Paper short abstract:

The objective of this paper is build on ethnographic narratives of Tangra, a Chinatown of, by and for the Indian Hakka Chinese community. Their narratives from memory is a classic case where their present decline in numbers can be traced from thier role in making and remaking their inhabited space.

Paper long abstract:

The Indian-Chinese are part of a large diasporic group called the'Overseas Chinese' which saw the influx of a large number of Hakka Chinese between the two world wars. They bought up waste land in the uninhabited marshes at the eastern limits of the city of Kolkata in India. The Hakkas set up tanneries and exported leather to an international clientele and this place came to be known as the Tangra Chinatown.

The Hakkas had been successfully running these tanneries when the highest court of the land, the Supreme Court of India issued a blanket ban on factory units within a three mile radius of the city. The options that the Hakka community had was to shut shop or set up their factory in a leather tanning complex called Bantala. While a few were able to abide by the instructions of the court most could not and either have left the city or have reinvented these tannery spaces into Indo-Chinese restaurants.

The paper makes a case for a diachronic study of the Hakka Chinese and their usage of the marshes to build a Chinatown out of it. It represents a classic case of 'city making' by a minority ethnic community. Now with a majority of them moving out and development of real estate my engagement with the space is to flesh out from memory a historical engagement with the Hakkas who made the locality their own in a time when reducing numbers may soon mean the end of India's only Chinatown.