The receipts are tallied, the maroon napkins restocked and two days later, it’s business as usual for Indian restaurants around Australia. For those who missed it, Wednesday the 24th of February marked Vindaloo against Violence day, a grassroots movement that encouraged people to have dinner at their local Indian restaurant and, by doing so, signal to the local Indian community and India that Australians are not indifferent to racially motivated violence.

There is a lot to be said for Vindaloo against Violence. A well-calibrated combination of protest action, alliteration, support for small business and multiculturalism, it led to one of the largest and most successful shows of solidarity in recent memory (not withstanding Melbourne’s Save Live Music protest, which also took place this week). It’s estimated 17,000 diners and 400 restaurants took part, which means it wasn’t just large in numbers; one of the most valuable aspects of Violence against Vindaloo was its dispersed nature. Wherever Indian food could be served, it was, and the profits were being turned accordingly. Restaurants were turning back punters, shutting down takeaway operations in order to cater to those who were dining in and running back-to-back sittings.

It’s no wonder then that when I spoke to local restaurateurs, they were consistently enthusiastic about the affair.  Smiling away any suggestion of racism, I was assured that Australians loved Indian food and Indian people — as though the two inevitably went hand in hand. It is this single assumption that lets down Vindaloo against Violence.

As the official blog indicates, eating out is an easy way to show your support for the local Indian community.  Too easy, perhaps. The Vindaloo against Violence model perpetuates the role of foreigners as workers in our services industries  — brown people serve, white people eat and pay for the “exotic experience”. Because it’s so simple, and because it relies on small business to provide community, it ignores nuances in the Indian community — such as the questionable working conditions of many students in Indian restaurants around Australia. One post on the Vindaloo against Violence Facebook event sums up the problem:

“It was a bit weird, though, not seeing a single Indian amongst the customers and realising that nobody from our group actually knew one … I need to fix that, too!”

He does need to fix that, but how? And will he? Vindaloo against Violence would have been significantly more useful if it had asked people to invite a recent migrant over for dinner. Though this idea still of reeks of cliche, it at least forces you to share the meal with a member of the community, to start a dialogue, a friendship and hopefully prove that your home and your neighbourhood, by extension, is not a racist one. Better still would have been a campaign such as child safety ones in which bright yellow stickers are placed on the letter boxes of “safety houses”. It’s a practical way of signalling that whole areas, not just individuals are committed to the safety of its residents.

Inevitably, and commendably, some people took the campaign further. In Kyneton, the local Indian restaurant put on a outdoor dinner, Bollywood film screening and family fun night, asking residents to pay what they liked — with all proceeds going to a help educate children in a rural Indian village. Others were more low key about it. Mr Singh, who has been operating my local Indian takeaway for 24 years, says a lot of his customers had invited Indian students and people of Indian origin to celebrate this in their own homes. “At least half of my customers were doing this kind of thing,” he said proudly.

Well, good. Because for too many others, Vindaloo against Violence was feel-good activism without practical outcomes.