“Mr Modi is The Boss!”
Anthony Albanese’s tortured Bruce Springsteen analogy got lost in the euphoria.
What the crowd heard, and what the world saw, was the prime minister of Australia genuflecting before a foreign prime minister on Australian soil: a foreign prime minister – India’s Narendra Modi – whose government was suspected to be running a network of spies in Australia, whose agents had been accused of stealing state secrets.
Inside Sydney’s Qudos Arena, Albanese’s effusiveness was greeted with rapturous applause by 20,000 fervent fans. Albanese waxed lyrical about the “warmth and energy in the room”, saying it was greater than that for rocker Springsteen when he trod the same stage.
But the whole story is far more fractured. To see only the rapture for Modi in the room misses those in the Indian diaspora who felt unwelcome within it, ignores the protests just outside, and disregards the fear that many in the Australian-Indian community live with every day.
India’s diaspora is one of Australia’s most vibrant and successful. It is now the second-largest diaspora group in the country – soon to be the largest, overtaking the UK. Over the past five years, India has provided more new Australian citizens than any other country.
And the rapid numerical growth has been accompanied by an increase in public visibility and political influence.
But the diaspora is disunited and factionalised, sometimes violently so. Fear has silenced many: a self-censorship borne of anxiety over surveillance or potential retribution. The growing schisms reflect the seismic faultlines dividing India itself.
And the apparent inability – perhaps unwillingness – of Australia’s political class to contemplate the Indian diaspora’s breathtaking complexity has exacerbated those divisions, and pushed them underground.
India’s vital, vibrant diaspora is deeply divided.
Caste discrimination ‘systemic’ in Australia
Some of those divisions have ancient histories. Casteism has been exported to purportedly egalitarian Australia, where – according to new survey data – children are being excluded from birthday parties because their presence is considered “polluting” and low caste workers are being denied shifts by higher caste managers.
The Hindu caste system, which is assigned at birth and determines occupations and social status, is made up of four tiers, with Brahmins or priests and teachers at the top and Dalits at the bottom. Dalits are often tasked with scavenging and street cleaning, are considered “untouchable” and are outcast from Indian society.
Dr Asang Wankhede led the National Community Consultation on Caste Discrimination, involving interviews with 146 Indian Australians. His research found “caste discrimination and prejudice is persistent and systemic in Australia”.
“It manifests in varying degrees in all aspects of public and private lives.”
Wankhede says casteism has existed for centuries – “irrespective of whatever the tides were back home in India” – and persists despite a constitution that explicitly prohibits caste discrimination. But he says its export to Australia is “shocking”.
Caste discrimination in Australia
“I have experienced caste-based discrimination at my job. My supervisor was an Indian Brahmin who is from an upper caste. She is very interested in knowing what caste the person belongs to when a new person starts the job. If the person is from lower caste she will behave differently ... She used to give overtime to people from her community but if the person is from a lower caste she might even cancel their shift … Every upper caste person that I have encountered behaved like this.”
- Anonymous Canberra resident interviewed for a report into Caste Discrimination in Australia by AIM and SGRSS Inc
“Kids (Dalit kids), when they go to other kids (upper-caste) birthday parties, and they (upper-caste) follow Hinduism and their own rituals, so sometimes what happens is that they are not allowed to enter that time when they follow the ritual. So, the children say why we are only going for the cake cutting time. (Note: the birthday cake cutting ceremony usually follows the Hindu ritual prayers which are held at the beginning of an occasion). With a sad face, our children (Dalit children) are prohibited from joining at the same time as other children and are made to wait outside of the place where the ritual is undertaking. Our children are not able to do the same ceremonies. They know which caste we belong to and that’s how they think we are (polluting). We are Shudras/untouchables. If we attend their rituals, they and the ritual will get defiled/polluted.
- Anonymous Sydney resident interviewed for a report into Caste Discrimination in Australia by AIM and SGRSS Inc
Dr Jasbeer Musthafa Mamalipurath, a lecturer in media studies at Queen’s University in Belfast, who has studied Australia’s Indian diaspora for more than a decade, says high-caste expatriates dominate cultural organisations, and exclude low-caste Hindus or people of other faiths.
“Caste-based divisions can lead to dangerous consequences because they perpetuate social inequalities, normalise exclusion and can even lead to significant psychological, economic and social harm to the marginalised communities.
“Additionally, it poses significant threats to the societal ideals of equality and social inclusion that countries like Australia claim to have been adherent to.”
Last month, the Australian Human Rights Commission’s national anti-racism framework recommended “the Australian government investigate options for legal protections against caste discrimination, including potential reform of existing legislation”.
Competing visions of the same country
Other divisions in Australia’s Indian diaspora echo the political schisms that grip India.
Modi began his third term in office in June. Only two prime ministers – modern India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his daughter, Indira Gandhi – have ruled the country longer.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has espoused an increasingly muscular and unyielding Hindu ethno-nationalism, an ideology known as Hindutva. The right wing of his party is linked to paramilitary groups such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded on a basis of Hindu supremacy.
Many of Modi’s policies, critics argue, are fundamentally discriminatory: his citizenship bill excluded Muslim migrants from gaining Indian nationality; the now-withdrawn “farm bills” to deregulate the agricultural industry were opposed most fiercely by Punjab’s Sikh agriculturalists; and his government’s efforts to bring Muslim-majority Kashmir under direct central government control resulted in dozens of political activists being arrested.
At stake are two competing understandings of what India is.
The Nehruvian vision is of India as a secular, pluralistic liberal democracy, home to a plethora of religions, languages and cultural traditions, and acknowledging India’s sprawling history of empire, conquest and multiculturalism.
The BJP’s conception is India as Hindustan, a country for the subcontinent’s Hindus. The corollary, critics fear, is that the country’s significant Muslim population (India is the third-largest Muslim country in the world), and other minorities, such as Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and the “hill tribes” of the north-east, are marginalised, even disfranchised or oppressed.
‘This New India comes into your home to kill you’
In 2020, Australia expelled two foreign agents, part of a “nest of spies” – in the words of Asio chief Mike Burgess – who were seeking to cultivate politicians and obtain classified information.
It was subsequently reported that the spies were agents of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (Raw) – the country’s foreign intelligence service.
In a 2021 speech, Burgess, who did not name a country of origin but is understood to have been speaking about India, said the spies “developed targeted relationships with current and former politicians, a foreign embassy and a state police service”.
“They monitored their country’s diaspora community. They tried to obtain classified information about Australia’s trade relationships.
“They asked a public servant to provide information on security protocols at a major airport.”
Surveillance extends beyond government.
Indian-Australians report being watched, says Dr Priya Chacko, associate professor of international politics at the University of Adelaide, and India’s intelligence agencies are increasingly active in monitoring diaspora groups overseas.
“It seems to be a policy, and it seems to me there’s evidence of this happening in Australia,” Chacko says.
While surveillance is meant to be covert, Chacko says it’s often anything but.
“People know that they’re being surveilled … and it’s a form of intimidation. And so it leads to self-censorship, which is an infringement of people’s civil liberties.
“So it is a threat to Australia in the sense that it’s undermining sovereignty, it’s undermining the government’s ability to do its job, which is to protect people’s civil liberties.”
The Guardian spoke to numerous members of the Indian diaspora in Australia who claimed they were being surveilled – at public or community events, even in the course of their work. Some declined to speak, citing fears it would inflame tensions.
Samar Kohli, a Sikh activist, says he has been overtly surveilled on several occasions.
“Just days ago, I had a car following me, it just kept following me for a long time, and I kept circling around, and I parked somewhere to see if they’re going to circle around and come back. And they did that. And then I left, and they left. So, like, weird things happen.”
Kohli says people have watched his home from parked cars, and others have reported almost identical incidents.
Surveillance of Indian-Australians
There are times I’ve had to park my car at a distance and walk so that people don’t know where my car is parked. There have been many times I know of, of people’s houses are being monitored: a new car will be parked across the road and left there. Sometimes there are people sitting there, they will just be sitting there watching us. And if you just go talk to them, they say, ‘oh, we’re just looking for something or discussing something’, then they just park. No one does that. These things do happen in Australia.
I can tell you so many people, we know for clear fact, might be working directly for India, and we’ve given evidence to the Australian Federal Police, to Asio and to everyone. Are we just waiting and seeing if and when that happens or what they’re going to do?
I wouldn’t say there is fear. I would say there’s cautiousness. [With the Asio disclosure of Indian espionage] I would say one part is relief that, “OK, finally, people are seeing what we’ve been saying for so long”. The other part is “will Australia let this happen in Australia?” Will Australia pick up its game even before India try to do what they’ve done in Canada? Does someone need to die before Australia takes it seriously?
“I know people, both in Sydney and Melbourne … either they’ve been followed, or their house has been monitored, or random things have just happened at times.”
Chacko says the fear in Australia is real.
“They’re afraid they’ll be denied visas to go back to India, or that they’ll be arrested in India. And, you know, this might be getting a bit paranoid, but they definitely feel like that, and they definitely self-censor for that reason.”
In October, officials from Modi’s government were expelled from Canada, publicly accused of involvement in the murder of the separatist Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was shot dead in 2023. Canada says it has shown India “credible and irrefutable evidence of ties between agents of the government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil”.
India has rejected the allegations as “preposterous” and maintains Canada has provided no evidence to back its claims. But earlier this year, Modi made a public boast that he was able to extract retribution for dissent, saying: “Today, even India’s enemies know: this is Modi, this is the New India. This New India comes into your home to kill you.”
Demonising Islam online
A key element of Modi’s political success – a comeback that far surpasses Donald Trump’s in America – has been his ability to harness social media, and exploit its reach directly to India’s vast and intensely online population.
Thousands of WhatsApp and Telegram groups in India are dominated by Hindutva ideology and aggressive political invective.
Chako says she sees evidence of the same rhetoric in Australia. WhatsApp groups and social media channels in Australia are dominated by polarising rightwing invective, often demonising Islam and other minorities.
“It’s coming straight from India,” she says. “Any agenda that’s active in India flows into these WhatsApp groups.
“It’s interesting to see how quickly it permeates and that the people in these groups don’t question it.”
Chacko says WhatsApp groups in Australia are dominated by disinformation around Islam and Sikhism – “about how Muslims are cultists, they’re a threat to Hindus”.
“It’s worrying in the sense that it’s disinformation, promoting Islamophobia, but it’s also in terms of fragmenting an Indian community. These groups, they never talk about Indians, they talk about Hindus, they separate themselves from the 50% of Indians in Australia who are not Hindu.”
Islamophobia among Australia's Indian diaspora
When I witness instances of far-right Hindu extremism in Australia, I am overwhelmed with a deep sense of fear, vulnerability, and distress. The chants of "Jai Shri Ram", now synonymous with violence against Muslims, carry a chilling message of hatred and bigotry. It’s terrifying to see such rhetoric and calls for violence openly expressed in our communities, making it difficult to feel safe or welcome.
Hearing calls for violence against those who slaughter and consume beef, used as a thinly veiled threat against Muslims, fills me with profound vulnerability. It’s not just about the words; it’s about the terrifying reality they represent for Muslims who live in constant fear of being targeted. We find ourselves increasingly alienated and marginalised, caught in the crosshairs of this growing extremism.
These events sharply highlight the impunity with which these extremist groups operate, further marginalising and isolating Muslim communities.
It leaves me questioning the safety of my loved ones and the inclusiveness of a society that allows such hate to flourish. The normalisation of this extremism is an assault not only on our physical safety but also on our sense of belonging and dignity in this country.
- Imam Waseem Razvi, Chair of the Alliance against Islamophobia
Minorities within minorities
Mamalipurath argues the idea of India “as a monolithic, homogenised identity is a myth that needs to be busted”.
“She is far beyond Bollywood and butter chicken.”
Across more than a decade living in Australia, Mamalipurath says he saw India’s diversity – across religion, caste, class, creed, culture, language – manifest in an intense communalism, even down to expat groups based on graduating from a particular Indian university.
He says conceptions of us versus them within the diaspora are used to further marginalise minority groups.
“India’s recent obsession with a homogenised cultural heritage – One Bharat – as well as the recent shifts in the country’s political landscape, plays a key role in pressuring the groups to subscribe to ‘one India; one identity and one sense’ about India.
“It leads the minority communities to experience a sociological double marginalisation; they get pushed down to become a minority within the minorities.”
Few in Australia – particularly Australia’s political class – are adroit at navigating the Indian community’s complexities and differences, Mamalipurath argues.
Numerous Australian politicians have been photographed wearing saffron scarves carrying the banyan tree logo of an ultra-nationalist Indian group, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), linked to alleged violence against Muslims; have chanted “Jai Shri Ram”, an ostensibly religious chant that has been used by Hindutva adherents during attacks on minorities.
“Heedless” politicians, Mamalipurath argues, find themselves co-opted by political interests within the diaspora, largely because they haven’t done their homework.
“These heedless activities by mainstream leaders and officials contribute to the normalisation of the ethnonationalist disinformation purveyed by the far-right groups of India.”
Sikh discrimination in Australia
There’s more and more and more hatred [against Sikhs]. You read the speeches of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister, and then to Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi or even Modi. It doesn’t take much to see there’s a clear hatred for Sikhs.
The problem is, now I see this feeling coming over to Australia. I’ve been in Australia for 20 years and this isn’t the country I came into. To some extent, Aussies are right: “do not bring your problems here”. But at the same time, unfortunately, these problems are following us. We left the country to be in peace, not for this to keep following us.
We already know these guys monitor Sikhs in Australia and across the world … even when you go to the Sikh events or any rallies, you will find these specific people who will come and start recording videos and taking photos of anyone who’s holding a Khalistani (Sikh separatist) flag.
People who speak, people who raise questions, they’re the one who’s been targeted the most … it’s basically to silence us.
What’s been coming on the news [of Indian espionage in Australia] is nothing shocking or surprising. It’s just finally coming out for everyone to see.
‘The common thread … is authoritarianism’
Chacko argues that India’s transnational repression needs to be understood in the context of a global shift towards authoritarianism.
“It has to do with Hindu nationalism, but it’s also got to do with authoritarianism in general. There’s now this very firm alliance between authoritarianism and Hindu nationalism. It’s not like the things that India is doing abroad are unique to India: Iran does it, China does it.
“The common thread … is authoritarianism.”
India remains a democracy, Chacko says, a vibrant if imperfect one, one capable of “throwing up surprises”. But the trend lines, she argues, point towards repression.
“India’s always been a flawed democracy, that’s always been the case. But it’s gotten to a point where it’s now an autocratic state, doing things or being accused of doing things that a country like Iran does. It’s really sad, actually, that it’s come to this.”
