SITES OF ‘SEDITION’, SITES OF LIBERATION: GURDWARAS, THE GHADAR PARTY, AND ANTICOLONIAL MOBILIZATION

Abstract

This paper examines the gurdwaras on the Pacific Coast of North America as critical sites of Ghadar organizing. Linked to gurdwaras across the Pacific, particularly in Manila, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, in a network of labor migration and anticolonial politics, the gurdwaras in Stockton, California, and Vancouver, British Columbia in particular, were closely monitored by US, British, and Canadian officials as centers of sedition and fronts for revolutionary activity. Examining British gendered representations of Sikh soldiers and the ways in which Ghadar activists sought to dismantle the bond between Sikhs and the British Empire, I argue that Pacific Coast gurdwaras were critical meeting spaces for Indian migrants to forge an anticolonial movement against both British colonial subjugation in India and racial discrimination and exclusion in North America. As such, these gurdwaras constituted a central place in early South Asian American history and the histories of global anticolonialism and state repression in the early twentieth century.