Rita Chowdhury at Jorhat on Sunday. Telegraph picture

Jorhat, Oct. 24: Rita Chowdhury, an author, plans to launch a movement for assimilation of the Chinese who were forcefully deported from Makum in Assam and some other parts during the 1962 Chinese aggression, into the greater Assamese society.

Chowdhury said more than 1,500 Chinese who were rounded up on November 19, 1962, the eve of the signing of the treaty with China, were Indian Assamese — forced migrants and in no condition could they be termed foreigners.

“Most of them had been forcefully brought to work here by the British on tea plantations and others had followed later. Another diaspora were soldiers who had fought along with British and Indian soldiers during World War II and who settled in the region and almost all had inter-married with the people here and identified with the people of Assam,” Chowdhury said.

Moved by their stories and plight, Chowdhury penned a book Makam in Assamese, published a few months ago.

Referring to the government’s proposal to table a bill for Amendment of the Enemy Property Act for restitution of seized property of these so-called Chinese as an acknowledgement of the wrong done by the government, Chowdhury said this might not be possible. “Had the property and valuables been seized and sealed till today then it might have been possible to give them back in toto but all these property have been auctioned off and to compensate them in other ways might not be practically possible. Many of those deported have died and the second and third generations have spread out and settled in different parts of the world and might not want to return,” the author said.

“Justice delayed is justice denied and besides restitution of property or compensation, the government should come out with a public apology and acknowledge them as Indian citizens wherever they might be,” she said.

Chowdhury said a gross injustice had been done where human rights had been violated and “total war declared by the government on civilians in violation of the UN’s Fourth Geneva Convention on non-combatants” of which India has been a signatory since December 16, 1949. The author said Indian democracy was at its infancy and the media, too, was not strong enough to take a stand and that this was the reason why such a grave injustice could take place.

“I on my part will work for their assimilation into the greater Assamese society once again,” she said.

Chowdhury said the Deoli camp internees had written to the Prime Minister for building a memorial at the Deoli camp by the side of Deoli jail in Rajasthan where the refugees were last kept before being deported, but had received no response to their letter till date.

Makam is a heart-wrenching true account bound only by “adhesive fiction” of how parents were torn from children, wives from husbands as officials tried to determine who were the Chinese, the mixed blood and the Indian.

It is a horrendous tale of how in one day the settlers were rounded up and told that they were being taken temporarily to a place for their own safety as the war was on, put into jail, denuded of all money and valuables, taken on a seven-day train journey to Deoli jail in Rajasthan with only one meal per day and then deported to Hong Kong without a chance to bid farewell to the near and dear ones.

Chowdhury said China patty still exists in Makum with some of the houses intact. “I would like the government to preserve them that way for future generations to learn a lesson from the grave injustice that had been done.”

She met survivors of the period in Kathmandu, Canada, US, China, Hong Kong and said even today they identified with India, most of them being able to speak words of Assamese or mixture of Hindi and Assamese.

In Hong Kong, they still considered themselves to be Indian refugees.