Andy Hsieh was a school student in Shillong, a town in northeast India, when he was suddenly arrested one day in 1962. His crime? He was of Chinese descent.
"The principal tried to intervene and told the officer he would personally guarantee his students' safety… but the officer refused …They had no choice. They had to go to jail," write Joy Ma and Dilip D'Souza, the authors of The Deoliwallahs, an account of the internment of Chinese Indians following the 1962 war between India and China.
Hsieh, now a resident of Toronto, is one of several Chinese Indians who were incarcerated by the Indian state during the war.
The unexpected nature of the incarceration is evident from the advice that Hsieh recollects his school principal gave him before the police took them away: the final exam was only two weeks away. The principal told them, "Take all your books with you. You may be back in a week or so."