More than cricket? Multiple dimensions of Australia's relationship with India

Abstract

Australia’s relationship with the countries of South Asia—above all with India—stands in clear contrast with its relations elsewhere in Asia. Unlike the efforts put into fostering ties with Japan, China and Indonesia, Australia’s links to the nations of the subcontinent have been characterised by recurrent bouts of amnesia. Like patients with injury to the hippocampus who have lost the ability to lay down long-term memories, Australia and the countries of South Asia approach their episodic moments of contact without apparent recollection of the past. Australia’s weak but evolving relationship to the successor states of British India—India, Pakistan and Bangladesh—offers a unique opportunity to explore the multiple dimensions of national interest. For the first time since 1947, for example, there has been a distinct 'de-hyphenation' of India from Pakistan in the framing of relations with the sub-continent. The economic transformation of India in the past decade has brought about a significant change in Australia's weak ties to the sub-continent. India is now widely canvassed as an emerging world super power. At the same time, relations with Pakistan are being strengthened in response to non-conventional security concerns. The analytical lenses of security, trade, ideology, culture/soft power and personal relationships between national leaders allow us to understand why relationships with the subcontinent have, until very recently, been so tenuous. They also offer an opportunity to qualify the assumptions of conventional approaches to international relations.