Date of Publication :26th October 2020

Abstract: The Indian society has been home to a wide variety of cultures, ethnicities and communities. Following the boom of tea plantation in some parts of the country, during the British rule, a large number of Chinese workers were brought into India to work in its tea gardens who stayed back and gave rise to a community of mixed ethnicities called the Chinese-Indians. However, following the Indo-China war of 1962 the country suddenly turned against this section of their citizens, naming them spies and traitors and going to the extent of arresting and deporting many members of this community. Following this traumatic experience this paper aims at studying some works of literature born out of this traumatic experience and tries to understand the ideas of identity, community and the self and how such ideas can be deformed and molded according to politics of identity and propaganda. By studying the works of real life survivors of this event, this paper aims at understanding how identity is formed within a society, how community along with its perception and prejudices influence the formation of identity and how that identity is played out in a politically driven environment.

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