Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Shanghai follows in the footsteps of a large ethnic Indian population which lived in the thriving port city before China’s Communists took power in 1949.
Thousands of Indians worked in Shanghai in jobs ranging from business to law enforcement during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Britain dominated the International Settlement and India was part of the British Empire.
Around 2,800 Indians, mostly Sikhs, were recruited into the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) which kept order in the concession, according to one estimate, and a Sikh policeman wearing a red turban remains a symbol of the times, immortalised in a wax figure at a city museum.
“Sikhs added colour to the Shanghai landscape with their flame-red turbans and soldierly appearance,” Meena Vathyam wrote on her blog “Sikhs in Shanghai”.
“The Parsees ran successful businesses,” she said, referring to Indian followers of the minority Zoroastrian faith. “Sikhs, Parsees indeed were a very important part of tumultuous Shanghai city.”