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Comment: Marking the centennial of the Komagata Maru

A hundred years ago, the Komagata Maru, a ship carrying 376 passengers of British Indian origin to British Columbia, arrived at William Head quarantine station before heading to Vancouver on May 23, 1914.

A hundred years ago, the Komagata Maru, a ship carrying 376 passengers of British Indian origin to British Columbia, arrived at William Head quarantine station before heading to Vancouver on May 23, 1914. It met public hostility fanned by newspapers, including this one, with headlines warning of a possible “Hindu invasion.”

The authorities refused to allow the ship to dock or the passengers to even disembark for an immigration hearing. Eventually, the ship was forced from the harbour.

“White Canada Forever” had become the watchword of governments at all levels, as Asians were deemed the unwanted others of Canada.

The British Indians on the Komagata Maru challenged the “continuous journey” regulations that barred their entry into Canada — as British Imperial citizens they had the right to travel freely within the boundaries of the Commonwealth. However, Canada, asserting its sovereign determination to establish and maintain its borders, refused them entry.

The Department of Immigration and Colonization that oversaw the Komagata Maru event repeatedly used covert measures to spy on the South Asian community in British Columbia. This history is ripe with surveillance measures, covert operatives, disguised agents of the empire. The South Asian community was held as a suspect community, stereotyped as dangerous, inassimilable and morally corrupt.

What does it mean to commemorate the Komagata Maru episode 100 years later?

Should it simply be a reminder of how Canada has moved progressively from a racist past toward a country open to immigration and multiculturalism? Or should it be read in relation to contemporary issues surrounding immigration policy in this country?

The recent media spotlight on Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program, for instance, evokes the forms of exclusion and racist discourse witnessed a hundred years ago.

In 1914, South Asian migrants’ adaptability, assimilability and inclusion into the fabric of the Canadian nation were routinely questioned and often denied. A wedge was placed between “Canadian” labourers and Asian or South Asian labourers. The foreigner was viewed as someone who should be considered simply lucky to be given a job, let alone someone deserving of equal pay for equal work.

Today, we see this attitude formalized through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. The labourers who have entered Canada through this program are overwhelmingly scapegoats in this repetitive narrative that pits Canadians vs. foreign labour.

Some labour unions charge the Canadian government with ethical and moral bankruptcy for facilitating industry abuse of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, yet they too often fail to recognize the corruption of a system that pits “citizens” against those with a temporary status in this country.

Temporary foreign workers contribute to the Canadian system of benefits, as do all employees, and yet many will never benefit from the CPP or EI payments that they make. They incur high costs, personally and financially, to secure temporary work in Canada. This model of precarious life and labour that is supported through the immigration policy of this country is having a devastating effect on the stability of employment and livelihood of all workers in Canada, regardless of birth, citizenship or nation.

Today, the notion of a “White Canada” is difficult to pursue through public policy decisions, yet we see an increasingly racially divided society in Canada aggressively rearing its head. The historical record cannot simply be changed or erased. Rather, the lesson is how logics of exclusion that were established a hundred years ago are operating similarly today.

The logic that informs the “blame” on the temporary foreign worker for joblessness in this province operates on a similar level. It is not that the South Asian migrant on board the Komagata Maru was posing a dangerous challenge to the moral fabric of Canadian society, or that these passengers had the potential to drive down the wages of white labourers, but it was the system that was in place that would permit the unequal treatment of one worker against another.

In 1914, the community of South Asians throughout the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island organized through the Khalsa Diwan Societies to raise funds in support of those stranded on the Komagata Maru. Even though this community of South Asians in Canada in the early 1900s were themselves living highly precarious and marginal existences, they organized to support the rights of those on the ship to land in Canada.

This 100-year anniversary is an important moment to recognize the forms of resistance and empowerment of those who are seeking justice and to remember the basic democratic tenet that equality for one is equality for all.

 

Davina Bhandar is an associate professor of Canadian studies at Trent University and John Price is a professor in the department of history at the University of Victoria.