The Indian diaspora as Australia’s identity, its future

The Indian diaspora is now officially Australia’s largest overseas-born community, overtaking the England-born population for the first time. This is not a small demographic footnote. Australia’s population has, for two centuries, been anchored by a British-derived majority. An Indian-origin community now outnumbering it marks a genuine inflection point in how the country understands itself. It is against this backdrop that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Australia — his third visit Down Under — will be a trip in which the diaspora is expected to command the spotlight.

The Australia-India relationship has come a long way, from being defined by the simplistic ‘three Cs’ — Cricket, Curry and Commonwealth — to a more meaningful ‘four Ds’: Democracy, Defence, Diaspora and Dosti. This shift reflects a decade of institution-building, including India’s participation alongside Australia, the United States and Japan in the Quad, the informal security grouping that has become the backbone of the Indo-Pacific strategy of India and Australia. Mr. Modi’s visit will touch on all four pillars, but it is the diaspora event — a large public gathering billed as ‘Melbourne Meets Modi’ — that is drawing the most attention, precisely because of what this community has come to represent for both nations.

The settlement trajectory of the Australian-Indian community is very different from its counterparts in the U.S. or the United Kingdom. The first significant wave of Indian professional migration to Australia dates only to the 1960s and 1970s, climbing after the dismantling of the White Australia Policy — an explicitly racist immigration regime that excluded all but European migrants.

By diaspora standards, this makes the Australian-Indian community still young. A large share of recent arrivals left India during the ‘New India’ years since 2014, a period of rapid outward migration driven by a mix of economic ambition and, for some, disillusionment with the state of democratic institutions at home. Whatever the reasons for leaving, this cohort tends to be more recently and more tightly bound to India — through family, business, remittances and a resurgent nationalist identity. That is what makes Australia’s Indian community distinct beyond just numbers.

As the anti-immigration wave rises across the globe, in Australia this wave has found a specific target in the Indian community. Nationalist street rallies under banners such as ‘March for Australia’ have gathered pace over the past year, and the right-wing populist One Nation party is emerging as the main opponent to the left-of-centre Labor party currently in power. Mr. Modi’s high-visibility diaspora event lands squarely within this tense landscape. By showcasing the scale, accomplishments and mobilisation of the Indian community, it will reiterate the statement — increasingly co-opted by conservative movements — that this community has grown too large, too fast, and too visible.

For Australia, the Indian diaspora is an economic asset and a force multiplier for the country’s multicultural fabric. But a fracturing domestic political landscape means that this asset can just as easily be recast as a liability in public discourse. Mr. Modi’s visit should be a reminder to policymakers that failing to invest in better understanding this growing and dynamic community carries real stakes for the future of this strategic partnership.

For India, the diaspora has long been framed as a source of pride and a connecting tissue of cultural links to Australia as a strategic partner. But pride and sentiment are not the same as understanding. What is missing — on both sides of the relationship — is a serious, evidence-based picture of how this diaspora actually lives, trusts and participates in Australian civic life, beyond the headline statistics on income, education and trade that has long been the mainstay of government discourse. If both countries are serious about treating the diaspora as a genuine pillar of their partnership rather than a talking point, that requires concerted efforts to capture their experiences of settlement which are far from monolithic.

Australia’s demographic transformation is not a passing trend. It will permanently reshape its national identity from an antipodean one to one that is far more entangled with India and the wider Indo-Pacific. That means sustained research, stronger engagement with civil society, and policies that build social cohesion rather than taking it for granted. If democracy, defence, diaspora and dosti are to remain the four pillars of the partnership, then the diaspora must be treated not merely as a symbol of the relationship, but as a constituency whose experiences and trust deserve to be understood.

Teesta Prakash is Research Fellow at the Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne; Hiya Harinandini is Research Fellow at the Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne