Current Events

The Rutgers South Asian Studies Program, Global Asias Initiative, and History Department invite you to a talk with authors Joy Ma and Dilip D'Souza to discuss their new book The Deoliwallahs.

Tuesday April 19, 12:00-1:30pm (lunch will be served) in Van Dyck Room 211

(IN-PERSON)

All participants are asked to RSVP using the following form https://go.rutgers.edu/go738j8m

Non-RU affiliates are welcome, but will need to comply with university vaccine and testing guidelines.

Description from publisher’s website: “Just after the Sino-Indian War of 1962, about 3,000 Chinese-Indians were sent to languish in a disused World War II POW camp in Deoli, Rajasthan, marking the beginning of a painful five-year-long internment without resolution. At a time of war with China, these ‘Chinese-looking’ people had fallen prey to government suspicion and paranoia which soon seeped into the public consciousness. This is a page of Indian history that comes wrapped in prejudice and fear, and is today largely forgotten. But over five decades on, survivors of the internment are finally starting to tell their stories.

As several Indian communities are once again faced with discrimination, The Deoliwallahs records these untold stories through extensive interviews with seven survivors of the Deoli internment. Through these accounts, the book recovers a crucial chapter in our history, also documenting for the first time how the Chinese came to be in India, how they made this country their home and became a significant community, until the war of 1962 brought on a terrible incarceration, displacement and tragedy.”