DesiOz Day

It’s fitting that one of the best test series in a long time is being played over the respective national days of the two opponents, India and Australia. And whilst the series has exposed some raw emotions on both sides there is more than this linking the way both countries view their national day than is at first obvious.

For India, the significance of Republic Day is real and for most of my Indian friends it seems to be quite raw. Of course it is the day that marks the formation of an Indian Constitution and the day Indians decided to govern themselves. However, images of freedom fighters, Marxist style fists thrust in the air, Gandhi in his dhoti still persist….I think the former, that of the freedom fighters is the first palpable link one can make with the way Australians view their own national day. Whilst Anzac Day in Australia is the pre-eminent occasion for remembering the sacrifices of our soldiers there is without doubt a lingering remembrance of them on Australia Day as well. Pride and remembrance of the fallen is growing in both countries (not always a positive thing I believe when it crosses the line into jingoism) and tomorrow will show this in both countries.

The British Empire too, and its impact on the two nations have a strong resonance on our national days. For India I think it can be a painful remembrance, perhaps one of lost opportunities and subservience followed by immense (and justifiable) pride in the final cutting of the colonial link and subsequent building of the largest independent democracy in the world. For Australia, whilst a massive proportion of the population claim British ancestry, there is still a measure of pride to be drawn from the fact that our first citizens were in fact the people England chose to discard, prisoners shipped in rotting hulks to the great southern land.

Sport, and obviously here I’m talking cricket, also plays a big part of the national day. In Australia, it looks like the Indian team will be teaching the Aussies how to lose consistently. But on beaches all over Australia and anywhere in India that a boy can truss up some stumps, make a bat from fence paling and throw down a few out-swingers mini tests will be played. Little Kumble’s and Hayden’s will compete for the ultimate prize – a Frosty Fruit icypole or a Gulab Jamun.

In Australia it’s definitely a day for celebrating our multicultural society. For the first 150 years of our existence (and I aknowledge that Aboriginals lived on the continent for tens of thousands of years without outside interference before ‘we’ arrived – however there was no notion of a ‘nation state’) we were an Anglo-Saxon nation, then Greeks, Italians and other Eastern Europeans flocked there following World War II. After the Vietnam War Vietnamese and Chinese, and more recently immigrants from the subcontinent and Africa have made their home in Oz and enriched our society to a huge extent. For India, whilst not sharing an immigrant past, the diversity of this country is if not celebrated, certainly present in the realization that so many starkly different cultures and backgrounds make up this massive nation state.

Of course there are many things that set us apart, but now’s not the time to dwell on those. Instead just be proud people. True, we both have problems that we’re grappling with, but we also have a lot to look forward to and we share enough commonalities to make a difference together, both in the region and the world.

Happy Republic Day! Happy Australia Day! And get a Kingfisher/Fosters cocktail into ya...yaar!