India: Kolkata’s Chinese Immigrants
My post about the final leg of my trip to India is more than a week overdue. In addition to a change in schedule, having taken up a full-time job working from home, I’ve also been dealing with a great deal of resistance. Maybe it’s because I’ve been putting too much pressure on myself to complete this series of posts in a timely and professional manner. Or perhaps I’m dreading that once the series is over, it means letting go of every detail, every memory, and feeling from my first trip to India and releasing them into the universe, making room for what’s to come next.
Well, before I reach that part of the journey, in honour of the resistance, I prelude my final posts of this series with a little bit of history. I must say that I don’t know much about my family’s past. Oral traditions don’t seem very common in my family and if ever there have been stories, I haven’t been around to hear many of them. Previously, when I’ve explained to others that my parents are from India, I’ve not been able to elaborate on how my grandparents got there and why. To this day, these stories are still very much a mystery, but thanks to the research and documentaries that have surfaced over the years about the Hakka Chinese, pieces of my family history are slowly coming together.
Tai Bak Kung, the first of many
*I will continue to refer to Kolkata by its old name, as this is how my family still refers to it.
It was in 1778 that Yang Daijang arrived in India, docking in Bengal and settling in the town of Achipur, 30 km south of Calcutta*. Originally believed to be a tea trader, Yang, who later adopted the name Tong Ah Chew, was the first of thousands of Chinese immigrants, who, over time, would later settle in Calcutta and in other parts of India. On the land he was granted, he established a sugar mill — the first to bring white sugar to the area; it’s from here that the Bengali word for sugar emerged (chini), leaving a thread forever woven into the local culture.
A little puzzled by the change of Yang Daijiang’s name to Tong Ah Chew, after some thinking, I realize that tong is actually the word for sugar in the Hakka language. Perhaps there’s a link, but I guess we’ll never know!
For his role in founding the first Chinese settlement in Achipur, the town named after him, Ah Chew is now widely referred to as Tai Bak Kung, or elder great-uncle. In India, he is our first ancestor. Although the settlement later relocated to central Calcutta after his death, many from the Chinese community return to his grave and to the temple he built every New Year to pay their respects.
Calcutta’s Chinatowns
By the late 18th century, the Chinese that established Calcutta’s original Chinatown originated mainly from the South-Eastern provinces of Fujian and Guangdong. What is now the Tiretti Bazaar area, the Chinese earned their livelihood in iron-work, carpentry, cabinet making, and opium trading, co-existing alongside other minorities, including the Anglo-Indian, Armenian, and Jewish communities.
In China, as the Taiping Rebellion and Punti-Hakka Clan Wars raged, Calcutta in the 1850s saw a second wave of migration with the Hakka Chinese, who would become known for their leather and shoe making. Between 1910 and 1920, many Hakka families were forced to relocate east of the city, where they could continue operating their tanning businesses; at this time, the onset of World War I had seen an increase in opportunity for leather making. Thus was born Calcutta’s second Chinatown, Tangra (or Dhapa) :
The boundary walls that the tanning units built for security concerns triggered a ghettoisation [sic.] that the community hadn’t seen before. Tangra, […], hence, had the look and feel of a walled community, an identity that was consciously imbibed by the Chinese to stick together when the war broke out in 1962.^
The 1930s and 40s saw yet another wave of mass migration of Chinese to India as they fled the continuous bloodshed of the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II, and the Chinese Civil War. Calcutta’s Chinese community slowly rose to its peak at more than 25,000**. Almost 80 years later, the population has now dwindled to roughly 2,000, if not less, steadily declining since the rise in discrimination and injustice brought on by the Sino-Indian War.
**Exact numbers are unclear and different sources report different findings.
Deoli Internment Camp & the decline of the Chinese population
What led to the Sino-Indian War of 1962 were disputes over the Himalayan border. For the Chinese in India, this was a dark time. Thousands were arrested and detained at Deoli Camp in the state of Rajasthan, forced to live in crowded quarters and stripped of their livelihood. For a multitude, returning to China was not a choice, but the only chance they would have at re-building what had been unlawfully taken away from them, in some cases, dating back generations. Native to India, some had never even set foot on their motherland.
And for all those untouched by the harsh sentences of imprisonment and uprooting, they faced persecution and restrictions that took a toll on everyday realities. It only made sense to leave the life they knew in India behind and hope for a fresh start as they sought opportunities elsewhere, emigrating to Canada, the US, Australia, Austria, Sweden, or wherever circumstances allowed. My family was no exception.
What’s left to uncover?
As I go about writing this piece, I’m shocked at the endless warfare and hardship that pervades my family’s history. How did my parents, aunts and uncles all experience the tensions brought on by the Sino-Indian War? And what dire circumstances plagued my ancestors, eventually leaving them no choice but to flee their homeland?
At the moment, the only information in my possession is that my maternal grandfather left his home for India in 1948, at the age of 15-16. To date, I’ve yet to uncover his story and before it’s too late, I hope to be able to learn from him firsthand. He is my only remaining grandparent. Although my Hakka is nowhere near the level needed to ask him these questions myself, I’m determined to find another way. As for my other grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ stories, I can only hope that one day, I’ll know more.
Strengthening my connection to my family history has so far been a highly therapeutic experience. The more I learn and the more I understand, I can feel my internal compass and the energies around me gently prodding me in the right direction. As I begin to wrap up this leg of my journey, I look forward to what awaits. In the closing posts for this series, I dive deep into my experience celebrating Chinese New Year in the community of Tangra, the town where my parents were born and grew up.
I really enjoyed this video, presented by Heritage Walk Calcutta. To date, it has provided me with the most in-depth explanation of the history of the Chinese in Calcutta. Worth a watch!
References
Achipur & India’s First Chinese Settler by Deepanjan Ghosh: https://www.livehistoryindia.com/snapshort-histories/2018/03/25/achipur-indias-first-chinese-settler
The Oldest Chinatown in South Asia by Tathagatha Neogi: https://medium.com/the-calcutta-blog/the-oldest-chinatown-in-south-asia-9bb40f7997c1
^Will the dragon dance again? By Kathakali Chanda, https://www.forbesindia.com/article/recliner/will-the-dragon-dance-again/42141/0
Thank you to my friend Robert Hsu, a member of the Indian Chinese Association, who shared other information resources with me:
Unmelted by the Heat, in China at its limits: An empire’s rise beyond its borders by Matthis Messmer and Hsin-Mei Chuang, https://drive.google.com/file/d/16VK-fUl5xzvSrbRS0x_tJrMF86CwCb7e/view?usp=sharing
