SOC 3137 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Indian Nationalism
12 Feb 2018
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Factors underlying the hostility towards of the komagata maru. Economic threat (these threats are not mutually exclusive) Arrival by water, media coverage and public resistance. Vietnamese (boat people) in 1970s and 1980s. The passengers had a revolutionary agenda (indian nationalism) Majority of them were sikh who were loyal to the british army, good soldiers, masculine and khalsa adherents (sikh warriors) Contradiction: the passengers were loyal british citizens, strong imperial ties, held british passports and masculine but were anti-british empire. Undermined the racial ideology which guided nation-building project, canada was regarded as a white man"s country at the time. Passengers were unassimilable because of their oriental feature (dirty, immoral, radical, and with diseases, fear of hindu religion, fear of crowding canada with asians. Endangering the livelihood of the white working man. Cheap asian labour in a period of economic recession. Scared of the wealthy passengers on board. The working class was already demanding the jobs held by indians in bc.
