As my name indicates, I am of Indian heritage. Now 83 years old, I arrived in Australia more than five decades ago. Whenever I meet newly arrived Indians, they often ask me about racism in Australia when I arrived.
My answer has always been, “I never experienced any racism 55 or so years ago, but in recent years I have had my share of unfortunate encounters at a personal level.”
Surendra Verma with friends of more than 50 years.
When I arrived here, institutional racism was in full force: the White Australia policy did not end until 1975. In those happy days, you could walk into the Australian embassy in New Delhi and enquire about your application. I noticed that my file was clearly marked “non-European”.
But still, I was here, a non-European, as they were the dying days of this abominable policy. Yet, no neo-Nazis were shouting to keep Australia white. There were no crowds of anti-migration Australians marching in the streets.
Of course, there were wog or curry jokes, but they were not laced with hatred, only humour. In fact, I never experienced any cultural racism, and most of my best friends are true-blue Aussies.
My first encounter with personal racism didn’t come until 15 years after I had arrived. It was in my new office. Someone remarked, “Go home.” I just dismissed it simply as a case of implicit bias: an unconscious attitude that affects one’s understanding of others without awareness. I saw no point in making it an issue.
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Going back to the question newly arrived Indians have often asked me over the years, when I arrived in Australia, there were hardly any Indians here and most of them were professionals. In fact, Indians were highly admired migrants at the time.
If Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price were there, she would be singing the praises of Indians, not passing disparaging remarks suggesting Labor was bringing in large numbers of Indians because they would vote for Labor, as she did last week.
