Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has named a three-member committee for the Community Historical Recognition Program to sensitize and inform Canadians about the 1914 Komagata Maru tragedy.
Vancouver-based businessman Jack Uppal will chair the committee. The other two members are Professor Ratna Ghosh of McGill University and Peel District School Board (Brampton and Mississauga) teacher Iqbal Gill.
The members, Kenney said, have met once and looked at some of the projects that the community groups have submitted for considerations. This is part of the mandate of the committee -- to advise the minister about which projects they would recommend.
Kenney said they have put in $2.5 million for projects that could help create awareness about the wrongs done to the community in 1914.
Establishing the Community Historical Recognition Program, Kenney said, 'It is tangible proof of our government's determination not only to acknowledge the hardships faced by the Indo-Canadian community, but also to use education to fight racism and to embrace diversity in today's society.'
The projects that will be approved under the federal government allocation, Kenney said, will 'transmit into the future the memory of the experience of the Komagata Maru, so that not just children going to school today but their children and their children's children will remember that there was a time in Canada when we weren't a welcoming society, when the doors of opportunity were not always open.'
Uppal said, 'We want to help all Canadians understand the Komkagata Maru incident and the early experiences of the Indo-Canadian community.'
"We need to get the Canadian public to know about the racist history which was aimed at South Asians -- the sooner the better," Ghosh said.
Ghosh, who teaches race relations and diversity at McGill, was surprised that even a group of her colleagues and would be teachers didn't know anything about the Komagata Maru.
Therefore, she said, it is important that "not only Indo-Canadians to know about it -- I want all Canadians to know about this incident, including the French Canadians.
"My interest in the whole project," she continued, "is the history that's taught in schools. It doesn't include the Komagata Maru incident and people don't know about it. Canadians ought to know what kind of policies we had before and that there were some important wrongs done, a blot on Canada's whole idea of diversity."
The Komagata Maru is not a Sikh issue or a Punjabi issue, she emphasized. "It is an Indo-Canadian thing as of 376 passengers onboard Komagata Maru, 24 were Muslims and nine Hindus."
An avoidable tragedy
In 1914, the passengers on board the Komagata Maru, a Japanese a ship from Hong Kong carrying 376 Indians, were not allowed to disembark in Canada.
'Because the ship didn't make a continuous journey to Canada, as prescribed by immigration regulations at the time, only 22 of the passengers, those were the returning Canadian residents, were allowed to land in the port of Vancouver,' Kenney pointed out.
"After a two-month standoff with authorities the ship was escorted out of Canadian waters and returned to India, where British officials intended to transport passengers to the Punjab. This resulted in a riot which we recall, where 29 passengers were shot by British soldiers and 20 of whom tragically died.'
Director Deepa Mehta is shooting a film on the tragedy in which the leading role is being played by Bollywood heavyweight Akshay Kumar.
