Will the Indian Chinese always be regarded as foreigners? A documentary asks all the right questions

Seven minutes into the documentary From Border to Border: Chinese in India, the camera pans over Chinese women dancing to Hindi songs. The audience comprises descendants of migrants who travelled to India in search of a better life in the 1800s.

Chung Shefong’s film gathers together the stories of individuals whose lives have been characterised by struggle, hard work, social exclusion and self-segregation. The 107-minute documentary begins with history lessons about the arrival of the Chinese in India in the 1800s and goes on to list the effects of the 1962 Sino-Indian war on the community. The Indian Chinese speak of discrimination, alienation, familial expectations and efforts at cultural preservation. Many of them have left India over the years for Canada and other countries.

These themes also figure in Rafiq Elias’s 2005 documentary The Legend of Fat Mama. What makes From Border to Border: Chinese in India unusual is that it has been made by a Chinese director. A professor and record label owner from Taipei in Taiwan, Shefong interviewed members of the community in Kolkata as well as hill towns. She shot the film between 2011 and 2014 and followed tanners, cleaners, dry cleaners, dentists, publishers, restaurant owners, traders and hawkers. Their ancestors entered India for trade, sometimes on foot.

Paul Chung, President of Indian Chinese Association, speaks of a Chinese man who came to India in 1780 and set up a sugar factory along with 110 Chinese labourers. Some went to Assam to become tea labourers.

Some of the testimonies are sad and filled with painful recollections, while others rejoice in the joys of life. Edward Liao, a restaurant owner and fourth-generation Chinese, explains how poverty-stricken Chinese came to India to make a brighter future for themselves. Liao explains, “Chinese took up manual labour, tanning, and such jobs which were considered jobs for the ‘untouchables’.”

Yeh Chi Yen, a leather factory owner, adds, “You could say that the East India company’s leather industry was built by the Chinese.”

Among the interesting anecdotes is the story of two Hakka Chinese labourers who picked up the trade of tanning leather in Kolkata and built a factory on the swamp lands of Tangra, which went on to become the new Chinatown after the one in Tiretta Bazaar.

The war that changed everything

The 1962 Sino-Indian war had far-reaching consequences for the community. Kolkata witnessed demonstrations against the Chinese, and many of them were detained for five to six years. The ones who were born Indian citizens became aliens overnight during the war. These were times when everyone from the same family had different passports.

Chang Kuo Tsai, a newspaper publisher, tells the filmmaker, “I had a passport from Communist China, my father had a Kuomintang passport and my brother had an Indian one.”

The Chinese were taken to an internment camp in Deoli in Rajasthan, where they survived on rice and bread gone bad. They were asked if they wanted to be repatriated to China or stay on in India. The ones who chose to stick around were released after four years.

The Indian government has still not apologised for this discrimination of its own people.

At least 30,000 of the Indian Chinese with passports were not recognised by the government till 1998. Many of them were denied citizenship and left stateless. Some Chinese residents in Kolkata still hold Chinese passports, while others who applied for citizenship in 1985 received it in 1993. It was not until 1998 that the government allowed the Indian Chinese population to be naturalised.

The documentary asks important questions. Will the Indian Chinese always be regarded as foreigners? Will there ever be a way to reconcile 1962’s history without forgetting it? What does 1962 teach us about other overseas Chinese communities?

For answers, Shefong turns to Bengali filmmaker Mrinal Sen, who directed Neel Akasher Neechey (1958), which explores the relationship between a Chinese immigrant wage worker, Wang Lu (Kali Banerjee), and Basanti (Manju Dey). Neel Akasher Neechey was banned by the Indian government for two years because of its contentious theme.

Sen told Shefong that even though he was not too happy with the film, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was a fan. “He liked it because the movie portrayed the struggle for national independence, which is inseparably linked with the democratic wars fight against fascism,” Sen says in the documentary.