Friday, February 19, 2010

Uranium not Racism: the real reason behind India's PR campaign against Rudd's Australia

2010 and i'm back again. Thanks for the encouraging comments. It's an election year so it's time to spit on the knuckles and start pummelling those sorry bastards who are determined to keep Australia in the 19th century forever - the ALP.

I'll begin with a post that is as close as i get to investigative journalism. a web-search lasting longer than 5 mins. I have found a trail of posts that highlight a narrative that seems to have been lost in the recent clamour of controvery over violence in Victoria against Indian students. That narrative tells the story of India's building fury with Australia, brought on not by alleged racism, but by one particularly bad diplomatic decision by the that dunce of diplomacy, Chairman Rudd.

Right from the outset in discussing Australian/Indian relations I must say that I do not accept for a second that Australia is any more racist than any other country, including India. Our diversity of races is conclusive proof to the contrary. Anyone who wants to know about the roots of Australian tolerance should read John Hirst's 2009 book "Sense and Nonsense in Australian History". It outlines beautifully that Australia has always been a tolerant place because Protestants and Catholics have lived here since the beginnings of the colony in virtually perfect harmony, certainly alot more harmoniously than they ever have done in Northern Island, or for that matter, France, England or just about anywhere else. The Irish catholics were much better assymilated into Australia than they ever were into America. Not that I ever like to have a go at the US, i'm just saying that in OZ we have a particularly good track record of tolerance and cohesion between different groups in society.

Andrew Bolt has been brilliant in arguing that racism is not a significant factor in student attacks in Melbourne. His best defense of your reputation is here. Furthermore, he attests that it's the Brumby government's inablility to enforce the law, and it's amazing ability to hide that fact, that is the real scandal. But I humbly submit that he does not answer one question. Why are the Indian media IN INDIA whipping up a massive frenzy over so-called racism in Australia? What has got them so mad? The answer can be summed up in one word: Uranium.

Sound crazy? Not at all. This Indian rage is about alot more than student safety. It's about an insult to Indian national pride and the denial of Indian prosperity, both delivered courtesy of Kevin Rudd.


Let me take you back to the last months of the Great and Glorious Howard Government (henceforth GGHG). Howard decided to sell Uranium to India after getting satisfactory guarantees that the uranium would only be used for peaceful power-generation purposes. Some had a problem with this citing that India are not signatories to the international Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty (NPT). I remember clearly at the that Howard's rationale was that we sell uranium to China, so why wouldn't we sell it to India? And in wonderful Howardian style that was the end of the argument. Decision made.

And India was happy. With the prospect of cheap power for India's future development our relationship with India was at an all time high. This article by Kaushik Kapisthalam from 23 Aug 2007 shows just how happy the indians were and gives a great justification of India's use of uranium dispite not signing the NPT. It does also end with an ominous warning:

On the other hand, should Australian leadership after the next elections take a more dogmatic approach in defence of a failed treaty [NPT], they would be making a huge and futile mistake. India is likely to get uranium from other sources should its deal with the US go through and New Delhi would unlikely forget the slight it received from Canberra.


Enter Kevin Rudd. As one of the very first actions of his government chose to end the relationship of trade in uranium with India. This was done on the basis that India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty. The strict safeguards that Howard obtained from India was not enough for Rudd because he has ambitions to make Australia a permanent member of the UN security council, and probably to make himself UN secretary general, and therefore seeks to follow UN rules to the letter, and beyond. With this pedantry Rudd has put his personal ambition ahead of Australia’s national interest and indeed the interests of the Indian people who are trying to lift themselves out of poverty with cheap clean energy.

In an article by hugely influencial Indian columnist Brahma Chellany (quoted in the Australian here on 3/3/08) the author seeths with rage at Rudd's decision:

"[Rudd] has made plain his intent to cosy up to the world's largest autocracy, China, while nullifying an important decision that his predecessor took to help build a closer rapport with the world's largest democracy."

"In touting its ideological resolve to uphold the NPT, the Rudd Government wants to be more Catholic than the Pope. Far from the NPT forbidding civil exports to a non-signatory, the treaty indeed encourages the peaceful use of nuclear technology among all states.

"Rudd has no qualms about selling uranium to China but will not export to India, even though the latter is accepting what the former will not brook - stringent, internationally verifiable safeguards against diversion of material to weapons use."


As Chellany so colourfully points out Rudd is actually going beyond Australia's duties under the NPT that allow the sale of uranium to non-signatory countries. He's sucking up to the UN. This is Rudd-style diplomacy, fawning and licking to the UN just like he does with China. It's no suprise to non-leftards when, Lo and behold, all that happens is that he and the nation he represents get treated with contempt.

So influencial Indians in the media and government of that country have been mightly pissed off with us for two years now because of Rudd's denying them uranium on a technicality - in true pencil-pushing style.

Now let's come back to the present, or the less distant past. May 30 2009 to be exact. On that day I was watching the new and saw a report of the Indian High Commissioner to Australia Sujatha Singh basically accusing the Victorian police of racism, by saying they showed a "lack of sensitivity" when Indians were the victims. I take it that she meant the police didn't really care about enforcing the law in these cases, not that they didn't say "there there" and hand over the kleenex. In response I thought two things: Firstly, try as they might, the Victorian police have trouble enforcing the law when anyone is the victim because they are crucially under-staffed and under-funded under labor. But what really struck me was that the ambassador from India to Australia, not some low-ranking official but the number one person charged with maintaining good relations between the two countries, was here undermining confidence in law and order in this country. I could not believe my ears. "OMFG!" I remember thinking, "This woman is going to incite a bloody riot!". If she had concerns of this nature the job of an ambassador is to have tactful discussion with other high-level members of the government and diplomatic community in order to bring the pressure to bear behind the scenes. Diplomacy is not about public speaking, and it sure is not about causing instability in the partner nation. I should have written it down that day because of what happenned in the immidiate aftermath.

The following day I was attending the Emerging Writers Festival in the attire of a Victorian (as in 19th century) Gentleman. After a lecture I decided to go outside onto Swanston st for a breath of fresh air. Imagine my suprise when I looked up from my pocket watch and I spied before me thousands of Indians marching down the street shouting and generally being surly. And there I was by myself metres away in the uniform of, a white colonial overlord. I have to say i fely a little trepidatious so i nipped back inside for a slug of brandy and a whiff of snuff to steady the nerves.

Because of the proximity in time of the High Commissioner's remarks and the protest i got a feeling, on top of the pleasant sensation brought on by brandy and snuff, that this protest was not a grass-roots movement of students concerned for their own welfare but rather the opposite: a top-down PR campaign if not explicitly organised by the Indian authorities then at least implicitly permitted by them, and intended to cast Australia in a bad light at home and abroad. In short, it smacked of revenge. "Revenge for what?", I mused, but a few gulps and snorts later, my mind moved onto other matters.

Over the coming months the issue just got bigger and bigger. Simon Overland has done a great job in my opinion never giving an inch to the suggestion that the Victorian Police are racist. But the Indians were not having a bar of it. And of course lefties here in Australia who so love to hate their fellow countrymen were all over the issue like a rash, re-enforcing the negative message again and again.

The Indians obviously kicked us right were it hurts, in our knee-jerk reflex for national shame. As another former colony they probably understand it well. The cringe. The teeth-grinding slow-burning humilialtion of of an imported sense of an inferiority. Both cultures should learn to relax because if we only visted the old colonial masters in Britain we'd realise they feel ever more inferior than we do, but back to the point.

As the issue grew I returned to ruminating about the cause for this rancor of Indians toward Australians? Do we not give them our cricket players for their IPL? do we not consume their delicious curries in huge quantities. DO we not love watching Bollywood with graceful actors dancing around in retina-burning colours, not to mention physiques. Do we not use the mathematical concept of zero and its symbol "0" (both invented in India) in the vast bulk of our daily calculations?

Apart from the the occasional 5-day period during a test match, we love india. Why the hell were they so pissed off with us? I just could not see how their anger was proportionate to issue of student attacks here in Melbourne. That would explain protests by Indians here, but the burning or effigies of Rudd in India??? I dont think so.

Then it hit me. Uranium. My memories of the fury in the Indian articles i had read came flooding back. Of course, i thought, this is not about the safety of a relatively small number of Indians in a far flung town in Aus. It's about the spit in the face that Rudd delivered to the entire Indian nation by denying them their very reasonable expectation of getting Aussie uranium. Who knows? Maybe they thought that decision was racist. In any event it piqued them. They felt the morally righteous Rudd was looking down his nose at them, as if they were children that could not be trusted with scissors. I know i get this feeling every time Rudd opens his mouth. I can't blame the Indians for hating him too.

But I was not sure whether this smearing of Australia, this whipping up of public hatred against us in two countries, was really orchestrated by the Indian intelligencia( the authorities and media) or was it a organic response to the concerns of the indian-man-in-the-melbourne-street. There was one more bit of info i needed to complete the loop.

I noticed on the ABC's coverage of the first Melboure protest regarding the treatment of Indian students on May 31st 2009 that it was organised by FISA, the Federation of Indian Students of Australia. So at what point did they announce they were having a protest? Was it a weeks long build-up of a grass-roots thing, which takes alot of time and effort to even tell people about let alone organise and gain council permission etc. Or was is on the spur of the moment?

I searched the FISA website for reference to the word protest. The only references that came referring to the May 31st protest had a later date and were merely commenting on it retrospectively. All mentions of a protest prior to May 31st were about those held by taxi-drivers. "That's be right", i thought. "Melbourne is the new Paris under Labor: wonderful wide boulevards, classy coffee-houses and a bleedin riot every second week". But nothing came up in my search about organising the student protest.

Then came my stroke of investigative genius, "What if i search for the word 'Rally'?". I puched it in and after a cupple of typos ... BINGO. Up came this page. "FISA calls for a PEACE RALLY" it proclaimed, in what i thought were vaguely aggressive capital letters. The date?

30.May.2009.

They day before the protest. And the same day as the High Commissioners remarks.

It might not be a smoking gun, but it's a still-vibrating sling-shot. To me this clearly demonstrates that the FISA protest was organised IN RESPONSE TO the public speach given by the Indian High Commissioner implicitly accusing the Victorian police of racism. She did not command anyone to do it (like Chinese authorities organising Olymic torch rally intimidation would have) but because she was saying the law was unjust she gave Indian students in Australia a moral justification for breaking it, which at the very least gives implicit permission to make a scene through civil disobedience.

The student's response was swift. Sure, it wasn't illegal except in one case, it wasn't the car burning of "youths" in Paris, but i can tell you that I felt threatened by what looked to me like an angry mob. And it would not have taken much more friction for many laws to have been broken that day. Once again its testimony to the stoic tolerace of Melbournians that they put up with the disruption to public transport until the student protest petered out and they went back to their theses.

Whether the ambassador intended for people to protest or not, and i'm not accusing her of that, I dont think the protests would have happened without her speech. It removed natural impediments to such action. I mean these people were university students. That means they have career prospects and visas that could be cancelled. Do you really think they are going to protest in the street unless they reckon their embassy has their back, and will support them publically if something goes wrong? I doubt it very much.


The anger that the Indian govt, Indian media and Indian people are feeling towards Australians has been building for some time - two years to be precise, since the day Rudd announced they would be denied our uranium. Remarks about "racism" must be understood in the context of the diplomatic dispute between the two countries. I do not poo-poo concerns about the safety of Indian students. These are certainly legitimate and would be best addressed by a return to law-and-order in Victoria. But pardon me, High Commissioner, this would be easier if you did not undermine the rule of law in our state by implying the cops only enforce it if the victims are white.


So what is the upshot of all this? It's obvious isn't it. We should stop slashing our wrists over "racism" and return to the policy of the GGHG and go back to selling uranium to India. After that we'll all be mates again.

Rudd's diplomatic blunder of refusing India uranium aggravated them in the extreme because it denied them both status as a trusted nation and cheap clean low-emissions power. Well actually they are getting their uranium from Canada now, so Rudd's little protest did nothing except deny australia loads of export income and cause our image to be besmirched in India for a generation. Now THAT's what i call a diplomatic own goal.

Uranium is the cause of all this drama and the drama will go on until that cause is removed. This is a top-level governmental and diplomatic issue. Rudd will never go back on his decision because his UN ambitions outweigh any other concerns (if indeed he has any) about the welfare of Australians and Indians. We cannot expect the normalisation of our diplomatic relationship with friends and cricketing rivals in India until a coalition govt is re-elected that is willing to deal with other nations as equals.

In the meantime at the grass-roots level I urge people to participate in Vindaloo against violence. Let's sit down for a chat with our Indian mates and stuff our faces.

UPDATE: Good to see that Julie Bishop is right on the case with his one


UPDATE: LOL! I just found by typing in the labels field that i already covered the topic of India Uranium nearly two years ago on the 3/3/08 here. I dont suck as much at this whole blog thing as I thought ;)