Internment at a camp in Deoli, Rajasthan, from 1962 to 1967 threw the lives of thousands of Chinese-Indians into complete disarray.
This Durga Puja, amid the plethora of must-see themed pandals, Kolkata has an unusual one.
A Chinese-inspired pandal inaugurated by the West Bengal governor and the Chinese consul general comes with Chinese red lanterns, dragons and performing artistes from Yunan province.
Probably, no one queuing up at the pandal knows or cares that this week also marks the 56th anniversary of the India-China war.
Neither the Indian puja organisers nor the Chinese consulate will want to bring it up. But hundreds of innocent Indians of Chinese origin still bear the scars of that war, unremembered, unacknowledged and unsung.
That war lasted from 20 October to 21 November 1962, barely one month and one day. But some 3,000 Chinese-Indians, picked up under the Defence of India Act, languished in an internment camp in the desert of Rajasthan for four years or more.
There have been no reparations. No apology. Nothing. It’s as if it never happened.
Looking for answers
In 2016, I met a group of former Chinese internees on a trip back to India. For Steven Wan, it was his first trip back in 46 years. He was 13 when he was sent to Deoli (Rajasthan). Months before that, he had been marching in the Indian Independence Day parade. Now, he lives in Canada and has never told anyone he is from India. “I say I am from Taiwan,” he said.
All of the returnees were children when Jawaharlal Nehru’s government bundled them into a train and sent them to the camp in Rajasthan, ironically one where the former Prime Minister had himself once been imprisoned.
Now they are in their 60s and 70s, but the scars remain. Yin Marsh, one of the others who returned on that trip, said she always thought of herself as Indian until her brother came back home crying one day and said, “Kids are making fun of me, calling me ‘ching chong China man’.” She wrote a memoir about those years, called Doing Time With Nehru.
Michael Cheng remembered his father handcuffed like a felon, their businesses seized by others. It took 30 years to win the family restaurant back through a court battle. But it was a hollow victory since all the brothers had left India by then. He lives in North Carolina, US, now.
They called themselves the Deoli-wallahs. And for years now, they have been trying gently, but consistently, to push for answers, something their traumatised parents never did.
“We would like build a monument in Deoli camp,” said Wan. “We want to remember the people who lived and died there,” he added.
The Deoli-walhahs have written to the Indian Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, there has been no reply. In Canada, the Indian High Commission refused to even receive a petition from the Association of India Deoli Camp Internees in 2017 to recognise those wrongfully held in the camp between 1962 and 1967. They had thought that perhaps a new administration in India, one not beholden to the legacy of Nehru, would be open to rectifying his blunder. But that was not true.
It’s a small group and most of them live outside India now.
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‘Khoya, khoya chand…’
But not all of them left. Monica Liu, a well-known restauranteur in Kolkata, was also interned at Deoli. She shows up now and then on Bengali television quiz and game shows, where she talks about Kolkata’s Chinatown and its dragon dancers.
But her fans, who go to her restaurant Beijing for beer, chilli chicken and crispy golden prawn, do not know that after 1962, her mother had to sell momos at her school to make ends meet. “My identity card number was 880. My mother’s was 879. My papa’s was 878,” she told me.
For the Chinese, most of them from hill stations like Shillong and Darjeeling, the desert was scary and unfamiliar. Several died of sunstroke.
The winter was freezing, for they did not have enough warm clothes. The children lost out on several years of education in a place with few books and no blackboards. They learned to eat camel meat. The rice was never washed properly.
“To this day I can’t eat potatos and lauki,” said Liu. “For five and a half years, I was eating just that. I don’t even want to smell that. My mother literally cried for five and a half years.”
It’s not like Deoli was a concentration camp. The inmates were not tortured. “We were like bird in the cage. We could see the sky but not go out,” said Liu. She remembered a Bollywood song she learned at the camp. It was “khoya khoya chand, khula aasmaan”.
Liu said she was not holding her breath for an apology. “What is sorry, anyway? It’s just like a small wind blowing on your skin,” she said, “Whatever we had is already gone.”
What’s worse is that the internees were treated with suspicion even after their release. Steven Wan recalled that, when they were released, they were sent to the Howrah station in Kolkata.
Two former internees who had been released a few months earlier came to receive them. “They were arrested for not having a permit for Howrah station,” he said. Liu remembered a pastor from Rajasthan being one of the few who helped them. He sent her Rs 200 after she was released.
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Stateless in their own country
But the Chinese who remained in India had a tough time. Their movements were severely restricted. “They would not let my parents go outside Kolkata to make a living,” said Cheng, “That was a slow killing.”
For the Chinese born in India between 1947 and 1950, it was worse. They were effectively stateless, never having been granted Indian citizenship. Their visa renewals cost a lot even today.
If the Indian government addressed even that, it would be something. But governments are loath to admit wrongdoing. The Deoli internees do not rank high in the government’s priorities. Since most of their families came to India fleeing communist China, they are trapped in a sort of no-man’s land between the two countries.
But, at the very least, Indians should know that this happened in their name. “If we did something wrong, we should be punished,” said Liu, “But we didn’t do anything wrong. Of course I still feel bitter.”
The Narendra Modi government has been accused of trying to whittle away Jawaharlal Nehru’s image in many ways big and small.
But here is a case where Nehru’s government can actually be held to task for something it did to its own people, despite being a founding signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Modi government could apologise much as the United States did for the Japanese it interned, put up a plaque and make at least symbolic amends (and score a point against Nehru in the bargain).
To the dwindling group of Deoli-wallahs it would mean a lot more than a Durga Puja pandal with a Chinese theme.
Sandip Roy is a journalist, commentator and author.
Most of the Chinese in India immigrated during the 1920-1930 because of poverty and of course the Japanese invasion of China. They did not flee because of the Chinese Communist, who came into power in 1949.
Most of the Chinese who came to India were fleeing from the Japanese before and during the Second World War , and of course poverty, in the 1920- 1930. The Chinese Communist came to power in 1949.
A very rare insight into the turmoils of forgotten community of Chinese origin in India
Another controversy brewing. The rohingiyas ate doing enough from the east now brace yourself from the Chinese. It is a never ending story for India.