Melbourne¿s man boob mayhem?

Melbourne: Not since the infamous Harbhajan Singh episode that dominated last season¿s cricket in Australia, have Indians merited coverage of this length in the mainstream Australian press. This time round Indians were in the news for what one commentator called ¿semi-organised ugliness¿ and what another termed an appreciation and understanding of the democratic process.

 

The laudatory bits first. On Saturday last (May 2, 2008), an opinion piece in the Melbourne broadsheet ¿The Age¿ by senior writer Sushi Das made a laudable mention of a large group of Indians in Australia for clamouring for their rights and galvanising the Victorian Government machinery into action.

 

On April 30, 2008, Melbourne cabbies congregated in the city centre in front of the Flinders Street Station in support of their demands pending for quite some time.

The unprecedented protest was sparked by the attack on a 23-year-old taxi driver in the suburbs in the wee hours of the day who was left bleeding and unconscious for a couple of hours before help arrived.

 

The Indian connection lies in the fact that most taxi drivers in Australia are of Indian origin and the attacked cabbie, Jalwinder Singh, was an Indian student, who like most of his ilk, had taken to driving taxis in the city to afford a University education that will perhaps lead to Australian permanent residentship.

 

It needs no study to learn that most of the taxi drivers in Australia are of Indian origin, for they are most visible. For some of the Indian undergraduate and post graduate students, taxi driving offers the way to live comfortably in Australia where Rs 36 makes a dollar and for others, it is the means of very survival.

 

So, on April 30 enraged taxi drivers decided to create a blockade to highlight their plight. Carrying placards which read ¿do not kill the cab drivers¿; ¿We do not just work in your 7-Elevens, we do not just work in your petrol stations, we do not just drive your cabs. We drive your economy¿ and ¿Our parents never sent us (here) to receive our dead bodies¿, cabbies took of their shirts and danced on the road to make their disgruntlement with the government known, which is what perhaps made the tabloid ¿Herald Sun¿ columnist Neil Mitchell term it "semi-organised ugliness". As the day wore on, they seemed resolved not to give up till the government responded.

 

Sure enough the government "bowed to the bullying" as Mitchell called it, and within 22 hours Transport Minister Lynne Kosky stated that safety screens will be installed in taxis and pre-payment of fares will be made mandatory for night trips.

 

For a witness to democracy as is practised in India, it is difficult to wholly second either Das or Mitchell. It is perhaps a little too specious to argue that the taxi drivers¿ protest was an example of Indian migrants¿ displaying the Australian characteristics of ¿defiance of authority, support for the underdog and respect for the battler¿  as Das put it, or even displaying an understanding of the democratic process. For most, Indians included, will readily agree that the Indian population¿s success has been largely due to their submissiveness and their reluctance to defy authority, even when the situation warranted it.

 

While one can understand the westerners¿ puzzlement at baring one¿s torso and dancing away in a forum of protest, it must also be noted that while the cabbies did cause a lot of inconvenience and were seen speaking angrily on prime time news, the protest was peaceful.  In the days that followed the incident provoked nothing more than jokes about removing shirts to show one¿s displeasure! The Australian noted that alliterative sub-editors were dubbing it  "Melbourne¿s man boob mayhem".

 

 

Surprisingly, the Indian migrants Down Under who have arrived economically and now seem to be testing the political waters, still debating what aspects of their Indian identity they can flaunt and what must they give up to become noticeable here, are yet to wake up to the plight of Indian students who arrive in droves and struggle to make ends meet.

 

Whatever one¿s reading of the situation, the incident has made the Indians known for more than curries and Bollywood. The Indian Diasporic media that has all along focussed on the incidents of attack on students serving in petrol stations and driving taxis, indeed took the opportunity to highlight the futility of the Indian preoccupation with Bollywood and to issue a wake-up call asking the Indian Diaspora to shake-off its complacency.