The Member of Parliament from Parramatta, home to the largest number of Indian diaspora residents, Andrew Charlton provides an engaging account of Australia-India relations. In this comprehensive volume, he takes stock of the political, strategic, socio-cultural, and economic evolution from Menzies-Nehru animosity to Albanese-Modi bromance. 

He rightly argues that while the relationship has come a long way, the focus now must be on strengthening the economic pillar of the relationship.  This requires “mutual” investment from both sides, and he suggests one way to do that could be to harness the potential of the growing Indian diaspora in Australia.  

Charlton provides an important update to the study of the Australia-India relationship by documenting the Narendra Modi years and shining a light on the growing importance of the Indian diaspora, which was recorded as the largest diaspora group in Australia between 2021-22.  

Charlton employs, quite literally, the metaphor of a “relationship” to analyse the bilateral partnership between Australia and India. The book is divided into four parts as it underlines the trajectory of the ties, with chapters titled chronologically as “acquaintances,” “friends,” “family,” and finally “partners,” each one looking at the strategic relations, common political themes, roles of diaspora groups, and the need for investment, respectively.  

Charlton commences his analysis from the Cold War period, where Australia and India inaugurated their political ties with Jawaharlal  Nehru, leading a newly independent India, who did not quite see eye to eye with the “British to the bootstraps” Robert Menzies. He traces the “acquaintances” part of the journey by surveying the role of leaders who he argues failed to hit it off the mark until the Abbott-Modi partnership, which then took off under subsequent leaderships under Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese. He argues that economic agreements like CECA and Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreements, represent the strong progress made by the relationship despite the “listless political leadership” which has encumbered the relationship for the majority of the 75 years.  

Charlton highlights common themes between the two countries. With subchapters dedicated to the now outdated 3C’s (Cricket, Curry, Commonwealth) and the new 3D’s (Democracy, Diaspora, Dosti (Friendship) he argues that the countries have shared interests and values both in the bilateral relationship, as well as the regional and global order.  

The rest of the book covers the socio-cultural dynamics of the relationship such as the importance of diaspora in areas like media, arts, culture, and politics. However, the overarching argument remains that to truly become “partners” Australia needs to invest more in India and vice versa. 

 While the overarching argument of the book, of adding economic heft to the relationship, remains correct, it remains underappreciative of the “structural” factors that have historically driven and continue to shape the bilateral relationship. Charlton’s arguments, particularly in the first section of the book covering strategic political relations, rely on the role of leaders in explaining the relationship. Despite the oft-cited Nehru-Menzies’ ideological and personal animosity, there were more factors shaping the relationship. Australia-India relationship historians have argued that the United States played a substantive role, and that the US-India relationship has acted as a catalyst to the Australia-India relationship leading to a lot more engagement on a bureaucratic level between Australia and India in the early Cold War years. These engagements also included India being the largest recipient of Australia’s aid program between 1951 and 1969, the heyday of the Nehru-Menzies years.  

Charlton also does not spend enough time interrogating the role that China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific has played in bringing Australia and India together. This is a rather glaring omission as both countries’ uneven ties with China have been, arguably, the main point of commonality between them. This has led, concomitantly, to the resurgence of the Quad and the need for a strong economic partnership to remove Australia’s over-reliance on China.    

Charlton remains an idealist in his hopes for the future of Australia-India relations and the role the diaspora can play. However the Canada example does raise pertinent questions about diaspora politics and its impact on bilateral ties. Due to political concerns in the Canada-India relationship and the role the Indian diaspora in Canada is playing in the resurgence of Khalistan, the free trade agreement talks have come to a halt. This case highlights that there are substantial political risks in instrumentalising the diaspora to propel the economic relationship which Australia must be careful about.  

However, hope springs eternal and this book is a welcome addition to the malnourished state of India literacy within Australia.  

This is a review of Andrew Charlton’s Australia’s Pivot to India (BlackInc Books, 2023), ISBN 9781760644772 (Softcover).

Dr Teesta Prakash is a policy analyst with expertise in strategic and foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific. She has a PhD in Australia-India strategic relations and has worked at the Lowy Institute and Australian Strategic Policy Institute previously.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.