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Canadian PM apologizes for Komagata
Maru,
Sikhs reject apology
Community wanted PM to deliver apology in House of Commons
WSN Bureau
 SURREY (BC):
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper last Sunday apologized for
the infamous Komagata Maru ship incident of 1914 in which over 300
Indians, mostly Sikhs, seeking a better life were refused entry into
the country, but the fact that he apologized at a public gathering
and not from the floor of the Parliament, prompted Sikh groups to
reject the apology instantaneously. The feeling in the air was of
having been betrayed, and a solemn occasion left a bitter
aftertaste.
Addressing a
crowd of about 8,000 people in
Surrey, British
Columbia, at the 13th annual Mela Gadri Babian Da, Harper said
Canada was sorry for the mistreatment of the passengers in 1914 and
apologized for it.
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The Incident
The Komagata
Maru sailed into Vancouver harbor on May 23, 1914, with 376
people on board. The dominion government did not permit
passengers to disembark due to racist immigration laws and the
vessel remained docked at the harbor for two months.
The Komagata
Maru ship was later forcibly sent back to India where the
British India police shot dead many passengers in Calcutta. |
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But members of
Sikh community and an organization of the descendants of victims of
the 1914 tragedy rejected the apology, demanding that the Prime
Minister do the same in the House of Commons.
Clearly, an
apology delivered in
Surrey’s
suburban Bear Creek Park during the summer holidays was seen as an
apology of an apology.
As soon as
Harper left the stage, hundreds from the congregation rushed to the
podium immediately denouncing the apology. "The apology was
unacceptable," Jaswinder Singh Toor, president of the Descendents of
Komagatamaru Society said, adding, "We were expecting the Prime
Minister to do the right thing, like the Chinese head tax." Harper’s
had apologized to Chinese-Canadian community in 2006 for the head
tax imposed on Chinese immigrants to
Canada between
1885 and 1923.
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Some reactions
Indo-Canadian MLA Jagrup Brar: "If our Provincial Assembly can
apologize, why can't the nation's Parliament? It was the House
of Commons which had passed a unanimous resolution proposing an
apology. The apology should have been entered into the House
records. I wonder who is advising this PM."
Deepak Obhrai, Canadian parliamentary secretary (minister of
state) for foreign affairs: "It does not matter where the
apology is tendered. Some people are bound to make noises. The
government has acknowledged that Indo-Canadians were
discriminated against in the past."
Maninder Gill, managing director of Radio India: Indo-Canadians
feel “deceived and disappointed. The Surrey-based station that
broadcasts across Canada has received hundreds of phone calls
during three talk shows about Harper’s speech, and “not even one
caller came in favor of the apology”. |
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"We wanted the
House of Commons to apologize, not the PM. We reject this apology,"
shouted mela organizer Sahib Singh Thind, even as security personnel
whisked the Prime Minister away. "The government has betrayed us, as
only yesterday it had promised us that the PM will announce a date
here for the apology in Parliament later. Today, they have treated
us like they did the Komagata passengers in 1914...It was the same
racist conservative government then as now. Racism is alive in
Canada,"
Thind shouted.
In May, the
government had issued an apology for the incident, and a formal one
was to be issued by Harper.
Jason Kenney,
secretary for multiculturalism and Canadian identity, ruled out a
repeat of the apology in the House, saying: "The apology has been
given and it won't be repeated."
One post on the
internet said it seemed "the much-vaunted master message-framers at
PMO blew a perfectly good opportunity to showcase the Conservatives’
efforts to make inroads into the Indo-Canadian community, who, in
turn, were left feeling as though the PM had broken his word on a
matter of extreme, if symbolic importance."
6 August, 2008
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