Immobile mobilities and free-flowing Sikh movements from Punjab

ABSTRACT

This essay borrows Bryan Turner’s theory of the ‘enclave society’ to throw light on imperial tactics and strategies deployed to immobilize the transnational movements of Sikhs under imperialism focusing on the Komagata Maru episode [2007. “The Enclave Society: Towards a Sociology of Immobility.” European Journal of Social Theory 10 (2): 287–304]. It proposes the notion of immobile mobilities to argue that while regulated movements from Punjab were catalyzed by imperial policies related to the recruitment of Sikhs in the imperial army, police and railways in the nineteenth century, free movements were immobilized through domestic and international regulations and legislations in the imperial ‘immobility regime’. It begins with providing an overview of the imperial policies through which assisted movements of different Asiatic groups produced sequestered spaces that Turner considers as the features of an enclave society. Then, it proceeds to trace the immobilization of the free flows of Sikhs through strategies of closure, sequestration, isolation and detention.

KEYWORDS:

• Enclave society
• mobilities
• immobilities
• immobility regime
• sequestration
• exclusion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Anjali Gera Roy is a Professor in the Department of Humanities of Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, who works on fiction, film and performance traditions of India, diasporas and Punjab. She is the author of Cinema of Enchantment: Perso-Arabic Genealogies of the Hindi Masala Film (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan 2015), Bhangra Moves: From Ludhiana to London and Beyond (Aldershot: Ashgate 2010) and Three Great African Novelists (Delhi: 2001). She has edited Imagining Punjab, Punjabi and Punjabiat in the Transnational Era (London: Routledge 2015) and The Magic of Bollywood: At Home and Abroad (Delhi: Sage 2012). She has also co-edited (with Chua Beng Huat) The Travels of Indian Cinema: From Bombay to LA (Delhi: OUP 2012), (with Nandi Bhatia) Partitioned Lives: Narratives of Home, Displacement and Resettlement (Delhi: Pearson Longman 2008) and (with Nukhbah Taj Langah) a special feature on ‘Siriaki Across India and Pakistan’ in Muse India: the Literary E-journal, July–August 2011. In addition, she has published 100 essays in literary, film and cultural studies.

Notes

1. This ‘culture of mobility‘ engendered by imperial policies in Punjab led to many Punjabi groups crossing the apparently porous boundaries of the Empire (Tatla 1995) to rehearse circular movements and fall into the peripatetic niche of the despised nomadic ghummakar and khanabadosh communities of Punjab.

2. Gurdit Singh states that ‘the proposed voyage would be a test of the sincerity of the Government of Canada in framing the rules’ (2007, 63).

3. The Report refers to a purchase of ammunition by Harnam Singh and Hookam Singh, Bhag Singh as well as to Harnam Singh’s involvement in seditious activities in BC and their conference with Taraknath Das. It also refers to the circulation of the Khalsa Akhbar by Harchand Singh of Lyallpur in Vancouver through the gurdwara at Vancouver.

4. Debunking the myth of the preferential recruitment of Sikhs in the imperial army as a reward for Sikh loyalty to the British, VeenaTalwar Oldenburg points out that as the greater part of the soldiers’ earnings went towards repaying the heavy taxes imposed under the imperial revenue system, both the Punjabi villager and the soldier were victims of imperial development (2002).

5. Tatla states that between 1895 and 1901, the number of Sikhs employed in the railways and security service was 3000.

6. According to Gurdit Singh, there were 10,000 Indians in Canada and America by 1910, 90% of whom were Sikhs (2007, 59).

7. In hindsight, Borden ‘regretted that Hindus made this attempt in view of the fact that the order prohibiting entry of artisans into British Columbia did not discriminate against Hindus in particular’ (‘Komagata Maru Incident: 90 Hindus Rejected as Medically Unfit.’ Ottawa June 1, 1914).

8. The Rowlatt Report discovered a Ghadr design behind the Komagata Maru by tracing the Ghadr’s links to Vancouver, casting aspersions on Gurdit Singh’s character and alleging that some of the Canadian Punjabis were revolutionaries of the Hardayal School (Waraich and Sidhu 2014, 90). Ghadr members in San Francisco were certainly in contact with those in Shanghai, Malaya, Hongkong, Manila, Burma and elsewhere and communicated with one another at a speed that was astounding in the days of poor or no connectivity (Waraich and Sidhu 2014).

9. ‘Our common Sovereigns, their Majesties, have solemnly promised all subjects of the Empire, regardless of race, equality of treatment’ (Memo December 2011, Waraich and Sidhu 2014, 20).

10. ‘Sikhs Allowed to Land in San Francisco.’ San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 1899, 10.

11. A newspaper reported that medical examination of passengers aboard the Komagata Maru began on the 24 May 1914 and that hundreds of ‘Hindoos’ who attempted to reach the ship on boats were turned back. On 28 May, the Premier replied to the Dominion House of Commons that only 20 had been admitted on the ground that they were returning to Canada and several excluded as the result of physical tests (‘The Question in Dominion House,’ May 28, 1914). Subsequently, on 1 June 1914, the Minister of Interior Roche stated that 90 of a ship-load of Hindus at Victoria had been rejected as medically unfit and 13 allowed to return.

12. … ‘it would be highly undesirable to have them in this Colony, where they may contaminate the Indian troops and the agglomeration of Indians who find employment as private watchmen’ (F. H. May, 25 July 1914, Waraich and Sidhu 2014, 95).

13. In opposition to the negative mobility of the vagrant and vagabond in the European and Canadian imaginary, the vagabond has been privileged in globalization theory and had religious associations in the South Asian context.

14. Although other Punjabi mobilities, such as that of peddlers in the UK and Australia, of merchants in Central and Southeast Asia and of khanabadosh multi-task nomads between Central Asia and Punjab, remained outside imperial surveillance, Gurdit Singh clearly identifies himself as an imperial subject rather than the peripatetic ghummakad.

15. D. C. Philliot’s letter of 6 August 1914 (Waraich and Sidhu 2014, 99). E. J. S. Swayne, in his Note on ‘Sikhs sent back from Vancouver’ of 5 August, states that ‘it was thought that the deportation of a number of Sikhs to India would greatly help toward the result, every one of the deported men being a centre of disaffection in the Punjab’ (Waraich and Sidhu 2014, 100). The Secretary of State for India, in his telegram dated 27 August 1914 to the Viceroy warned that ‘the circular which is signed by nine prominent Indians says passengers on “Komagata Maru” are relied to induce military desertions in Hong Kong in order that the Indian Army may be influenced’ (Waraich and Sidhu 2014, 105).

16. His Britannic Majesty’s Consul General Kobe, in his letter dated the 2 September 14 to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, stated that he had ‘received anonymous letters from two passengers, stating that the Indians intend to make trouble on arrival in India’ (from Waraich and Sidhu 2014, 109).

17. The British Ambassador, Tokyo, in his telegram dated the 15 September 1914, to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department stated that he was ‘informed that Javaher Mal Mansukhani, an agitator, if he is allowed to proceed to Calcutta, is likely to try to cause trouble on arrival in India’ (Waraich and Sidhu 2014, 114–115).

18. The report from the Viceroy to the Secretary of State of 2 October 1914 states that they had suggested the return of the ship to Madras rather than to Calcutta where the atmosphere was less excitable (Waraich and Sidhu 2014, 127). J. G. Cumming, Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal, in his report dated 12 October 1914 admits that the decision to prevent Gurdit Singh and the passengers from entering Kolkata was intentionally taken to prevent them from venting their grievances in this volatile city that might prove to be excitable (Waraich and Sidhu 2014, 127).

19. Cummings states that Budge Budge landing was chosen to prevent the passengers to ‘come to the Howrah Railway Station’ as ‘there is a Sikh Gurduwara in Howrah’ where ‘some demonstrations’ might have been made excitable (Waraich and Sidhu 2014, 127).

20. The presence of persons like Dr Raghunath Singh who boarded the ship, Bela Singh who was used as an informer by the Canadian immigration department confirms the strict monitoring of Sikh movements by the imperial government.

21. This was first voiced by Gurdit Singh when he remonstrated that when even a pauper English man is permitted to travel and work in India the Sikhs should be permitted to do so. Gurdit Singh’s notice to the authorities on being detained that he was a merchant and ‘there was no law to prevent the merchants to go on shore’ and passengers proving their credentials as landowning cultivators rather than labourers or artisans drives home their awareness of class based regulations. Their contestation of the basis on which 20 odd Sikhs but mainly Dr Raghunath Singh were permitted to land foregrounded the anomalies even in class based regulation of mobility.