Arrested development
Who precisely can legitimately claim to be an Indian citizen is now the subject of vigorous debate in the country following the enactment of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the internment in Assam’s detention centres of those who have been designated “foreigners” after work began on compiling a National Register of Citizens (NRC). However, this is not the first time that people living in India for generations have been placed in internment camps . That happened in 1962 to people of Chinese origin who were living in Kolkata and other towns in Bengal and Assam, and whose ancestors had migrated to India over a period of several decades in search of better opportunities. This was done not by any Hindutva-spewing leader but by Jawaharlal Nehru’s Congress government, following the outbreak of war between China and India on October 20, 1962.
The Deoli Wallahs is the story of these internees who were detained in a disused World War II prisoner-of-war camp in the town of that name in Rajasthan, written by California-based Joy Ma (who was born in the camp in 1963, had access to many of the internees and their descendants, and has recorded their stories) and the writer Dilip D’souza, who has sketched the political and military background.
Few Indians know of this infamous chapter in their history, as is clear from Mr D’souza’s confession that he found out only in 2012, while researching an article he was writing to mark the 50th anniversary of the war. The internees numbered some 3,000 at their peak, a number admittedly dwarfed by the number of Boers who were detained in Lord Kitchener’s concentration camps in
South Africa during the second AngloBoer war (18991902, where the death toll of Boers and black Africans was nearly 50,000), or the 110,000 JapaneseAmericans detained in 1942 after Japan attacked Pearl Harbour and brought the United States into World War II.
But there is a key difference between the American and Indian parallels. Fortysix years after the detentions in the US, then US President Ronald Reagan, while signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which apologised and granted reparations to the Japanese-americans, said that three things had led to the internment — racism and prejudice, wartime hysteria, and the failure of the political leadership to uphold the US Constitution. There has been no such apology from the Indian state. The sheer numbers and persistence of JapaneseAmericans (who continued living in the US after their release), plus the fact that they found champions in the US Congress to lobby for their cause, helped them secure an official apology.
Chinese-indians in India are pitifully small in number, most of the Deoli detainees and their descendants having migrated to Canada and the US. Those still living in India are fearful of inviting the Indian government’s wrath should they demand an apology, given the frequent stand-offs between Indian and Chinese soldiers on the borders. It was only in 2017 that some 50 Chinese-indians living in Canada and the US drummed up the courage to travel to Ottawa, intending to hand over a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Indian
High Commission, asking for an apology. (The High Commission refused to accept the letter, indicating how difficult it will be to secure redress.)
The two co-authors agreed on a neat division of labour. Mr D’souza provides perspective and commentary on the border conflict, while Ms Ma has sensitively portrayed life at the camp and the extent to which the internees’ lives and livelihoods were disrupted. Nearly 60 years later, the survivors’ wounds are still raw, and the feeling of betrayal by India palpable, because they had lived in India for generations, spoke only Indian languages, and no longer had any connections with China. Most remained in detention long after China declared a unilateral ceasefire. Those who owned restaurants, sawmills and shoemaking businesses came back physically and mentally broken, to vandalised homes and businesses. Many are yet to come to terms with that chapter of their lives.