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Speaking of the Hindu Diaspora in Australia

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Speaking of the Hindu Diaspora in Australia Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies Volume 11 Article 6 January 1998 Speaking of the Hindu Diaspora in Australia Purushottama Bilimoria Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Bilimoria, Purushottama (1998) "Speaking of the Hindu Diaspora in Australia," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 11, Article 6. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1179 The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. Bilimoria: Speaking of the Hindu Diaspora in Australia Speaking of the Hindu Diaspora in Australia Purushottama Bilimoria Social Inquiry, Deakin University Philosophy, University of Melbourne WHAT ARE THE distinctive character­ Anxieties about the likely treatment of . istics of the "Diaspora Hindus" who turned Hindus in Australia in view of their practice ! : up during the different phases in the of "idolatry" and "caste evils" did not deter I . Australian landscape? To address this private entrepreneurs from sponsoring question, this essay will briefly discuss the emigration of Indian "coolies". But fears of early, colonial, post-independent, and more a mass exodus of "Hindoos", led the recent phases corresponding to patterns in colonial Indian government to pass the migration, settlement, and temple culture of Indian Emigration Act 1839. Henceforth Australian Hindus, drawing on the history of only a few Indians migrated as itinerant their reception in the host society alongside merchants, and small shipments under other data, from the 1857 to 1996 national private arrangements continued throughout censuses. 1 the 1840s and 1850s.5 These latter recruits comprised larger number of Hindus, some I. Early History of higher caste groups. The 1857 census Hindus had long fantasized about the vast showed that Victoria alone had 277 persons (un)inhabited. landmass that lay farthest of Indian or "Hindoo race". (Race was a south of the dreaded seas where civilization common classification to register and colour ended. While Java-based Hindus had trading and religious roots.) contacts with· Moluccus and Timor, there is The "Hindoo hawker" only anecdotal evidence of their presence The next wave' of Indians came with Pathans dakshinahidvipaviit.2 . from Punjab, Sind, and Frontier Provinces; The "coolie Jlindoo" they were Indian nationals classified .as On board the first few fleets that brought "Hindoos". Some indeed were Hindus, the white settlers and convicts to terra australis, rest were Punjabi Muslims and Sikhs. They from 1787-1823, there were a few Indian worked as camel-drivers or servants on crews, and others came later as labourers or caravanserais. Later, some ventured to gold as convicts. As the hinterlands opened up mines in Victoria and a few to pastoral there were renewed calls for recruitment of projects. The men married local white or Indian labourers, although misgivings about aboriginal women, but otherwise "close the effects of ~"paganism" and "colour" of association with the infidel community" was 3 discouraged. (Their "half-caste" children I i the caste Hindus remained rife. But an ex­ British planter from India argued in favour were not allowed to marry back into Anglo­ of Hindu labourers because they were "not Christian families. 6) addicted to opium, wine and spirit" and Hindus along with Sikh Pathans became worked hard, equal in some respects to hawkers and pedlars in rural outposts carting Europeans.4 In 1837 he recruited some 40 their bundle of wares, silk, and utensils "Hindoo" labourers to work in the fields; which they sold door to door. When a most were Dhangar tribal people from Hindu or Sikh among them died, he would Chotanagpur region. ~be cremated in the open eucalyptus-pyre. - Hindu-Christian Studies Bulletin 11 (1998) 11-19 Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 1998 1 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 11 [1998], Art. 6 12 Purushottama Bilimoria Most returned to the subcontinent to retire; proverbial welcome: "All black; have you some continued their small trading interests got no soap?" 11 Sanadhya commented on the or took casual jobs. The early signs of lack of community cohesion or religious public reaction to the presence of Hindus identity among the Indians scattered in appeared in 1893. A news magazine report different parts of the country. Most Indians, chided at the "niggardliness" of the hawkers Hindus among them, appeared to survive by and "the wretched manner in which Hindus inter-marrying and assimilating with the host and Mahometans live" only to hoard a society. The assimilationist practices in "pile" (of money) to take back to their .own Australia have been blamed for keeping country. While they begged for tea and alive the "white-as-snow" ethos, that among tobacco, they were less frugal with drinks, the indigenous inhabitants included contrived . under whose influence "they seem either mixed mating, dislocation of children, and horribly dangerous or irredeemably nasty".7 mission confinements. In sum, Indian/Hindu immigration was The agitations in 1923 of a visiting a mixture of banished Ramas, "coolie" Indian diplomat and Hindu-rightist, Srinivasa recruits, domestic servants, farm-hands, and Sastri, over the plight of local Indians, plantation labourers, to camel-drivers and found support with the Council of Churches. hawkers. Estranged from their families, a This wein them electoral franchise, pensions, good few eventually left for their homeland. and some concessions. But Sastri also The ethnic-religious identity also came to . reviled the great heroic symbol of the Indian prevail among the few Indians. Thus, a diaspora, viz. Gandhi, pouring scorn on the Hindu merchant, Shri Pammamull, who "philosophic anarchy of the fervent fellow came from the Sind region as an opal believer lost to an extremist Hindu cause"! polisher, gradually built a family opal trade Prejudices about the religious characteristics that has prosperously continued with his of. the Indian were reinforced in the third to fourth generation descendants, who Australian psyche through Sastri's imagery too remain ,as devout Hindus, contributing of the "plucky little bloke in loincloth" and generously to Hindu-Indian causes. 8 the bizarre practices of Gandhian Hindus. White Australia Policy and the absented Even the cremation rite witnessed by many Hindu in the outback aroused allusions to suttee The official barrage continued over (sati or "widow-immolation,,).12 immigration of Indians, indeed of all Asians. This culminated in the Immigration ID. The Post-Independence Hindu Restriction Act 1901, effectively heralding Settlement the "White Australia" policy. The supreme Post-colonial professional Hindu exclusivity of the "white race", with its By the 1950s the migrant community from supporting Christian base, was repeated by the subcontinent was just too sporadic and numerous leaders in Australia over several scattered for a sense of ethnic-religious decades. 9 Only five Indian visitors a year identity to grow. The 1954 census recorded came to Australia from 1905 to 1923, with 2647 Indians in the vast nation. With the no spouses. In 1911 of the 3698 "Hindoos", end of World War II and the subcontinental the majority were Hindus. Despite being Independence, immigration to Australia was British subjects, they were denied equal open only for those with over 50 % status, even land leases. 10 European blood. The late 1950s saw a slight increase in the number of Hindus opting for II. The Modern Townwallas Australia rather than for England, the United The activist Hindu States, and Canada. What attracted most was In 1914 a Hindu activist, Totaram Sanadhya, certainly not the promises of an open visiting from the Fiji colony, received the "environment where religious aspirations https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol11/iss1/6 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1179 2 Bilimoria: Speaking of the Hindu Diaspora in Australia The Hindu Diaspora in Australia 13 could be freely pursued. Instead, for many adopted homes, and many looked to modern secular Hindus, the sixth continent Australia, although a greater majority from appealed as a safe refuge from the religious these troubled regions have settled in orthodoxies and caste-ridden life back in the Canada. subcontinent. When packing their tin-chests, Taking the 1986 census as an example, the emigrants asked: "What can we leave 21,500 identified as Hindus (which includes behind?" It might occur to them later that European converts to Hinduism). The break­ they have left behind some important down of overseas Hindus by country of birth ingredient of their identity. was given as the following: India 35.7%; After 1965, when the "White Australia" Fiji 21.5%; Sri Lanka 11.0%; Malaysia policy was officially dropped, the reception 7.1 %, U.K. 4.3%, South Africa 3.8%, New of immigrants changed, although Zealand 2.5%, other 14.1 % (this comprised reservations about admitting people with Hindus from other states of Africa, "different. standards of living, tradition and Southeast Asia, North America, Europe, and culture" did persist. The overall image of the Arab regions). 74% of overseas-born Australia too had changed dramatically, Hindus arrived between 1967 and 1976. from an
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