Rites of passage: early visitors from the subcontinent

Kolkata is not just the city with the largest Chinese community in India. It also sent out the first Indian travelers to China in the early 20th century. One reason was the presence of Chinese settlers in the city.

Tansen Sen says there were three waves of Chinese migration to Bengal, the province of which Kolkata was the capital, between the second half 19th century and the first of the 20th. Major turmoils in China, such as the Japanese invasion and the civil wars, saw thousands of Chinese fleeing to other shores - for safety and for jobs.

Kolkata, then one of the richest cities in the East, was an obvious destination. The eastern Indian city was the closest in India to Chinese shores. And, as the capital of the British Empire in India until 1911, the city attracted merchants, entrepreneurs and even laborers from different parts of the world. The Baptist Mission Press in Calcutta published Chinese translations of the Bible as far back as 1805.