Reflecting on the past year, Australia’s Indian community has much to celebrate as it truly comes into its own. We’ve left a significant imprint – both in the Australia-India relationship and as a nationally influential community – while also experiencing notable growth and progress internally. Wrapping up a year marked by ambition, brilliance, and jam-packed calendars, the air is alive with a sense of anticipation for what lies ahead.
Elections
It was a year of elections – and surprise results had us all become political pundits at our own levels. Whether India or the US later, it was democracy in action as voters booted out governments that were not delivering, or returned governments with diluted strength.
Closer home to us, the crisis of confidence in leadership was glaringly obvious in local government elections in NSW and Victoria, as record numbers of candidates from our own community threw their hat in, aiming to make a difference. The surprising element – large swathes of them shunned the major political platforms, choosing to go independent. If the candidates appear to be striving for a paradigm shift by distancing themselves from traditional platforms, it raises the question of whether voters, too, might reject the status quo and embrace fresh, alternative options. Indian australian community 2024
India-Australia
Even as government relations sped on at breakneck pace with multiple visits by ministers (including External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar twice, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan inbound, and Vic Premier Jacinta Allan outbound), business-to-business links grew as well in the lead up to an expected Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement CECA. Military ties further strengthened with initiatives such as Exercise Kakadu (multinational warfare drills coordinating air, sea and subsurface operations), and the General Rawat Exchange Program for defence personnel.
CAIR and nurture
In keeping with its remit of facilitating greater collaboration and engagement with India, the Centre for Australia-India Relations CAIR presented an approximate $2.6 million in grants to nurturing Australia-India projects. $1.4 million of this makes up the Maitri Cultural Partnerships Grants given to nine organisations, and $1.2 million in Maitri Research Grants for five different recipients. Established by the government in 2023, the Centre inaugurated its headquarters at Parramatta this year.
Trends
Perhaps the most significant takeaway from this year for the Indian community in Australia, is that the trade winds of influence are beginning to guide mainstream perceptions of us.
Hindi / Punjabi When the Indian cricket team tours Australia, it’s as though portal doors open to an India that is usually restricted to the western suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney. The dhols come out; the bright pugris, Nehru jackets, kurta pyjamas and the occasional sari do not seem out of place.
This tour, cricket has put Hindi in the legacy newspapers. Hands up if you’ve made keepsakes of THOSE front pages in Hindi and Punjabi only days ago, from The Daily Telegraph and The Sun Herald. (Granted there were errors in the text, but Hindi advocates like Mala Mehta celebrated: we could not have imagined this only ten years ago, and when did you ever see cover headlines in Greek or Maltese or Bahasa?) The Age and SMH went a step further, by transcribing entire cricket articles into Hindi. And NBN jumped on to the bandwagon, with full page ads in language.
Diwali Ask a random person on the street about Diwali today, and they’ll know it’s the South Asian Festival of Lights. With plenty of media attention around Diwali, every major mainstream organisation – government, corporate or educational – now holds a Diwali event. Whether a fundraiser or just a morning tea, expect extravagant themes of India – in the outfits, décor, food, entertainment – with diyas galore and plenty of talk about the power of light in uplifting lives and souls.
A recent trend has been Diwali events at museums – a perfect opportunity to showcase collections, and perhaps to throw the doors open to an entirely new audience.
Meanwhile local celebrations are continuing to grow bigger too – such as at Phantom St in Schofields where every house stands bedecked in lights, and rows of cars drive past to experience Diwali glory. Indian australian community 2024
As we ourselves hopped from event to event this year, there may well have been celebration fatigue, but not Diwali fatigue! Indian Link 2024
Power list The Daily Telegraph’s list of Top 25 influential Indian-Australians in NSW also succeeded in creating some chatter, and no doubt, brought in new readers for the publication. That a mainstream media organisation had invested in studying the community at close quarters and produced such a list, was testimony to the growing influence of Indian-origin Australians. Discussions raged about the relative merits and otherwise of those included, but a comparable list produced for Indian-Australians in Victoria went by largely unnoticed.
Other talking points
Migration rules Some significant changes were announced in migration rules this year that will impact members of our community including international students. These include:
- 20% decrease in student visa grants
- changes to English language requirements for student visas
- significant changes in temporary graduate visas
- inclusion of Indian citizens in Work and Holiday Visas
- measures to end “visa hopping”
- changes to Skilled Work Visas in regional areas in some states
- the axing of the “Golden Visa” program
- and perhaps significantly, new visas for victim of workplace exploitation.
(Source: YouTube)
ABC Four Corners The report Spies, secrets and threats: How the Modi regime targets people overseas caused a bit of furore amongst Indian-Australians, not all of them BJP supporters. Indian Link spoke for the community when we concluded that the program would have benefitted from additional contextual references, in the interests of balanced reporting. Indian Link 2024
Performing Arts
Among the performing artistes, it was a veritable who’s who of stars that came our way: musicians AR Rahman (twice), Anoushka Shankar, Kumar Sanu, Sunidhi Chauhan, Sonu Nigam, Shreya Ghoshal, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Sachin-Jigar, Adnan Sami, Abhijeet Bhattacharya and Atif Aslam; new-gen sensations Maithili Thakur and Afsana Khan; Southern stars Hariharan, Anirudh, KS Harisankar and When Chai Met Toast; Punjabi singers Harbhajan Maan, Babbu Maan, Karan Aujla, Gurnam Bhullar, B Praak, Shubh, Garry Sandhu and NINJA; classical musicians Zakir Husain, Kala Ramnath, Jayanthi Kumaresh, Lalgudi GJR Krishna, Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Rahul Vellal, S Sowmya and Rama Vaidyanathan; and not to forget, the brightest of our screen stars for IFFM, plus Neena Gupta and Mihir Ahuja for the filming of Hindi Vindi.
Stand-up comedy continues to rise in popularity as a favoured form of entertainment. Joining the rush of celebrity stand-ups touring from India (think Vir Das, Zakir Khan, Amit Tandon, Kanan Gill, Aakash Gupta, Gaurav Gupta, Aditya Kulshreshtha, Vipul Goyal, Anubhav Singh Bassi), we’ve seen the flowering of Indian-Australian stars (hello Urvi Majumdar, Aaditya Gautam, Jo Gowda, Sashi Perera, Delhi Buoy, and the promising new platform Brown Women Comedy).
It’s been a fantastic year for Indian-origin artistes in the mainstream. Musician Dhee hit the headlines as a Parramatta-raised performer who has won acclaim in India’s entertainment industry. Vaishnavi Suryaprakash solidified her reputation as an actor of true mettle following back-to-back hits Counting and Cracking and Nayika. Congratulations also to Reuben de Melo of Perth who won The Voice Australia; Vidya Makan who played Eliza Hamilton in Hamilton; Mithila Gupta who created Four Years Later (SBS); director Neil Sharma of Critical Incident fame (Stan Australia); Sharon Johal who starred as Australian TV’s first Khalsa woman in The Twelve Season 2 (Binge); Raj Labade and Pallavi Sharda who featured in The Office (Australia); Sydney actor Sanjeev Mehra who played Kareena Kapoor Khan’s dad in The Buckingham Murders, and 21-year-old Sydney writer and poet Sathyan Elanko whose song Aasa Kooda has become the Tamil hit of the year. Plus, we are now keenly awaiting Mitu Bhowmick Lange’s made-in-Melbourne anthology My Melbourne.
Kudos also to the schoolkids from Victoria and NSW who won lead roles in the Schools Spectaculars this year (hoping to see more in coming years), and the community arts organisations who got the opportunity to showcase their particular artforms at OzAsia and Melbourne Fringe. Indian australian community 2024
SXSW made inroads to India as well, although we’d like to see more thought going into this next time round.
Congrats however to the Sydney Film Festival, who picked some wonderful gems from Indian cinema, in various genres, at this year’s event.
A heartfelt shoutout here to community theatre: local theatre groups across the country have now found their footing, showcasing remarkable sophistication in both themes and techniques.
Visual Arts
There were Indian links galore in our leading arts festival the Biennale of Sydney, Sculpture by the Sea at Bondi (boasting no less than ten Indian sculptors this year), and the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial IOTA at Perth.
Modern mystics, writers
Guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Sadhguru. Deepak Chopra. Three of the leading gurus of inner awareness, consciousness and personal growth brought their wisdom to us directly this year. Add to this mix Vedic speaker Dushyanth Sridhar, and founder of the Shrimad Rajchandra Mission Dharampur Pujya Gurudevshri Rakeshji, and followers of this genre must surely have soaked in spiritual bliss.
Providing food for thought also, were celebrity writers William Dalrymple (touring with his acclaimed Golden Road), Perumal Murugan, Anjum Hasan, Abraham Varghese and Balli Kaur Jaswal, among others. Indian australian community 2024
Sport
Cricket has had its fair share of mention this year, and not just currently. (Remember when all of Mumbai came out to see India’s favourite sons – and a large shiny ornament?) With the Border-Gavaskar Trophy ongoing, in a five-test duel no less, there’s enough cricket chatter as it is so we can safely keep that out of this discussion. Luckily for us, there’s been plenty of other sport this year. We were glued to the Olympics, although India’s Paralympic athletes wowed us where the Olympic stars faltered. (Still feeling for Vinesh Phogat? Us too).
Closer home to us however, we applauded Canberra’s IM Rishi Sardana who became Australia’s 2024 Chess Champion; India’s polo team created a bit of a buzz; Melbourne teen Charvi Tanksale made a mark at the AusCycling Junior Track National Championships, and we can’t wait to see Victoria’s embrace of Pro-Kabaddi later this month.
And a bit about us
Time flies, they say, when you’re having fun. And just like that, we’d ticked off thirty years on the calendar. Of course we celebrated with a gala event, with friends and well-wishers attending. As a surprise anniversary present, in our anniversary month, we claimed three more trophies at the NSW Premier’s Multicultural and Communications Awards, giving us a new a tagline: 30 Awards in 30 Years. It lasted but a month, when our Melbourne journalist Lakshmi Ganapathy knocked it off its perch by winning a media excellence award at the Vic Multicultural Awards. As we finish the year with 31 awards in our kitty, we are committing to a new initiative – a scholarship for media and communications students at a leading Sydney university.
Indian Link 2024
Thumbs up to:
- The burgeoning of space startups in India-Australia collaborations (eg LatConnect 60, Space Machines Company and Skykraft who secured A$18 million funding for civil-space innovations and commercial partnerships)
- IFFM, which marked its 15th anniversary this year
- IABCA, which marked its 10th anniversary this year Indian australian community 2024
- Community members who won honours in the Australia Day and King’s Birthday Honours this year including Niharika Hiremath (the youngest recipient this year at only 29), Sakshi Thakur, Harinder Kaur, Harinder Sidhu, Dr Ramananda Kamath, Dr Sachint Lal, and Prof Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt Indian australian community 2024
- Kudrat Makkar of fashion label MASTANI who presented the first solo show by an Indian-Australian at the Australian Fashion Week Indian Link 2024
Thumbs down to:
- Politicians’ push to appease select communities with proposals to rename landmarks, or to allocate festivals/months along religious lines, leaving the rest of the Indian diaspora unimpressed. Indian Link 2024
- Continuing domestic violence deaths such as that of Chaithanya Swetha Madhagani of Point Cook Melbourne, whose killer remains at large
- The acquittal of William Swale, who crashed his car into a beer garden in Daylesford Victoria, causing the deaths of five people of Indian origin including Pratibha Sharma, her daughter Anvi, her partner Jatin Kumar, their friend Vivek Bhatia and his son Vihaan.
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