ABSTRACT
Having identified a racialized and a pluralist-yet-hierarchical narrative of the Anglosphere, the task becomes now to understand how India has responded to them both discursively and diplomatically. This chapter considers the juxtaposition of India’s postcolonial identity and Australia’s racialized identity by examining India–Australia relations immediately after Indian independence. Australia’s identity was defined through the ‘White Australia’ policy. This made a close relationship all but impossible, due to a very distinct clash between India and Australia over colonial/postcolonial hierarchies in world politics. Australia’s approach to India reflected a very pure form of the India problem. Australia saw India, Indian people and Indian foreign policy as unknowable, irrational and unnecessarily concerned with colonialism. As a result, they found Nehruvian foreign policy mystifying. Australian identity in this period reflected a racialized and hierarchical vision of world order – preferring to ally with the US and the UK, while at the same time preventing non-white immigration. Indian identity, however, was set against precisely this hierarchy.
