Its for your own good that we don’t want you here

[muhammad_abuzar]

The Komagat Maru incident is etched in the Canadian Sikh memory as a moment of profound injustice. The Continuous Journey act had severely curtailed the migration of South Asians to Canada. For Sikhs in particular, this injustice stung even more. Sikhs had been part of the Royal army. They had been praised and prized for their (mythical) ‘warrior’ race. Out of all South Asians, they had been on the fringes of the Empire the most. For all intents and purposes, they were entitled to rights in any part of the Empire. That is not to say that they were deluding themselves with thinking that they were equal wit the white subjects of the Empire. However, they were expectant of fair treatment at least.
Now when people like King simply deny Indians the potential of a good life in Canada on such superficial bases as cold tolerance, it tends to infuriate people. Now the matter with Asiatic diseases, racist though it very much is, is much more understandable. However, such words coming out of the mouth of settlers who were just finishing up the devastation caused indigenous people by their own diseases are very ironic.
David Goutor documents an interesting story of Hans Ibing, a German migrant, who came to the Canada on the basis of the Railway agreement which was created in a push to populate the west with good farmers. He explains that Hans Ibing didn’t even a little bit of trouble when he entered Canada on the basis of this agreement while stating his occupation as a clerk even though, the agreement required farming experience. This when seen with the fact that most Punjabi’s were farmers and were still denied entry. Also, these Punjabis were part of the army that had fought against these very Germans as enemies in the First World war. From a humanist perspective, this is injustice. From a historical perspective, its is pure hypocrisy to be denied entry on the basis of unsuitability.

David Goutor, A Chance to Fight Hitler: A Canadian Volunteer in the Spanish Civil War (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2018)