ABSTRACT
In January 2010, Nitin Garg was stabbed to death on his way to work at a “Hungry Jacks” fast food outlet in the city of Melbourne in Australia (Grace & Miller, 2010). Mr. Garg was 21 years old and was studying accountancy. He was from India. His tragic death came after 6 months of public debate in Australia and India around reports of violence against international students, mainly from India, in Australian cities, particularly Melbourne and Sydney. The responses to Mr. Garg’s death from stakeholder groups mirrored, and indeed deepened, the parameters that had shaped the dialogue around the issue of “racial violence against Indian students” since it first attracted public attention in May 2009, when international students staged a public demonstration in Melbourne. It appeared that Mr. Garg was not robbed during the attack and the absence of any apparent motive was sufficient for some commentators to claim that the attack was racially motivated (the absence of a
Introduction 241 Denial of Racism 243 The Study 244 Results 245 Avoiding the “R” Word 246 Positive Self-Presentation: Nationalist Rhetoric 246 Deflection: Racism versus Crime 247 Discussion 247 Conclusion 250 References 250
motive is one of the many indicators that can be used to determine whether an incident is a hate crime). On the other hand, the absence of evidence pointing to overt racial overtones on the part of the assailant meant that the Victoria police were not in a position to attribute a racist motive to the crime. None of this is any consolation to Mr. Garg’s grieving family. It does, however, signal the polarities of opinion that characterize contemporary debates on racist violence in Australia.
