NSW election: Hindu proud to fight for One Nation

Mritunjay Kumar Singh decided to run for One Nation in the NSW seat of Parramatta for two reasons.

One Nation candidate and teacher Mritunjay Kumar Singh with, from left, schoolchildren Rudra, Dhruv, Ishaan, Shagun, Ishika and Nyra. Picture: John Feder

Mritunjay Kumar Singh decided to run for One Nation in the NSW seat of Parramatta for two reasons.

The 57-year-old schoolteacher thinks their education policy is best and he wanted to give the Hindi community a voice.

Mr Singh is also critical of left wing politics and confesses to being politically incorrect.

He denies One Nation, the party led by Pauline Hanson, is racist, pointing as proof to the fact the party are running him, a migrant from India, as a candidate.

Mr Singh also points out that the Labor Party opposed the abolition of the White Australia policy in the 1960s.

“How far back in history do we want to go?” he said.

Labor later formally abolished the White Australia Policy under Gough Whitlam in 1973.

One Nation became synonymous with anti-migration politics after party leader Pauline Hanson said Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians” in her maiden speech in 1996.

Mr Singh said people often made comments about racism and Hanson when he was on the hustings but said he didn’t have much at all to do with the party’s federal leader.

Mr Singh was drawn to One Nation after NSW party leader Mark Latham defended the right wing Vishva Hindu Parishad organisation in state parliament.

Then NSW Greens upper house member David Shoebridge told a budget estimates hearing on March 3 in 2021 that the VHP, an organisation devoted to Hindu nationalism, was a “right-wing Hindu organisation that is considered a military extremist religious organisation by the CIA”.

Mr Latham accused Mr Shoebridge of slurring a “peace loving community”.

“No one else came to our defence at the time,” said Mr Singh.

The federal government does not list the VHP as a terrorist organisation.

Amit Batish, 46, is running as an upper house candidate for One Nation. He joined the party six years ago and is now the NSW state director. He said he was drawn to the party’s stance on education, housing affordability and traditional values.

“The family system, genders, societal values, the traditional values like nationalism,” said Mr Batish. “They are very important for the community and myself. And these are constantly under attack.”

One of One Nation’s key policies in the NSW election is the establishment of the state’s first Hindu non-government school.

Mr Latham said members of the Hindi community started turning to One Nation after becoming disillusioned with Labor and the party’s “wokeness”.

“At MK Singh’s campaign launch we had people saying the Labor Party turn up in saris and then they don’t do anything for us,” he said.

In the seat of Parramatta, the multicultural enclave of Harris Park feels worlds away from the whitebread suburbs associated with One Nation.

Shops sell samosas, dosai and the translucent orange sweet jalebi, and one in three of the suburb’s residents were born in India, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Mr Singh is passionate about a range of topics but is particularly effusive about history and laments that the history and philosophy of religion and science isn’t taught in classrooms.

He currently teaches maths after decades teaching history and says a greater uptake of STEM disciplines would help soothe the anxiety around climate change felt acutely by young people.