Indian outrage in Melbourne.

Australia's most multi-cultural city has made international headlines recently, for a very wrong reason. Indian students, fed up with getting bashed and mugged in Melbourne's western suburbs, have protested en masse (photo left), formed vigilante 'guard groups' outside at least one train station, and taken their case to Indian news outlets, who've splashed the racial abuse of Indians in Melbourne across front pages for several days now.

Thousands of Indian students attend university in Australia. Many desire to live here permanently, providing Australia with desperately needed skilled labour. While Australia's reputation as a tolerant nation is taking a PR hit, this crisis will only be acted upon when students return to India and future students begin paying exorbitant tuition payments to universities outside of Australia.

I don't think Australia is more racist than any other majority Caucasian country. Like most urban areas, the further you get from Melbourne's inner city, the more you're likely to encounter ignorance, prejudice and uneducated fools. Indians are seen as soft targets: They carry cool gadgets and don't have a reputation for fighting back. They're victimized by cowards with small knives and screwdrivers. The major problem -- besides a moronic mentality that considers beating on brown-skinned people as sport -- is alcohol. A night out for Aussie teens invariably involves getting blasted. Not drunk -- blasted, blotto, beyond bombed. Of course it's not an excuse -- I'd love to confront a pack of drunken Aussies hellbent on abusing a person of color and crack each of their skulls with a baseball bat.

But that's what cops should be doing. And they're not. THAT's what's got the Indian community up in arms. They know justice shouldn't be tethered to a major withdrawal of Indian money from the Aussie economy. It should be meted before someone ends up dead.