A 22-year-old Indian student living in Victoria, Australia, was left with a broken nose in February after what began as a verbal slur — “Indian Dog” — in a gym. There was no provocation, no theft, and no one was hoarding from a “food bank” — as many South Asian students in Canada were accused of recently.
The incident is not an outlier. It sits within a pattern that has become harder to ignore, even as Indian students rush to go down under for Australian degrees, jobs, and the promise of upward mobility.
The contradiction begins at policy level. In January, Australia moved Indian applicants into the ‘higher-risk’ visa category, citing “integrity risks.” The tighter scrutiny and tougher approvals are framed as administrative safeguards, but they also reinforce a perception: that Indians, as a group, require more policing. On the ground, this bleeds into everyday interactions, legitimising suspicion that students often say they can feel in rented homes, offices, and public places.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Australia has witnessed a rising trend of systemic racism, xenophobia, anti-Indian sentiments, rising attacks on students, defamatory misinformation, and trolling apparatus. Since August last year, outright racist protests under the banner of “March for Australia” have witnessed thousands of participants across all major cities in the island nation.
And yet the flow of Indian students has not slowed.
For many families, studying abroad is still seen as a necessary glory: a gateway to better jobs and global exposure. Most students leave with a realistic understanding that racism exists. What they are less prepared for is how it manifests: not just in headline-grabbing attacks, but in the slow, grinding friction of everyday life.
From hostile landlords to locals being shocked that a person from a country like India can speak fluent English, Melbourne is a melting pot of every kind of racism a world-is-my-oyster student doesn’t need or should ever have to experience.
A year in Melbourne, a lifetime of racism
I spent a year as an international student in Melbourne in 2025 and experienced this racism first-hand, which made me second-guess and shrink parts of myself just to go about everyday life.
It shows up first in housing. Securing accommodation is expensive and precarious, often with profiling from landlords.
Maintenance issues can drag on. A simple plumbing issue, which in India would be fixed within hours, can be a traumatic experience in Melbourne. With no immediate help from neighbours or the landlord, and hefty fees for external services, it can often mean vacating the apartment for a few days.
Melbourne is also unusually hot in summer. There are air conditioners, but Victoria homes don’t have ceiling fans. If the AC stops working, most landlords have the same solution: “Deal with it.” This is what most get after shelling out AUD $1,600 a month, over Rs 1 lakh, to rent a shoebox apartment with no ventilation near the campus.
The problem is not unique to Indian students, but the sense of being deprioritised, or dismissed more easily, is a recurring complaint.
It appears in work, too. Part-time jobs, essential for most international students, frequently come with informal arrangements like cash payments, no contracts, and wages that fall below legal minimums. The justification is familiar: “This is how it works here.” But in reality, it is easier to hide the meagre pay that barely meets the minimum wage requirements. It also makes it easier to fire employees on a whim, without having to deal with any contractual obligations.
Even in universities, international students are often asked with shock and surprise: “How do you speak such good English?” In the same breath, they are also asked if there is a shorter name, because learning to say Indian names with all these consonants is more difficult than properly pronouncing ‘Kata Tjuta’ or ‘Indooroopilly’.
The problems are exacerbated by the overwhelming lack of institutional support when it comes to everyday racism — small, benign-at-first-glance acts that reveal a larger pattern of systemic “othering.”
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Hierarchies of racism
In Melbourne, it is survival of the fittest — of those who can successfully embody the “right” values and behaviours of a model immigrant. This hierarchy is clearly visible through routine activities and slang. Terms such as “FOB” or “Fresh Off the Boat”, inspired by the American sitcom of the same name featuring a Taiwanese family migrating to the United States, visibly show the way those slow-to-adjust immigrants are belittled with these thinly-veiled insults.
There’s a clear divide between those who have “figured it out” and those still finding their feet. Immigrant areas, like in any big city, are also considered less-gentrified, but these are often the only areas that students who are unable to secure university housing can afford. It becomes a silent sorting system, where some are seen as acceptable and more assimilated, while others are playing catch-up.
But there is no winning. If you slack, you are a menace to society, and if you are an over-achiever, you are stealing their jobs. Even in organisations that pride themselves on being more inclusive, so-called compliments such as “Oh, with your colour, you’ll fit right in” are casually thrown about.
And yet, we continue to chase the illusion that a “white man’s world” is where opportunity lies.
Back in India after a year, I am no longer reduced to the colour of my skin, the plumber is a holler away, and Fresh Off the Boat is once again just a TV show.
Mrinalini Manda is a TPSJ alumnus currently interning with ThePrint.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)