Being an Indian immigrant in Australia is exhausting. The irony that many of us are here because our parents, or their parents, chose this country in their quest for a “better life”, after our own country was decimated by British colonialism, is not lost on me.
My own ancestors were shipped from India by the British to Fiji to work as indentured labourers – ostensibly slaves – on Australian-operated sugar farms in the late 1800s. Multiple generations later, after enduring political and social exclusion in Fiji and being subject to racist rhetoric and political violence, my parents worked insanely hard to find a pathway to Australia, so that their children could escape the cycles of poverty and entrenched disadvantage that they lived through.
So to wind up here, in 2025, once again the target of racism, stigma and prejudice from our communities and our political leaders is not just disappointing, it’s so tiring that I almost didn’t want to write about it. When will it end? What’s the point in, once again, pointing out how absurdly unfair this racism is, when that never seems to stop it from recurring?
Over the past few months, I’ve watched my social media feeds gradually swell with videos of young, white Australians espousing their anger at being “swamped” by Indians, as though the people they’re referencing aren’t the same kids they went to school with, who grew up alongside them, as Australian as their own undoubtedly immigrant ancestors.
It’s one thing to see these videos and feel perplexed over how this generation is somehow imbibing the same anti-Indian/Asian immigration rhetoric that we grew up dealing with in the 1990s. It was another thing to watch violent protests take over the country specifically calling for people like us to be torn out of the fabric of this society.
But to have someone like Jacinta Nampijinpa Price piggy back off this surge of racism to take a cheap shot at the Labor party felt like salt in the wound. That a political leader would validate this sentiment, which is so clearly mired in hatred and has very little to do with genuinely calling for solutions to the cost of living and housing crises, was a signal to people like me that we aren’t considered Australian. It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been here – we’re just not enough.
When I was younger, my immediate reaction to racism was to try and point out that – despite being brown – I was just like the white people in Australia. I grew up here! I don’t know any other home! “I’m one of you,” I tried to convey.
Now, I realise that this argument plays into the same territory of the racists – because even if I was a recent immigrant, even if my English wasn’t perfect or spoken with an Australian accent, even if a large part of my life happened in a different country, I would still hold the same value as anyone else here, and have the same right to contribute to this country and benefit from it.
I have a son, and recently I was thinking about how when I was just a little older than him, my preschool in country New South Wales told my parents that they should take me out of classes, because I was being routinely bullied by the other children. I remember it. I was told I was “brown like poo” and excluded from play time, and the staff’s response was to remove me from the environment because they didn’t know how else to deal with it.
Reflecting on this, I found myself feeling glad that my child’s mixed race heritage means he is white passing, and hopefully won’t have to face any similar discrimination himself. He’s less than two years old. These are the things that play on my mind, after a lifetime in Australia.
I used to try to justify my existence here, to explain why racist attitudes are wrong using logic and reason. Now, I have only anger left. I am furious that this is a conversation that is being allowed to play out on a national stage. I am furious that hundreds of thousands of hardworking Australian immigrants are being forced to justify our existence in this country that relies on our labour and skills to service its economy. I am furious that some ignorant people are using my community as the targets for their hatred and prejudice, and their desire for a moment in the spotlight.
The only thing I take solace in is that by continuing to succeed, prosper and grow a family in this country, I am exacting my best revenge on the racists. After all, a happy, successful, tax-paying Australian Indian is apparently their worst nightmare.
• Zoya Patel is a writer and editor based in Canberra
