Three years ago, Nitin Garg arrived in Australia from Jagraon in Punjab state, expecting a promising future. Now, as a permanent resident and with a postgraduate degree in commerce, the 21-year old has been sent home in a body bag. As soon as the next 'breaking news' occurs, his death will undoubtedly be forgotten. But for his family, Nitin's violent stabbing, on 2 January at West Footscray in Melbourne, will be forever remembered with the tears of having lost a loved one and the guilt of having chosen to send him to school in the 'land down under'.
Nitin's death took place during a month in which three Indian taxi drivers were assaulted and a gurdwara was set on fire in Australia. These followed, from May last year, reports of violent attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and then in Sydney, stories that appeared in newspapers the world over. The violence was particularly widely reported in India, inciting extreme anti-Australia responses that included the burning of effigies of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in New Delhi. Meanwhile, Indian students organised peaceful protests in Melbourne and Sydney, though these too turned violent and ended with police intervention. There have since been additional protests in these two cities, with Indian students attempting to raise awareness over security, the rising crime rate, and what they perceive as Australia's unfair justice system.
Complaints by students in particular, coupled with horrific stories, are clearly bad for Australia's reputation as a provider of international-standard education. The country's relationship with international students goes back over five decades. The early 1950s saw the establishment of the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic Development in South and Southeast Asia, which sought to foster cooperation among the countries of Southasia and the Pacific. Today, education is a full-blown industry for Australia, having in recent years moved ahead even of tourism, the country's other main services export. Indeed, the education industry in Australia is the third-largest export-earner overall, behind coal and iron ore. And it is students from various parts of Asia that provide the bulk of that education system's financial backbone. There are currently almost 100,000 students from India alone, contributing almost USD 2 billion to the economy. While the Indian market is still smaller than that from China, the Indian numbers have been growing far faster – by 55 percent over the last five years, compared with 19 percent growth for China. In 2009, students from the Subcontinent as a whole accounted for 19 percent of total international enrolments.
Those numbers now appear to be in clear jeopardy. Media coverage in India has framed the issue as one of deeply entrenched racism within Australian society, and has played a significant role in terming the recent events as a 'crisis' of race relations. It is worrying that the Indian media has played the race card so quickly. A 5 January cartoon from Delhi's Mail Today, depicting the Victoria police as a hooded member of the Ku Klux Klan, is an example of this, and one that sparked widespread outrage (see pic). Bal Thackeray, the leader of the Shiv Sena, has also warned that his activists would target Australians in the Indian Premier League if they "stepped on Mumbai's soil".