Abstract
Chinese migration to South Asia (India) was part of the same trade and indentured labour diaspora that brought Chinese to Southeast Asia between the 18th and 20th centuries. While there is considerable scholarship on the overseas Chinese of Southeast Asia, there is comparably less work done on their counterparts in India. This paper examines the state- sponsored persecution of the ethnic Chinese in the Republic of India during the 1962 border conflict between China and India, popularly referred to as the 1962 China-India War. As a result of the 1962 China-India War, approximately 3000 ethnic Chinese residents of India were arrested and interned in concentration camps in Deoli by the then Indian government on suspicion of having links to Communist China. The internment of the ethnic Chinese is a less widely known fact of India’s postcolonial history. What does the persecution of overseas Chinese communities in South Asia tell us about nationalism and state-building in postcolonial India? My research method combines existing literature with oral historical accounts of former Deoli internees. During this war, the Indian government brought into effect draconian measures of persecution which, this paper argues, enforced a particular image of the Indian nation-state along ethnic lines. The 1962 China-India War and the exclusion of the overseas Chinese identity from India’s national imaginary illustrated an ethnicization of the nation.
Author Information
Joita Das, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Paper Information
Conference: ACAS2023
Stream: Comparative Studies of Asian and East Asian Studies
This paper is part of the ACAS2023 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Das J. (2023) Deoli Days: The Internment of the Ethnic Chinese of India, the Overseas Chinese Identity and Nation-Building in South Asia ISSN: 2187-4735 The Asian Conference on Asian Studies 2023: Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2187-4735.2023.4
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2187-4735.2023.4
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