No, not the kind Voldemort spreads in the sky in eerie green only to have it dissipate without a trace. We are discussing the kind that sticks ugly in people’s minds and in history. Can-do Canada’s past is no stranger to such impressions, no stranger to xenophobia. In the early part of the last century the Canadian government imposed a head tax on all Chinese immigrants that began at $50 in 1885 and increased to $500 by 1903. Out of the around 80, 000 Chinese in Canada who paid that tax, 15, 000 were working to build the Canadian Pacific Railway and around 4000 of them died during construction. The head tax kept families apart for decades, sometimes for good, and kept them in a state of economic depression while they made it possible for goods to travel across Canada’s enormous land mass.
In April, the Chinese Canadian National Council’s mission to gain a formal apology and remuneration for the estates of Chinese-Canadians who paid the tax came closer to status ‘accomplished’. At the end of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s throne speech there was mention of an agenda item concerning a formal apology for Chinese Canadians. This type of dialog has prompted hope among many in the Indo-Canadian community of a similar apology, with possibility of redress, with regard to the Komagata Maru incident:
The Conservative government should issue an apology and compensation to Indo-Canadians over the Komagata Maru incident if it is going to give both to Chinese-Canadians over the head tax paid by Chinese immigrants in the early 20th century, B.C. Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal said… “If the government is going to apologize to one group of Canadians, they should also have a similar line for other groups of Canadians who have suffered discrimination” [Link]Harper is said to be “looking into the matter”.
The Komagata Maru was carrying passengers who were Sikh by a large majority but the “white, please” immigration policies of the Canadian government at the time saw only brown. Passengers were not allowed to disembark, were left on board for two months in miserable conditions and were ultimately forced to return to India where they were persecuted by the British as participants in the Independence Movement. All because the Canadian government was afraid of some hardworking brown folk. This episode is as much a part of our history as Indian-Canadians as it is a part of Sikh history. Early immigrants to Canada were largely Sikh but they came here as Indians and they were discriminated against as Indians.
As a Canadian who never misses an opportunity to yap about how great our multicultural society is, I can only hope that the cause for a formal apology is taken up by many more than just the Sikh community in British Columbia. A petition for such an apology was tabled in the House of Commons by former MP Gurmant Grewal who was a part of the opposition at the time. Now that the opposition has finally become head honcho it is very unfortunate that the petition’s champion is nowhere to be seen due to a series of controversies surrounding his time in parliament, the latest being a criminal investigation into his campaign finances.
The time is prime for some positive interest and who better than a film maker to raise some eyebrows and get some joints in motion. Following in the footsteps of Ali Kazimi’s much-lauded film “Continuous Journey”, Deepa Mehta is going to try her hand at recreating the Komagata Maru’s moment in history with a big budget feature film titled ‘Exclusion’. She is looking at adding the Big B to the “starring” list, which already includes Seema Biswas and John Abraham. Pardon me while I whoop with joy and scream my “you go girl!” at this bit of news (especially the Big B part). I am really pleased that she is finally tackling Indo-Canadian history and I hope that she will reign once again as Queen of Controversy (minus the burning effigies, of course). So that people can finally begin talking about the Komagata Maru without being met with blank stares and ultimately with disbelief. So that Canadians of all backgrounds can have a chance to peek outside their daily lives and understand how we arrived at this point in time. So that we can use this knowledge to represent real multiculturalism when the time comes for us to defend it.
