They came to Mumbai as traders and dockyard workers in the 1800s, and made India their home

Kwan Tai Kung – Mumbai’s only Chinese shrine – is in a narrow lane outside the Mazgaon Dockyard’s boundary walls. (Photos via Wikimedia Commons)

On Chinese New Year last Sunday (January 22), the Kwan Tai Kung came alive as it always does. The little-known temple – Mumbai’s only Chinese shrine – in a narrow lane outside of the Mazgaon Dockyard’s boundary walls is at the heart of the city’s tiny Chinese community.

According to a 2015 news report, the city’s Chinese population at the time stood at around 4,000. A visit to the Kwan Tai Kung temple may suggest that the number is significantly smaller. Depending on who you ask, there are but a few hundred Chinese origin Indians living in Mumbai today. Most others have either passed on or emigrated.

Even the former caretaker of the temple, Albert Tham, doesn’t live there anymore. Regulars at the temple tell you he spends most of his time in Australia where his children have migrated.

Albert Tham (Photo via Wikimedia Commons 4.0)

In some ways, the story of the Tham family is the story of the Chinese Indian community itself. His family immigrated to Bombay (as Mumbai was called then) in the 1800s. Tham’s grandfather worked as a labour contractor at the British India Steam Navigation Company (BISN) and started a training institute to ensure a steady supply of qualified labour to his
clients.

The training institute was set up in the same house that we know as the Kwan Tai Kung temple. It welcomed migrant Chinese men and trained them for different jobs on the ship – from welding and carpentry to cooking and serving.

Indeed, the neighbourhood itself was home to several Chinese families since the dockyard employed several Chinese men. Then India and China went to war.

“1962 served as a turning point for the Chinese-Indian community,” says Bharat Gothoskar, who identifies himself as a heritage evangelist and the founder of Khaki Tours that hosts heritage walks in the city. “The community that had made this city and country their home for several generations was suddenly viewed with suspicion. And the discrimination got worse over time.”

The epitome of this discrimination were the internment camps at Deoli, Rajasthan, where Chinese-Indians, especially across North-East India, were summarily rounded up and sent to prison camps under suspicion that they were spies. This, despite the fact that most of them had struck roots in India for at least a few generations.

When they were released, they returned to their properties being vandalised or stolen. During this time, several Chinese Indians including those from Mumbai made their way overseas to countries such as Australia and Canada.
As a result, the population of Chinese Indians in Mumbai dwindled considerably. At its peak, though, the Chinese Indian community in Mumbai was large enough to have expanded across two neighbourhoods: Kamathipura and Mazgaon.

“The earliest Chinese to arrive on the Mumbai shores were tradesmen,” Gothoskar says. “They lived around the Fort precinct at first and along Sukhlaji Street in Kamathipura. This was a neighbourhood that was reclaimed from the marshes. And here the earliest China Town thrived. There were restaurants, beauty parlours, even opium dens that marked the
presence of the Chinese Indian community here.”

According to Gothoskar who is himself a Mumbai native, Chinese Indians were traditionally restaurateurs, beauticians, dentists, and shoemakers.

The Bhangs, for instance, ran a successful shoe store in South Mumbai’s Colaba neighbourhood. When a young costume designer, Bhanu Athaiya, scouted them for making footwear for a film, they were the least known of at least four other Chinese Indian shoemakers in the city who custom-made shoes for the Viceroy, and the Aga Khan among others. But the film Athiya was working on was the Oscar-winning film Gandhi, and before long, the Bhangs became Bollywood’s favourite shoemakers.

Today, like most Chinese Indians, the younger generation of Bhangs are settled overseas, and the shoemaking has stopped. But, as it turns out, the last of the Bhangs continue to occupy the store and have reinvented it… as a beauty parlour!

Gothoskar also remembers a time when dentistry in Mumbai was almost always associated with the Chinese Indian community. “Most of the Chinese Indian ‘dentists’ back then were basically teeth-setters, and they often ran their business on the side of the street and out of a suitcase. Several of these dentists were located in the Kamathipura neighbourhood,” he says.

Some of the younger generation who have followed their respective fathers into the trade are, of course, medically qualified professionals. You will likely remember Meiyang Chang’s turn as a dentist in Modern Love Mumbai. Interestingly, Chang’s character like him, gives up dentistry to follow his passion, music.

According to Gothoskar, the community expanded from Kamathipura to Mazgaon due to the demand for labour on the docks. “At the time the community was thriving, there were Chinese schools, newspapers, even a graveyard in Kamathipura,” he says. “With the community numbers dwindling, the schools have shut, the newspapers have stopped, and
the graveyard shifted out.”

Today, there are likely more Chinese Indians living abroad than in India. As they swing to Bollywood tunes, speak Hindi, and look to India as their motherland, it is a community most unique. In Mumbai, however, it has taken all of four or five generations for the community to arrive, thrive and diminish. All that remains of it are a few shops, a few clinics, a temple, and a graveyard.