History
Now Online: A Dark Chapter From Canada's Racist History
by ANDY IVENS
The Komagata Maru incident, which played out in Vancouver’s harbour over two months in the summer of 1914, is one of the most infamous events in the early history of the city annd Canada.
Now, with financial backing from the federal government and input from leaders of the local Sikh community, Simon Fraser University is overseeing the creation of an extensive website that will tell the story in great depth.
It’s a story of aspiration, survival, massacre and a milestone in the struggle of Sikh-Canadians for equality against racial intolerance in a young country of immigrants.
The ship called Komagata Maru carried 376 hopeful Punjabi immigrants to Canada, only to be denied entry once it reached Vancouver by Canada’s exclusion laws.
About 20 passengers eventually were able to prove residency and were allowed to disembark.
In July, the ship was sent back to Calcutta, leaving Canadian waters under military escort.
The British, who ruled India at the time, wanted to put all the returning passengers onto a special train to the Punjab, but many of them resisted.
Emotions were raw at the Budge Budge dock in Calcutta and British soldiers attempting to control the crowd opened fire, killing about 20 people. Some survivors were sent to exile or jail.
“It was a very specific historical event here which has had ripples and repercussions way after the original event,” Simon Fraser University ("SFU") associate university librarian Brian Owen said on Wednesday.
“We’ve been mindful that we want to collect and present content and information here in a way that is balanced and representative of the range of opinion out there.”
A motherlode of information on the website will be an interactive version of retired SFU history professor Hugh Johnston’s book, “The Voyage of the Komagata Maru,” said Owen.
“It’s one of those interesting things where you take a single historical incident and the themes or threads that come out from it go in so many different directions,” he said.
If people log on to it they will find it is “a very basic little placeholder website,” but by the end of the year, Owen expects much more will be accomplished on it, although the work will carry on to completion some time beyond that.
It can also be found at komagatamaruincident.ca.
The federal government has provided funding of nearly $500,000 for the project.
To illustrate the depth of material and the need to present different points of view, Owen said he has seen his own perceptions of the incident evolve.
“There are so many little details that start come out the more you get into it that, if I look at the statements I was making about it a few months ago, I’m getting more and more refined and nuanced on how I look at it,” said Owen.
In the case of Gurdit Singh, who organized the voyage, Owen mused, “Was he really inspired by political or revolutionary means, or was he just a businessman who thought he could capitalize on a loophole [in the law] that had been exploited successfully by several previous ships?”
Owen said a year before the Komagata Maru arrived, about 70 Sikh passengers on a ship called the Panama Maru had been allowed to enter Canada through the loophole.
“There’s any number of interpretations,” he said.
• The city of Vancouver is commemorating the incident as well.
The parks board has accepted the donation of a monument to incident to be installed in Harbour Green Park, hopefully by March 2012.
Conversation about this article
1: Kirat Kaur (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), July 22, 2011, 10:48 AM.
"There's any number of interpretations," says librarian Brian Owen, who then goes on to muse whether Baba Gurdit Singh was in it merely for profit, etc. Hm-m-m-m. Let's give Owen the worst interpretation he can come up with vis-a-vis Gurdit Singh's motives. How does that change anything from the fact that the Komagata Maru Incident was a despicable and racist act on the part of Canada? What other interpretation can anyone come up with of the sad and uncivilized behaviour of the bigots then in the Canadian government and on the streets of Vancouver? I'm sorry, Mr. Owen, but I can see through your use of code and your prevarication ... even though it may not be intentional and only subconscious. You'll have to learn to be truthful in setting out the country's history. Gone are the days of a "white Canada" and gone is the time when you can sweep the facts out of sight. Hope this man isn't involved in this project! In fact, why isn't it being run primarily by Sikh-Canadians and true scholars like Hugh Johnston. Does anyone know that the government funding this project directly descend from two streams of political policy: first, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney who in the 1980's brought back the bizarre "continuous journey" laws to expressly exclude Sikh and Tamil immigrants. (By the way, this is the same Prime Minister" who was caught taking large wads of cash as bribes and putting them, yes, personally, in his pocket. Not moral giants, these racists!). The second stream comes from Preston Manning and the Reform Party, of which the current Prime Minister and his cahoots were founding members. Their published policy, believe it or not, as recent as the 1990s was to oppose the wearing of turbans by Sikhs in the RCMP, etc. I hope this government is not holding any strings that lead into the Komagata Maru project, because if they are, history will remain distorted for yet future generations to sort out.
2: Virinder Khera (United Kingdom), July 22, 2011, 5:12 PM.
Kirat Kaur sums it up nicely. I hope Kirat will contribute more often to this topic and site in the future.
3: Morrissey (Manchester, United Kingdom), July 22, 2011, 5:22 PM.
$500,000 to set-up a website is financial rape ... FYI, our group also submitted a 150-page proposal to the Federal Government to secure funding for a similar in scope Komagatu Maru project ... all for a tenth of the current jackpot. Some will say, "a case of sour grapes" ... and I say "Hell, Ya!"
4: G.Singh (Hyderabad, India), July 23, 2011, 3:05 AM.
The fact is that Komagata Maru was renamed as "Guru Nanak Jahaaz" by Baba Gurdit Singh, before the ship started its voyage to Canada. I wish our Sikh community in Canada will also put their energies and resources to build a Sikh-Canadian Museum not only to cover the voyage of "Guru Nanak Jahaaz" but also share stories of our pioneers who sacrificed so much to build Canada into what it is today. If we won't preserve our history and heritage, who else will?
5: Harinder (Uttar Pradesh, India), July 24, 2011, 3:08 AM.
Gurdit Singh ji should be posthumously bestowed with the title of "Panth Ratan". A blog,