Re-imagining the Komagata Maru incident: Canadian history through fiction and film

Abstract

ABSTRACT The failed journey of the Komagata Maru in 1914 of British Indian subjects from Hong Kong to the Burrard Inlet in Vancouver, is a reminder of Canada’s deep-rooted racial prejudice and practice of exclusion, further reflected through its discriminatory policies and façade of multiculturalism. Canada’s strategic implementation of the Continuous Journey Act and its subsequent effect on the ship, turned out to be a nightmare for the aspiring South Asian immigrants to Canada as they were stranded onshore for two months. Renewed focus on discussion around borders, rights, and identities draws attention to the early nineteenth- and twentieth-century discourses that expose the complexities of colonial regimes and the crises that have followed. It is in this vein I propose a re-reading of the Komagata Maru incident, through its contemporary literary and artistic representations and raise questions of race, citizenship, ethnicity vis-à-vis issues of borders, empires, nations, belonging, and home.