Election 2025: Australian Hindus call for an envoy to protect their freedom

The Hindu Council of Australia says Hinduphobia is an unrecognised problem and needs political buy-in.

Hindu Council of Australia national vice-president Surinder Jain. Picture: Jane Dempster.

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Australian Hindus have called on the next federal government to appoint an envoy on Hindu­phobia to work alongside envoys on anti-Semitism and Islam­ophobia.

The Hindu Council of Australia says an envoy or similar mechanism is needed to address problems such as attacks in Tarneit in outer Melbourne where it says the temple has suffered a ­“relentless cycle of vandalism, theft, firebombing and property ­destruction”.

The council’s national vice-president, Surinder Jain, told The Australian that Hinduphobia was under the radar because “we have dealt with it in a very mature way, by talking to the police, by talking to the local members of parliament, by increasing the security in the temples. We haven’t gone out and started protesting or running around with posters.”

He said while the community of about 684,000 Hindus had been “invisible”, both sides of politics had started listening. He welcomed last week’s promise by the federal government of $8.5m to build Australia’s first Hindu school in outer Sydney, matching a Coalition promise in March. The school has been strongly supported by Labor’s Andrew Charlton. Hindus make up about 21 per cent of voters in his seat of Parramatta.

There have been ongoing tensions in the Indian diaspora around the world between Sikh groups arguing for a breakaway state of Khalistan and Hindus who espouse the extreme brand of nationalism known as Hindutva.

Over the past couple of years, there have been media reports of defacement of Hindu temples in Australia.

Mr Jain said the religious freedom of Australian Sikhs also needed to be protected by an envoy or other mechanism. “We do not have any issue with the Sikh community,” he said.

“The problem … is that overseas issues, overseas problems, are being brought into Australia.”

He said the bid for Sikh separatism was based on a political, not a religious, ideology, “so we will defend every Sikh from being vilified, but we have our own political views, which may differ from the views of others who are demanding a separate state in India”.

The home page of the council’s website is headed “Immediate Action Needed Against Hate Crimes on Hindu Temples” and claims “another shocking and unacceptable act of vandalism and robbery has been committed against the SMVS Swaminarayan Sanstha Temple in Tarneit, the eighth attack on this Hindu place of worship”. It calls for increased police surveillance and security measures to protect Hindu places of worship.

Almost 30 per cent of the Tarneit population was born in India, and 2.5 per cent born in Pakistan. It is estimated that 21 per cent are Hindus and 13.6 per cent are Sikhs.

Mr Jain said: “There are people who don’t like Hindus to live their culture and to live their religion, and they are raising all sorts of ­bogeys about Hinduism, about Hindutva.

“There is an anti-Semitism envoy and a Muslim envoy so those communities’ voices get heard by the press and by the government. Hindus don’t have that.

“We want either a Hindu envoy or some other mechanism by which the work envoys are doing can be raised for Hindus also. There are other communities who don’t have an envoy, like Sikhs, like Parsees. Perhaps (there could be) one envoy to look after all of them, or one envoy for Hindus.”

Another option was to fund the NSW-based faith lobby group Better Balanced Futures to look after Hindus and Sikhs “and other issues”. There are about 210,000 Sikhs in Australia.

Mr Jain said the Hindu population of 684,000 in Australia was not far behind the Muslim population of about 813,000: “We deserve an envoy of our own. One of the things that happens when you don’t have an envoy, many government departments, they look for an envoy. They will talk to the Jewish envoy, they’ll talk to the Muslim envoy (but) they will ignore us totally.”

The Hindu school will be built on 2ha of land at Oakville, about 30km from Parramatta in Sydney’s west, with the first students expected in 2027 and with plans for 1000 students from kindergarten to year 12. The land was bought last year with $5m raised by the community.

The school will follow the NSW syllabus but will also teach Indian languages, dance, art and religion, yoga and meditation.