Letters:
The Komagatu Maru - An important event in Canada’s racist immigration history
RE: Sept/Oct 2004 Issue #48
On page 36 of the last issue you have a cutline below a picture stating that the Komagata Maru was carrying “376 Sikh passengers.” This is an oft-repeated but still inaccurate description of the passengers of the Komagata Maru in 1914.
While the 376 passengers were all Punjabis, they were not all Sikhs. The evidence we have is that the 376 passengers also included 12 Hindus and 24 Muslims. The British Columbia press at the time referred to “Boat Loads of Hindus” and a “Hindu Invasion,” in keeping with the then-common practice of referring to people from India simply as Hindus. We need to be careful not to make a similar mistake in the way we refer to Punjabis today.
Your cutline also says that the ship was turned back without any provisions. I think this is also inaccurate. Even then there was a significant Punjabi population in Vancouver and it raised much money to support and feed the detainees on board the ship. The detainees themselves also fought off a police boarding party and refused to leave Vancouver harbour until they were properly provisioned.
The ending of the account of the Komagatu Maru took place elsewhere in the British Empire. British authorities refused the ship landing rights in both Hong Kong and Singapore before it reached India, where the British Administration continued the mistreatment of the migrants.
Nineteen of them were killed by British troops while they were being detained in India, where it was thought that their experience being told and retold throughout the country would lead to anti-British agitation. Of course, the migrants did come to play a significant role in debunking the imperialist myth of British “fair play and justice” - which had never had that much currency in India anyway. The last piece of information to add about the experience is the refusal of the former Hindu Nationalist BJP government of India last year to ackowledge the Komagatu Maru migrants as a part of the freedom movement, or in any way related to the freedom struggle. This narrow view ignores how the experience of migration can politicise the oppressed and their allies, and certainly reminds us how history remains a terrain of struggle for all of us.
Thanks for the opportunity to respond about an important event in both Canadian and South Asian history.
In solidarity
Patrick Barnholden
Sudbury, Ontario