Mirch masala in Australia

Indian students in Australia, unnerved by a wave of attacks on them, are carrying chilli powder and pepper spray to repel potential aggressors — and are also preparing to enrol for martial arts courses in self-defence techniques.

“I’ve been carrying around a pepper spray canister for some days now, on the advice of one of my Australian friends,” Sandeep, 24, who refused to give his surname, told DNA on Saturday. Two other students brandished chilli powder in plastic packets, which they had tucked away in their jacket pockets.

The unusual self-defence techniques, which echoes methods employed by the protagonists in the Hindi film Mirch Masala, were felt necessary because the police in Australian cities have been “unable or unwilling” to stop a wave of attacks on Indian students, they said.

Simultaneously, an Australian martial arts expert in Melbourne has offered to train Indian students in self-defence techniques that will equip them with “just enough to defend themselves, without breaking any laws,” Federation of Indian Students of Australia founder Gautam Gupta said.

“There are many liberal-minded Australians who see the racial attacks on Indian students as ‘unAustralian’,” he said by way of explaining the Australian expert’s involvement. There had been “tremendous support” for the initiative from students, and the first of the classes might begin within two weeks, he added.

Asked if such self-defence action and classes might be seen by Australian authorities as a kind of “vigilante action”, which Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently warned students against, Gupta said that the students “had sadly been left with no option”. In any case, he claimed, police in Victoria state had told students a while ago to “take up self-defence” since there weren’t enough policemen to protect every student.

In recent days, police have intensified night-patrolling, including by canine squads, in low-income neighbourhoods where Indian students live, and on metro rail services that they use late at night when they return home from after-school employment.

Indian eyewitness to attack leaving 
An Indian in Australia who witnessed the screwdriver attack on Shravan Kumar Teerthala last month is leaving Australia for good, saying he was “scared for his life”.
Sandeep, 24, who was working in a restaurant in Melbourne, was at a birthday party where two Caucasian gate-crashers turned violent and stabbed Teerthala with a screw driver. “I’ve been traumatised by what I saw, and my parents in Hyderabad want me, their only son, to return,” he told DNA.

“I came to Australia two and a half years back with big hopes. But after my experience, my only concern is to live safely and well,” he added.

Another Indian student in Melbourne, Bagapalli Jayasankar, 22, said he too w ould be flying back to India because his parents were concerned for his well-being in the wake of recent attacks, but added that he would later return to Australia. “We’ve had these attacks going on for a while, but I’m not afraid,” said the student of information systems at Central Queensland University.