Half-Plate Love

What’s it about?

It asks people of Melbourne to dine at their local Indian restaurant on Feb 24

The campaign has three goals:

• To express solidarity with the Indian community under attack
• To tell Indian media that Australia isn’t a racist country
• To compel official Australia to take note of the attacks

Who’s coming for the Feb 24 dinner?

Nearly 10,000 have confirmed their participation

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In an age of spin and corporate-generated social marketing, it’s natural to be suspicious of businesses wanting to exploit a public crisis to earn a profit. Marketing insiders also gleefully pointed out that Mia works with a marketing firm called Symplicit. But Mia, a Melbourne designer, with Australian and Caribbean heritage, has her own reason for choosing this novel form of protest. “I wanted to find a mode of protest that ordinary people who do not go to street protests could do. A campaign in which my circle of friends...the whole community could get behind. I wanted to find something that was the opposite of a boycott and that embraced the Indian community in some way,” she says to me at one of the more popular Indian restaurants in Melbourne’s central business district.

Mia is excited at the response to her campaign, fervently hoping that “Melbourne’s love affair with food” can “nip in the bud” the ugly violence against Indian students. Her optimism is understandable. From the time she began her campaign—VagainstV—with a Facebook page and Twitter messages, the campaign has gathered astonishing momentum. Around 10,000 people have already confirmed they would dine at an Indian restaurant on February 24. Indian restaurants received posters last week announcing the campaign, but their owners are reluctant to talk, as some establishments had been attacked in the past few months.

Messages of support have been pouring in, including from middle-class Indians. “I think VagainstV is an amazing, simple and effective initiative and shows how most Australians feel,” gushes Priya Rathore Singh. Krystel D. quipped, “I’m ready, armed with my spoon and fork!” And Rosie M. thought Mia’s campaign effectively combined protest with fun: “The VagainstV night is a beautiful way for the peaceful majority to make a statement of both solidarity and protest. We are getting a group of parents from our local school for what promises to be a fabulous night out.”

Mia’s campaign has three distinct goals. “First, the idea is to send a message to the local Indian community that we are not indifferent to this violence,” she says. The second goal aims at convincing the Indian media that Australians don’t want themselves to be cast in the image of a racist nation because of the actions of a racist minority. “And the third goal,” says Mia, “is to send a signal to the government, the media and the law enforcement here that we do not want to focus on what Indian people should be doing about their personal safety and focus more on the root cause of this racist violence and what is being done to diffuse this criminal behaviour.”

It’s hard not to be caught up in Mia’s passion as she talks about the multicultural Melbourne of a few years ago, a culture that locals were so proud of, a culture she feels has been betrayed by a violent minority in recent years. Obviously, one curry night can’t end racial  violence in Australia. But even critics credit Mia’s campaign with an honesty not discerned in the furious debate on the race issue.

For instance, it has been hard to keep up with the state government officials who have swung from condemning racist violence to saying that racism isn’t a serious issue in Melbourne. Ted Baillieu, the Victorian opposition leader, has weighed in with people like Mia and publicly said Victoria has a problem with racist violence. Recent online surveys by two Melbourne newspapers showed that a massive 44 per cent to 48 per cent of Victorians thought their state was indeed racist.

But can curry-munching really address curry-bashing? With white Australians turning curry-munchers—a put-down term here for Indians—will it heal the wounds of Indians? Gautam Gupta, spokesman of the Federation of Indian Students of Australia, points out a glaring omission—the night of February 24 might generate thousands of extra dollars for restaurants, but not one cent would be channelled for the welfare of Indian students, the group bearing the brunt of racist attacks.

Says Gupta, “Just a small percentage of that extra profit could pay for the legal representation of tens of thousands of Indian students who now urgently need to legally challenge unjust and retrospective immigration changes. The idea of VagainstV has its appeal but it lacks substance. It’s like photo shoots of police playing cricket with Indian students. Once again, it stops short of actually giving anything to Indian students. Once again, Indian students are the missing ingredient.”

The campaign hasn’t touched working-class Indians with the same light charm and exuberance. An Indian waitress at a busy city restaurant shrugged her shoulders, “What’s the point? We will still work our shift that night, nothing special for us—we do not even get tips here.” An Indian cabbie’s response was even more jaded, “Bhai, that’s good news if there are more people catching cabs that night—and even better if they pay.” He was referring to the chronic problem of customers refusing to pay taxi fare. As for Indian students, many simply asked, “Do we get a free meal?” Obviously not.

For one night, though, Melbourne can forget the accusations, the official denials of racism, the cracked skulls and horrible beatings, and the student deaths. The event offers as much escapism as it offers awareness.