Closely observed ships

ABSTRACT

Komagata Maru set the template of a colonial strategy to suppress Punjabi Sikh labourers and other emigrants. What were the social components of political control imposed? How did the repressive state apparatus actively seek and receive help from European-owned monopolistic business interests? Were various forms of colonial authority and interest interlocked in the process? How did the police authorities from Bengal, Punjab, Delhi and Simla collaborate and draw support from an inter-imperial geography of surveillance? What was the impact of colonial surveillance on vessels and travellers during the weeks, months and years which followed? Finally, did the passengers resist and in what way? Drawing on the official voices traceable in reports, circulars and correspondence, this article examines the unknown facets of repression in the wake of Komagata Maru’s journey.

KEYWORDS:

• Ships
• imperial surveillance
• repression
• Ghadar

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Suchetana Chattopadhyay teaches History at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. She is also Joint Coordinator, Centre for Marxian Studies, Jadavpur University. She is the author of An Early Communist: Muzaffar Ahmad in Calcutta 1913–1929 (Tulika, 2011). The monograph is based on her doctoral research at SOAS between 1999 and 2005. She has also undertaken research at Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme, Paris as Hermes Post-doctoral Fellow (2009) and Visiting Professor (2014). She has contributed to South Asia Research, History Workshop Journal and Twentieth Century Communism: A Journal of International History. Her current research themes focus on imperial surveillance, urban social history and communist history.

Notes

1. For an account of Komagata Maru’s journey, see Johnston (1979). A pioneering historical treatment of the Ghadar Movement from 1913 to 1918 and its relationship with the world of migrant labour can be found in Puri (1983). To grasp the entwined world of the colonial state and colonial capital, see Bagchi (1972). For a survey of the Sikh diaspora in Bengal, see Banerjee (2012). A recent treatment of the surveillance network on the Sikh diaspora in North America during the early twentieth century can be found in Sohi (2014).

2. Home (Political) WBSA 322/14. WBSA stands for West Bengal State Archives.

3. IB 1105/14 (57/14). ‘IB’ stands for Intelligence Branch of the Bengal Police. By Victoria is meant Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.

4. B 1105/14 (57/14).

5. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

6. Home (Political) WBSA 80A/1916.

7. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

8. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

9. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

10. Home (Political) WBSA 322/14.

11. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

12. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

13. Home (Political) WBSA 58/19.

14. Home (Political) WBSA 58/19.

15. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

16. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

17. Home (Political) WBSA 322/14.

18. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

19. IB 1105/14 (57/14). Home (Political) WBSA 322/14.

20. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

21. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

22. IB 1105/14 (57/14). Weekly Reports of the Intelligence Branch, Bengal 1914. The Tosha Maru incident finds brief mention in Chakravorty (1997, 113).

23. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

24. Weekly Reports of Intelligence Branch, Bengal 1915.

25. IB 1105/14 (57/14).

26. Weekly Reports of Intelligence Branch, Bengal 1915.

27. Home (Political) WBSA 368/15. Shantou or Swatow, on the west coast of the Pacific Ocean was a treaty port in South Eastern China, collectively controlled by the western powers.

28. Home (Political) WBSA 368/15 (5–14). Home (Political) WBSA 368/15(22–24). Home (Political) WBSA 368/15(29–31).

29. Home (Political) WBSA 80A/1916.