Article Three: East Indian Immigration

3. East Indian Immigration

Previously, we explored Canada’s identity crisis in the early twentieth century. Now, in the third part of our six-part series on early twentieth century Canada, we shall look at how racism and abuse of power systematically denied East Indians access to Canada, which would culminate in the incident involving the Komagata Maru in 1914.

After the Anti-Oriental Riots in Vancouver, Labour Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to determine why asian immigrants kept coming to Canada and he determined that it was because of the CPR agents who had facilitated East Indian emmigration from India.

And so it was that the government, in order to cut back on Indian immigrants, passed the Continuous Passage Act, which stated that all immigrants “in the opinion of the Minister of the Interior" that did not "come from the country of their birth or citizenship by a continuous journey and or through tickets purchased before leaving their country of their birth or nationality” would not be permitted to enter. Considering the great distance between India and Canada, this basically ensured that no Indian would ever be able to come here because a direct route was almost impossible.

This is the Continuous Passage Act.

This Act is not only ethically questionable, but it is also illegal. Anyone from any part of the British Empire could travel to another part of the Empire legally and because Canada was part of it then it meant that they shouldn’t have even been allowed to pass that law. This darker aspect of Canada’s history is significant not just because it happened, but because it meant that the racism of Canadians superseded their judgment, and is a testament to the racism prevalent within all levels of Canadian society.

In 1914, Gurdit Singh chartered a ship called the Komagata Maru to carry 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims and 12 HIndus on a voyage to Vancouver from Hong Kong. When the ship arrived in Vancouver it was held in quarantine and no one was allowed off the ship. They were kept on the ship for so long that many of the people onboard nearly starved, save for the generous donations of food and water by the Sikh community. They were denied food, water, medical attention, communication with their family and legal counsel. On July 6 of that year, the B.C. court of appeals ruled that it could not interfere with the Department of Immigration and Colonization. The ship was taken back out to sea by the Sea Lion and was forced to return to India, where many of them were imprisoned or killed for breaking the law and being political agitators.

These are the people aboard the Komagata Maru.
Notice the crowded condition.

This event is significant because of how it represents Canada’s racism towards people of other ethnicities. Had an Englishman stopped in the United States before arriving in Canada then this certainly would have been a problem; the fact that the Continuous Passage Act specifically targeted Asian immigrants makes it not only racist, but against the multicultural values that Canada has today. The Komagata Maru serves as a harsh reminder that the Canada we celebrate today did not always exist, and that Canada had to evolve from the prejudices of the past to become the country that it is today. Now, Asians make up over 26% of British Columbia’s population, and while immigration certainly has its restrictions, they are based on the character and skills of the person rather than their ethnicity.

Population of Asians in Canada today