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Unmooring the Komagata Maru
Charting Colonial Trajectories
Rita Dhamoon (Edited by), Davina Bhandar (Edited by), Renisa Mawani (Edited by), Satwinder Kaur Bains (Edited by)
9780774860666
Paperback / softback, published 15 February 2020
352 pages, 6 b&w photos, 1 map
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.5 kg
Unmooring is an important transnational text that sheds light on the history of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest as well as their present. - Dharitri Bhattacharjee, Western Washington University (BC Studies, Issue 209) Overall, this book is a well-written, rich and complex exploration of an event that illuminates Canadian nationalism and racisms and the transnational disciplining of brown bodies across borders, as well as historical anti-imperialist and contemporary anti-racist and anticolonial struggles. As a book that makes a vital contribution to political science and, indeed, the social sciences more broadly, Unmooring the Komagata Maru deserves an important place in university classrooms and research libraries across Canada and beyond.
In 1914, the SS Komagata Maru crossed oceans and jurisdictions to arrive at the west coast of Canada. Canadian officials, calling on legislative acts designed to limit the immigration of Indians, detained the ship for two months in Vancouver Harbour. Most of the 376 passengers were then forcibly returned to India. Unmooring the Komagata Maru challenges conventional Canadian historical accounts by drawing from multiple disciplines and fields to consider the international and colonial dimensions of the voyage. By situating the history of South Asians in Canada in a global-imperial context, this volume emphasizes the ways in which the Komagata Maru incident is related to issues of colonialism more generally. The contributors offer a critical reading of Canadian multiculturalism through past events and their commemoration. Ultimately, they caution against narratives that present the ship's journey as a dark moment in the history of a redeemed nation. Unmooring the Komagata Maru demonstrates that, a hundred years later, the voyage of the Komagata Maru has yet to reach its conclusion.
Introduction: Itinerant Subjects of Empire: Unmooring the Komagata Maru / Davina Bhandar and Rita Kaur Dhamoon Part 1: The Politics of Anti-Colonial Resistance in the Journey of the Komagata Maru 1 Right to the Empire?: British Imperial Citizenship before the First World War / Ian Christopher Fletcher 2 The Last Stretch of the Journey: The Komagata Maru, War-Time Political Radicalism, and Migrant Workers from Punjab in Calcutta / Suchetana Chattopadhyay 3 Resistance Struggles: Facing Lies, Deception, and Racism / Satwinder Kaur Bains Part 2: Migration Regimes in Colonial Contexts 4 The Komagata Maru as Event: Legal Transformations in Migration Regimes / Radhika Mongia 5 Borders, Boats, and Brown Bodies: Reading Tamil "Irregular Arrivals" through the History of the Komagata Maru / Nadia Hasan, Sailaja Krishnamurti, Omme-Salma Rahemtullah, Nayani Thiyagarajah, and Nishant Upadhyay 6 Temporary Arrivals: The Komagata Maru Passengers and Migrant Labour / Davina Bhandar Part 3: Colonial Temporalities of Memory and Cultural Production 7 The Komagata Maru Incident as Described in Two Japanese Works / Kaori Mizukami 8 (Mis)Representing the Komagata Maru in Indian Print Cultures / Irina Spector-Marks 9 The Time and Sound of the Nautical Border / Ayesha Hameed Part 4: Disrupting Colonial Formations of Nation 10 When Home and Harem Collide: The "Hindu Women's Question": A Mass Spectacle of the Canadian Nation, Family, and Modernity / Enakshi Dua 11 The Komagata Maru Recontextualized: Memory, History, and Diasporic Sikh Subnationalism in Anita Rau Badami's Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? / Rajender Kaur 12 Past Wrongs and a New National Imaginary: Remembering the Komagata Maru Incident / Alia Somani 13 The Politics of Empire: Minor History on a Global Scale / Renisa Mawani 14 Poems: Still Chanting Denied Shores / Tariq Malik Appendix 1: Historical Figures cited in the Chapters Appendix 2: BC Government Apology, May 23, 2008 Appendix 3: Canadian Government Apology, May 18, 2016 List of Contributors; Index