Why hate us, mate?

They clean toilets, man 24-hour service stations and deliver newspapers at 5am. In Australia’s southern state of Victoria, they are an invisible army of menial workers. But increasingly, they have become the most visible target for violent attacks. 

Many young Indians are doing the work that was once the preserve of the post-war Italian, Greek and Vietnamese migrants. They are soft-spoken, well-educated and vulnerable. They are students struggling to make ends meet as they complete their degrees.

After the Chinese, Indians are the city’s fastest growing demographic. Of the 93,000 Indian students in Australia, 47,000 are in Victoria. Last year there was a 54 per cent increase in the number of Indian students coming to Australia.

“Most of them seem to have a fairly gentle disposition and bullies out there may see them as a target,” a spokeswoman for the state’s police said. “They’re working late hours when a lot of people aren’t around and travelling alone late at night.”

The spate of violent attacks on Indian students in Melbourne in recent weeks has brought to a head a problem that has been brewing for at least a year. The state’s police in fact set up a special group in January when it became apparent that Indian students were being victimised.

Police have been meeting with Indian community members. Unions representing 1000 of the city’s office block cleaners, many of them Indian, and associations representing student tenants have expressed concern about prejudice against Indians and exploitation.

Sravan Kumar Theerthala, 24, is in intensive care in hospital after being attacked with a screwdriver at a party a week ago. A 17-year-old has been charged with attempted murder. Four other youths were arrested this week for bashing 21-year-old Sourabh Sharma last month. Sharma said he was racially abused.

Last week another student was hospitalised after he was stabbed walking alone at night. Two Indian students working as taxi drivers have been assaulted and earlier this year two Indian students were hit on the head with bats. In the most recent attack overnight in Sydney, Rajesh Kumar, 25, suffered burns after a petrol bomb was hurled at him.
It is difficult to estimate how many attacks there have been because Victorian police only record crimes against Asians, Caucasians and Aborigines. Any other ethnicity is recorded as ‘other’. To compound this, many crimes go unreported because Indian students “will suffer in silence” if they are in trouble, Gautam Gupta, of the Federation of Indian Students of Australia told media. The association claims there may have been as many as 70 attacks on Indian students in the past year. 

The attacks have been the discussion of talks at the highest levels of government. The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed concern in a phone conversation with the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd late on Friday.   The Australian foreign minister told the media that “Australia takes very seriously its reputation as a safe destination for Indian students.”

But Indian students are not convinced. More than 3000 Indian students are expected to rally in the heart of Melbourne city on Sunday. One Indian hospitality student, Mohteshim Ali Khan, 24, from Hyderbad, said he had never been racially taunted in his year in Australia but since reports of the attacks he has shelved plans to seek permanent residency in Australia.

“I really want to complete my studies and get home now.” While his parents could afford to support him in Australia, he prefers to pay for his own living expenses by working at a service station for $15 an hour 20 hours a week.

His colleague Faiz Mohammed, 23, a management studies student also from Hyderbad, says that he doesn’t feel scared in Australia although he was racially taunted when he worked as a taxi driver. “There are racist people in Australia but they won’t physically attack you. Racism is everywhere in the world.”

He said that attacks were coming from young, bored Australians living in less wealthy suburbs, sometimes with a perception that Indians were taking their jobs. 

“People who are trouble-makers are just finding a reason to do this.” At the same time he said he did not feel comfortable socialising in Australian venues and would prefer to go home to have a better a social life. “We are just working. We don’t have a social life here.”

Prabir Mujumdar, 41, moved from India to Australia 15 years ago with his wife, Swati, a cardiologist and their two children Irabaan, 13 and Tisya, 3. Mr Mujumdar now works for the country’s largest non-government organisation, World Vision in Melbourne.

He says the recent attacks appear to be racially motivated. But he also says that the issue is socio-economic because students are more vulnerable. As a student in Brisbane, he worked in a restaurant and experienced racial taunts such as ‘nigger’ and had customers refuse his service.

(Sue Cant is an Australian journalist based in Melbourne)