KEYNOTE ADDRESS: AUSTRALIA-INDIA LEADERSHIP DIALOGUE
This address was delivered by Pallavi Sharda at the Australia–India Leadership Dialogue — a high-level forum comprising thought leaders and key stakeholders in the bilateral relationship. She was invited to speak on the convergence of arts, technology and culture within the Australia–India relationship. We are publishing it here because we believe it belongs in the public record. It is, in part, the founding argument for why Bodhini Studios exists.
‘Good afternoon, distinguished guests, it is truly an honour and a privilege to speak before you today. Thank you to the Hon Lisa Singh and the Australia India Institute for this invitation and for facilitating a discussion like this.
This topic is vast and a few minutes on it is tough. But there are a few words that stick out for me, namely convergence, emerging, dynamic, Australian, Indian, connection, and community. I can’t not approach this topic from a deeply personal standpoint. I stand before you today as an Australian woman – born in Perth on Noongar land and brought up here in Melbourne on the lands of the Wurundjeri people. An Indian woman, the child of two academics who grew up in Delhi but chose Australia as their home in the mid-1980s.
I learnt Hindi by watching bootleg Bollywood movies hired from a corner Indian shop called Masala Queen – a place where I became smitten by Hindi Cinema. I learnt the tropes of my Australianness, amongst other things, from the tele and by cheering on my older brother as he ran between the wickets for our local club cricket team every Saturday morning. I stand before you today also as an artist. While I may be known as a film actress, I trained foremost as a Bharatha Natyam classical dancer here in Melbourne – under the tutelage of Dr Chandrabhanu, a man of mixed Malay-Indian heritage who brought the Kalakshetra style of the dance to Australia in the 1970s and under Srimati Renuka Aurmughasamy who arrived in Australia from Sri Lanka in the 1980s and taught the fundamentals of this art form from the garage of her modest home. So smitten was I by this ancient art form that, aged 9, in what was perhaps the first child-led solo cultural exchange program between India and Australia, I moved to Chennai for a semester and also learnt dance there.
It was in my late teens that, while completing my higher education in law and journalism and studying drama, I shifted from Melbourne to Mumbai to find a space to perform, because in Australia, as a professional arts practitioner of Indian heritage, there simply was none. Once in India, I commenced the arduous task of breaking into the industry that had seemed the only plausible home for my artistry, Bollywood. Stripped of my Australianness – my most cherished privilege, I was completely alone. I was now distinctly other. There was no pathway, no institutional support; it was statistically impossible and, dare I say, had never been done before.
In the discussion about the convergence of technology, art and culture, I don’t use myself as a case study lightly. But I can’t help but feel like an anthropological study in what it takes to contribute to a cultural corridor between these two great countries without any framework, paradigm or dialogue to support it. As time has passed, I have been fortunate to carve a diverse global film career, but one that has always had an eye on breathing life to the reality of an Indian-Australian identity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, cricket and Bollywood – which you could call the Vegemite on toast of our cultural relationship - have been central themes.
Between my work on film sets, I waved my hands alongside the late Spin King Shane Warne as Melbourne’s Moomba Queen, curated and performed at Melbourne’s White Night festival as part of the epic Sita’s Garden extravaganza, which brought Bollywood, Kathak and Bharatha Natyam to a floating stage on our own Yarra River. Around the same time, in India, I ‘came out as Australian’, letting my Aussie twang loose on Indian screens for the first time, as I hosted an edition of the IPL for Sony ESPN.
Sometimes, in order to be seen within the context of my Indian Australian heritage, I felt I had to be reductive. So, when the language of diversity erupted in the global screen framework – when it seemed for once possible that people of colour might finally be allowed in, I decided to cross back over the Indian Ocean and onto Australian screens. What I did not expect upon my return was having to forge a career from scratch – all over again - because the world which had inducted me into the screen arts – namely Hindi Cinema – was considered mythic, exotic, irrelevant, when it came to the nuts and bolts of being a working actress. I was other and foreign once again.
Until this point, which was not that long ago, there was a stark lack of understanding on both sides of the pond, in the ability for this identity to fluidly cross between two places and shape shift into different parts of itself. The existing frameworks didn’t account for the adaptability that comes naturally to those of us who work, live and have our hearts in both places. Early on, at every step of my journey, I sought institutional help. I tried to create artist residencies to prove the worth of the experiment in cultural bridge-building. Each time, my successes were celebrated by community and sometimes diplomatically, but the sweat and toil of the grassroots work remained invisible.
People to people links in the arts, particularly has largely been an individualised endeavour. Workers, and that’s what we are – workers - in culture industries are often self-starters, underfunded, devoid of institutional backing and frameworks, yet often expected to be the icing on the cake in our cross-cultural story. But we are a key ingredient in what makes that cake rise, the fabric that will make this bilateral relationship fuller and more human.
Each artist has their own story and their own struggle, and represents their own unique piece of social fabric. Like India is not homogeneous, Australia too is not a monolith – not just a filming location, a tax incentive, a golden beach (although the beaches are pretty great) – it is a layered community with a rich indigenous history – filled with mythology and art, contemporary research and innovation, and now – the stories of a million-strong Indian diaspora.
Technology is now on our side to facilitate culture building and explore our pluralities – be it through online exchanges, cross-innovation between arts and sports institutions, or community building through social and online channels. The recent ratification of a co-production deal for screen industries between India and Australia is a promising step which opens a multitude of opportunities for trade, to share our stories, skills, and most importantly, for story building, to reshape our future narratives.
In 2022, Netflix USA released three Indian-American pieces of content in one week, one of which was Wedding Season, a rom-com in which I was fortunate to star. The American example shows that cross-pollination of our stories, be it for the screen or through sport, has global rewards, can create valuable IP and build cultural output that transcends physical boundaries. The output doesn’t just quell the aspirations of practitioners; it has widespread benefits, including but not limited to industry development and the realisation of community-building goals.
With the internet and technology, the possibilities are infinite. The Sitar player in Dandenong, the weaver in Banaras, the indie game developer in Hyderabad and the Kalaralipai artist in Kerala have the capacity to converge, create and build new narratives together - online and in person. But this requires sustained intentionality, investment and tangible goals towards research, consultation and pathway creation.
Today, the convergence of India, Australia, Arts, Sports & Technology is underway, the question is whether we want to invest as a community of leaders to augment it, to back the expertise of our people and projects that look beyond the standard, sometimes extractive, paradigms of cultural exchange towards unlocking our rich plurality and shared humanity.’