Australia’s relationship with India grows ever closer but on one metric, it’s drifting apart
Idea
There was a moment last week when Narendra Modi told a jubilant late-night crowd of 28,221 in Melbourne to turn off their phones.
Turn on your phone’s flashlights, he instructed the crowd at a near-freezing Marvel Stadium on Thursday. And they did.
Not to seek a tribute from himself as India’s visiting prime minister, but to pay tribute to his host, Anthony Albanese.
“In honor of my friend the prime minister, all of you turn on the flashlights of your mobile phones and honor him,” he said in Hindi. “In his honor.”
As thousands of brightly tipped arms swayed back and forth like a sparkling anemone, a smiling Albanian paid tribute to the crowd by pressing his hands together in the Anjali Mudra gesture that accompanies namaste. This only made them cheer louder. For any politician, this would be an uplifting confirmation.
The slogan heard in the stadium as the crowd raised their phones was not “Albo, Albo” but “Modi, Modi”. Chants of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” were raised at various points throughout the evening.
This was certainly a high point for India-Australia relations and the multi-million-strong Indo-Australian diaspora.
“Two great democracies,” Albanese praised, “two great multicultural societies.”
In an implicit rejection of Pauline Hanson’s xenophobia, she addressed the crowd: “Your passion for Australia and your love for this country over the generations has made it better, stronger and more vibrant… We are a better nation because you are in it.”
But the evening belonged to Modi. He was “the boss,” as Albanese had greeted him on an earlier visit. As an Indian partisan posted on Instagram after the “Melbourne Meets Modi” event: “Australia’s land, Australia’s people. But Modi ji owned the moment.”
Even after a dozen years in power, Modi’s approval rating stands at a remarkable 70 percent; this is the highest rate among the 24 democratically elected leaders. Morning ConsultationAccording to April data. Albanese, on the other hand, ranks 11th in the same ranking with 40 percent approval.
So Modi’s support is a political gift for the Australian leader. But it also creates an advantage for Modi. The one who gives the endorsement can also take it away. This is likely to hurt Labour’s electoral rankings.
Modi is investing heavily in relations with Australia. He made three trips to Australia during his dozen years in power. Before that, no Indian prime minister had visited this place in 28 years.
“The relationship is taking on a depth it didn’t have before,” said an official familiar with the matter, Peter Varghese, a former secretary of the State Department, former Australian high commissioner to Delhi and author of the federal government’s 2018 report. India Economic StrategyIt is known as the Varghese report.
“The big difference is that India sees Australia as a country that can contribute to its interests. Previously, India was not convinced that we had much to offer them. Economically, strategically and now with a diaspora community of one million, it adds layers that it didn’t have before,” he says.
Behind the scenes, Modi himself made similar points last week, according to a longtime political ally living in Australia: Doctor Jagvinder Virk. The two met privately in Melbourne last week.
“The uranium supply deal was the highlight of the visit, but Modi places importance on Australia for many reasons. It’s trade, Australia has the resources India needs, it’s also diaspora and connectivity, it’s bipartisan Australia’s longstanding support for India.” Virk told me Modi had no complaints about Australia.
Virk himself is part of the connection. Formerly a staunch supporter of Tony Abbott, he is now working on the Indian businessman’s $3.5 billion bid Naveen Jindal Acquiring and restoring the mothballed Whyalla steelworks in South Australia.
One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce sought to make some “monocultural” political gain from the multicultural moment of the Modi visit.
“I have a little concern about things ra-rah,” he told Sky News at the weekend. “I think you have to be a little careful about holding hands and showing up… he was trying to ingratiate himself with a community for votes.”
Barnaby’s logic is ridiculous. Is it unusual, even bad, for a politician to try to ingratiate himself with a community in order to get votes? That’s pretty much all they do. It’s a terrible thing!
But his comment wasn’t about logic. It was a dog whistle. Conclusion: Albanese was going too far in assimilating himself into a foreign community and humiliating himself with the “rah-rah” thing.
Joyce also tried to imply that Albanians were contaminated by Modi’s ethno-religious Hindu nationalism. He noted complaints of discrimination from India’s Sikh and Muslim communities.
“If it [Albanese] He wants to stand by all the policies of Narendra Modi, he wants to come out and tell us. It would be an interesting day.”
I’m saying something ridiculous again. If we applied this test all the time, Australian prime ministers would be very isolated on the world stage. The Prime Minister can never meet Xi Jinping or Donald Trump on this basis.
Even New Zealander Christopher Luxon differs from the Albanians in many respects. Capital receives taxes, do nuclear-powered submarines earn money?
Again, Joyce wasn’t trying to be logical. He was just being mischievous, trying to create difficulties in Australia’s relationship with India.
However, there is a serious point behind Joyce’s cheap politics. Modi is taking India in an illiberal direction. It remains democratic, but it is not a liberal democracy. Although Australia’s relationship with India is getting closer, the countries’ values are diverging from each other.
“As a secular, liberal democracy, we must accept that Australia and India under Modi will not move in sync,” advises Varghese.
But Australian and Indian leaders will ignore this discomfort. For the first time since the First World War, Australia chose not to engage the United States in a major war. US credibility is at a new low. At the same time, Australia has felt China’s coercive pressure on trade and security and feels vulnerable.
India feels similarly strategically vulnerable. Delhi is insulted by Trump’s punitive trade sanctions and threatened by Xi’s military crackdown on shared borders.
Both countries are seeking new sources of political, economic and strategic support. In times of darkness, Canberra and Delhi are drawn to the points of light they see in each other.
Peter Hartcher is the political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
