You know India-Australia relations have reached a nadir when Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bacchan, who has ruled over India's film industry since the 1970s, turns down an honorary degree from an Australian university. "My conscience is profoundly unsettled at the moment," he wrote to Queensland University of Technology in a letter he posted to his blog on May 30.
The action superstar has good reason to be upset. For weeks, Indian and Australian media have focused on an alarming number of. On May 24, a 25-year-old student from India was stabbed in the head with a screwdriver during a mugging in Melbourne, leaving him comatose. On June 2, an Indian student was robbed by a gang of five men, who slashed his chest with a box cutter after demanding money and cigarettes. In Melbourne's western suburbs, one-third of all violent attacks target Indians. According to a report by Australian police authorities, the state of Victoria (of which Melbourne is the capital) reported 1,440 attacks against Indians in the 12 months ended June 2008, up from about 1,000 attacks in the previous 12 months. About 50,000 Indians live in Melbourne, a city of 4 million, according to government estimates,
In India and elsewhere, the reaction was immediate: On May 31, close to 1,000 Indians took to the streets in Melbourne and about 300 protesters ringed the Australian Embassy in New Delhi. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the day before the protests and condemned the attacks, but said they were criminal, not racist in nature. Indian newspapers and television channels leaped on the story, accusing Australians of racism and the Australian government of doing little to protect its guests. Typical of the reaction in the Indian media was a story in The Economic Times, India's largest business paper, with the headline, "Australia, Land of Racists."Fresh from their humiliating defeat in national elections, opposition parties have seized the opportunity to score some points by criticizing what they called the failure of Singh's government to do something concrete to stop these attacks. "The dreams of Indian middle-class parents who mortgage their lifetime savings and obtain education loans to send their children have fallen astray to racist manifestations," the Communist Party of India wrote to Prime Minister Singh.Indians aren't the only ones concerned about the safety of young Asian students Down Under. Australia has about 415,000 foreign students, according to government estimates, of which Indians make up 90,000. That's second only to the 130,000 Chinese. Beijing has taken note of the uproar. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Canberra told the Sydney Morning Herald on June 2 that "it is hoped that the Australian government will provide better protection to international students from China and other countries."
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