Australia-Asia relations in historical perspective
AUSTRALIA'S AMBIVALENCE TOWARDS ASIA: JV D'Cruz and William Steele; Monash University Press, Monash University, Victoria-3800, Australia.
AUSTRALIA CARRIED out a quasi-eugenic experiment between the 1880s and the 1960s to create an ethnically homogeneous society. The objective of the "White Australia" policy, which was essentially a restrictive immigration policy, was meant to isolate the continent from its immediate geographical region.
The harsher effects of the policy were directed at the indigenous natives; in the name of Her Majesty, the Queen, the Australian Government forcibly separated Aboriginal children from their parents if they were found to be of mixed race and sent them to white institutions run by churches.
The idea was if these children were denied access to Aboriginal culture they would turn to western culture and could be then assimilated into white society. Whatever name the Government gave this grotesque project, it was done to contain the evidence of miscegenation.
The story of the "stolen generations" so movingly told in "Rabbit-Proof Fence," a film based on true events, is all the more shocking as the project carried on well into the late 1960s. What is telling is the Federal Government's refusal to apologise for the stolen generations.
Human rights record
In Australia's Ambivalence Towards Asia, JV D'Cruz and William Steele are indignant about Australia's smug superiority towards its Asian neighbours. Australia broadcasts its image as the standard-bearer of rights and in censorious tones rebukes its benighted Asian neighbours. This moral posturing is jejune given Australia's rights record at home — the unjust treatment of Aboriginal people notably.
The authors argue that Australia's attitudes towards non-whites and Asia stem from a reactive racism; from a feeling of inferiority rooted in its colonial past. It transfers the hatred it suffered at the hands of its colonial masters on to Asia.
Fear and anxiety
Australian attitudes toward Asia are partly constructed in immutable discourses of fear and anxiety; fear that a resurgent Asia would pose a threat to Australia's sovereignty. The images and metaphors used to describe Asian society and assumptions about "our" and "their" national character reflect an enduringly negative view of Asia.
The book was written as a sort of riposte to Blanche d'Alpuget's Turtle Beach which first appeared in 1981. The novel set largely in Malaysia provides an unflattering picture of Asians with D'Alpuget employing language as a tool to belittle and disempower non-whites. The book claims to be post-colonialist but the authors swiftly uncover its racist shadow.
Overly racist comment may have been eliminated from public discourse post-1975 but the authors detail how language issues matter in a country which still perceives itself as a monoculture where there is little variation in the way English is spoken.
Hence, the variant of English spoken by Asians becomes a Trojan horse by which racism can be subtly evoked. The non-whites are "othered" subtly without any overt reference to race. The authors demonstrate how use of language difference becomes a culturally permissible way to give vent to racist urges.
Identity crisis
The open racism of the 19th Century may have gone only to be replaced by a bigotry that insists on assimilation. On the death of a Hungarian-born industrialist Peter Abeles, the former Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke wrote, "Peter never acquired our accent but he absorbed our spirit."
In his eloquent foreword, Ashish Nandy says that the first identity of Australia could have been that of a country of dissent. Instead it chose to be a near replica of its colonial masters. "White Australia has to look at the Asian and indigenous Australians as well as its Asian neighbours as inferior and fearsome, for it has itself felt inferior, and it has feared its own self — socially, culturally and morally."
The Tampa crisis in 2001 showed yet again how the question of admitting non-white migrants into Australia regurgitates the chronic anxiety that something alien, and therefore undesirable, may breach the Anglo-cultural barrier. Right-wingers like Pauline Hanson would insist that they were not being racist but how could they not object to the Asian immigrants who formed ghettos and spoke their own language and held on to their culture in these ghettos?
Exclusivity
What is worrying is that this exclusivity of nationality is endorsed by liberals as well, all the more dangerous because of the insidious subtlety. Politicans, journalists and academics alike are caught up in this historical web of anxieties and fears of the "other" — the Asianisation of Australia. The perceptions of Asia are still tinged with fears of overwhelming numbers.
The anti-Asian backlash generated by the One Nation party led by Hanson may have represented a radical fringe but what if she had tapped into a broader undercurrent of the Australian mainstream that could surface if the economy faltered?
The authors' anguished self-reflexivity is refreshing and their analysis and arguments thought-provoking though the bashing of western, especially American, values of "liberalism" and "democracy" is a bit tedious. They drive home the point that Australia is a nation still looking for a way to reconcile its geography and history.
Drawing a parallel between Australia's relations with Asia and its race relations at home, they emphasise that if the nation is to succeed in Asia then it has to acknowledge and reach out to the "other" at home.
The key to establishing better relations with Asia is not a clearer understanding of "them" but what Australia needs is a thoughtful unpacking of the values and fears that constitute "us".
ANANDHI SUBRAMANIAN
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