THE CONVERSATION
Starting in 1962, India imprisoned 3000 Chinese-Indians in a camp in Deoli, Rajasthan, some for up to five years. This happened purely because at a time of war with China, these people “looked Chinese”. This is a page of Indian history that comes wrapped in prejudice and fear, and is today totally forgotten.
But five decades on, survivors of that experience are finally starting to speak. The book, authored by Joy Ma and Dilip D’Souza, “The Deoliwallahs” tells the stories of several camp survivors, while also fleshing out the political and historical background that made this internment possible. They see it as a direct assault on the amnesia around this tragic episode.
Joy Ma, Author
Dilip D’Souza, Author
JOY MA
Joy grew up and was educated in India. She attended Lady Shri Ram College and graduate school at the New School for Social Research in the US. She enjoys travelling, meeting people and writing. She recently published a book “The Deoliwallahs: The True Story of the 1962 Chinese-Indian Internment” (Pan Macmillan, 2020).
Joy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two sons, her mother and Willie, the family dog. She was one of a handful of children born in the Deoli internment camp in Rajasthan.
DILIP D’SOUZA
Dilip was educated in Pilani, Providence, Delhi, Rishi Valley, Bombay, Cambridge, Austin and places in between. Once a computer scientist, he now writes for his suppers: about political and social issues, travel, sports and mathematics. Computer science stresses clear thinking, reason, logic and getting to the heart of matters. Maybe those things shape his writing. Maybe not.
He writes about political and social issues, travel, sports and mathematics. His writing has won him several awards, including the Statesman Rural Reporting award, the Outlook/Picador nonfiction prize and the Newsweek/Daily Beast South Asia Commentary Prize. He has published eight books, most recently “The Deoliwallahs: The True Story of the 1962 Chinese-Indian Incarceration”.
Dilip lives in Bombay with his wife, children and cat Aziz. He misses his Rhodesian Ridgeback, Shaka.
