Demonstrators shout slogans during a protest by Indian students against the recent attacks on Indian students in Australia, in Harris Park, west Sydney. –Reuters Photo

Ultimately, at least in the Indian context, it boils down to old and new money. The overnight emergence of a relatively prosperous class of Indians, thanks to a neo-liberal sleight of hand, has recast an old social malaise in a new format: the inability of economic upstarts to acquire good demeanour. The message is writ large. So much so that in the popular movie Lage Raho Munnabhai, the hero, a street thug who becomes a Gandhian pacifist, advises a girl on how to assess a suitor: if at their date he makes crude noisy gestures to get the waiter’s attention, as so many young Indians do, forget him. Munnabhai had a point.

A marked feudal upbringing of India’s burgeoning middle classes has brought with it a culture of prejudices. The steeper the economic climb, the greater the chances of atavistic social traits tagging along. This is most obvious on college campuses. In a residential school in Ajmer an old feudal rivalry between the Baniya and the Rajput clans could easily take a threatening tone, regardless of the grades a student of either community may have got. Similarly Delhi University harbours in its fold simmering rivalry between Jats and Dalit students, among other feudal streaks.

Caste snobbery is evident among Muslim students too, as any old student of Aligarh Muslim University familiar with the perpetual standoff between the perceptibly diffident Bihari students and the loud and pushy Pathans from the Rohilkhand region of Uttar Pradesh would testify. I am told the Biharis have become more assertive now, as have the Dalits in Delhi.

Add an inbuilt gender bias together with a homegrown intolerance of other Indian cultures into the social basket and you would have an explosive cocktail of violent and unruly assertiveness. Road rage, sexual harassment, even rape, insensitivity towards ethnic minorities and vandalism is a hallmark of a new class of Indians. They have been let loose on the streets of big and small cities to prey on their own fellow compatriots, their pockets bulging with wads of cash, their minds vacuously riveted to other ways of making more money. About racism that lurks within, the chief minister of Nagaland recently complained how he was often asked if he was Nepali.

Every nation is mildly or seriously racist. I am sure Australia has its share of the malaise. But I am now inclined to listen to the other side of the story about the alleged racial attacks on Indians Down Under, particularly since this different version comes from Indians who have lived in Australia for decades. Let me give excerpts from two Indian news reports from Australia that cast a fresh eye on the prevailing problem of Indian students there.

The first is a report from Sydney in The Hindu of July 5, by Anita Joshua. It is headlined: Attacks divide Indians Down Under. The other is an analysis by Roli Srivastava in The Times of India of June 29. Datelined Melbourne/Sydney, this article is headlined: ‘Old’ Indians in Australia say youngsters invite attacks.’

‘The attacks on Indian students in Australia over the past two months have split the Indian community in the country,’ said The Hindu. ‘Broadly, the divide is between the entrenched Indian community and the newcomers but it is so evident that Australian authorities too comment on the disconnect.

‘The old-timers do not just echo the government’s stated position that the attacks are instances of ‘opportunistic crime’ and not racist in nature, but openly find fault with the way in which the new crop of students from the sub-continent have been conducting themselves.

‘The litany of faults with the Indian students runs thus: ‘They move around in their own linguistic groups and make no effort to mingle with the locals. They speak loudly amongst themselves and on cellphones while on trains and in other public spaces. They swagger around with flashy cellphones and iPods. They stare and pass lewd remarks. They are rude and unwilling to adapt to Australian culture.’

‘If Australians are smarting over the ‘racist’ tag, the Indian community is bristling and the group of journalists from India on a visit sponsored by the Australian government drew flak for the media’s response to the attacks.

‘Some are upset primarily because the media focus on the issue – described as ‘curry-bashing’ among students — has singled them out in their own small local communities. Others feel that the sporadic attacks being reported in recent weeks were essentially a case of ‘copycat crime’ as now Indians are being seen as easy targets since they are reluctant to approach the police. Indians have apparently earned the description of being ATMs — throw a few punches and you get money – primarily because many students do not have debit cards and, therefore, carry cash all the time.

A give-away comment in the Times of India’s account of the story goes thus: ‘This visible divide between the new and old Indians in Australia is much like a generation gap that cannot be bridged with the younger bunch of students saying that the older Indians here were ‘subservient’ to the system but since the new generation grew in a free, democratic India, they do not think twice before challenging the system.’

The Times says that throughout the controversy of alleged racial attacks, the Indian immigrant community kept its distance from the younger lot.

‘The immigrant Indian community in this continent country is resenting this attention on them ‘for all the wrong reasons.’ They say they had lived peacefully in this nation for years together but the sharp rise in the student population followed by the problems of attacks on them has made the community suddenly uncomfortable with its Indian identity.

For this reason, the Indian immigrant community here has remained invisible even as students spoke against the government rather vociferously demanding that the government should protect them better.’

According to the Times of India, the older generation of Indians points out that the student community ‘has first world expectations from this country (referring to their statements on police apathy and government inaction to these attacks) but fail to behave in accordance with how citizens of a first world country live. They find them loud and flashy and thus conspicuous and targets for such attacks. Young students say that the attacks cannot be condoned with such explanations and find it intriguing why their Indian elders here are not finding faults with the assailants but with them.’

This is so different from the problems faced by Indians of a less privileged class who are working abroad. Evident in the Indian government’s high profile response to violent incidents in Australia is the state’s class bias. In my view, far greater humiliation is heaped on Indian workers in the Gulf, who mostly come from the southern state of Kerala.

But the government has traditionally been more responsive to the interests of the white-collar workers and businessmen based there. Let me end with this story from 1981. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was bracing to make her first official visit to the United Arab Emirates.

Her aunt and cabinet minister Sheila Kaul came to Dubai for a preparatory visit. I asked her if Mrs Gandhi would meet the Indian workers who lived haplessly in remote shantytowns. She said of course Mr Gandhi would, and I wrote the story in the Gulf News. When Mrs Gandhi came visiting Dubai, the various Indian associations, all controlled by the well-heeled members of the community, blocked the meeting with poorer workers. The consul general who joined the conspiracy to prevent the prime minister from meeting the workers whose hard-earned money singularly shores up India’s foreign currency reserves, has become a columnist for the rightwing religious revivalist journal – Organiser.

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