Professor Mohan Dutta: “The compulsory Te Tiriti education at the University of Auckland is not a burden. It’s a necessary starting point for migrants, especially for caste-privileged Indian migrants like Dr Parmar, to begin undoing the toxic ideologies we bring with us.” (Photo supplied)

ACT’s tertiary education spokesperson, Dr Parmjeet Parmar, has positioned herself as a voice for “equality” in parliament, attacking scholarships, study spaces, and entrance pathways for Māori students as well as Auckland University’s new compulsory Te Tiriti courses for first-year students. 

Her attitude is a product of the caste privilege in which she was raised, writes Professor Mohan Dutta, and shows why migrants need Te Tiriti education.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar, the ACT MP, and I have a lot in common.

We were both born in India and migrated in the 1990s. Both of us studied STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, maths), completing our doctoral education after moving overseas.

Dr Parmar completed her master’s in biochemistry in India, moved to Aotearoa in 1995, and went on to complete a PhD in neuroscience at the University of Auckland in 2003.

I completed my bachelor’s in agricultural engineering in India, then moved to the US to pursue a master’s on a scholarship, eventually completing a PhD in mass communication at the University of Minnesota in 2001.

We’ve both found ourselves here in Aotearoa — a country where Te Tiriti o Waitangi offers a powerful global model for organising a settler colonial society in ways that honour Indigenous rights.

Like most migrants from India, I had no awareness of Te Tiriti before arriving here, and I doubt Dr Parmar did either.

Our idea of New Zealand would have been shaped by media images of cricket games broadcast on TV, stories of Sir Edmund Hillary, and Bollywood songs set on Aotearoa’s pristine beaches or snow-capped mountains.

What the caste system and colonialism taught us

Given our education in STEM, I’m assuming that, like me, Dr Parmar probably had little exposure to the critical humanities and social sciences education.

The postcolonial Indian education system, shaped by British colonial management and Brahminical ideology, privileges science and engineering while discouraging questions about caste, power, or justice. Most middle-class families aspire to raise a doctor or an engineer. There’s little room for developing critical social thought.

As middle- or upper-class (and most certainly upper-caste) Indians, we were taught to believe in merit — in the idea that we earned our place through hard work and talent. But caste shaped our access to opportunity long before we applied ourselves. That’s how caste works. And it’s why most of us never even see it, let alone challenge it.

Like me, Dr Parmar probably received very little education about the pernicious caste system that forms the everyday fabric of Indian society, the systemic oppression of India’s Adivasi (Indigenous) peoples, and the ongoing violence carried out on Adivasi people in the pursuit of postcolonial development.

Adivasis are often framed as primitive savages that get in the way of development, a menace to the postcolonial Indian nation, and troublemakers who must be dealt with through police and military violence. They’re portrayed as backward, as burdens on the welfare system, and as incapable of participating in decision-making processes.

Sound familiar?

By the time we arrive in places like Aotearoa, we are well practised in playing the model minority in white societies. It’s what we’re taught from early on.

We learn to play the double game. We draw on our caste privilege to conform to white norms of success and respectability. And at the same time, we pitch ourselves as marginalised, perfecting the stories of victimhood and crying racism to secure benefits for ourselves.

We learn quickly to co-opt the language of human rights and equity, but often only when it suits us: to secure scholarships, funding, and cultural recognition. We embrace diversity, but rarely examine our own internalised superiority or our attitudes to Indigenous people.

We repeat casteist tropes at our dinner tables, chai sessions, and community get-togethers — about Māori crime, Māori laziness, Māori benefits. We resent what we see as “privileges” for Māori while refusing to recognise the privileges we’ve inherited through caste and class.

Our frustrations with the daily experiences of racism in a white-dominated society are projected onto Māori, as we try to position ourselves higher in the pecking order. In the hierarchy of whiteness, we imagine ourselves to be superior to Māori.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar, the ACT Party’s tertiary education spokesperson. (Photo: National Party)

Dr Parmar’s attacks on Te Tiriti

It comes as no surprise, then, that Dr Parmar positions herself as a voice for “equality” in parliament — a version of equality that attacks the very policies designed to correct historical injustice. She has targeted tertiary education, claiming that scholarships, study spaces, and entrance pathways for Māori students are race-based discrimination.

On her X feed, in a post titled, “MP drafts bill to end race-based university policies,” she wrote:

I also reiterated to the Minister concerns I have raised publicly about the University of Auckland’s new compulsory paper on the Treaty and indigenous knowledge. In ACT’s view, the compulsory nature of the course disrespects the time and financial investment made by students. Students deserve the chance to focus on areas relevant to their careers and personal interests. This is especially true for international students who are now forced to pay upwards of $5,000 for a course that will hold little value once they leave New Zealand.

But Te Tiriti is not a local inconvenience. It’s the foundation of Aotearoa. And understanding it should be the minimum expectation of anyone who lives on these lands, let alone those who seek to be in government.

Her version of “equality” ignores justice and context. It casts those who are most marginalised as the villains, pathologising policies that seek to level the field. In doing so, it mimics the casteism we inherited — the same casteism that denies the oppression of India’s Adivasi peoples while claiming victimhood for itself.

It also mirrors the tactics deployed by white supremacists — denying the historic violence and trauma of colonisation, rewriting history, and dressing up privilege as fairness.

Why migrants need Te Tiriti education

Many New Zealanders are baffled by Dr Parmar’s stance. They can’t understand why someone who migrated from a country brutalised by colonialism has so little empathy for Indigenous rights. Why, instead of solidarity with tangata whenua, she seems so deeply aggrieved by articulations of Māori rights.

They assume that our history of colonialism and our own experiences of racism in a white settler colony would put us on the same side as tangata whenua.

But that assumption misunderstands caste. Caste is not just an Indian problem — it travels with us. It trains us to see hierarchy as natural, privilege as earned, and Indigenous people as obstacles to progress.

That’s why Te Tiriti matters so much — and why it’s threatening to those of us steeped in casteist thinking. Te Tiriti challenges the very idea that one group should dominate another. It insists on honouring relational obligations. It requires us to rethink our place in this land — not as entitled newcomers, but as respectful guests with responsibilities.

The compulsory Te Tiriti education at the University of Auckland is not a burden. It’s a gift. It’s the bare minimum. It’s a necessary starting point for migrants, especially for caste-privileged Indian migrants like Dr Parmar, to begin undoing the toxic ideologies we bring with us.

Learning seriously about the foundational document of Aotearoa offers us a potential pathway for learning how to live in Aotearoa and uphold its foundations.

We owe this learning not just to tangata whenua, but to ourselves — if we are to live with integrity on these lands.

Mohan Dutta is Dean’s Chair Professor of Communication and Director of the Centre for Culture-Centred Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) in the School of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University. His research and teaching explore the intersections of community organising, Indigenous rights, migrant rights, and global justice. He is a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association (NCA) and Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA).

E-Tangata, 2025