The Shanghai connection

The book is the result of painstaking research, including poring over archival material and interviewing descendants of the prominent merchant families

Stray Birds on the Huangpu: A History of Indians in Shanghai

Mishi Saran and Zhang Ke (Eds)

Shanghai People Art Publishers

350 yuan

Mishi Saran, a well-known author, and Zhang Ke of Shanghai’s Fudan University have produced a most readable and engaging history of Indians in Shanghai. It covers the period from the time China’s premier metropolitan city began its journey as a treaty port after the infamous Opium Wars in the mid-19th century up to its reincarnation as China’s most modern and dazzling commercial centre in the new millennium. Several Indians have shared this journey through recent history, including Parsi, Bohra and Ismaili merchants from Gujarat, Sikh policemen from the Punjab and soldiers drawn from across India. And today, Shanghai attracts a different brand of adventurous Indians, hoping to share in the glittering prosperity of this most vibrant of China’s mega cities.

Mishi Saran, who lived in Shanghai for several years, is the celebrated author of Chasing the Monk’s Shadow, which retraces, in contemporary times, the treacherous but also the wondrous journey of the Chinese monk Xuan Zang, who journeyed to India in the eighth century to gather Buddhist texts and sutra and carry them back to his homeland. Her patent affinity and strong connect with Shanghai shines through the several contributions that she has made to the volume. Zhang Ke, too, is a raconteur who loves his city and delights in ferreting out its many hidden and surprising secrets. For him, the history of Indian families who made the city their home enmeshes seamlessly with and reflects the tumultuous history of Shanghai itself.

The book is the result of painstaking research, including poring over archival material, interviewing descendants of the prominent merchant families and gathering stories from the most recent Indian seekers of fortune. There is the fascinating story of Bejan Dadabhoy Tata, a Parsee, and his progeny and their life at the luxurious Avan villa. There is a chapter devoted to the Jewish Sassoon family, originally from Mumbai, but with business interests in both Hong Kong and Shanghai.  When I was serving as a young diplomat in Hong Kong in the early 1970s, one came across the Kadoories, a branch of the family that which had made the then British colony its base after China turned Communist in 1949. The Sassoon family was well known as owner of the extravagantly expensive but elegant Cathay Hotel on the Shanghai Bund. It became the state-owned Peace Hotel and this is where I stayed in the winter of 1976. I still recall its faded elegance and old world charm. There was even a jazz band, which played Dixieland music during dinner in a vast dining hall that I had all to myself. So one could relate to the interesting account of the Sassoon family and its several property holdings by Xie Fu in his chapter “From the Fairmont Peace Hotel”.

A darker chapter in the history of Indians in Shanghai relates to their involvement in the infamous opium trade. Some 15 Ismaili traders from India were listed as entitled to compensation because their stocks of opium had to be surrendered to Chinese authorities, which attempted to ban the trade just before the Opium War. Some of these families later established themselves as prosperous merchants in both Hong Kong and Shanghai, dealing in real estate, textiles and the retail trade.

Zhang Ke has written a most absorbing account of the Sikhs who were brought to the city by the British to serve as policemen in the International Settlement and as guards at offices and other establishments. The city boasted of three gurudwaras in different districts and those buildings now serve as residences, with space partitioned among Chinese families. Almost all the Sikhs left after 1949, most returning to India, while a few settled in Hong Kong. I recall meeting a few when I was living in that city. Clearly, the Sikhs were not very popular among the Shanghainese, being seen as an instrument of British oppression. Among Chinese not very familiar with India it was the turbaned Sikh who came to represent Indians in general.  When the Dr Kotnis medical mission was sent by the Indian National Congress to assist Mao’s Communist forces at Yanan, the cultural skit by the art troupe had all the performers representing Indians wearing turbans!

Mishi Saran has also penned an interesting slice of history of India-China relations through the experiences of K P S Menon and his extended family. Menon was India’s Agent General and the later ambassador to China during the last years of the Second World War and the waning years of the Kuomintang government. He later served as Secretary General of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office under Nehru. His son K P S Menon Jr and his grandson Shivshankar Menon, followed him in both capacities, as both ambassadors to China and as foreign secretaries. Quite a family history! K P S Menon’s account quoted in Mishi Saran’s contribution, describes graphically the seismic changes taking place in China and the region during this period.

This substantial volume has some rare and interesting photographs which bring alive this fascinating history. The Foreword written by Professor Tan Chung is both erudite and evocative, expressing the hope that China and India and their people will forge a common destiny in the future. This volume, which is the result of intimate collaboration between an Indian and Chinese scholar, represents a good beginning.

The reviewer is a former foreign secretary and currently Senior Fellow, CPR