Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has formally apologized for the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, in which Canada turned away a Japanese steamship in order to prevent more than 370 Indians, including six Muslims and Hindus, from immigrating to Canada. The move was widely acknowledged to be aimed at keeping Indians out of Canada. Then premier of British Columbia, Sir Richard McBride, said at the time, “we always have in mind the necessity of keeping this a white man’s country.”
Ali Kazimi talking:
We just heard over and over again in the clips and in your quote that Canada was imagined as a white man’s country, and that assertion was repeated during the debates in the House of Commons a hundred years ago and even before that. So, from 1867 to 1967, I assert that Canada had what was effectively a whites-only immigration policy. And one of the instruments of keeping the country a white man’s country was the continuous journey regulation, which prevented the Komagata Maru.
You had to come by continuous journey from your country of nationality or origin. And this was specifically designed for South Asians, because, remember, at that time Canada was part of the British Empire, and what the imperial authorities were worried about is that if Canada denied British—fellow British subjects, Indians, the right to enter, India would go up in flames. This was a very real fear. So a policy had to be designed that was veiled. So, Mackenzie King, who later became Canada’s one of the longest-standing prime ministers, designed a policy which said you just had to come by continuous journey. It made no mention of race or nationality, and that—therein lies its brilliance. And therefore, it’s been ignored by historians as being an instrument of racial exclusion.
And I think the term “Hindu” was used to describe people from India at that point. It was a distinction made because—to avoid confusion between the indigenous peoples of Canada, the so-called Indians at the time, and so anyone coming from South Asia who was brown, who wore a turban—and many, many South Asians who were not Sikhs also wore turbans at that point—were simply labeled as Hindus.
In the end, many of the people on the—the survivors, after the shooting, were arrested. Many were treated as seditious revolutionaries.
The shooting happened in the village of Baj Baj, which is 26 kilometers away from Calcutta, the port of Calcutta, where the ship was sent back. And the authorities felt that these people, many of whom were returning veterans of the British Indian Army, were going to cause another mutiny in the British Indian Army. This is the thought that terrified the British, when India was immersed in the First World War by the time the ship got back, and the Indian Army was the largest volunteer force, of over 1 million men, to serve in the First World War. And the British couldn’t afford to lose India, nor could they afford to lose this immense force on their side in the First World War.
Meanwhile in Canada, the continuous journey regulation, which was used to turn the ship away, was an absolute regulation. We had something called the Chinese Exclusion Act, which mirrored what happened in the U.S. But the Chinese Exclusion Act was not as absolute as the continuous journey regulation, which effectively blocked immigration [to] Canada ’til 1948. And Canada did not drop its race-based immigration laws ’til 1967.
One of the things that happened with the Komagata Maru was that the passengers were detained outside the rule of law, for two months. They suffered what is happening to the detainees right now who are being held in indefinite detention outside—you know, without due process. Women and children are being held in detention in Canada. The same thing happened on the Komagata Maru. There were women and children on board the ship who were driven to the edge of thirst and starvation, deliberately, by the immigration authorities.
There are many patterns that continue to this day. Canada, for example, has signed an agreement with the United States called the Safe Third Country Agreement, which says that refugees must come by direct journey from the country of persecution to Canada, and if they don’t, they will have to seek asylum in the safe third country that they pass through. The vast majority of refugees to Canada come through the U.S. border. And now, by blocking the border since 2003, Amnesty International has condemned Canada for the Safe Third Country Agreement, which has led to a massive drop, a huge drop, in refugee applications to Canada. So, these—the continuous journey regulation, on the one hand, has been apologized for, but there are echoes of it in ongoing Canadian immigration and refugee policies.
I think it’s extremely important for Canadians to know what took place a century ago, because this is not just South Asian history, it’s Canadian history. It forces us to re-examine our own self-image as somehow this country that is quite different and above what happens in the U.S. Race makes people incredibly uncomfortable in Canada. And any idea that these kind of incredibly racist and deliberately designed laws existed in the country is still not widely known in Canada. And one of the things about the apology was that, you know, in an apology, both sides have to know what happened.
see this as Canada’s “Voyage of the Damned,” the MS St. Louis, which took 900 Jews away from Nazi Germany? They tried to get into Cuba; they were denied entry. They tried to get into the U.S.; they were denied entry.
They tried to get into Canada, yes. And the St. Louis was the second ship to be turned away, the first being the Komagata Maru. So this was the pattern that Canada has in its history. And it’s a pattern based on the notion of white superiority. And that, Canada has to confront and has to face head-on, and we haven’t done that so far. The apology goes some part in addressing that. I’m glad the prime minister did not stop at just—that this was just about this one incident. I’m glad that he acknowledged that there were discriminatory laws.
And I think what was even more important for me, that the members—the leaders of the opposition took it a step further, and they said that these were—”Let’s name it: These were racist immigration laws.” And so the idea of race entered the House of Commons and was talked about. That pleased me. And the leader of the NDP then connected it to what happened to a boatload—a shipload of Tamil refugees who came four years ago on a ship called the MV Sun Sea, who were subjected to very similar conditions, beyond the rule of law, by the then-Conservative government. They were put in hazmat suits. They were denied access to lawyers. They were detained indefinitely. They were denied access to the press. This is exactly what happened to the Komagata Maru.
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Ali Kazimi
filmmaker, writer, scholar and visual artist who is the chair of the Department of Cinema & Media Arts at York University. He is the author Undesirables: White Canada and the Komagata Maru and made an award-winning documentary on the Komagata Maru incident, Continuous Journey.
— source democracynow.org