For many migrants ANZAC Day symbolises soldiers wearing a slouch hats who fought in the fields of Gallipoli in 1915.
However, over the last one hundred years this image has slowly changed.
ANZAC Day has come to mean a day where the nation pays tribute to veterans from different wars and from culturally diverse backgrounds.
On ANZAC Day Australians across the country commemorate those who served, those who fought and those who perished in the Australian and New Zealand forces.
But over time the significance of the day has extended to those who were on the opposite side of the battles.
Now ANZAC marches on 25th April are open to all former servicemen and servicewomen and their descendants.
In 2006, Victoria’s RSL gave permission for descendants of Turkish World War I veterans the right to join the ANZAC day march.
Sankar Nadeson is of Indian background and works with ethnic communities at RSL* Victoria and Legacy in Melbourne.
Sikhs alongside the ANZACs Source: Australian War Memorial/Public Domain
Despite growing up in England and wearing poppies since childhood on Remembrance Day, he never connected his family history with ANZAC.
It wasn‘t until he started working with war widows that he realised the cultural diversity of the ANZAC’s and questioned his own story.
“I asked my aunty and she said yes, your grandfather actually fought in the British Army in Malaysia and I had no idea, completely no idea. I didn’t actually connect to the ANZAC story or to any of the stories of the conflict in war through the imperial forces or the Australian Defence Force on a very personal level in relationship to my history and my family,” Sankar said.
The Australian War Memorial says many of the 420,000 Australians enlisted during the Second World War came from diverse backgrounds.
They include Indigenous Australians, and those with British, Asian, Greek and Northern European backgrounds.
Sankar Nadeson also worked with the Sikh community and says when the public recognizes returned soldiers it’s a comforting process that contributes to the nation’s healing. He says Sikh soldiers no longer felt like strangers in Australian society. Sankar Nadeson believes that due to the recognition of its veterans, the Sikh community feels more integrated into the Australian community.
Sikhs fighting alongside ANZAC troops in Gallipoli Source: Australian War Memorial (Commons Wikimedia)
“When I worked at a Sikh temple with over a hundred community members, they actually felt that they were not the other any longer. Sometimes you recognize that you are different to the wider community, but when there are things that are cohesive and bring people together, you feel Australian, you actually feel that this is what Australia is. So the Sikh community actually had the recognition that they were inextricably connected to this community not another,” he says.
Through his work with different ethnic communities Mr Nadeson observed how each community approaches the day, revealing their innate traditions.
He shares, “In the Sikh culture it’s very serious, there’s a very serious tone, because they have got the warrior saint traditions, but at the same time there is always a sense of celebration and so they were very colourful.”
Preparing exhibitions for The Shrine of Remembrance Jean McAuslan works with multicultural communities of Victoria.
She says people from culturally diverse backgrounds want to connect with ANZAC day, “My observation is that there is a wish, on the part of people who I have come into contact with, to be a part of it, to engage with a very significant day in Australia’s history.”
For more information on Australia’s ANZAC Day traditions visit the Australian War Memorial’s website. https://www.awm.gov.au
*The Returned and Services League
