As I stood with my back against the locked door and stared into the crazed face before me, I wondered if this rage would subside enough for me to escape or continue to escalate. The rush of adrenalin had suspended time and I felt a calm disconnection from what was happening. I had courteously deferred to this turbaned man for years, whenever I entered or left his house, but I could not say that I knew him or that I could be sure of the outcome of my dilemna.
His daughter, my best friend Jazzy, had run away from home and we, her friends, were sworn to secrecy with regard to her whereabouts. I knew her sisters well and had been seconded for the mission of charming myself into the Chowdhary house in order to persuade the girls to disobey their parents and hand over Jazzy’s prized art portfolio. I was obviously a novice at such subterfuge. Had I been more experienced I would have realized that the free flowing conversation was a feint ploy that gave her older sister, Ravvy, the chance to call her parents and keep me distracted until they arrived.
The first thing her father did upon entering was to lock the front door behind him and block my way out of through any other doors.
Twenty years on my memories of this day are coloured by the twists and turns my life has since taken. As the teenage rescuer of ransomed goods, this adrenalin pumping adventure was detached from logic. I had singular vision. Jazzy was right! Her parents were wrong! As a parent, I understand her family would have been beside themselves with worry. As an Australian, and one who has changed nations through choice and not compulsion, I see clearly the climatic clash of cultural tensions and the consequential frustration and powerlessness of the Chowdhary family.
National Character myths
The sound of clashing cultures is inherently prevalent in Australian society with one in four Aussies born overseas. The forgers of Multicultural policy, dreaming of the end of discrimination and prejudice, ardently work towards the ever-evolving goal of uniting our best qualities and strengths in the form of shared values and ideals.
I have heard it said that, “If you could take the best qualities from every culture on earth and put them together you would make the perfect person.” Undoubtedly this would be the anthropologist’s definition of the perfect quest, imagine traversing the rugged terrain of human community in search of those qualities.
Interestingly, research scientists, from the Laboratory of Personality and Cognition recently embarked on a similar quest, comparing National Character Stereotypes with personality profiles. Their results are clear, “National character
is a social construction,” and stereotypes are exaggerations that bear little resemblance to actual personality profiles.
Jokes about our convict past will need to be revised as will the age old depictions of a perfect world where the police are English, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and everything is organised by the Swiss.
Dr. Jane Shakespeare-Finch of the Queensland University of Technology was one of the 87 researchers recruited to study 49 cultures, across 48 countries. She declared this a landmark study saying, “National character has a much darker side, as we see around us in the world, because it can lead to a lot of prejudice and discrimination.”
Multicultural Australia
As you would expect from a nation with such a young political system, the evolution of our multicultural polices has seen optimistic intentions and inclusive ideas diluted by mixtures of ignorance, fear and supremist attitudes.
Convicts, soldiers and explorers alike arrived on our shores bringing with them, as some have poetically observed, the seeds of a new culture. They lived in intolerant and brutal times, where few men’s lives were of value, but they were also exciting times of exploration, discovery and adventure.
In the 70 years from European settlement in 1788, until 1858 the population grew to one million. Aside from early convict transportations many set out from their homelands with hopes of great prosperity. A flourishing wool industry enticed many Brits to leave the industrial strife in their homeland, whilst famine impelled the Irish. Gold intoxicated thousands and Chinese settlers soon outnumbered all but the British migrants.
By 1949, almost a century later, the population had reached eight million and included plantation workers from Melanesia; camel herders from Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan, who strategically opened up remote regions for trains and communication systems and Japanese fishermen who gave vitality to the pearling industry. Also, lest we forget, 12,000 Camp Survivors were re-settled after World War II.
Today there are over twenty million Australians, 74% of these are Anglo-Celts, 19% are European and 4.5% are from Asia.
Bend it Like Beckham
I came to Australia in 1990 with no actual intention of staying longer than my visa allowed. I loved England and my family but my life needed a kick start after the death of my mother in 1989 and a year in Oz seemed the perfect adventure. I met and married an Aussie and we settled happily in South East Queensland. I had left on an adventure without considering its end until the birth of my daughter brought home the reality of the physical distance between my family and myself.
I grieved the loss deeply, so much so that I found myself lost in the empty space between two worlds that exists for all those who one day realize that their former land is no longer home and their new land is still too alien to be so called.
The day I watched the movie, “Bend it Like Beckham” was the day I realized how “white” my life had become. Was it the Bamra family’s pretty pink velvet sofa, their perfectly patterned pink wallpaper, the elaborate golden lamps or the plastic flowers? I am not sure, but I had been in that lounge room and I knew that world, my goodness I could even smell the Aloo Gobi!
As the movie progressed my memories unraveled and a part of my world, that had been lost in transition, flooded back.
Jaswinder, aka Jazzy and I were seven when we met in the school playground and such is the innocence of childhood that our penchant for fun and adventure superseded any cultural differences. I vaguely recollect my surprise when I saw her mother make tea in a saucepan and her male cousins with long plaited hair!
I have only recently discovered that the Chowdhary family had endured years of unrest from the start of the Mau Mau’s rebellion against British sovereignty and left Kenya for the UK in 1961, two years before the first Kenyan Independence Day.
The Kalasinghas or Sikhs of East Africa, had served as defenders of British interests since the 1890 Treaty of Berlin. Their colonial leaders, impressed by their dedication as soldiers in their Indian army, had enlisted them to police, build railways, and subdue uprisings.
When Jazzy’s mum and two young daughters travelled, ahead of her husband but alone, to London, signs on hostels that read, “No Pakkies, No blacks, No Gypsies”, greeted her. Ironically, they found their first home with a black family.
Curiously concerned I asked Jazzy recently why I knew so little about their plight. Was it because I wasn’t interested or curious enough to ask? Or, was it because she didn’t want to speak about such things? It is hard to know the real answer to these questions. I know that our turbulent teenage years were saturated with emotional reactions to one issue or another and that Jazzy was torn between her traditional Indian ways and her English life.
Prejudice & Anger
Colliding cultures inevitably climax with pain.
I will never forget the hissing skinheads who, whilst pushing their faces close to mine, declared me to be “Nigger Meat!” It was 1981, the time of the Brixton Riots and I was walking in Trafalgar Square with Pakistani friends.
I wish it wasn’t true, but it is undeniable that the potential for hatred seethes in the underbelly of every nation. It has no logical explanation, seeming to grow from fundamental fears of change and a threatened identity.
Western nations are being forced to learn from their mistakes. In Australia, archaic policies have been discarded and our leaders are re-working the multicultural policies that have allowed intolerance to accelerate into radicalism.
Throughout our history we have seen migrants assimilate imperfectly but well into Australian culture, often in their own unique way as evidenced in the experiences of Croatian migrants who traveled to Australia in the 60’s and 70’s.
They came from devoutly Catholic, patriarchal villages where blood kinship and community were highly valued and formed close knit ethnic communities in Perth, as a ‘mechanism for adaptation,’ through which they express their identity and Australian-ness.
Close-knit ethnic communities seem to be a logical starting place for migrants, especially those with little english.
People need a safe place to venture out from when summoning all their courage and skills to negotiate a new culture.
It is certainly true that layers upon layers of policies, correction of policies and research have created a foundational base upon which we can re-formulate our Multicultural policies. However, negotiating our way through the present explosive and rapidly changing cultural climate is going to be difficult for our politicians. Already we are seeing decision makers having to unite with defence ministries in order to perfect their policies and protect civilians.
Tolerating Intolerance
“We have ‘courted disaster by tolerating intolerance’ and have ‘failed to anticipate that immigrants might one day be opposed to the central tenets of Western society, says George Zubrzycki, one of the Australian architects of multiculturalism. “We did not see this happening.’
The reality of homegrown Muslim instigators of terrorism has shaken western countries to the core. The dutch have virtually halted immigration since the ritual murder of provocative film-maker, Theo van Gogh and all nations are looking closely at the controversial characters within them.
Australia has had a rude awakening, finding herself no longer able to stay isolated from the world’s problems, but is rallying to be all that she needs to be in this rapidly changing world.
Faith in the Future
Call me naïve, but I have faith in the ability of Australia and other nations to ride the storms and prevail. I don’t consider our way of life to be perfect or without flaw and I know that our leaders are mere mortals. Nevertheless we have a lot to offer those who come to our nations.
“We were really greeted here like human beings, we felt like human beings again,” said Angelina, a Serb from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“They (the Australian government) gave money, they paid for school, they did not ask our nationality,” said Desa, a Serb from Croatia who had previously only lived under policies of ethnic cleansing and discrimination.
Connecting Past and Present
I lost touch with Jazzy for a while when I first emigrated to Australia, but thankfully we found each other again a few years ago. I was so happy to hear that Dave, the Artist boyfriend I knew, is her husband and that her parents are her closest friends.
It was something of a bizarre moment when I discovered that Gurindha Chadha, the Director of “Bend it Like Beckham,” is Jazzy’s cousin, as that movie symbolically connects my past and present. Even more so when I found out that Jazzy had been enlisted on the set as the Artistic Co-ordinator to ensure authenticity.
I told her she had done her job well!
Sources:
Bihkhu, Parekh, 1997, South Asians In Britain, History Today, September 1997, Vol. 47. Issue. 9 Page 65.
Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, 2005, More than Sixty Years of Post-War Migration, Fact Sheet 4, Public Affairs Section of DIMIA, Canberra, Revised 20 April, 2005
Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, 2005, The Evolution of Australia’s Multicultural Policy, Fact Sheet 6, Public Affairs Section of DIMIA, Canberra, Revised 10 May, 2005
Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, 2005, Population Projections, Fact Sheet 15, Public Affairs Section of DIMIA, Canberra, Revised 22nd January, 2004
Foskey, Deb, Dr., 2005, Beyond Quantities in the Melting Pot, Online Opinion.com.au, 2005
Fukuyama, Francis, 2001, The West has Won – Radical Islam can’t beat democracy and capitalism. We’re still at the end of history, The Guardian Newspaper, 11 October, 2001
Fukuyama, Francis, 2005, A Year of Living Dangerously - Remember Theo Van Gogh and shudder for the future, The Opinion Journal , from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, 2 November, 2005
Markovic, Milica, 2001, Crossing National Boundaries: Social Identity Among recent Immigrant women from the former Yugoslavia in Australia, Key Centre for Women’s Health in Society … The University of Melbourne. 2001.
Moira, Rainer, 2001, Cultural Diversity, Legaldate; July 2001, Vol.13 Issue 3, P1. 5p
QUT, 2005, Personality Study Debunks National Stereotypes, October 8, 2005, Experts Online,
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Peisker, Val Colic, 1999, Two Waves of Croatian Migrants in Western Australia: Class and National Identity, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 01576321, Vol.34, Issue 4.
Science Magazine 2005 Science Journal, National Character Does Not Reflect Mean Personality Trait levels in 49 Cultures, Available from: www.sciencemag.org Vol. 310, 7 October 2005.
Trainor, Brian, 1995, Democracy and Multiculturalism, IPA Review, 1030-4177, September 1, 1995, Vol.48, Issue 2
Watson, Raymond. "Multiculturalism and Middle East Terrorism.", National Observer; Issue 51; Summer 2002; 39-44,
Wren, Kathleen, 2005, Science gets the last laugh on ethnic jokes – Study shows that real personalities don’t match national stereotypes, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2005
Bev Holmes-Brown lives in Brisbane, Australia. In 2001 she began Link-Zone, a Christian Resource ministry with a mandate to “Bring the Body together in specific interest areas and to Believe and Pray for the Reformation of Values, Systems and Wisdom.“
In the last nine years Link-Zone has focussed on praying for governments, communities and ministries. ‘We are currently transitioning,’ Bev says, ‘believing the Lord wants us to begin to tell people’s stories. There are so many people living amazing and victorious lives for God against the odds, we want to hear from them, to understand their hearts and glean the treasures that God has laid up in their hearts for our own breakthroughs. Of course we will continue to feature our favourite columnists and will not give up on praying but we believe this is a season where God wants us to identify and clarify the frontlines that need our support. It’s exciting to venture into whatever He lays upon our heart.
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