ABSTRACT
The Sino-Indian War in 1962 inaugurated a specific form of ethnic nationalism in India, one that mobilized a range of anti-Chinese sentiments and, over time, codified them into state policies. This nationalism targeted both an external neighbour (China) as well as India’s ethnic Chinese as hostile enemies. The Indian state systematically cultivated this ethnic nationalism and, in so doing, implemented a range of policies that discriminated against, disenfranchised and specifically targeted India’s Chinese community – a community that included Indian citizens. Thus, a series of ordinances, special orders, and citizenship policy reforms institutionalized by the Indian state brought a new status for those of Chinese origin in India; they were now deemed as ‘aliens’ affiliated with an enemy nation. The state’s unequivocal codification of exclusions and expulsions were thus stamped on to the blue-print of national belonging through a suspension of various civil liberties, mass arrests, revocation of citizenship papers, deportation, and finally, internment in detention camps and jails. In addition, the felonious conduct of ordinary Indian citizens against the Chinese – public harassment, larceny, arson, physical assault, even homicide – constituted the ‘extra-judicial’ corollaries of the state’s discriminatory actions. The Chinese minority in India was thus subjected to a complex web of violent dispossession organized around a nascent but surprisingly coherent anti-Chinese nationalism.1
