There’s an episode of The Simpsons where Bart and Lisa’s elementary school runs a model-UN club. Bart is assigned to represent Libya and give a presentation on its exports.  “The exports of Libya are numerous in amount,” Bart reads confidently from a blank piece of paper. “One thing they export is corn, or as the Indians call it, ‘maize’. Another famous Indian was Crazy Horse. In conclusion, Libya is a land of contrasts. Thank you.”

I thought of this scene during a passage in Australia’s Pivot to India, the new book by federal MP Andrew Charlton, in which Charlton is obliged to vaguely wave toward the deteriorating state of Indian democracy. I’ve included it below. It has been abridged, but not by much:

The impact of [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi’s tenure on democracy is a complex and highly debated topic. Critics argue that under Modi’s government there has been an increase in religious polarisation. There are suggestions that the government’s rhetoric and policies often favour the Hindu majority, which undermines the secular principles of Indian democracy. These critiques coexist with the fact that Modi remains a popular figure in Indian politics, as demonstrated by electoral outcomes … There is also no question that India has also substantially increased its economic and strategic power during the Modi administration.

There are three more paragraphs on the subject — including one that praises Modi’s apparent initiatives to “strengthen Indian democracy”, and another that is two-sentences long. In a book that covers everything from the emergence of Indian-Chinese cuisine in the 1700s to the common history of Australian and Indian mountain ranges, the words “Hindutva” and “Hindu nationalism” do not appear anywhere.

Australia’s Pivot to India is a kind of anti-book. It doesn’t exist for any of the reasons books typically do — to be read by other human beings, or to impart insights on its topic, or even to ask questions of it. This is true of most books written by or about Australian politicians, unless the author is an embittered former party leader with scores to settle.

The book exists for three reasons: so that when Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase “he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations”; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

In trying to achieve these goals, Australia’s Pivot to India becomes insightful — though not in the way Charlton intended. In its attempts to whitewash the ongoing atrocities and fascist Hindutva ideology of Modi’s BJP government, it illuminates the Albanese government’s moral cowardice on humanitarian injustices from Palestine to West Papua. As an “authoritative analysis of Australia’s relationship with India” written by a corporate economist with almost no knowledge of the subject matter, it reveals Charlton as exactly the sort of person who would move from a $20 million trophy home in Bellevue Hill to a relatively Spartan $2 million “luxury sub-penthouse” on the banks of the Parramatta River to represent an electorate where he has never previously lived and with which he has no real connection.

In a frantic attempt to establish his bona fides, Charlton whisks us through an India for Dummies exposition with a speed and self-assurance only a management consultancy veteran could muster. The Mughal Empire takes him a little over three pages. The colonisation of the subcontinent by the British needs just over seven. The relative status of Hinduism, Jainism, Islam, Sikhism and Christianity in India are dispatched in a tight nine.

With the assumed authority of a lifelong scholar, Charlton diligently lays out the kind of factoids you can find on Wikipedia. Did you know India was the world’s largest economy in the Middle Ages? Or that “it was not the British government that seized India but a private company”? I’m not an expert in Indian politics, history or society, and Australia’s Pivot to India left me no more knowledgeable on any of those subjects than before I started.

Throughout the book, Charlton tries mightily to obscure the true nature of Modi and the BJP, producing some amazing feats of linguistic gymnastics along the way. He rhapsodises about “Modi’s vision … to connect India’s proud history with its destiny as a first-rank nation” and the BJP’s “vision of a grand Indian civilisation” without mentioning that they both involve turning India into a Hindu ethnostate from which all other religions and viewpoints have been purged.

Inconveniently for the author, events keep getting in the way. The book’s September press tour clashed with allegations from the Canadian parliament that Indian government officials successfully planned the assassination of a Sikh activist and Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. When asked about the allegations by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Matthew Knott, Charlton responded: “there is a lot we don’t know.”

At times, Charlton’s attempts to whitewash Modi’s record are undercut by his own lack of knowledge. As evidence of India’s supposed brave new dawn, Charlton cites Modi’s installation of a nine-metre statue of Raj-era independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose in Delhi. In choosing this example, Charlton is seemingly unaware of Bose’s rampant antisemitism and defection to Nazi Germany in 1941.

There are too many pearls like this to list. “Indians have traditionally valued humility and deference,” Charlton informs us at one point. In the chapter on “Politics” (which is ten pages long), he paints a vivid picture of “ordinary people discussing politics at the corner chai shop.” Palestinians, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Iraqis and the inhabitants of whichever country the United States invades next will be surprised to learn that “we live in the first ‘empire-free millennium’ in history.”

The last word on Australia’s Pivot to India comes from Penny Wong, who provides the pull quote for the front cover and whose own biography, Passion and Principle, is also a Black Inc. work. “India is a democracy and India is a country which shares so many of the values Australians look to,” Wong is quoted in the chapter on “Democracy” (which runs for seven pages). “And India is a very important partner for Australia, particularly at this time.”

Wong’s passion and principle are currently on display via her electorate office hotline, which has its voicemail function disabled due to too many people calling to complain about the government’s silence on Gaza.

Truly, India is a land of contrasts.

Image: a detail from the cover of Australia’s Pivot to India