Peter Williams
Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality check.radio three days a week.
Like any (sort of) sophisticated nation, we’ve always played host to visits from foreign leaders. The APEC meeting of 1999 even had the presidents of the USA, Russia and China all here at the same time.
But never, ever, ever, have I seen a New Zealand prime minister holding hands with a visiting prime minister.
Holding hands!
Dear me, it’s what you do when you‘re stepping out with a new squeeze in the first pangs of love, or when that relationship has nicely matured and you’re having a really romantic date night.
But prime minister to prime minister? A 75-year-old and a 50-something holding hands in full public view for the world to see.
I’m sorry, but that was just weird.
Whose idea was it?
If it was supposed to be a public display of the now incredibly tight love affair between our two countries then why has a New Zealand PM never held hands with the president of China or the PM of Australia or even the president of the US?
It might just be that Modi is a tactile individual, but it’s still weird.
It was also very strange that a visiting PM held a rally where 10,000 of the Indian diaspora filled Spark Arena and where the audience reportedly spent the evening adulating Modi in a way that very few leaders have ever been adulated through history.
Those that have generated such a public response have been decidedly sinister types running North Korea and 1930s Germany.
Has a visiting prime minister of Britain ever held such a rally for immigrant Poms? Or has a leading man from the CCP ever brought together thousands of New Zealand residing Chinese all in one place at the one time?
That’s why the whole Modi visit was just weird.
Have we just succumbed to the temptation of a market of 1.6 billion and the potential for untold riches that could come from that?
Modi spoke to the rally in Hindi. His English is described as functional rather than fluent, but what of the old saying about when in Rome? According to a reporter who was there, no translation or interpretation was available for non-Hindi speakers.
But what I found really disturbing were Chris Luxon’s speeches, both at the Kiwi India Hall of Fame Awards just before Modi arrived and at the Spark Arena Rally itself. He said on both occasions that Indians in New Zealand are “younger, wealthier and better educated”.
Thanks for backing Kiwis, Chris.
Then he talked of the Indian community in New Zealand, quoting Modi himself, as being “a living bridge” to India. As if Indians in New Zealand are not that interested in the future of New Zealand but of using New Zealand as a kind of branch office for the future economic development of India.
Modi himself had said the same, according to a report on an Indian news site.
“Even while living thousands of kilometres away, India continues to appear somewhere in your heart and your daily life. India lives within you ... your body may be here, but your heart remains connected there.”
That’s a worry.
Immigration over the centuries has been about the search for a better life, about leaving the previous life behind. It’s why my ancestors came from Scotland 178 years ago. It’s why I have no significant place in my heart for Scotland these days and why I don’t remit some of my income back to distant relatives there.
Yet Modi appeared to be saying to his faithful you can live here and work here and have a life here but still do your bit for the people back home.
Who benefits from that?
And the strangest words of all from Luxon.
“We should reject outright the voices and the politicians that are wanting to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment.”
Followed by, “I know I speak for Chris Hipkins as well, and Chris I want to say thank you for your support of the Indian FTA as well.”
Hmm.
Luxon’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters was coincidentally on purpose out of the country during Modi’s visit. If relations between National and New Zealand First were tetchy before Modi’s visit, our prime minister’s comments have only ratcheted up the tension.
And as for the $US20 billion that New Zealand companies are supposed to invest in India in the next 15 years? Is it a commitment or an aspiration?
Modi and his officials used the c word. New Zealanders insist we’ll just try to do it.
But in diplomacy words matter. Why can something seemingly as straight forward as this not be written in easy-to-understand language?
Indians have been part of the fabric of New Zealand society for as long as I can remember. The ones I’ve known were often fruit shop or dairy owners, but doctors too. I’ve known them as people, like thousands of other immigrants, who came here for a better life who didn’t look upon the motherland with much affection at all.
But the majority of them were Christians.
The New Zealand-India relationship has reached a new level with the FTA and now the Modi visit and lovefest.
Do we really need to be as all-in on this as Luxon wants or should we just take a more dispassionate view?
I prefer the latter.
Otherwise it’s just weird.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
