A significant body of academic research on White Australia Policy has spanned the history of Asian migration and policy-making initiatives in Australia. In their research, prominent Australian scholars such as Marie De Lepervanche, David Walker, David Goldsworthy, Margaret Allen, and Kama Maclean have focused on the impact of White Australia Policy on early Indian migrants and Australia-India relations. Research on early Indians in the Australian colonies, especially Hindu and Punjabi settlement in New South Wales and Victoria, has particularly focused on male laborers, cameleers, and plantation workers. Other sociological, anthropological, and genetics studies have shed light on linguistic similarities between Aborigines and Andamanese tribes. These point to earlier links or encounters between precolonial Australia and the Indian subcontinent, such as the trade between Aborigines and Makassar seamen. With the beginning of British colonialism, countries of South Asia, particularly India, often acted as a lifeline for Australians. The Ghans and hawkers (Afghan and Indian camel drivers), brought from northern India to connect the outback with towns and cities, became central to inland transportation in Australia. Samia Khatun's exquisitely written and fascinatingly entitled book Australianama, which means “Chronicle of Australia,” is an extension of, and a timely contribution to, Australian history and the narrative of South Asian migration in Australia. Her book not only contributes to the above oeuvre of research but also demonstrates the need for, and vitality of, research on tracking pioneer South Asian settlers in the field of a largely Eurocentric scholarship dedicated to migration history.
In most historical studies written from a Eurocentric position, the marginal, vernacular, and diverse histories of migrant communities, especially those of the colonized, are consigned to the sidelines. Khatun's book, divided into eight well-crafted chapters, makes references to the contemporary Muslim experience and takes us on a journey to chart the history of the South Asian Muslim diaspora in Australia. As a passionate and consummate historian, Khatun uses multilingual resources from South Asian and Aboriginal narratives to argue for an alternate history of the British Empire and Muslim migration in Australia.
In chapter 1, Khatun recounts how she was encouraged to begin this research after stumbling upon a nineteenth-century Bengali book, Kasasol ambia, in a mosque at Broken Hill, New South Wales, which was incorrectly identified as a Quran. This took her to the Australian outback to reexamine cross-cultural interactions between Australians and Muslim migrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In chapter 2, Khatun provides historians with a methodology to reread the past and to critique power relations using alternative and non-European epistemes. She showcases this by focusing on the journey of Kasasol ambia and its complicated textual history. This strategy of interpreting historical storytelling helps in reinterpreting the actual movement of early South Asian migrants in Australia's interior. Chapter 3 takes us on another journey, this time between Lahore and Australia, with a rich merchant, Khawajah Muhammad Bux—popularly known as “Sindbad of Lahore.” In chapter 4, we are back in the Australian outback on the first camel train with Ghans. And in the next chapter, Khatun examines the varieties of Islam in the Australian outback, especially Ahmadiyya, which took root along the camel tracks. Here, she traces the similarities between the prophecies found in Islam and Ahmadi interpretation of the Aboriginal Dreamtime stories. She also transports us to the world of Hasan Musakhan, an elite South Asian bookkeeper and legal advisor to merchants in the Australian camel trade. In chapter 6, Khatun takes us on a camping trip with Reg Dodd, the chairman of the Arabunna People's Committee, to let us glimpse Aboriginal history from the South Asian perspective. Some have argued that because of the strict immigration policy and a dictation test, South Asian women were excluded from Australia. In chapter 7, Khatun challenges this masculinist assumption and provides a new framework to relocate South Asian women's stories and journeys across the Indian Ocean in feminist history. In the final chapter, she again brings us back to Kasasol ambia and the central question of the journey—of the book and her people. Here, using W. E. B. Du Bois's idea of “double consciousness,” she makes us rethink historical writing and theorization of the past in terms of both written and oral narratives, dialogues, and intellectual paths. This brief summary of chapters has only scratched the surface of Khatun's deep investigation of Muslim migration, which is held together by her strong command of the historical narratives and their interpretation.
This cross-disciplinary work combines history, literary study, Aboriginal narratives, and anthropology. Australianama is, as Khatun points out, “a record of the shimmering multiplicity of things it can mean to hear books” (p. 185). This book deepens our understanding of South Asian migration. It is highly recommended for postgraduate students and researchers of the history of South Asian migration, migration narratives, Islam in Australia, Aboriginal history, and Aboriginal–South Asian storytelling. It could also be a reference in courses related but not limited to colonial and postcolonial histories, anthropology, feminism, and multiculturalism.
