The Surveillance of Indian Nationalists in North America, 1908-1918

Abstract

Immigrants from India, most of whom were Sikhs from Punjab, dis­ covered North America in 1903 and 1904. An immigration of young men nourished briefly until shut off by Canadian authorities in 1908 and by American in 1910. By then a small community of Punjabi labourers had established itself in the Pacific coast states and in British Columbia. Asso­ ciated with this community were a number of students and entrepreneurs from Bengal and elsewhere in India. The leaders of this community were under close surveillance, so that now, eighty years later, in the archives of four countries — Canada, India, Great Britain, and the United States — we can trace their movements with remarkable precision. Most of these men were political activists who were openly critical of the British regime in India and who called for Indian self-rule, either within or outside the British Empire. It is not surprising that these leaders were watched, given the paranoia of the British regime in India and the sentiments of the antiAsiatic lobby in the Pacific coast states and in British Columbia. As time progressed, they warranted more watching. By the end of 1913, Indians in San Francisco had organized the Ghadar or Mutiny party with links in Vancouver, Victoria, and other points up and down the Pacific coast. In the first months of the First World War, the leaders of the Ghadar party tried to stage a rising in Punjab and encouraged emigrants to return to India to take part. Their efforts were ill organized and drew little support from the Sikh population in Punjab, but the Indian government met the threat with a severity that profoundly affected the outlooks of Sikhs and other Indians and contributed to the unrest that seized Punjab after the war ended. Canadian immigration officials in Vancouver played a key role in the surveillance of Indian nationalists in North America. This role has been recognized in previous studies of the Punjabi community in British Columbia, but the nature of the surveillance and its consequences deserve