Here we go again...
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As we talked about last class, American Immigration Laws - such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Alien Contract Labor Law, and the Immigration Act of 1917 - mainly targeted east Asian communities from immigrating to the US also impacted South Asians who wished to come to America. "White Canada Forever" by P. Ward discusses the challenges faced by Punjabi workers in British Columbia and California. In America, the fear of losing American cultural identity to Asians strengthened the idea of the Yellow Peril. Anti-"Hindoo" sentiment in British Columbia and California were connected to west-coast racism against the Chinese and Japanese. Among white British Columbians, who wanted to preserve racial (white) homogeny, the arrival of Punjabi immigrants was a perceived threat to their cultural identity. Ward describes this mindset stating, "[t]he presence of East Indian stirred the same concern for racial homogeneity that the Chinese presence had long aroused" (p. 80).
Like the Yellow Peril, which comes from the idea that East and Southeast Asians are "core imagery of apes, lesser men, primitives, children, madmen, and beings who possessed special powers," the stereotypes of East Indians, in this case Punjabis, were often dehumanizing (Dower). Punjabis were seen as unclean and unhealthy, which eventually became justification for systemic discrimination against East Indians in Canada. Ward quotes an anti-"Hindoo" critic who stated, "[t]he country from which they come... has long been recognized as a hotbed of the most virulent and loathsome diseases" (p. 82).
Similar to America's Alien Contract Labor Law, which was enacted out of fear of the immigrant worker, Canadians held a similar fear over the increase in Punjabi labor. The Victoria Trades and Labor Council feared "cheap Asiatic labour" flooding the workplaces and argued that it would "exclude the very class of labour that is most essential for the progress and prosperity of the country - i.e., white workers" (p. 82). Fear that Punjabi labor would undermine their economic standing reflects how competition was framed within a racial context - white Canadians vs. East Indian, Punjabi Immigrants - which further fuelled anti-Indian sentiment.
Yellow Peril Info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril#cite_note-4
Dower, John W. (1986). War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon. pp. 3–13. via WIKIPEDIA