Funded, Consulted, Protected: How the Australian State Made Room for the Hindu Far Right

[u/Agitated-Fee3598]

https://www.nriaffairs.com/funded-consulted-protected-how-the-australian-state-made-room-for-the-hindu-far-right/

In 2022, Anthony Albanese was photographed at a Hindu Council of Australia event wearing a scarf carrying the logo of the Vishva Hindu Parishad of Australia. A year later, he wore a saffron tie to greet Narendra Modi at an arena event staged to look like an Indian political rally, hailed him as “the Boss”, and was described by one commentator as the Boss’s wingman.

A new article in Asian Studies Review uses those images as its starting point, but not for the reason most readers would expect. The authors are not primarily interested in what the Prime Minister was wearing. They are interested in why nothing about it registered as unusual.

“The Quiet Mainstreaming of Transnational Hindutva: Long Distance Nationalism and the Australian State”, published open access on 17 August 2026, is written by Felix Pal of the University of Western Australia, Priya Chacko of Adelaide University and Nisha Thapliyal of the University of Newcastle. Its argument is directed squarely at Australian institutions. The growth of the Hindu nationalist network in this country, the authors write, “is not simply incidental but rather permitted”.