One hundred years ago today, federal immigration inspector William Hopkinson was waiting in the Vancouver courthouse to give evidence when he was shot and killed by Mewa Singh, who then calmly waited for the police to arrest him.
Hopkinson had been a central figure in the detention and eventual expulsion of more than 350 Indian immigrants who arrived in the Vancouver harbour aboard the Komagata Maru that summer, and his murder was assumed to have been in retaliation by some in the Sikh community for his efforts. But subsequent research by historians such as Hugh Johnston and Richard Popplewell has revealed that Hopkinson was at the centre of the most important British surveillance network aimed at Indian nationalists and revolutionaries on the Pacific coast of North America.
Hopkinson was 28 and apparently on leave from his position as an officer with the Indian police in Calcutta when he moved his family to Vancouver in 1908. With his police training and his fluency in Punjabi and a number of other Indian languages, he was able to secure a position with the federal immigration service.
While he performed his normal duties, he built a network of informants within the Sikh community, and by 1913, his network reached important centres in Washington state and California. He regularly reported on the activities of Indian nationalists and revolutionaries to senior government officials in Ottawa, to the governor general and to the Indian government.
By 1913, the Indian government was supplementing his Canadian salary and financially contributing to the cost of running his network.
Immigrants from India, most of whom were Sikhs from the Punjab, came to B.C. in steady numbers from 1903 to 1908, when the federal government changed the immigration law to prevent their entry. The anti-immigration laws in Canada were used by Indian nationalists and revolutionaries to raise agitation among the Indian population to reject British rule.
By 1914, the Ghandr (revolution) party was the largest and best organized of these anti-British parties in B.C. and in the U.S., and was the prime target of Hopkinson’s efforts. The Ghandr party’s goal was Punjabi independence and it advocated violence against the British to achieve its aims.
The Canadian and British governments were warned that the Komagata Maru was meant to test the exclusionary immigration laws. Hopkinson knew that the British and Indian governments did not want a violent confrontation, which would have supplied the Ghandr party with more fuel (and perhaps martyrs) for its anti-British campaign.
He counselled caution as the confrontation dragged on through June and early July, and was rewarded after the B.C. Court of Appeal rejected a legal challenge to the immigration law. It took another tense three weeks before the re-supplied ship left the harbour, escorted by HMCS Rainbow.
The British declaration of war against Germany in September provided another opportunity for the leaders of the Ghandr party. They thought the war in Europe would weaken the British control over India and called for their adherents in North America and South Asia to return to India and expel the British. Many Sikhs from B.C. and the U.S. did return to India, but the revolutionaries also targeted Hopkinson and his informers. In August, two alleged informants were murdered, and in September Bhag Singh, a key member of the surveillance network, killed two Sikhs while he escaped an attempt on his own life.
Hopkinson, who was in the courthouse to testify at the Bhag Singh trial, was the next target, and his murderer became one of the Ghandr martyrs when he was hanged in early 1915.
The Komagata Maru incident was not only a chapter in Canada’s history; it was also part of the history of the British rule in India in the early 20th century. In February 1915, a Ghandr-led attempted revolt in the Punjab was quickly suppressed, in part because of information previously supplied by the Hopkinson network.
Also in 1915, a German-government-funded attempt to ship guns and ammunition from San Francisco to Indian revolutionaries was exposed by the Indian secret service, leading to one of the longest conspiracy trials in U.S. history.
Richard McCandless of Victoria is a retired assistant deputy minister of the provincial Court Services Branch. He has a keen interest in B.C. history and public policy.
