Concentration Camp In India!

It may be fifty years since the infamous 1962 border conflict with China, but everything even now seems very opaque. The Henderson Brooks report inquiring into the debacle got completed in 1963 itself, but looks like it may never see the light of the day. During every anniversary, columns by retired Generals appear in newspaper and they concentrate mainly on strategic issues and government apathy in preparing for war. Not much is said about how it affected civilians.

But this year what really caught my eye was the plight of people of Chinese origin during the war. Prior to 1962. the country had a small Chinese community mainly confined to Kolkata and some Northeastern towns. Some had migrated way back in the 18th century and when the border conflict happened, majority of them were well into the second or even third generation of their lineage in India.

The 1962 war suddenly made their loyalty suspect and their distinct facial features and appearance proved dead giveaways. They were seen as spies, fifth columnists and started figuring in various conspiracy theories. They faced harassment, both from the public as well as the state. Many migrated to places such as Canada, England to escape police harassment. All this was more or less on the public domain, but what came as news to me was the presence of a concentration camp (yeah you heard it right) in India to round up all Chinese-origin people. It was tucked away at Deoli, a nondescript village in Rajasthan. A chance reading of SNM Abdi's piece in Outlook magazine on this issue really startled me.

It stated that most of these families were bundled into trains and taken to Kota, the nearest railhead to Deoli. Some were even told that it was being done for their own safety. The saddest part is that it happened after the conflict got over. The government's line of thinking was that the Chinese may attack again and the native Chinese will act as fifth columnists.

Deoli was formerly a PoW camp for axis soldiers during the second world war. Though there was no torture or hard physical labour as in the Nazi concentration camps, the conditions at Deoli were quite primitive and the desert heat of Rajasthan only added to their misery, as they were used to living in far more cooler climes. For some the detention lasted till 1967.

Later another article on same issue by Dilip D'Souza in Caravan stated that after the detention they had to restart their lives right from scratch. No compensation or even an apology was given by the Indian establishment. In fact, most of them found that their erstwhile house and property were seized and sealed off as ‘enemy property’. Some of the top official whom Abdi spoke to even drew parallel from United States' detention of people of Japanese origin, after attack on Pearl Harbour. 

It really amazes me how this issue remained hidden for so long. Granted that in the sixties the media penetration to far flung areas was non-existent. But even after the boom in regional press and 24/7 television news channels, it bafflingly continued to elude the media’s radar.

One reason could be that Indian Chinese people formed only minuscule minority and that too after this detention most of them migrated to Europe and America, rather than pursue their case. The security establishment would anyway say that it was done to deal with the threat perception of those times; as Abdi had remarked, “ethno-phobia is triggered more often by hallucination than facts.” 

Also Read: Bangalore Beat