On Monday, May 28, in a cold stormy Wellington evening, the New Zealand India Research Institute and the Stout Research Centre of Victoria University of Wellington hosted a roundtable discussion and book launch at the Te Ahumairangi Room of the National Library of New Zealand.
The welcome address by Associate Professor Kate Hunter, Director of SRC, was followed by the panel discussion on the ‘Kiwi-Indian experience’. The ‘Kiwi-Indians’ or the New Zealanders of Indian descent, now constitute more than 4 per cent of the national population and they contribute positively to New Zealand’s national life.
They are in different powerful positions in public life and show a tremendous amount of initiative, enterprise and resilience. Yet, they also face various challenges, such as racial discrimination, confusion of identity, retention of culture and so on.
To discuss these issues from their personal experiences the NZIRI and SRC had invited four successful Kiwi-Indians and they narrated their fascinating life stories candidly.
The four panellists were, Shila Nair (Senior Advisor and Counsellor, Shakti Community Council Inc.), Rakesh Naidoo (Strategic Advisor Race Relations, NZ Human Rights Commission), Bhav Dhillon(Managing Director, CEMIX and Honorary Consul of India, Auckland), and Priyanca Radhakrishnan(Member of Parliament, representing the NZ Labour Party).
The discussion was coordinated by Professor Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Director of NZIRI.
The second part of the programme was to launch the NZIRI’s newest publication: Indians and the Antipodes: Networks, Boundaries and Circulation, edited by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and Jane Buckingham, and published by Oxford University Press.
The book in its ten thematic chapters traces the story of Indian migration to and settlement in Australia and New Zealand from 1769 (when two Indian lascars or sailors first arrived in Aotearoa in a French East India Company ship) to the present day.
Dr Kate McMillan, a political scientist and a specialist in migration studies from Victoria University of Wellington, spoke on the book, and Sir Anand Satyanand (New Zealand’s 19th Governor General and the most well-known New Zealander of Indo-Fijian origin) formally released it. This part of the programme was coordinated by Associate Professor Jane Buckingham of the University of Canterbury.