G L I M S E

Lost Tribe

By Ming Tung Hsieh

Published: April, 2011
Pages: 252
ISBN: 9781456773380

This book is part memoir, part un-usual history of India and China, with lot of untold true stories about a small and an unique tribe that used to live in Calcutta’s (now Kolkata since 2001) China Town for as long back as the city of Calcutta which was established by the British East India Company in the 18th century, about the poignant story of an once vibrant tribe that was systematically rounded up by their thousands, women, children and infants included, then transported in special trains to a concentration camp in Rajasthan when a short sharp war broke out between India and China in 1962, many more were arrested in the middle of the night, taken to border and pushed across to China for deportation, even though many of them had never been or seen China before, such ethic-cleansing like measure were resorted to until it become a lost tribe. Emphasizing the fact that they were mostly small traders, shopkeepers & skillful craftsmen, diligently working and contributing to the local economy, never indulged in any antinational activity, yet when the far away border dispute cropped up between the governments of India and China, they were summarily arrested because of their ethnicity, this book also has many untold stories narrated by inmates of the only concentration camp interning the ethnic Chinese civilians during the later half of the 20th century, about how they lived, ate and stubbornly not giving up hope of being able to come out of it alive some day. When writing this book which had taken him more than four years of research and search for the relevant men and materials, he maintained that maximum care was taken to be as accurate and truthful as possible, he dedicates this book to the memory of the lost tribe as well as to the survivors from, and all those who did not survived in that wretched concentration camp