India’s Deoli Catastrophe
As a newly independent country learned to take a stand, it failed an entire community.
In early 1963, the first wail of a baby pierced through the cold, melancholic breeze of the Deoli internment camp in Rajasthan. Its otherwise desolate inhabitants rejoiced at news of a girl’s birth, considering it a late Christmas gift. There was, after all, little else to help them forget their misfortunes.
“I was one of about five babies born in the camp,” Joy Ma, author of The Deoliwallahs (2020), told The Juggernaut. For the Indian government, her birth in a family of Chinese ancestry was enough to justify her spending the first four years of her life in Deoli.
The mid-20th century was rife with unrest and turmoil for a newly independent India. Decade-long border tensions with China had culminated in the 1962 Sino-Indian War. Though the conflict was brief, ending a month later in defeat for India and the loss of territory, it unleashed an unforgettable trauma on Indians of Chinese ancestry.