Patriotic Australians are planning a “peaceful but loud” protest against Australia’s relationship with India during Indian leader Narendra Modi’s visit to Melbourne.
The demonstration is set to take place outside a sold-out Melbourne Meets Modi event at Marvel Stadium in Docklands on Thursday, where the Indian Prime Minister will be joined by his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan in front of a crowd of 30,000.
Mr Modi lands in Melbourne on Wednesday for the Australia-India Annual Leaders’ Summit, is expected to visit the site of the city’s proposed Little India precinct, and will pressure Australia to speed up student visa approvals amid rising rejection rates and a new cap.
Will you heed the call?
Join @aus_pill and I this Thursday at Marvel stadium where we’ll be voicing our opposition to ceding national sovereignty to appease foreign leadershttps://t.co/iJCa5uxKY3 pic.twitter.com/E6eyCAFBxH
— Doug (@sir___doug) July 8, 2026
Protest organiser, right-wing influencer Hugo Lennon, who goes by Auspill online, announced the rally on Tuesday and published details on his website, saying it was to remind “our leaders that we need to be put first in our own country”.
Mr Lennon said Australia’s alliance with India was built on “people-to-people links”, which meant “growing the Indian diaspora in Australia as the main driver of closer bilateral ties”, resulting in Indians becoming the largest overseas-born group last year, numbering close to 1 million.
“India is a shaky ally at best. It preaches ‘strategic autonomy’, keeps deep defence and energy ties with Russia, and maintains a complex relationship with China,” he said.
“Yet Australia is expected to treat India as a key partner in the Indo-Pacific while we rapidly change our own demographics to make the relationship ‘work’.
“Turning parts of our cities into Little India precincts and flooding migration pipelines is not a sustainable alliance strategy, it is quite literally turning our country into India to be treated more favourably by them.”
Mr Lennon said mass immigration from India had a negative impact on Australians, and added “pressure to the housing crisis, rents, congestion and infrastructure”.
“Polling shows India is viewed unfavourably by many Australians, yet our governments continue prioritising this relationship over domestic needs,” he said.
“The issue is not individual people, it is Canberra’s policy choices: special deals, symbolic precincts, and demographic engineering that put foreign relations ahead of Australian sovereignty and living standards.
“This must stop.”
The protest is set to begin at 2.30pm outside the Department of Home Affairs, and demonstrators will then march towards Marvel Stadium where the Melbourne Meets Modi event is being held.
Header image: Left, a flyer for the protest (X). Right, Mr Modi and Mr Albanese (PMO).
