Sunday, May 31, 2009
Defend The Students
We the Student Faculty Cell and Peer Group members of IGNOU view the attempts to denigrate the student community in the wake of racist attacks in Australia on the Indian students with extreme concern. We have condemned the racist attacks in an email to the FISA(Federation of Indian Students of Australia) and expressed our support for its attempts towards racial harmony.In this context it must be noted that students of diverse ethnic groups including the Australian students joined together to promote racial harmony with the Indian students.This is the right approach towards building a peaceful and harmonious atmosphere for continuing to study in Australia or anywhere in the world. The attempts by the Australian media to isolate the Indian students from this atmosphere by labelling them as 'smelly' or 'pesky'or by pointing to the limitations of language skills etc. only feeds in to the racial stereotyping which has contributed to the present violence. Students and learners everywhere( including IGNOU) study to overcome their limitations and if these limitations are racially or otherwise put in to a stereotypical mould then the entire process of teaching learning becomes counterproductive. We urge upon the Australian government and people to demonstrate the genuineness of the multicultural ethos which they put forward in their tourism advertisements.This will enable the students to study and work their way through their study programmes in Australia.Their families too will feel more secure back home.We in India and IGNOU too need to draw appropriate lessons from these horrifying episodes in Australia.The need to build a genuine teaching learning process free from prejudice is evermore the need of the hour.In IGNOU we will take this up in our meetings of the student faculty cells and the peer groups.We need more people like Mr.Amitabh Bacchan to stand up to this lawless counter world of prejudice both amongst the students and the wider fraternity.(Members of the Student Faculty Cells and Peer Groups of theFlying Club Study Centre and the Guru Dronacharya College Study Centre of IGNOU,India with the help of Mr. Ajay Mahurkar and Dr. Dolly Mathew)
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As a student and at times also as a trainer i have thought about the true purpose of education. And many a times i have only felt that the present system of education is only teaching us to become more and more inhumane. Education has since the past been to help develop wisdom to serve the needy. The present education system is only isolating the younger generation from the reality and degerating their hearts. We have become more hostile to one another and more alienated in the four boundaries of our homes.
ReplyDeleteI truly feel we need to change out perspective of getting into good educational institute just for the sake of gratifying our own needs. As we would never fulfill our thirst. It is this degenerated heart that is making us discriminate our own fellow students just because of their color or race.
I would like to say here that, we the peer group members should ourselves understand empart the true purpose of education to all the students we meet. The education that is sought not to gratify our needs but to become wise human beings, world citizens who would contribute to the society alongside working for his growth hand in glove with the underpriviledged.
Its proven fact that education kills the inhumanity inside and lightens the power of knowledge. What ever happened in australia for our students is purely inhumane act done by human beings who are not educated. They have to learn from India about the hospitality and respect to the fellow people. There is no way out by only given the best education a person can be a good citizen, but the culture matters equally -Deepa
ReplyDeletethe brutality on the students or foreigners is a serious crime. the government and the people of both the countries are responsible. it is harsh and hardest of all things to happen, in the world the morale of students got effected adversely. where evr, howevr , whenever such insidents happen the cases and pepople who ar einvolved in must be punished deterently. we regret to penalize one but we all so capable of punishing if it is required. we urge the citizens of the world to react and realise to save the life, studies, culture all in all the humanity. there are no bars when we condemn the act of terror, since they dont belong to any nation, class, creade, region and religion.
ReplyDeletewe all express our solidarity to our fellow students and extend, express and expose to say we aRE THERE FOR THEM AND WE WILL COOPERATE TO TAKE A FIRM ACTION ON THE CULPTITS.
Over the past few years racism and mono-culturalism has seen a revival across many developed countries such as US, Europe and Australia. At the outset, these economies have always needed cheap labour to work in industries, agriculture and other sectors, which they got from developing countries like India, China, other Asian countries and Latin American countries. Not mincing a word, the elite world always treated the people from the developing countries, as second class, though mostly, it was owing to latter that these countries registered rapid and enormous growth.
ReplyDeleteWith privatisation, liberalisation and globalisation, a new wave of growth set in, especially in sectors of telecommunication and IT, agriculture, industry, infrastructure etc. This furthered the pace of large-scale migration from the developing countries to the developed ones with migrants being available for all kinds of jobs. But with the present global recession, the developed countries have been hit the most and they have been facing tremendous loss in employment and decline in the growth rate. With migrants to be accommodated with natives in times of employment crisis has irked the latter and perhaps one can see this as a crucial factor that has set in the revival of racism and the underpinning of the racial assault in Australia. Revival of racism can be seen as a reflection of not being able to cope with the ‘new social asymmetry that has come owing to globalisation.’
Australian universities attracted several students from countries like India, China and other Asian countries with which the Australian economy benefited enormously, in terms of student fees, sponsored scholarships, infrastructure growth etc. but the political leaders were not successful in shaping a new society that could have welcomed the heterogeneous student culture and diversity.
That political leaders, law and order enforcement agencies, media, students and people themselves should take into cognisance the new social asymmetry that is emerging and assimilate the wider and heterogeneous cultural diversity almost everywhere across the globe. The rights of all to retain their respective cultures, respect for human rights, equality of opportunities and access to programmes and services need to be upheld to make the global democracy vibrant and sustainable.
Yet another attack today on an Indian student in Australia who had been attacked before.Yesterday cars belonging to two students were torched. Clearly we need to go beyond the reasons being given in the press,by the governments of both the countries and the pundits for the current violence.Economic causes like the current recession have been cited as a reason by drawing analogies from the histories of recession, racism and fascism in different countries.Reasons like crimes of economic opportunism also have been cited.But these attacks are now becoming attempts to annihilate the personal property and the person of the immigrant students.Is this a throwback to the days of Wakefield's 'systematic colonization','White Australia'etc.?If so then the Australian multiculturalism really has a long way to go.The struggle of the Indian students to build a congenial atmosphere for their studies even more difficult.ajay.
ReplyDeleteFriends, I am posting the communication sent to FISA for the SFC and Peer Group and us by Dr. Dolly Mathew.She writes: "The FISA- an Indian Students’ body in Australia represents the Indian students and the problems they face there, (that can be like discrimination at the workplace or difficulty in getting a house for being a migrant or being indicted for some crime)It has currently taken up the cause of racial harmony and multiculturalism in the wake of the recent racial assaults against Indian students in Sydney and Melbourne. It is thus that we have upheld the action taken by them and expressed our concern and solidarity.
ReplyDeleteWe have received a response from FISA on our email sent to them on 31/05/09. The same along with our email is being reproduced here:"
Email from FISA
Against Racial Attacks on Indian Students in Australia
Deven Pravin Tanna 10 June
Thank you for your email and kind words.
FISA has received thousands of emails of support. At the moment we are inundated with work, as you can imagine, and unfortunately do not have enough resources to execute all the work that needs to be done including replying to our generous supporters such as yourself.
We will endeavour to get back to you and keep you updated on the work we do. In the meantime please keep checking our website which is regularly updated.
Best Regards,
Deven Pravin Tanna
General Secretary
Federation of Indian Students of Australia Inc.
www.fisa.org.au
P: 1300 FISA4U
E: secretary@fisa.org.au
EMAIL From SFC and PEER Group
2009/5/31 dolly mathew
To,
The Federation of Indian Students of Australia
We the 'Student-Faculty Cell' and 'Peer Group' at the Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, India condemn the recent incident of racial assaults on Indian students at Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. We find such incidents counter productive to the entire ethos of a genuine student-culture development. This also hampers our fledgling efforts in developing a student culture in our University system. Kudos to Mr. Amitabh Bacchan for not accepting the honorary doctorate from an Australian University in protest against the racial attacks.
Governments, both in India and Australia, should immediately take stern action against such atrocious incidents to prevent them from taking place in future and ensure and restore safety and confidence of Indian students.
We express our sympathies to the students and families affected by the attacks. We wholeheartedly support the peace march and the candle light vigil for racial harmony being carried out by the Federation of Indian Students of Australia today.
Note: For details of our statement on the Australian incidents, please visit our blogsite:
www.expressionssfcpg. blogspot.com.
We welcome your comments on the blog.