BOOK REVIEWS

Chinois à Calcutta, les tigres du Bengale (Chinese in Calcutta, the Bengal Tigers), by Julien Berjeaut

Sinologists interested in the Chinese diaspora concentrated first of all on those communities that were most conspicuous in their adopted countries, either through their economic power, their capacity for political influence or the strength of their social organisations. In contrast, Julien Berjeaut has chosen to take a look into the Chinese community of Calcutta, which has never had an important economic or political role to play. As a historian, he recounts the chronology of this community’s development from the end of the Eighteenth century to the present day. As a sociologist, he conducts interviews with the members of this community—businessmen, doctors, teachers—and is interested in the image this community has for Indians. As an anthropologist, he provides a plan of its houses and districts and reconstructs the myth of a common ancestor, recognised by all as the first Chinese person to have come to settle in Calcutta.

Julien Berjeaut finds features in this community which are distinctive of Chinese diasporas, such as the structuring role played by the geo-dialectical situation of individuals in the organisation of the community. The geo-dialectical-based associations have a function which is at once economic (professional associations providing business and credit opportunities), religious (administration of temples and organising worship of divinities) and social (managing schools and settling internal disputes).

The writer also insists time and again on the internal divisions within this community stemming from the diverse backgrounds of the first migrants—those who jumped ship arriving from the ports of southern China; contract-workers recruited by British companies for the tea plantations of Assam and the building sites; or those attracted by Bengal’s nascent prosperity. Hence, it is not one but several Chinese communities that have settled in successive waves in Calcutta. Moreover, conflicts have broken out at regular intervals, in particular between Hakkas and Cantonese and by the end of the 1960s, economic competition, as well as personal and inter-clanic rivalry were such that people went about armed in the Chinese parts of Calcutta.

The author also tries to address the topical issue of integration, one which is all the more sensitive than Indian society is fragmented, made up of a mosaic of ethnic and religious communities with a strong social stratification. In India, this issue is even today only partially resolved. In spite of a Constitution (1950) bestowing Indian citizenship on long-term migrants, the present situation remains a complex one. Whereas there are those who have retained their PRC nationality, acquired in the 1950s, and the younger generations in the main have Indian citizenship, there remains a stateless fringe whose request for Indian citizenship has still not been met. The writer also shows to what extent much of the recent Christianising of this community (in the 1960s) has been a means of Westernisation and integration into the Indian middle classes. These Westernised (and educated) Chinese are today among the batches of qualified workers leaving India, in particular for the Gulf states.

One original contribution of the work has to do with Calcutta’s urban history. Julien Berjeaut gives a detailed analysis of the two main Chinese districts of the city. The one, Bowbazar, is an old part of the city centre. But this first Chinatown, mainly Cantonese, was a victim of the urban development schemes of the 1950s and 1960s. The laying down of new road networks and the construction of large modern apartment blocks in place of very dense housing have opened up the district to the Indian city. The second Chinatown is the outlying area of Tangra, near the Chinese cemeteries and the first industrial plants. Its development was linked to the expansion of one particular economic activity in the 1960s, namely that of the tanneries run by Hakkas. Contrary to Bowbazar, this is a closed area, whose streets are difficult to negotiate when they are not actually closed off by gates (Julien Berjeaut incidentally provides his own map—the fruit of his own topographical research). Marriages are mainly endogamous in this community, whose exchanges with Indian society are primarily professional.

The subject of this research is all the more fascinating in that these Chinese communities have been caught up in the turbulent history of Sino-Indian relations in the second half of this century. In this respect, 1962, when these two Asian giants came to a military stand-off on their border, appears as a watershed year. Although the Chinese elites showed their loyalty at that time to the Indian Republic, steps were taken by police to restrict their freedoms. Several thousand Chinese from Assam and Bengal were deported and interned, creating a lasting trauma, and discriminatory policies were continued for a long period of time.

While the style and fluency of the writing are to be commended, there are some unfortunate errors. Why, for instance, has hui been translated as “club” rather than by the more neutral and generally adopted term of “association”? Also disappointing is the absence of any quantitative data, which, even incomplete, would have enabled a comparative analysis both with other Chinese diasporas and organised ethnic communities in Calcutta. Likewise, insufficient use seems to us to have been made of surveys. It would have been worthwhile to find out more about the relations between those Chinese from Tangra, a “closed” community according to the writer, and the many Indian workers they employ. Yet these remarks are in no way intended to lessen the pioneering nature of this work which provides a significant and stimulating contribution to our understanding of modern Asia.

Translated from French original by Peter Brown