CALCUTTA, 4 May 2004 — Political parties are desperately looking for someone who speaks Chinese to canvas for votes in the city’s historic Chinatown, Tangra.

Tangra is a part of the sprawling Calcutta (South) parliamentary constituency where polling will be held on May 10 in the five-phase general elections under way in India.

“We badly need somebody who is fluent in Chinese to campaign from door to door in Tangra, prepare posters and write graffiti to send our message across to ethnic Chinese voters”, said Mamata Banerjee, who has represented the Calcutta (South) three times in a row and is fighting for a fourth term in Parliament.

Banerjee’s main rival, Nafisa Ali, is also eyeing the small Chinese vote bank in what is likely to be a very close fight for the prestigious seat.

Banerjee, who belongs to the Trinamul Congress party and is federal Minister for Coal in Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government, spent over four hours in Tangra on Sunday. Congress’ Ali, social activist and ex-Miss India, is scheduled to pay a visit to the area today.

Besides the two women politicians, West Bengal’s ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist)’ candidate, Rabin Deb too is targeting Tangra in the final phases of electioneering before polling.

Donald Hou, vice president of the Chinese Tangra Youth Club, said the community is “by and large, apolitical, but peace-loving.”

Only those Chinese born after 1950 are entitled to exercise their franchise.

There are only 3,500 Chinese left in what was once South Asia’s biggest Chinatown. In 1981, there were over 10,000.

When the British left in 1947, the community mainly from southern Guangdong province, was 50,000-strong comprising tanners, restaurateurs, dry cleaners, dentists, shoemakers and carpenters.

The relationship between the prosperous Chinese diaspora and the locals never fully recovered after the war in 1962 between the two nations.

Hundreds were deported, assets seized, bank accounts frozen and restrictions clamped, including compulsory renewal of residential permits each year, triggering migration to Hong Kong.

Over the years, Tangra has been reduced to a shadow of its former self.

Many of those remaining are determined to migrate to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Canada, Sweden and the United States because of shrinking business opportunities and harassment by federal and provincial administration.

Two years ago, the community suffered another setback when India’s only Chinese language newspaper, the Chinese Journal of India, based in Calcutta, shut down because of union problems and a dwindling circulation.

The paper, started 60 years ago, catered to the once bustling Chinese population in Calcutta.