Australia Day creates mixed feelings for Indian Australians on January 26, as public perception continues to evolve

Meena Singh calls herself an Aboriginal girl with an Indian name. 

Her mother is a Yorta Yorta woman from northern Victoria and her father is an Indo-Fijian man who migrated to Melbourne in the 1960s. He was the grandson of indentured labourers who travelled from India to Fiji during British colonisation to work the sugarcane fields — what Mena calls “slaves with a time frame”. 

It’s a rich heritage that usually sparks a barrage of questions about her identity. 

“Some people will ask it as a really blunt question within a minute of meeting me and kind of feel like they’re owed the response,” Meena said of the all-too-familiar ‘but-where-are-you-from?’ question.

Meena is often greeted with words like unique, exotic and interesting when she tells them she’s both Aboriginal and Indian. 

“For me, it’s never a case of one or the other. It’s both together all of the time.” 

Meena walks in two worlds; two cultures connected through a shared experience of British colonisation and forever linked by a date that holds different meanings to both groups.  

In India, January 26 is Republic Day — a celebrated anniversary of the country officially cutting ties with the British and forming a Democratic Republic in 1950.

And the January 26 date creates a tough juxtaposition for South Asian Australians — and for Meena particularly.   

“It’s this interesting dichotomy of Indian Australians [potentially] celebrating a date of independence from a colonising power on the same day as celebrating invasion by a colonising power,” Meena said.

Known as Survival Day by many First Nations Australians, January 26 is seen by many as an anniversary of massacres and dispossession, a date which marks the beginning of hundreds of years of racist government policies  — such as the Stolen Generations — resulting in continued disadvantage. 

Meena’s mother and Yorta Yorta woman Diane Day said January 26 was “very painful”. 

“I hate this time of year with all these people [who] ring the radio stations and say, ‘We should let the past go.’ But whose past? We still have a past, we’ve always been here,” she said.  

Meena, a lawyer and the commissioner for Aboriginal children and young people in Victoria, wants the country’s national holiday to be held on another day that is inclusive of everyone.

She also wants a day to recognise the horrors First Nations people have experienced since colonisation.  

“When we talk about the removal rates of Aboriginal children, when we talk about high incarceration rates and we talk about over-representation of having chronic illness, when we talk about shorter life expectancy, these are all legacies of colonisation,” she said. 

Changing perceptions

With its bustling streets, authentic restaurants and grocery stores full of traditional spices, Harris Park in Western Sydney is a little slice of India for Khushaal Vyas and his family.

“It’s the hub,” he said. “For [many Indian Australians], it’s where people have a lot of memories.”  

Khushaal’s parents migrated to Australia from India on January 26, 1988, in the midst of Australia’s bicentennial celebrations. 

For years his family celebrated the dual holiday, spending the day with friends.

And they’re not alone.

A 2020 survey from the Australian Management and Education Services found 68 per cent of new migrants and refugees celebrate Australia Day.

For many, it is the day they gained citizenship.

Khushaal, a lawyer and multicultural youth medallist, is also a passionate and active social justice campaigner and community advocate. 

He said for a lot of new Australians or those with migrant backgrounds, celebrating Australia Day had become a symbol of wanting to “belong”.

“[It’s celebrated] to almost prove that you’re Australian,” Khushaal said. 

“[For new migrants] there is that fear of rocking the boat, or trying to avoid challenging the status quo, to make sure that you are the model minority and that you aren’t being troublesome or disruptive.”

In December, the federal government gave local councils the flexibility to choose whether or not to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, allowing them to be held from January 23 to January 29. 

The federal government has ruled out changing the date of the national holiday, but has allowed public servants to choose to work the date if they like, and take their day off at a time they feel is more appropriate.

Likewise, more private employers are giving their staff a choice whether to take January 26 as their public holiday. 

For Khushaal, his community work aims to better educate his community, including his parents, about the history of January 26 and what it means for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. 

“It is over the last 10, 15 years that those changes are happening and those conversations are happening,” he said. 

“It’s more about challenging the barriers that [new migrants] may have to engage in the first place, whether it’s the knowledge barrier or whether it’s that fear of getting involved in the first place.”

Khushaal’s father Sunil Vyas said migrant families like his had learnt more about Indigenous affairs from their children, who had grown up within Australian society and the education system.

“Over the last 30 years, the wider community, the wider Australian society, has actually become much more knowledgeable and much more sympathetic towards the Australian history of Indigenous peoples and understanding the suffering they’ve actually gone through,” Sunil said.

“I must admit, I have changed as a result of that in many ways, both in my beliefs and ideals.

“I feel it is also my duty, it’s incumbent of me, to try and actually not just understand our history but also share it sympathetically with people who may not be knowledgeable about it.”

New generations, new beliefs 

The Australia Talks National Survey in 2021 found a majority of people now believed Australia Day should not be celebrated on January 26, given the historical significance of the date for Indigenous nations.

Other surveys have found the perception of Australia Day is changing, particularly among younger generations. 

For Meena, she is humbled when she does see South Asian folks and other culturally and linguistically diverse Australians at Survival Day protest marches. 

“There is that connectedness of understanding that this is not a day to celebrate, that this is a day to recognise what happened and what it led to,” she said.

“Once people understand more, they’ll understand why the date is so painful. I think that goes for whether you’re a newly arrived migrant person or whether you’ve been here your whole life.”