Memory, Migration, And Marginalization: Reconstructing Chinese Indian Lives in Rita Chowdhury’s Makam

  • Unique Paper ID: 193206
  • PageNo: 21-26
  • Abstract:
  • India has been home to a diverse group of communities and ethnicities and remains so even today. In the British period, Chinese labourers were brought to India to work in tea gardens, forming one of the country's most significant ethnic communities. Over time, they integrated into Indian society through naturalization and intermarriage. Rita Chowdhury's narrative offers a fictionalized account of the hardships faced by the Chinese Indian community. This group established notable Chinatowns, such as Bow Bazar in Kolkata and Makum in Assam. However, it was the 1962 conflict between China and India that led to their marginalization. This paper attempts to examine the various understandings of identity and memory in the face of adversity. Rita Chowdhury’s Makam provides a feminine perspective to an incident which is largely viewed from a political standpoint and shows how great emphasis has been given on the individual, women, family and children highlighting the emotional loss along with its social consequences. In her work, Makam (The Assamese Original of the English translated Chinatown Days), she delves into the lives of people affected by the Indo-China War of 1962 while prominently placing her female characters at the forefront. This paper aims to scrutinize identity, especially that of the Chinese-Indian community in North East India and the greater part of India.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{193206,
        author = {Ms. Salma Begum},
        title = {Memory, Migration, And Marginalization: Reconstructing Chinese Indian Lives in Rita Chowdhury’s Makam},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {},
        volume = {12},
        number = {no},
        pages = {21-26},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=193206},
        abstract = {India has been home to a diverse group of communities and ethnicities and remains so even today. In the British period, Chinese labourers were brought to India to work in tea gardens, forming one of the country's most significant ethnic communities. Over time, they integrated into Indian society through naturalization and intermarriage. Rita Chowdhury's narrative offers a fictionalized account of the hardships faced by the Chinese Indian community. This group established notable Chinatowns, such as Bow Bazar in Kolkata and Makum in Assam. However, it was the 1962 conflict between China and India that led to their marginalization. This paper attempts to examine the various understandings of identity and memory in the face of adversity. Rita Chowdhury’s Makam provides a feminine perspective to an incident which is largely viewed from a political standpoint and shows how great emphasis has been given on the individual, women, family and children highlighting the emotional loss along with its social consequences. In her work, Makam (The Assamese Original of the English translated Chinatown Days), she delves into the lives of people affected by the Indo-China War of 1962 while prominently placing her female characters at the forefront. This paper aims to scrutinize identity, especially that of the Chinese-Indian community in North East India and the greater part of India.},
        keywords = {Indo-China War of 1962, Community, Identity, Displacement, Home},
        month = {},
        }

Cite This Article

  • ISSN: 2349-6002
  • Volume: 12
  • Issue: no
  • PageNo: 21-26

Memory, Migration, And Marginalization: Reconstructing Chinese Indian Lives in Rita Chowdhury’s Makam

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