Greens and One Nation expose the absurdity of culture wars

One Nation NSW MP Mark Latham. Picture: Getty Images

They say that politics makes strange bedfellows. In NSW, ­Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party is defending Third World immigrants from the depredations of the Greens, who are leaning on the CIA for support. Go figure.

The hyphenated Australians at the centre of this multicultural flare-up hail mainly from India, and the organisation at the heart of the controversy is the Vishva Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council.

Last week, One Nation’s Mark Latham sponsored a motion calling on the Greens’ David Shoebridge to withdraw comments characterising the VHP as a “far-right Hindu extremist organisation … which is designated as a militant extremist religious organisation” by the CIA. Shoebridge had implied the VHP should be disqualified from giving religious instruction in public schools.

It’s bad enough to quote the CIA; it’s even worse to misquote them. The actual 2017 CIA factbook said only that the VHP was a “militant religious organisation”, presumably using the adjective “militant” in its American sense as “aggressively active” — that from Webster’s dictionary.

Speaking in his own defence, Shoebridge compounded the ­mistake, claiming the CIA had ­labelled the VHP a “military extremist religious organisation”. His double-down was a double failure of multiculturalism, ex­hibiting a lack of empathy for both Indians and Americans. Divided by a common language, all of us. And divided by Indian politics.

The cockfight between Latham and Shoebridge has little to do with Australia, multiculturalism, or religious education. It is, in fact, all about India’s recent agricultural reforms. Last September, the Indian parliament passed a set of three controversial farm reform laws. They were mostly supported by Hindus, but mostly opposed by Sikhs. Hindu-Sikh tension has since spread to Indian diaspora communities in Canada, Britain, and now Australia, where Hindu-Sikh violence has erupted in western Sydney.

Shoebridge says his Indian constituents have expressed concerns about “the rise of right-wing extremism … directly connected to” the VHP. They probably have. Labels like that fly fast and furious in India’s viciously cutthroat world of domestic politics.

In India, the VHP is a member of an umbrella organisation that also includes the governing party. The VHP itself is studiously non-political, but it’s fair to say that most of its members support ­Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. To Modi’s opponents, that makes them “right-wing”.

But for real Hindu bigots and religious zealots, the VHP is dangerously radical. One of its major initiatives is the abolition of caste and the admission of Dalits (often labelled “untouchables”) into Hindu temples. The VHP even trains Dalit priests. The organisation is also active in animal protection and other environmental causes — though, as might be expected, motivated by religious (not secular) beliefs — and is a major provider of social services.

In India’s highly charged religious landscape, the explicitly Hindu orientation of the VHP makes it a lightning rod for controversy. The VHP is an outspoken defender of Hindu rights in an officially secular society, and is often involved in the contentious politics of protest. Its members tend to be, as the CIA once said, militantly religious. But there’s a big difference between the militantly religious and religious militants. The VHP aggressively advocates and educates. It does not burn crosses or bomb mosques.

As the Greens’ 2019 election platform said: “Too often politicians attack and dehumanise minority communities; this has to stop.” Once they stop, the Greens should take another page from the CIA factbook. In 2018, the CIA gave up on pigeonholing the ideologies of foreign civil society organisations. It’s a multicultural lesson that’s well worth learning.

Salvatore Babones is an associate professor at University of Sydney.