When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh takes up the country’s strategic border issue with China on Tuesday, it will be a home coming for a small group of Chinese. These Chinese citizens will be visiting their birth place Makum, a small township in Assam's Tinsukia district on Tuesday.

These forgotten people are part of the close to 1,500 Assamese-Chinese community, whose forefathers were forcefully brought from China by British to work in the tea plantations in Assam during the early 19th century. They had to leave their birth place after the Indo-China war in 1962.

Sahitya Akademy award winning writer from Assam Rita Choudhury penned the story of these people in her 2011 novel named Makam (meaning Golden Horse in Cantonese). Makam is the significant history of these Assamese-Chinese people, who had been forced to leave the India because of their Chinese origin.

Many of the Chinese-origin people had been living in Makum for years and were married to local women. Most of them had assimilated with the mainstream Assamese society and a few had even forgotten the Chinese language. Yet, these people were accused of being Chinese spies during the war and forced to leave India post November 19, 1962. While majority were deported to China, some of them made their way to Hong Kong and other places later.

“I was only eight-year-old then. I was studying in the Chinese school in Makum. Policemen came all of a sudden and put us under house arrest. We were then taken to a detention camp in Deoli, Rajasthan and then to Madras (now Chennai). From Madras we were forced to board a ship and deported to China,” said an emotional Anjali Goala, one of the victims of the tragedy.

Ten people of the community, who are based in Hong Kong now, reached Guwahati on Monday while on their way to Makum to refresh their childhood memories of the place of their birth.

Anjali (59) has a Chinese name — Ho Yuct Ming but she prefers to be known by her Assamese name — Anjali Goala. Anjali's father Ho Kong Wa was a descendent of the first generation Chinese labourers and artisans brought by the Britishers to work in the tea plantations in Assam.

“People ask me about my birth place in Hong Kong and I tell them I was born in Assam, India. Makum is very close to me as I have all my childhood memories there. I always wanted to see the place again once in my lifetime and this is why I am here,” said Anjali while adding that she and her friends don't have any grievances against anyone now.

“I have some memory of my friends-Bhuda, Suji, Kalu, Jailal, Dukhu and I am going to find them out about them once I reach Makum tomorrow,” said Anjali. Anjali migrated to Hong Kong from China after 1978 and settled there.

“At our heart we still feel ourselves as Assamese. How can we forget our place of birthIJ In Hong Kong there are about 2,000 descendents of the Assamese Chinese community now. We celebrate a 'Chinese Indian party' among our community in Hong Kong every year and we eat Indian food and dance and sing Hindi songs on that particular day of the year,” she added.

“We still converse in Hindi among our community,” said Anjali in her broken Hindi, which is identical to those used by people, mainly the tea tribes communities, near the tea plantations in Assam.

“I am very happy to facilitate these people to come to Assam to fulfill their dreams to see their 'motherland'. They are a society which had assimilated with locals in the best possible ways but unfortunately deported due to political reasons. Now I want them to go back to Hong Kong with fond memories of their motherland,” said author of Makam Rita Choudhury, who was also present on the occasion.

Choudhury mentioned that the community had to go through immense humiliations during the Sino-Indian war in their own place, which they had adopted as their 'home' after living for generations and finally their own people discarded them only because of their origin.

It was difficult for the administration to separate the Chinese from the non-Chinese as most of the people didn't look Chinese and had Indian wives and in the process husbands were separated from wives, children were separated from parents, and so on. Even they were not allowed to take with them their cash, valuables, their hard-earned property was seized as enemy property and later auctioned.

EoM