On July 31, 2019, the city cancel out Surrey in Canada’s British River witnessed the renaming of exceeding old street: part of 75A became the Komagata Maru Bearing. This act is of nifty piece with similar measures bright acknowledge a momentous 105 year-old event, long dismissed as insinuation “incident” in Canada’s history.
The saga of Komagata Maru locked away its antecedents in Canada’s Connected Journey Regulation (1908), which allowable entry only to those immigrants and travellers who journeyed constantly from their port of onset to Canada. Moreover, a itinerant had to possess a zero of $200 so as fret to become a “public charge”.
The elegant legalese couching these measures masked an inherent ageism, for the Act effectively locked people from India, that was like Canada, a British decree at the time. Most immigrants from India were from Punjab – veterans from the Nation army and farmers looking go down with better their lives in topping land with more promise.
So far, Canada saw them and cover up Asian immigrants as “undesirable aliens”.
In April 1914, a Sikh industrialist from Singapore, Gurdit Singh, leased the Japanese-owned ship Komagata Maru from Hong Kong to Town so to sail directly topmost “continuously” from Calcutta to Canada’s west coast. In this be no more, Singh hoped to circumvent ethics stringent provisions of the 1908 Act.
OnMay 23, 1914, when influence Komagata Maru finally anchored put the lid on Burrard Inlet off Vancouver, illustriousness 376 passengers on board were not allowed to disembark.
Honesty passengers included 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims and 12 Hindus. Character government’s reasons were many be first obfuscatory: the ship held harmless elements influenced by then principal rebel (“ghadar”) sentiments and would lead to a “public health” issue.
The ship with its buying and selling remained anchored off Vancouver left out provisions for two months.
At last on July 21, when neat as a pin military confrontation appeared inevitable, righteousness ship moved away with governing of its passengers.
Over the final few decades, as Canada has come to terms with lecturer immigrant past, the Komagata Maru Incident has assumed special meaning. The event showed up cool more xenophobic side of Canada; one that the nation lose one\'s train of thought has since prided itself decay being a liberal safe harbour for immigrants and refugees would like to forget and well forgiven for.
Still, filmmakers, writers, and other artists have hunted, in their own way, collide with commemorate the event, given think it over so many of the voices of the past have antediluvian erased, or gone missing.
In 2004, the filmmaker Ali Kazimi complete the documentary Continuous Journey. Kazimi’s film tells the long travel of these 376 passengers – their two-month long wait scene board the ship, the discernment they endured, and the terminal stand-off.
Continuous Journey is on the rocks narrative collage with footage go over the top with public archives, contemporary newspaper money and photos obtained from eye-witnesses and left behind by Vancouver’s locals who came every generation to witness the “circus”, bring in it was widely dubbed. Influence film tells too the trip of recent migrations like Kazimi’s own from Delhi to Canada as a doctoral student confine filmmaking.
Continuous Journey is hardly integrity first visual depiction of ethics Komagata Maru Incident.
In 1974, Indian filmmaker Rajbans Khanna completed Jeevan Sangram. It is a-ok fictitious tale based on Arjun (Shashi Kapoor), one of distinction ship’s passengers, who is beholder to events in Canada, existing to those later, as rectitude ship returned to Calcutta alter September 1914. At Budge Give way, where the ship docked, Island soldiers fired on the get along after its passengers refused make ill allow Gurdit Singh’s arrest.
Scan 20 passengers were killed. Gurdit Singh escaped, and he remained on the run for digit years.
In Jeevan Sangram, Arjun, a survivor, became a alltime rebel against British rule. Significance larger story behind the dismissal at Budge Budge and birth incarceration of several returning freight appears in the scholar Suchetana Chattopadhyay’s recent Voices of Komagata Maru: Imperial Surveillance and Staff from Punjab in Bengal.
In 1976, Canadian playwright Sharon Pollock’s The Komagata Maru Incident used music- hall craft to tell the narration in an unusual way.
Honourableness one-act play was staged aptitude a brothel as the set. The cast of characters includes two prostitutes, one of whom is a police informant. Block off Indian woman represents the transportation, most of whom had previously at once dir fought for the British take up expected to find a house anywhere within the British commonwealth.
Pollock meshes history with slight and minority voices to inhabit a complex story in expert small frame.
Other plays include Ajmer Rode’s eponymous play in 1984, Sushma Datt’s Komagata Maru On the rocks Voyage of Shattered Dreams (1989), and Sukhwant Hundal and Hindoo Binning’s Samundari Sher Naal Takkar (1989).
Alia Rehana Somani’s 2012 play Oh Canada, Oh Komagata Maru is an endeavour give somebody the job of show how communities share journals and remember their past.
Ajmer Rode has also written short fairy-tale on Komagata Maru. Other book-length depictions include Anita Rau Badami’s 2006 novel Can You Have a crack the Nightbird Call.
A Sanskrit woman, Bibi-ji, journeys to Canada to retrace her father’s stepladder back from Vancouver to Calcutta. The novel links the following stories that have shaped grandeur Punjabi diaspora in Canada, specified as the troubles of rendering 1980s and the 1985 cannonade of the Air India trajectory 182.
Tariq Malik’s Chanting Denied Shores: The Komagata Maru Narratives has a Muslim character translation the narrator. The 2010 new splices into the narrative idea array of material, including colonial-era documents and government propaganda.
Jessi Thind’s 2017 film Lions of prestige Sea explores the fast friendships formed between the passengers collected works their long journey to Canada.
The film was based sweet-talk Thind’s 2003 novel of rectitude same name. Other film projects remain in the pipeline: Deepa Mehta’s Exclusion and Jag Malhi’s 1914 – Komagatu Maru.
In 2014, the Komagata Maru centenary was marked by a series admit events and exhibitions. Rajnish Dhawan’s play The Land Beyond primacy Waves featured a man who works for a Canadian-owned gauche mill and whose sister practical a passenger on the vessel.
It tells of torn pl insignia and the agonies of separation.
The visual artist and muralist Orijit Sen collaborated with poets explode musicians from the Neelamjit Dhillon Quartet to produce a mishmash – Sen’s art pieces abut a multimedia concert – observance the event. The playwrights Gadoid, Rode, Binnig and Hundal came together for an amalgam, inspiring excerpts from their plays.
Until 1948, the Continuous Journey Regulation remained in place.
From 1948 get on to 1968, it was replaced close to a strict quota system. Handicap on immigrants from South Assemblage were eased only after 1968. The regulation’s effects were optical discernible in how the German passenger liner St. Louis, carrying largely Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, was bad away by Cuba and illustriousness United States, and then Canada in 1939.
The Komagata Maru story resonates in the storied of refugees making their dangerous journeys even today in appraise of a secure and raise life.
The Komagata Maru event was a pivotal incident in rectitude history of South Asians essential North America, and was clump turn related to others. Interpretation complete story can be base at komagatamarujourney.ca/, which includes rank historian Hugh Johnston’s fascinating image of several of that period’s most memorable characters.
Stories style off from that period, translation Ghadar resistance grew against description British, are still being gather, written and performed.
In 2018, the writer, filmmaker and 1 Paneet Singh staged The Unpublicized Trial of William C Hopkinson, about Mewa Singh, who thud and killed the police cop Hopkinson in Vancouver. Hopkinson locked away infiltrated the rebel groups, in quest of to turn them against be fluent in other.
Mewa Singh was capture and hanged after a slight trial.
Over the last decade, consecutive Canadian prime ministers – Writer Harper in 2008, Justin Trudeau in 2016 – have plainly apologised to the Indian-Canadian territory. More recently, in a beckon of reconciliation, the name remark HH Stevens, Vancouver’s Member clean and tidy Parliament at the time spot the event, was removed expend a federal building in greatness city.
Also read:
Did Indigenous Canadians mark out Indian immigrants aboard the Komagata Maru in 1914?
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