Canada features in legacy lawsuit
Thu, October 02 2008
Malwinderjit Singh Waraich, a prominent Indian historian and lawyer, has extensively researched his country’s freedom struggle.
He recently filed two separate petitions in the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking freedom fighters’ status – which includes pensions and benefits for the surviving heirs – for the passengers of the Komagata Maru, a vessel that was turned away from the Vancouver coastline by the Canadian government in 1914.
The first petition was launched in 2003; a second petition was filed in 2005. “There is no word on when the hearing will start, while the Canadian government has already apologized,” Waraich told the South Asian Post from India.
The ship came to Vancouver on May 23, 1914 with 376 Indian passengers, mostly Punjabis, aboard. The ship was turned away two months later under the controversial, discriminatory continuous journey law.
On its return to Calcutta, India, British troops fired upon some of the passengers, who resisted attempts to forcibly send them back to Punjab in a special train.
The shootings left a dozen passengers dead at Budge Budge Harbour in Calcutta. Last Monday was the anniversary of the Budge Budge massacre.
“This whole episode shaped the future struggle for independence from the British occupation in Punjab, said Waraich.
“The survivors of the Komagata Maru ship were transformed into revolutionaries.”
None of the vessel’s passengers is alive today.
The Indian Home Ministry initially said in its first reply to the petition in 2004 that the ship passengers were not freedom fighters, but had gone to Canada for economical reasons.
Waraich said that is an insult to the revolutionaries, whose families did not get pensions or benefits while the families of those Indians who allied themselves with the colonial British continue to flourish in a free India.
“Since Canada was a dominion state of the British government, these people saw a conspiracy behind the whole affair and joined the revolutionaries upon their return,” he said.
By Gurpreet Singh
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