Letters That Get No Response
By Dilip D’Souza
Every now and then, I come across another name. George Takei. Satsuki Ina. Daniel Inouye. Paul Kitagaki. Sono Fujii. Japanese-sounding names, or at least partly so. If there's a picture attached, they are all Japanese-looking, whatever that really means.
But they are all also Americans, of Japanese ethnicity, yes. But full-fledged Americans. Satsuki Ina is a psychotherapist. The late Inouye was a US Senator, named "President pro tempore" of the US Senate from 2010 until his death in 2012. That is, he was the Senate's second-highest-ranking officer, and thus third in line to the Presidency. Takei is an actor who made his name in the "Star Trek" films. Etc.
The point being, again, that these are Americans like any other. Yet what forever marks them, and other Japanese-Americans, is that starting in 1942, the US incarcerated over 100,000 people like them in prison camps. This happened because the US and Japan were enemies during World War II, and these Japanese-Americans were seen as potential traitors to the country they lived in. Ina was born in such a camp. Takei spent a year-and-a-half in another. Inouye only side-stepped the internment by, ironically, enlisting in the US Army. He lost his right arm to a grenade and was later awarded the Medal of Honor, his country's highest military award.
Just Americans. Yet we know their names today. We know about the internment today. We know there are memorials to this shameful piece of history. We know that people visit the sites of the camps. We know that after several years of campaigning and lobbying, the US formally apologized in 1988 for the internment, and paid reparations to thousands of families. The story of the internment is relatively common knowledge across the USA.
William Ma, Yin Marsh, Ying-Sheng Wong, Joy Ma, Ming-Tung Shieh - these people, and a few thousand like them, still wait. These are not Japanese-Americans. These are Chinese-Indians. They were sent to a prison camp in Deoli, Rajasthan, starting in 1962. Like Satsuki Ina, Joy Ma was born in that camp. Will the country where they were all born ever find the compassion and strength to acknowledge their incarceration, if not yet apologize for it and pay reparations? Will there come a time when the story of their internment also is common knowledge across India?
That's what they would like to see happen. That's what they believe must happen.
A quick summary of this sad tale: indeed, when India fought a short and bitter war with China starting in 1962, Indian authorities began rounding up Chinese-Indians from across the country's northeast. These were people whose families, in many cases, had been in India for generations. But when war broke out, they were immediately the target of plenty of hostility and hatred from neighbors and, eventually, authorities. Plucked from their homes, they were put on a train that trundled west for a week to Kota in Rajasthan. Along the way, their fellow-citizens threw abuse and stones at the train. From Kota, they were sent by bus another 85km northwest, to the town called Deoli where the camp was.
Ironically, the rounding-up actually began after the end of the war, in late November 1962 (over 60 years ago as you read these words). But some families - like Joy's - were only released years later. Of course, when they returned to their homes, they often found them vandalized or burned down, their property stolen.
Over the years since, many Chinese-Indians emigrated abroad, to the extent that their once-vibrant presence in India has dwindled to a shadow of itself. Today, there's a sizable group in Toronto, with others scattered across North America. They have formed the AIDCI - the Association of India Deoli Camp Internees - to spread the story of their treatment by India, and to seek acknowledgement and an apology from the Government of India.
In reality, though, it took them several decades to start publicly asking for these things. They are naturally afraid of history repeating itself. After all, border tensions between China and India continue. Every time there's a flare-up, and even when the Corona pandemic erupted, there's unthinking hostility directed at them. Who can credibly assure the community that the 1962 incarceration won't happen again? So why attract any attention to themselves?
In August 2010, the AIDCI wrote a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Noting that the 50th anniversary of the conflict and the incarceration was just two years away, they appealed to the Prime Minister "for the erection of a monument [in Deoli] in memory of the ethnic Chinese who lost their lives in the camp." Such a monument, they noted, would "remind citizens of today of the value and meaning of human rights, civil liberties and social justice."
This letter got no response.
In January 2011, the AIDCI wrote to Prime Minister Singh again. They reminded him of their earlier letter, noting that "we have not received a response or an acknowledgement of receipt ... we anxiously await your favorable response."
This letter got no response.
In August 2017, a group of 50 AIDCI members travelled by bus from Toronto to the Indian High Commission in Ottawa, carrying a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This letter appealed for "the Indian Government [to] do the honourable thing and apologize" to the Deoli internees. Standing outside the High Commission, they even read the letter out through a loudspeaker. But the Indian officials refused to accept the letter, so the AIDCI delegation taped it to the gate and left for home (https://scroll.in/article/848781/in-canada-indian-mission-refuses-to-acknowledge-a-chinese-indian-protest-and-a-historic-wrong).
This letter got no response.
In November 2021, the AIDCI wrote to Prime Minister Modi again. They reminded him of their three earlier letters, enclosing copies. They referred to "the emotional and psychological wounds we have all suffered." Especially as 2022 would be both the 75th anniversary of Indian Independence and 60 years since the war with China, they wrote that "it is time to start the healing by acknowledging that innocent civilians and Indian citizens of Chinese descent were punished unjustly." Once more, they repeated their appeal for an apology.
This letter got no response.
"We can no longer be silent," write these Indians of Chinese ethnicity in their letters.
That's as it should be. But will the country they called home in 1962 drop its silence and do what it must?
*A version of this article appeared on Scroll.in - https://scroll.in/
Dilip D'Souza is a Mumbai-based writer and journalist. He writes about social and political causes. He’s the co author of “The Deoliwallahs”. We are delighted for his support of the Kickstarter campaign for VOICES OF DEOLI.
Join Dilip and support the campaign today!