British India, White Australia: Overseas Indians, intercolonial relations and the empire by Kama Maclean

Abstract

Reviewed by: British India, White Australia: Overseas Indians, intercolonial relations and the empire by Kama Maclean Margaret Allen British India, White Australia: Overseas Indians, intercolonial relations and the empire By Kama Maclean. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2020. This volume sets out to write a history of relationships between India and Indians and Australia and Australians in the first half of the twentieth century, through the "framework of the [British] empire, and later the commonwealth." The period begins with the federation of the Australian colonies, based upon restrictive immigration policies directed, in part, at the Crown's Indian subjects. Federated Australia became a self-governing entity within the empire, while India was unable to progress to a similar position, remaining largely under direct British rule until the growing nationalist movement was able to effect independence in 1947. This study builds upon and makes a contribution to the small but growing literature on the histories of Indians resident in Australia during the heyday of the restrictive White Australia policy. But it does much more than that. The focus upon the "awkward triangular dynamic that developed between Britain, India and Australia in the early twentieth century" allows larger questions to be explored. Clearly the racially restrictive immigration policies were an important barrier to cordial relationships between these two very differently situated parts of the British Empire. Indeed Indians saw the White Australia policy as a "permanent characteristic of Australia." The British government was very critical of Australian racism, but Maclean argues for "the similarities between the White Australia policy and the White Man's Burden, the very premise of British imperialism in India." The British castigation of Australian racial thinking around immigration diverted attention from British rule in India. An important focus of this volume is upon political history and intercolonial/international relations but it also delves into popular culture and histories of representation. An exploration of the categorization of the naming practices of Indians in Australia reveals a litany of mostly derogatory terms: Hindoos, Asiatics, aliens, Natives, coolies, and Indians. Many of these were used on the Certificate Exempting the Dictation Test, an identity document which resident Indians needed to negotiate Australian entry ports. Maclean also traces the origins and meanings of the name "Charlie," often applied indiscriminately to Indian men resident in Australia, arguing it was a further manifestation of Indians being distanced by the Australian community. Politicians and press promoted an undesirable view of India and Indians which, along with the pervasiveness of works by Kipling and his ilk, served to maintain racial prejudices, but by delving into an archive of Australian family photographs, which included images of Indian hawkers, who were so often crucial to the rural communities they served, Maclean finds that some "individual Indian hawkers were able to transcend the stereotypes that were so dominant in the public sphere": their "acceptance" was both "limited and conditional." Maclean argues that as the nationalist movement built in the first decades of the twentieth century, Australian knowledge of India's hopes and aspirations was limited, especially as works expressing pro-Indian views including Palme Dutt's India Today (1940) were largely kept from the Australian public. The Australian public was fed a stream of pro-imperial propaganda as "the government of India continued to covertly influence global opinion about Gandhi and the Congress." Indeed even as Indian independence neared, the British were still intervening in the India-Australia relationship and even seeking to censure the speeches of India's first High Commissioner in Australia, R. Paranjpye. Maclean brings to light individuals such as Winston Burchett who sought to enlighten the Australian public. He attended the 1937 conference of the Indian National Congress, and hearing Nehru and other leaders speak, became committed to breaking through the veil of misinformation about India and to informing the Australian public about the nationalist movement and its aspirations. However, missing from this study is any discussion of Australian Christian missionary activity in India and such missionary influence on Australian views of India. India was a favoured field for Australian missionaries and many people and organizations formed long and deep associations with India and Indians. It is easy to see Christian missions merely as an arm of...