Hello, and welcome to my first post on our newest project, “Ology of Apology”. This project focuses on the Canadian Government’s injustices towards minorities. This post will focus on a more specific event though. The Komagata Maru.

The Story

The Komagata Maru is a story of injustice, and a story of bravery, testing the limits of the law. The story starts in Hong Kong, where a wealthy Sikh man name Gurdit Singh came into possession of a boat named the Komagata Maru. 150 Punjabi passengers boarded the ship in Hong Kong, all Punjabis. But this wasn’t enough yet. The ship travelled through Japan and picked up 226 more passengers.

The ship then began its 2 month journey into Canadian waters. Although Gurdit Singh and the passengers were aware that Canada had been turning away south Asian immigrants for almost 5 years, they thought that being British subjects would be enough to be allowed admittance. This was not the case. Only 20 passengers (and a few special cases) were allowed onto solid ground due to the fact that they were returning residents and could prove it. The other 350 some passengers were kept on the boat for 2 months with food or water supply all while the local police were harassing them hoping to get them to leave by their own volition.

The Punjabi people on land did their best to get food and water to the ship while raising money to bring the issue to court. They raised an incredible sum of money and hired lawyers to take the case to court. The court later ruled that the ship had broken the continuous journey act and the ship began its journey back to India. The ship stopped in Japan where approximately 20 passengers got off of the ship. The ship then arrived in the port of Budge Budge in India, where some distrusting police members got into a scuffle with the passengers resulting in the death of 20 passengers.

This is a brick that was used to fight against the police officials trying to force the Komagata Maru to leave

Source: Museum of Vancouver

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The Apology

in 2008, Stephen Harper made a public apology to around 8,000 people in a local event in Surrey, BC. The Sikh community thought that this apology was half hearted and demanded it be said on the floor of the House of Commons, which didn’t happen until 2016, when Justin Trudeau made the decision to apologize in the House of Commons as the Punjabi community asked.

Recent events such as residential schools are getting the same sort of apology in an attempt to make things write and move forward as a society. These sorts of apologies are important because they allow the general public to be educated or just acknowledge the events and it shows the remorse and responsibility the government is taking on because of it. It also allows the community affected to observe this and forgive.

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The Conclusion

This event isn’t just some random thing from history class. This event is even significant to our lives today! This is because of the effect that it had on the way it has functioned as an example for discrimination and how we have pushed against systemic racism evident by the great variety of people now living in Canada. But overall, I think the most important part of this whole story to remember are the people that took the journey knowing it may not work out, eventually leading to the society we live in today.

 

Thanks for reading this post on the Komagata Maru, and I hope you look out for my next posts on the other racial injustices in Canada!

Signing off.