• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Remembering Komagatamaru Ananda Bhattacharyya Hugh Johnstone1 has persuasively argued that the of force only served to embitter the relationship between Komagata Maru incident in 1914 and the Ghadar the British Government and their Indian subjects, and the movement were more closely linked with the Indian Sikhs who were forced to go back to the Punjab became. revolutionary movement. The event of 1914 was Though the Komagata Maru story has been shrined in connected with a longer story. According to Johnstone, national narratives, both Canadian and Indian, it may the episode of Komagata Maru was “a foreshadowing of be argued that the 1914 confrontation was a historical the future for the British Empire—which appeared to be moment in which a heterogeneous, diasporic movement at its greatest when its days were actually numbered”. for social justice became a wellspring of a trans-border, But colonialism, the migration question and the objective anti-colonial upsurge. Entangled in the maw of virulent conditions of living affecting a considerable number settler racism and the emerging British-American alliance of the Punjabi Sikhs were at the root of the incident. for global White supremacy, the Komagata Maru saga However, neither the demand for the right of Indians to was to have profound repercussions that continue to be live in a British colony nor the demand that British rule felt to this day. should end in India was accepted, understood or even Pacific coast settlers on both sides of the US-Canada considered by a majority of colonial rulers, whether in border shared a long history of anti-Asian racism. India or abroad. British Columbia and California were centres of this The Komagata Maru episode of 1914 forms an anti-Asian agitation that would have both national important chapter in the history of India’s struggle for and transnational effects. Canada, as a dominion of freedom. The attempt made by Baba Gurdit Singh of the British Empire, was also part of a transnational Amritsar to take a batch of Indian emigrants, mostly Sikhs, racial network that included other settler colonies, viz., from different places in the Far East to Canada where Australia, New Zealand among others. Substantial they might live in comparative comfort was foiled by Indian migration to Canada and the United States began the Canadian authorities, afraid of the growing influence in the early 1900s.2 By 1906, this influx had swelled into of the revolutionary Ghadar Party of Indian settlers in thousands. Seema Sohi’s study3 of this phenomenon the United States and Canada. Such was the price of begins at the turn of the twentieth century, as migrants patriotism which Baba Gurdit Singh and an adventurous from the Indian subcontinent flocked to the west coast and hardy band of Sikhs had to pay for their attempt of North America. The reasons for the sudden influx to settle in a British Dominion across the seas whose are many. Some employers of the sparsely populated government felt unnerved by the growing influence of Western regions realized the utility of cheap Indian a small group of Indian revolutionaries already settled labour4, which could weaken the bargaining strength there. As was to occur in the case of the Jalliwanwalla of the local trade unions. Besides, the monsoon had Bagh massacre, the British troops did not hesitate to been poor in Punjab between 1905 and 1910, and this open fire on an almost unarmed group of Indians who gave emigration an added incentive. As a result, by had already undergone much hardship, and resented the 1908, about 3500 Indians had settled down in British British Government‘s attempt to restrict their freedom of Columbia, and, nearly as many in the western states movement in their own country. The unwarranted show of the United States of America. Their immigration was encouraged, first by the reports of their comrades returning through Canada from the Diamond Jubilee * Assistant Director, West Bengal State Archives, Calcutta. celebrations of Queen Victoria’s reign in London, Summerhill: IIAS Review 31 and thereafter by the prosperity and encouraging ‘when I came to Hong Kong in January 1914 I could statements of their predecessors, who had returned not bear the trouble of those who were in the gurdwara home to collect their families. In order to placate the waiting to go to Vancouver. He spoke at the gurdwara White population of Canada and to please the Asiatic on 3 January 1914 during a commemoration to mark Exclusion League which had earlier taken out a protest Guru Gobind Singh’s birthday. He had an office in the march in the form of ‘Anti- Asiatic Parade’ in 1906-7 Hong Kong gurdwara from where he conducted his against the Asian immigrant, the then Government business. Gurdit Singh also resolved to take the aspirant of Canada passed an order in the Vancouver Council immigrants to Vancouver under any circumstances. in1908 as a step to ban Indian entry into Canada. The party which was formed centering round the Next, the Canadian government took the initiative gurdwara had its headquarters at San Francisco, with to send the Indians out of Canada to another British branches at leader of the Komagata Maru expedition Colony – British Honduras5. The ground on which the came to Hong Kong after having spent 25 to 30 years existing immigrants based their strongest protests was, in Singapore and the Malay States, where he carried of course, the cruelty of preventing their wives and on business as a contractor and was supposed to have families from joining them6. There can be little doubt acquired considerable wealth. Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong- that the real strength of the agitation was directed Kong, Jakarta, Sumatra and Malay States and various against the prohibition of future immigration into a other parts of South-East Asia, from Chiangmai in colony offering such prospects of profit as Canada, the north, to the remote island of Mindano in the and against the stigma thereby placed on Indians as Phillipines9. Even some shipping agencies and their a class.7 A report prepared by some Sikh delegates on unscrupulous agents in India sought to make a profit by the poor conditions in the Honduras was publicly read enticing the sturdy Punjabi peasants to emigrate with in the local gurdwara in front of the huge congregation tempting assurances and travel facilities. To restrict the of the Indians present. This marked a watershed, the huge influx of the Punjabis in Canada and also in the political rise of the community, whereby the gurdwaras, continent the Canadian government responded with originally set up only with the motive of worship, an exclusionist policy to stop the ‘Brown Invasion’10. emerged as a common meeting point of all Indians These laws included a stipulation that all arriving irrespective of their religion to discuss important Indian immigrants are bound by law to have an amount issues. British officials had good reason to fear the of $200 with them to enter Canada and they must come circulation of anti-colonial tracts addressed to Sikhs, through a direct route. Discrimination against Indians particularly in North America, where nearly 50 per bred defiance and stirred a political awakening.11 Thus, cent of migrants had served in the British Indian army in the years before the First World War, various home- or as police officers in colonial territories across East grown institutions arose to defend and assist Indian Asia. These gurdwaras were the key sites of Ghadar communities in the Americas. The Indo-American activity. society, the Indo-American National Association, the One Gurdit Singh established the Guru Nanak Hindustan Association12, the United League, and Sikh Mining and Trust Company to use the capital of centres of worship developed an international network economically successful Indian migrants to fund to combat schemes like the Canadian government’s commercial ventures and provide financial support attempt to relocate them to British Honduras in 1907. for those migrants seeking employment. He showed This network became a fertile ground for Indian himself frequently at the gurdwara at Hong Kong. nationalists. After Indians chose to resist anti-immigrant Gurdit Singh pressed them to do what he could to attain violence against their new American homesteads, they this object. Thus, Hong Kong and Vancouver gurdwara realized that they should be arming their compatriots turned into a hotbed of sedition and it was thought by to resist oppression in India too. Pamphlets like ‘Maro the Canadian government to watch ‘disloyal’ Indians8. Firinghiko’ (‘Kill the Foreigners’) had already been The British labelled women and most colonized people circulating on Indian communities when White labour as fragile, passive, and emotional but characterized resumed the attacks in 1911. In Vancouver, also, in the Sikhs as martial/masculine. The centrality of the 1907, the Khalsa Diwan Society was founded for social gurdwaras along the Pacific Coast to the Ghadar Party, service with several branches. British authorities kept and their connections to gurdwaras across the Pacific, a close eye on the Khalsa Diwan Society and later was especially evident during the Komagata Maru considered it to be extremely dangerous because of its affair in the summer of 1914, when 376 Indians sailed support to the Ghadar Party and its alleged deployment into the Vancouver harbour to challenge restrictive of religious preachers, whose primary function, they Canadian immigration laws. As Gurdit Singh stated believed, was to ‘disseminate revolutionary ideas’.13 32 Remembering Komagatamaru Sohi had shown how the Indians fought back by hiring movement picked up momentum, Ghadar weeklies lawyers to defend their rights, by forming their own published in Urdu, Hindi, Pashto, Bengali and self-help organizations, and by petitioning the British Nepali were distributed from the Americas to Indian Government to defend its subjects abroad.

Load more

  10

Copy Link