I never thought I’d say this about a book: Australia’s ambivalence towards Asia is not for the faint-hearted.
In the last few years, a number of books have been published looking into Australia’s relationship with the other countries in the Asian region. It is fair to say the consensus is that Australia has problems fitting in.
Vin D’Cruz and William Steele’s Australia’s ambivalence towards Asia stands out, however. They consistently and relentlessly identify the reasons behind Australia’s failure to be accepted as a neighbour by Asian countries. The subsequent report is disturbing, to say the least. Professor David Walker, from the school of Australian and International Studies at Deakin University, who provides the afterword, writes of Australia’s ambivalence that:
It disrupts many of the comfortable notions we may have formed about how best to interpret the relationship between Australia and Asia. I am right behind them in this enterprise.
Although the book focuses on Australia, it also projects Australia against the background of Western nations in general. Most of the discrepancies between professed ideology and practiced policy that abound in Australia can also be found in other nations that belong to the Western European intellectual and cultural tradition. However, some instances of glaring hypocrisy are idiosyncratically Australian.
The foreword by Ashis Nandy, a professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, does not prepare the reader for the contents of the book itself, because while it is incisively critical of Australia’s stance and attitudes towards Asia, the blows are somewhat broken by his delightful wit and humour.
Australia may have been ambivalent towards Asia ..., but the Asians too have been ambivalent towards Australia for more than a century ... All through our childhood teens, we never got any inkling that Australia was or had been, like India, a colony. Unlike the Irish, the Australians hid that part of the story quite successfully from us. At least in India, Australia projected itself as an extension of Britain—a slightly declassé, provincial, off-colour Britain, but Britain nevertheless ...
In the pages following Nandy’s foreword, all gloves are off.
Australia is uncomfortable positioning its psyche in Asia, according to D’Cruz and Steele, not only because Asians are people of colour and the majority of Australians are white, but also because Australia is obsessed with its desire to prove itself equal to Britain and other Western nations. While Britain and continental Europe believe they are superior, Australia feels