Naming Charlie
This chapter discusses the racist environment in late nineteenth-century Australia which resulted in the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 designed to prohibit entry of non-white immigrants from the Commonwealth. The chapter discusses the evolution of various collective terms like ‘alien’, ‘coolie’ or ‘Hindoo’ to identify Indians as the ‘other’ of the national community. From biographical details and photographs in the Certificates Exempting from Dictation Test (CEDTs), which monitored the movement and identities of non-white residents, the chapter reveals how many Indians had undergone a change of name during immigration, an important marker of individual identity. The chapter argues that the most commonly ascribed name ‘Charlie’, was a means of ‘infantilizing and subordinating’ Indian migrants. The CEDT images of migrants in Indian clothes and identified with their new names are seen as locating Indian settlers in early twentieth-century Australia in a position of subordination within the colonial social hierarchy.