Culture shock: mending Australia’s fractured relationship with India

On my last visit to India in April this year, I found the nation in the grip of Indian Premier League (IPL) fever, or so the umpteen news channels had me believe. With Katy Perry in a kitsch Indian costume, a South African percussion band, and the usual Bollywood ensemble performing at the opening ceremony, it appeared to be turning into a transnational celebration of cricket, as well as a tangible expression of India’s ascendancy). Despite the coming together of previously sworn enemies on the cricket field, such as India’s Harbhajan Singh and Australia’s Andrew Symonds during the IPL series, I wondered if the two nations could really talk to one another – a shared language and a similar understanding of parliamentary democracy notwithstanding.