In search of heritage

You are never good enough a man for your fatherinlaw And if your fatherinlaw is Chinese when you are Indian you could be nicknamed lsquoThe Black Devilrsquo like Mahalingam Pillay was in the 1930s Pillay eventually married Ang Ah Kee and she was disowned by her family Their grandson Kevin Bathman has been trying to heal the deep gash of racial segregation through his online art project mdash Chindian Diaries It tells the stories of the children of interracial couples mdash of Chinese and Indian origin mdash and their identity crises and blows to selfesteemThis is a photograph of Narayan Muthu from Vathalagundu in Madurai and his wife Lim Ah Chwa During the early 1940s Narayan was transferred to Malaya by the British government Narayanrsquos family couldnrsquot accept the marriage and even got him married to a woman of their caste when hersquod made a short trip home Upset he never spoke of that incident till the day he died However Narayan still missed the presence of his own family in his new life in Malaysia To remind himself of his family he decided to name all his 13 children after the names of his family members in India Bathman was born and raised in Malaysia in a part of the world that saw a large population of Chinese and Indian immigrant workers during colonial times While workers from southern part of India worked in the fields Han Chinese people were merchants Following the British policy of divide and rule this encouraged socioeconomic as well as racial segregation through political and administration policies In Singapore till as late as 2010 a childrsquos identity card mentioned the race of the father to avail of linked benefits and subsidies In 2010 this was changed to mention the race of both parents Malaysiarsquos government forms still have no boxes for mixed races mdash you have to fall into the categories of Malay Chinese Indian or othersIn 1930 Bathmanrsquos grandmother Ang Ah Hee met Mahalingam Pillay Their marriage infuriated Angrsquos father who was against the idea of her marrying an Indian man with dark skin Ang embraced Indian culture by learning how to speak Tamil and cooking Indian cuisine She mastered it and soon began cooking for her Indian neighboursIn this environment love flourished Kevinrsquos paternal grandparents married and Kee embraced Indian culture cooking Indian food and speaking Tamil ldquoI grew up listening to the story of my paternal grandparents and how much hardship they went through to be together It was their story of determination and love that I was interested to delve deeper inrdquo says 40yearold Bathman whose mother is Chinese ldquoAdd to the fact that I had never learnt much about my motherrsquos history too made me decide to investigate further to find out more about my rootsrdquoDisownment by family is a common thread in most of these stories Chindian children grew up mostly in one culture either parentsrsquo while society identified them with the race of the father ldquoThe most common thread for a Chindian child growing up is identity crisis Over and over I hear the same story of bullying not fitting in not being Chinese nor Indian and the identity confusion The other recurring theme is racism mdash both cultures feel the other culture is too foreignrdquoSherlyn Yaprsquos parents met in Kuala Lumpur The officer writing her birth certificate said ldquoBapak Cina mak India anak Melayu lardquo The father is Chinese the mother Indian then the child is Malay It was after much argument that he begrudgingly wrote lsquoCinarsquo To reach out to other Chindians Bathman started requesting stories and pictures from his social circles in Singapore Indonesia and Malaysia in 2012 and put out the word upon social media ldquoParticularly in Malaysia and Singapore the Chindian community has never been documented and mostly been sidelined It made me realise that we needed to build a community that could share its own stories and to be proud of its heritagerdquo he says The result is interviews of couples on YouTube a page at wwwcowbirdcom and a photography exhibition in Australia next yearKevin BathmanDuring his research Bathman also came across the assimilation of Chinese people into India They came as workers with the East India company settling in communities in Kolkata and Mazgaon in Mumbai ldquoMost Chindians are thankful for a place to share our stories and photos In India I have highlighted the story of the Chinese Indians in Kolkata and the effects of the ChinaIndia war in 1962 as well the Deoli camp incident In China there is a surge of interest of Chinese people wanting to learn the Bharatanatyam dance and the Indian culturerdquo he says