Cultural Diversity and Experiences of Discrimination

Running head: CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Cultural Diversity
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Part 1- Cultural origins, the length of time your family has been present in Australia,
and your cultural beliefs, values, attitudes and experiences.
I am international student and I used to live in Bangladesh. I have come to Australia
in order to complete my higher studies. The culture of mine, being from Bangladesh is
intertwined with the Bengal region culture from Indian subcontinent. However, my religion is
Islam and I am a Bangladeshi Muslim. I don’t live with my parents in Australia. Here I live
alone and will be spending some time living here in order to complete my studies. I am here
since 2017 and usually speak here English with my friends and peers. I interact effectively
with them as I already had good fluency in English since my childhood. However, in my
country of origin, the primary language spoken is Bangla or Bengali (Seargeant et al., 2017).
It is to note that the most significant social divide in my hometown is that of the divide in
between Hindus and Muslims. In the year 1947, after the independence of India, most of the
Hindus moved towards west to West Bengal and there were million Muslim who moved to
the newly formed nation- the East Pakistan (Gurley et al., 2017). My ancestors were one
among them. There were great violence occurred at that time and several columns of people
moved past each other. However, today, in Bangladesh most of the sections of the country,
both Muslims and Hindus live peacefully in the adjacent areas and are also connected by their
economic structures and roles (Shrivastava & Tanchangya, 2015). Both of the religion or
groups consider themselves as the members of the same culture.
It is to mention that my country has a diverse culture and it has evolved with the
passage of time along with the influences from the other different social groups. The primary
religions in Bangladesh are Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism (Hinks, Devine & Naveed,
2018). They have played an important role in influence the culture of my country to a great
extent. Development and growth of the culture of ours proliferated towards the nineteenth
century and as a part of the twentieth century at the time of Bengal Renaissance.
Notwithstanding this fact, since 1976 to 1998 there was a sustained cultural conflict in my
nation over the control of the South Eastern Chittagong Hill Tracts (Haque et al., 2018). The
place was a home for several tribal groups which resisted the movement of the Bangladeshi
Muslims into their territory. However, still, these groups do not regard themselves as a part of
the national culture. It is to note that my country is still in the form of rural culture and village
or what we call as “gram”, is a key cultural and spatial concept for the residents of the
significant cities of Bangladesh. Most of the people identify themselves with an ancestral
village in the country side.

2CULTURAL DIVERSITY
In my country, they greet each other by saying “Assalam Waleykum”. It means
“peace be with you”) and to this, the other people response saying “Waleykum Assalam”,
which means “and with you”. Among the Hindus there, they use the term “Nomoshkar”.
There are men who also shake hands if they are of the equal status but do not grasp the hands
firmly (Hamid & Jahan, 2015). In Australia, I found many things different from my country.
Here I saw many of my friends to kiss one another during their meeting and they say hello hi
while meeting. Also many of them say good morning/ good evening in order to greet the
other person. I like the culture of Australia. They are not very formal and everyone here is
very down to earth. In my country too, they respect each other and always live in bonding.
However, the dressing style differs a lot. In Australia, I saw business women wearing smart
dress and business suits and also, many girls and women wear different types of dresses like
jeans, hot pants, skirts, short skirts etc. Whereas (Potter & Reiger, 2017). In my country they
value the traditional attire and culture a lot. Very less girls and women are allowed to dress
with something other than Sari or Salwar Suits.
Migration is indeed a very difficult journey and there are several issues in those
communities which are directly corollary to such a paradigm shift. I also get to know few
Bangladeshi Australians here who have helped me a lot in getting equipped with the culture
of Australia. At first, I used to become nervous a lot. I took a bit of time to adjust with the
environment here. But, gradually I realised that the level of informality among the
Australians is very high as compared to my country of origin, especially in terms of my
studies (Hamid, 2016). It is very common in my university to call our tutors and lecturers by
their first name. In Bangladesh, we were not allowed to do so. In fact, many of the times, my
friends in school were punished for calling our teachers by their first name. Australians
approach the most situations in very friendly and relaxed manner (Goddard & Cramer, 2017).
I really like this approach of theirs and try to implement the same within myself as well.
Furthermore, like in my country, in Australia too, everyone are treated respectfully and
equally, regardless of their origin, the country, their ethnic identity. There are several
international students like me who come every year to study here and they complete their
higher studies with absolutely no issues. However, one thing I want to mention is that I have
faced racial discrimination many times in Australia and even seen people facing it.
With the same, like Bangladesh, Australia is also a multicultural society but in
Bangladesh I find very limited religion (Gomes, 2015). On the other hand, Australia is a
nation with about one quarter of the total population are born overseas. Therefore, I easily