Doss was a brief visitor to Australia, unlike those Indians who lived in the country for many years and made their living here. With the passage of restrictive immigration acts in some colonies in the late nineteenth century and in particular with the passing of the national Immigration Restriction Act (IRA) in 1901, their situation worsened. The IRA deemed Indians to be prohibited immigrants, despite the fact that they were British subjects, and they had to contend with an array of administrative practices. Such discursive practices ‘articulated and organized particular sets of relations’, as Hall puts it, ‘through the workings of knowledge and power’.^[43]

After Federation, in general, no new immigrants from India were allowed to enter Australia and a whole system of surveillance and regulation of the lives and movements of British Indians in Australia was developed. This related chiefly to movements outside Australia and re-entry to Australia, and Indians domiciled in Australia found their mobility and the freedom to come to and go from Australia at will was restricted.^[44] An identity document, the Certificate Exempting the Dictation Test (CEDT), was created in order to regulate the movement of Indians and other ‘Asiatics’ domiciled in Australia as they left and re-entered the country. The certificate involved the use of photographs—front and profile—a description of the holder and the taking of hand-prints and later of thumb-prints. A bureaucracy was created to oversee, regulate and register the movements of domiciled people from the classes of prohibited immigrants. Through such practices, these non-white men (and a few women) were rendered objects to be watched over, administered and controlled. In order to gain a CEDT, they had to provide references from members of the European community as to their character, and the local police checked with their referees and made inquiries into their activities and financial standing.

Such administrative processes inherently positioned these men as untrustworthy. A CEDT was therefore given to the applicant only when he was on board ship and about to leave port. Indeed, for each ship that entered and left a port, customs officers counted and listed the numbers of non-white passengers and crew. For such accounting, the passengers were regularly mustered on deck.^[45] Information about the movements of non-white people was conveyed from customs at one port to the next with the special responsibility of the customs officer at the last port of call to note the departure of such passengers. When the person returned to Australia, the CEDT was taken back by the customs authorities and stored in the ‘Strong Room’ at Customs House. This was presumably to ensure that no other person could make illegal use of it to gain entry to Australia.

Indians protested against the policies and administrative processes of the White Australia Policy on a number of fronts. They drew up petitions, demanding that their rights as British subjects be honoured. Just as Sowar Saut Singh sought to bypass colonial authority by calling attention to his links with the Governor of New South Wales, the Indians’ protests and petitions were often addressed across national boundaries to the British Colonial Office or the India Office in London or even to the Viceroy in India. Others directed their complaints to the Indians Overseas Association, which had its headquarters in London. Within Australia, some individuals contested the application of the discriminatory processes to their movements. I have discussed elsewhere the struggle of Sher Mohmad for exemption from thumb-printing and from the requirement to get references each time he wished to visit India.^[46] In 1929, he wrote testily to the officials administering the legislation, asserting his right to be treated as a person, a modern citizen and a businessman who had contributed to the making of Australia: ‘I have already furnished the Customs with many such certificates and my character is proven beyond any doubt. The process of obtaining the certificates is most painful and humiliating and not necessary in my case.’^[47]

The undignified and un-manly character of hand-printing was eventually recognised by an alteration to these requirements, allowing them to be omitted for some more prominent ‘Asiatics’. The Customs Officer therefore wrote in 1912 of Rochimull Pamamull, who had a shop in Coles Arcade in Melbourne: ‘As Mr Rochimull Pamamull is a well known business man, the handprints need not be taken.’^[48] Similarly, when the businessman Marm Deen left Melbourne with his wife and children in 1912, only a family portrait was taken to allow them to re-enter Australia. Deen’s status was such that he seemed to correspond directly with Attlee Hunt and other senior officials. Perhaps it was felt that to treat him in an undignified manner would be demeaning to these prominent white men with whom he dealt.^[49]

After 1919, British Indians resident in Australia were permitted to apply to bring their wives and minor children to live with them in Australia, thus making it possible for the families to also gain resident status. This allowance was curious given that Indians were not seen as appropriate settlers. Indeed, it came because of the pressure exerted on Australian authorities by imperial authorities as a result of India’s great contributions in terms of fighting men and funds to the British war effort. An applicant, however, had to satisfy a number of requirements before his family could join him. He had to prove that it was his wife and children who would enter Australia and that the children were indeed minors. Most important was the requirement that the authorities be satisfied that the applicant had sufficient funds to support his family and a suitable home in Australia to house them in an appropriate manner. Many if not most applications seem to have been rejected.

This new policy was run through with paternalism. Some Indians were refused permission to admit their family because their residence was not seen as suitable. Police would make an inspection of the Indian applicant’s house and inquire into his financial position to determine whether he could support a wife and children in a suitable manner. Implicit in this practice was the belief that the ‘white standard’ of civilised behaviour had to be affirmed and that an Indian man might not know how to look after his wife and family in a manner appropriate to a ‘civilised’ community.^[50] Implicit also was the notion of the ‘Bengali man as effeminate and incapable of caring for his own dependants’.^[51] There were not many applications for wives and children to join men in Australia, and they were often refused on grounds that were presented as solicitous and gentlemanly official concern for the woman.

Gola Singh, who worked as a labourer in the Clarence River district of New South Wales, was the first to apply. In 1918, just as the agreement with the Indian Government was being finalised, he sought permission to bring his wife, Harman Kor, to Australia when he returned from India.^[52] The officials made a number of inquiries, asking what occupation he would follow in Australia and how he planned to support his wife and make a home for her. Gola Singh understood the drift of these questions, informing them that he planned to take a farm on lease on the Clarence or Richmond Rivers: ‘I do not want to work about like before.’ The officials rejected his application, advising him ‘to defer bringing your wife to Australia until after you have carried out your intentions of leasing a farm or until you have re-established your self in some suitable occupation that will enable you to provide a satisfactory home for your wife in Australia’.^[53]

Sirdar Singh, a South Australian hawker and businessman and a veteran of the Indian and Australian armed forces, was more successful when he applied in 1936 to bring his wife to Australia. An inspector from the Investigation Branch of the Attorney-General’s Department looked into his situation, discussing his affairs with one of his referees, a representative of G. & R. Wills, the import and export company with which Singh dealt. The inspector concluded: ‘Applicant is well-spoken and a good business man. It is unlikely that he would be unable to satisfactorily provide for his wife.’^[54]

Otim Singh went back to India only once, in 1927. He applied for permission to bring his nephew from India as a substitute, to take his place in the store and help his wife during his absence. The policy of substitutes allowed for a man who was planning to return to India for a year or two to temporarily bring out a close relative to look after his business interests in his absence. As was normal with such applications, the Investigation Branch was asked to assess Singh’s worth and his standing in the community and also whether ‘his white wife would be able to manage the business during her husband’s absence’. The officers made inquiries ‘of principal business houses in Adelaide and at Kingscote’.^[55] The local police at Kingscote also made inquiries and the report read, ‘Otim Singh had an old established business as a General Storekeeper at Kingscote, Kangaroo Island and is well spoken of by residents of good standing there.’ They also checked if Susannah Singh would be supported in her husband’s absence. The implication here was that an Indian man might just leave and abandon his wife, that he might not know how to behave in an appropriately masculine manner. Something of Susannah Singh’s feelings about such inquiries can be heard in the official report of her reply: ‘Mrs Singh intimated that if her husband left Australia he would do so with her full knowledge and consent and that she had no reason to doubt that she would be fully provided for.’^[56]

Most of those Indian men who lived out their days in Australia had to spend their declining years alone, dependent only on other old men who, like them, were virtually relics of a previous more relaxed immigration regime. There are a number of files that demonstrate the strict and cruel administration of the regulations, which were designed to limit the growth of non-white populations in Australia. These regulations made it impossible for such men to enjoy the comforts of fatherhood. Khair Deen was share-farming with Joe Khan on a banana farm at St Helena’s, Bangalow, in New South Wales. He had been in Australia since 1891, apart from making some trips home to visit his family. He had some property in Australia: his share of the farm was worth about £100. In 1941, he applied for his son Biroo, born in 1921, to come to Australia to live with him.^[57] His solicitors in Lismore forwarded his application, noting that he had been back to India in 1920–22 and 1935–37. His application for his son to join him was refused, as the customs officials had no record of his going to India in 1920–22. They claimed that he went to India in 1914–19 and therefore assumed that Biroo was either no longer a minor and eligible to enter Australia or that he was not Deen’s son. While a number of these Indians were rather vague about the dates of their visits to India and the ages of their children, it is also possible that Deen sought to deceive the authorities so that he could have the comfort of his son’s company in his declining years and see his property in Australia passed on to his kin. Although his solicitors asked for the decision to be reconsidered, it was once more rejected. He applied again in 1942, noting that ‘[a]t the present time my eyesight is failing and I am finding it somewhat difficult to carry on without help’. This application also appears to have been rejected.^[58] Deen died alone in Australia. In 1944, Biroo wrote from the Punjab seeking to know about this father’s estate.

A crucial element in the foundation and maintenance of the White Australia Policy was the attitude of organised labour to ‘coloured’ labour. The first issue on the ‘Fighting Platform’ of the Australian Labor Party in the early twentieth century was ‘Maintenance of a White Australia’.^[59] British Indian workers in Australia had to contend with the view that they were taking away white men’s jobs. During a 1919 industrial dispute in Queensland about the rights of Indians to work cutting sugar cane, the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) secretary for far north Queensland sent a telegram to the Industrial Arbitration Court in Brisbane, pointing out that cane growers were defying the court’s direction to employ white labour:

In a letter of protest addressed to the British Secretary of State for India in 1934, a Brisbane man, S. W. S. Ismail, outlined the great power that the union movement had to deny him and his former compatriots work, even though they had been in Australia for up to 40 years and had children—‘our unfortunate offspring’—to support. He wrote: