November 16, 2014

NARENDRA MODI EXPRESS ROLLS INTO SYDNEY, BRINGING EXCITED SUPPORTERS

[Iyer, his wife and young son were among the 220 Indian Australians who made the overnight trip from Melbourne to Sydney aboard a specially chartered train known as the Modi Express. The atmosphere was jubilant and festive, as passengers anticipated Modi’s speech to a community audience on Monday afternoon.]

By Shalailah Medhora
India’s prime minister is due to give a speech to a mainly Indian Australian audience at a sold-out Allphones Arena in Sydney


Supporters of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, dance outside Southern Cross station in Melbourne 
as they prepare to ride an overnight train to Sydney for Modi’s community 
speech on Monday. Photograph: Mal Fairclough/AFP/Getty Images
“Prime Minister Modi is the change we’ve been looking for,” says Hari Iyer. “He’s the only one who can turn India’s fortunes around.”

Iyer, an aerospace engineer has lived in Australia for eight years. But his connection to his homeland of India is still strong, and he has been following Narendra Modi’s progress since before he was elected prime minister in May.

Iyer, his wife and young son were among the 220 Indian Australians who made the overnight trip from Melbourne to Sydney aboard a specially chartered train known as the Modi Express. The atmosphere was jubilant and festive, as passengers anticipated Modi’s speech to a community audience on Monday afternoon.

Many Indian Australians have welcomed Modi’s charismatic and engaging public persona as a turning point for the country.

“Having him here is an awesome thing. Indian Australians have two mothers – a birth mother and an adoptive mother,” Iyer says. Bilateral relations between the two countries have never been stronger, he says.

The president of the Australian South Asian Federation, Aashish Gholkar, says Modi’s appeal is partly due to this outward-looking approach to politics.

“India’s political establishment has historically been insular,” Gholkar says. Reaching out to the Indian diaspora has been a deliberate strategy to build Modi’s “aura”, Gholkar says. “He is trying to get people to focus on things that unite.”

About 1.6% of Australia’s population were born in India, making it one of the fastest growing migrant groups.

Many came to the country in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the Howard government introduced its revamped 457 visa program. Others came as students and stayed on skilled migrant visas. India is one of Australia’s most significant tertiary education markets.

India does not offer dual citizenship with other countries, forcing migrants to relinquish voting and other rights if they take on Australian citizenship. That has been a sticking point for many new migrants. “I’d love to be able to vote in Indian elections,” Iyer says.

Indian Australians from around the country will fill the sold-out Allphones Arena in Sydney on Monday afternoon to hear Modi speak. More than 30,000 people applied for tickets.

The organiser of the event, Balesh Singh, said more than 100 people were coming from overseas to hear the leader, including from New Zealand, Fiji and South Africa.

Modi’s contentious treatment of minorities and links to Hindu nationalist parties have angered some ethnic and religious groups, who plan to hand over a petition calling for change before the address on Monday.

Members of Australia’s Sikh community want Modi to pursue the perpetrators of a series of pogroms against the religious minority in 1984.

“Almost every Sikh’s concern is that nothing has been done to arrest those responsible [for the massacres],” the secretary of the National Sikh Council of Australia, Bawa Jagdev says. “After numerous commissions nothing has been done.”

He says the fanfare around Modi’s Australian appearance has been driven by Indian political groups, a claim flatly denied by Singh.

“This is completely community-funded,” Singh says. More than 200 community organisations and 21,000 individuals contributed to pay for Modi’s address, he says.

Indian community groups in Australia say opportunities have been missed for investment and engagement, but Tony Abbott’s visit to India in September helped put the bilateral relationship back on the Australian agenda.

The relationship between Canberra and New Delhi has been on an upward trajectory in the past few years, partly due to the Modi’s focus on diaspora communities, and partly because of the shift in focus to Asia from successive Australian governments.

“There has been inattention to India in recent years [but] there has been unprecedented levels of high-level contact between the countries,” Danielle Rajendram from the Lowy Institute says. “The relationship has bounced back from a low point in 2009-2010,” she adds, referring to a series of attacks on Indian students living in Australia.

The economic relationship between the two countries is strong, and both have a strategic interest in the Indian Ocean. Details of bilateral naval exercises in the Indian Ocean next year “are in the works”, Rajendram says.

The resolution of the ban on selling uranium to India – due to its refusal to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty – has also strengthened relations.

Rajendram says about 70% of Indians saw the ban as a sticking point in the bilateral relationship.

“It’s more symbolic than practical in that sense. It signals India is a mature and responsible nuclear power,” Rajendram says.

That policy paved the way for a future free trade agreement with India.


“India is the next frontier to conquer,” says Amitabh Mattoo, head of the Australia-India Institute. “In the past, the India-Australia relationship has been marked by missed opportunities and a lack of conversation. This relationship could be the one for the future.”