India’s Canadian history
Thu, September 11 2008
Reflecting a growing desire among young second generation Indian immigrants to explore historical events that had a deep impact on the diaspora, two young Indo-Canadians have been sifting through archival material in Delhi over the past several months to focus on significant journeys by ship and air.
Alia Somani, a doctoral researcher, is looking at two events: the 1914 Komagata Maru incident when Indians travelling to Canada were turned away from Vancouver and the bombing of an Air India aircraft in 1985. Nalini Mohabir’s research is on the journey of a ship, MV Resurgent, which brought back the last group of Indian indentured workers from Guyana in 1955.
The metaphor of journey is important to migrants since the migration from home to the new land symbolizes the distance travelled from home. Both Somani and Mohabir’s families have made several journeys in the past.
Somani’s family left Rajkot, Gujarat, to go to Tanzania and when the wave of Africanization swept East Africa her parents moved to Canada. Mohabir’s ancestors left a village near Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh to go to British Guyana more than 100 years ago and years later her parents migrated to Canada.
Somani, who is writing a book titled Broken Passages, deals with two events as journeys that were incomplete and connects them through the notion of broken passages.
Both journeys had a sad end. “The Komagata Maru passengers were arrested when they returned to Calcutta (now Kolkata) on the suspicion that they may be part of the Ghadar Movement, while the passengers on the plane had their Canadian citizenship negated,” Somani explained.
The two events in Canada form a significant part of the creative work by Indo-Canadians in recent times. Many of the creative writers in Canada have returned to the image of a ship and a plane caught between the borders of Canada and India.
Author Anita Rau Badami’s 2006 book “Can You Hear The Nightbird Call?” also dealt with the Komagata Maru incident and the bombing of Air India Flight 182 as well as the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India. Earlier, Bharati Mukherjee wrote a short story, Management of Grief on the same subject.
A film called Air India 182 by Canadian filmmaker Sterla Gunnarsson created a stir when it was premiered in Vancouver.
The docudrama reconstructed the bombing and the investigation into the crime by talking to the relatives of those who died in the plane crash. Of the 329 passengers on the Air India flight, 280 were Canadian citizens, many of them women and children.
Alia Somani, a doctoral researcher, is looking at two events: the 1914 Komagata Maru incident when Indians travelling to Canada were turned away from Vancouver and the bombing of an Air India aircraft in 1985. Nalini Mohabir’s research is on the journey of a ship, MV Resurgent, which brought back the last group of Indian indentured workers from Guyana in 1955.
The metaphor of journey is important to migrants since the migration from home to the new land symbolizes the distance travelled from home. Both Somani and Mohabir’s families have made several journeys in the past.
Somani’s family left Rajkot, Gujarat, to go to Tanzania and when the wave of Africanization swept East Africa her parents moved to Canada. Mohabir’s ancestors left a village near Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh to go to British Guyana more than 100 years ago and years later her parents migrated to Canada.
Somani, who is writing a book titled Broken Passages, deals with two events as journeys that were incomplete and connects them through the notion of broken passages.
Both journeys had a sad end. “The Komagata Maru passengers were arrested when they returned to Calcutta (now Kolkata) on the suspicion that they may be part of the Ghadar Movement, while the passengers on the plane had their Canadian citizenship negated,” Somani explained.
The two events in Canada form a significant part of the creative work by Indo-Canadians in recent times. Many of the creative writers in Canada have returned to the image of a ship and a plane caught between the borders of Canada and India.
Author Anita Rau Badami’s 2006 book “Can You Hear The Nightbird Call?” also dealt with the Komagata Maru incident and the bombing of Air India Flight 182 as well as the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India. Earlier, Bharati Mukherjee wrote a short story, Management of Grief on the same subject.
A film called Air India 182 by Canadian filmmaker Sterla Gunnarsson created a stir when it was premiered in Vancouver.
The docudrama reconstructed the bombing and the investigation into the crime by talking to the relatives of those who died in the plane crash. Of the 329 passengers on the Air India flight, 280 were Canadian citizens, many of them women and children.
By Shubha Singh
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