When Canada turned away the first Sikh migrants
Published on: Tuesday, January 15, 2019
KUALA LUMPUR: A local historian has thrown light on a Sikh from Selangor who tried and failed to migrate to Canada with others before the First World War.
In 1914 Gurdit Singh chartered the Japanese ship, Komagata Maru, in Hong Kong to take 376 Punjabi passengers to Canada. Their intent was to work in Canada, gather some wealth and return home after a few years. The ship left Hong Kong on April 4 and reached Vancouver, Canada, on May 23. But the ship was never allowed to dock at the harbour.
ADVERTISEMENT The passengers were seen as undesirable immigrants, something the Canadian government of the day feared would taint its “white man’s country”.
The Komagata Maru literally became a floating detention camp, and after a 62-day stand-off, its passengers were forced at gunpoint to sail to India on July 23.
The ship finally docked at Budge Budge, near Kolkata, India, on Sept 29. When 19 of the passengers ignored the directive of the British Indian authorities to board a special train to Punjab state, they were shot to death.
“This event has been considered as one of the most shameful tragedies in Canadian race relations and immigration policies,” says Ranjit Singh Malhi, who has detailed this black historical event in his book, The Komagata Maru Affair.
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The 64-year-old Malaysian historian and prolific author adds that the victims, being subjects of the British Empire, strongly believed that they had the same right as any British citizen to travel and settle anywhere in the British Empire, which included Canada.
“Unfortunately, they were not given the same treatment because they belonged to the wrong colour and religion.”
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Ranjit says the incident spurred thousands of overseas Indians from different parts of the world to return home to expel the British from India.
While Ranjit admits he is not the first to have written about this event, he says he has rectified numerous errors found in earlier narratives.
“Factual accuracy is a prerequisite of any good historical work,” says the historian, who spent more than nine months researching the incident from archival and library sources in Malaysia, India and Canada, in his quest for the truth.
One major error concerns the origins of Gurdit. Many books had stated that he was from Singapore or Hong Kong, but Ranjit found out that Gurdit was a long-time resident of Serendah, Selangor.
Ranjit gives readers a deeper insight into who Gurdit was in his book, which has nine chapters in total, covering some 200 pages.
Gurdit was born into a poor peasant family in 1859 in the village of Sarhali Amritsar, a district of Punjab, India.
A drought affected the crops in his village and his father, Hukam Singh, immigrated to Malaya in the early 1870s to find a better life for his family.
Gurdit’s father worked for a Chinese businessman in Taiping and later joined the Perak police force as a constable. Back in India, Gurdit had wanted to join the British Indian Army but was rejected due to his small-sized chest. In 1877, he emigrated to Malaya to join his father and brother Pehlu who had left India for Malaya earlier.
Gurdit worked for a Chinese pork dealer in Taiping, and later operated a dairy business. In the early 1890s, he moved to Serendah and became a successful contractor dealing with railway and road construction. He also planted rubber.
In 1913, Gurdit went to Hong Kong to pursue a case against a former business partner who had absconded with his money.
In Hong Kong, he met with some Indians who were keen to make a better life for themselves in Canada. It was then that he decided to make their dream a reality.
He chartered the Komagata Maru, a coal-transport steamship which had been converted into a cargo-cum-passenger ship with 533 bunks, for their journey.
Little did Gurdit realise that his action would spark a bitter and bloody incident, which would be talked about for years to come.
Ranjit says he is happy to see that things have drastically changed in Canada over the years, and the country has since become more racially diverse and tolerant.
When Justin Trudeau became the prime minister in 2015, he appointed four ethnic Sikhs to his Cabinet. And on May 18, 2016, Trudeau, on behalf of the Canadian government, issued a formal apology for the 1914 Komagata Maru incident to a standing ovation in parliament.
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The Indian government is also currently building a memorial to the victims of the massacre at Budge Budge. There are also reports that Bollywood plans to make a movie on the incident.
“The important lesson we can learn from this is that we should always uphold racial equality and justice,” says Ranjit. – The Sun