Making and Unmaking of Strangers – The Komagata Maru Episode and the Alienation of Sikhs as Undesirable Persons

Roy, Anjali Gera

doi:10.1080/17448727.2016.1147171

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In fact, "in the recollection of [Punjab's] Lieutenant-Governor Michael O'Dwyer [it was] "by far the most serious attempt to subvert British rule in India"" (Gill, 2014, p. 24). Through her study of Gadar Party surveillance, postcolonial scholar Anjali Gera Roy notes two larger phenomena of state-subject relations: (1) imperialism functioned through an "immobility regime", where Sikhs could only migrate without threat so long as it was through British orders as imperial servants and (2) the 1915 Gadar Party conspiracy trials set a lasting precedent for the subsequent Red Scare and other suppression of anti-US political sentiment (Gera Roy, 2016aRoy, , 2016b. As the Gadar Party gained in popularity and mobility, the German Foreign Office and Russian communists offered financial support and political refuge, validating the Party's threat to the British Empire.…”

Section: Sikh (American) Politics: Subversion To Subserviencementioning

confidence: 99%

The limits of imperial incorporation: Alternative sociological frameworks to study Asian American subjects

Kaur

Tran

2023

Sociology Compass

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This paper argues existing scholarship on Asian American communities is limited by an assumption that incorporation into the US can productively address racial and economic precarity. As an alternative, we offer "Extinguishing Asian (American) Insurgency", a theoretical framework that incorporates histories of colonialism, imperialism, and postcolonial politics of incorporation into contemporary sociological analyses of Asian subject formation. Applying Du Boisian sociology alongside Frantz Fanon and Joy James, the framework adopts a global, relational analysis of Asian Americans and the US state. We demonstrate the framework's utility through two case studies: anti-colonial Sikh diasporic politics through the Gadar Party and US state efforts to tie diasporic South Vietnamese identity to an anti-communist politic. As such, we encourage the study of alternative possibilities of Asian subject formation that are extinguished by state incorporation, particularly through imperialism and military serivce. Specifically, we address sociologists who extinguish the insurgent Asian American subject in their scholarship by assuming incorporation and pro-state politics as a natural end goal of migration, or those who simply do not name the US as the institutional force extinguishing possibilities of Asian Americans' insurgency.

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Section: Sikh (American) Politics: Subversion To Subserviencementioning

confidence: 99%

The limits of imperial incorporation: Alternative sociological frameworks to study Asian American subjects

Kaur

Tran

2023

Sociology Compass

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“…Labelling those who perished at Budge Budge as martyrs, the Ghadar Party connected current events with Sikh martyrs of the past to create the appearance of an unbroken chain of violent rebellion against colonial forces, one which Sikhs were obliged to continue. Roy (2016) goes so far as to argue that the increased British surveillance of Sikhs following these concerning moments for the Empire completed the alienation of Sikhs, from which utter rebellion was ultimately assured. Letters written by Sikhs show the community was not at all univocal on such an issue.…”

Section: The Dissatisfied and Disillusioned Diasporamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…("Hindu" was the label applied to all people from the Indian subcontinent and appears to have been willingly donned by Sikhs, further demonstrating the ambiguous identities at issue. See (Roy 2016)). While Sikh subjects of the Raj felt their status as British subjects entitled them to freedom of movement anywhere within the British domain, Canadian subjects sought methods of preventing an influx of peoples they saw as inferior and dangerous, and images of dark-skinned, turbaned workers were effectively put to use in nativist propaganda.…”

Section: The Dissatisfied and Disillusioned Diasporamentioning

confidence: 99%

Sikh Self-Sacrifice and Religious Representation during World War I

Soboslai

2018

Religions

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This paper analyzes the ways Sikh constructions of sacrifice were created and employed to engender social change in the early twentieth century. Through an examination of letters written by Sikh soldiers serving in the British Indian Army during World War I and contemporary documents from within their global religious, legislative, and economic context, I argue that Sikhs mobilized conceptions of self-sacrifice in two distinct directions, both aiming at procuring greater political recognition and representation. Sikhs living outside the Indian subcontinent encouraged their fellows to rise up and throw off their colonial oppressors by recalling mythic moments of the past and highlighting the plight of colonial subjects of the British Raj. Receiving less discussion are Punjabi Sikhs who fought in British forces during the Great War and who spoke of their potential sacrifice as divinely sanctioned in service to a benevolent state. Both sides utilized religious symbolism in the hope that Sikhs would again enjoy a level of self-rule that had been lost with the arrival of the British Empire.

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“…During the twentieth century, the first of such incidents occurred in 1914, when the 376 passengers aboard the Komagata Maru challenged a racist Canadian policy attempting to prevent the immigration of British subjects from the Indian subcontinent. After much political and media attention, they were refused entry and deported back to Kolkata (then colonial Calcutta), where twenty of them were killed in riots and others were detained and tortured (Mongia 1999; Ward 2002; Johnston 2014; Silverman 2014; Mawani 2015; Roy 2016). In 1939, when the MS St-Louis arrived off the shore of Nova Scotia requesting that authorities let the more than 900 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany land and claim asylum, they were received with bold anti-Semitic statements and sent back to Europe.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is thus something significant and troubling about Canada’s response to migrants and refugees who arrive by sea without authorization. And recent debates and interventions related to irregular arrivals need to be interpreted in relation to the heritage of the Komagata Maru , and understood as profoundly imbricated in the project of Canadian colonial state-building (Macklin 2011; Gera Roy 2016; Moffette and Vadasaria 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fighting Human Smuggling or Criminalizing Refugees? Regimes of Justification in and around R v Appulonappa

Moffette¹,

Aksin²

2018

Can. j. law soc.

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Following the arrival of the MVOcean Ladyin 2009, four men were charged with human smuggling under s. 117 of theImmigration and Refugee Protection Actfor having helped Sri Lankan asylum seekers reach Canada. Section 117 made it a criminal offence to aid and abet the unauthorized entry of asylum seekers, including when this was done for humanitarian reasons, to help family members, or as a matter of mutual aid. The case made its way to the Supreme Court and, in 2015, the court ruled inR v Appulonappathat s. 117 was too broad, potentially criminalizing humanitarian workers and family members who help transport asylum seekers, and should be interpreted in a strict manner. This article draws from pragmatic sociology to study the regimes of justification mobilized by various actors involved in, and around,R v Appulonappabetween 2009 and 2015. It focuses on two sites of contestation that crystalized around divergent conceptions of fairness and safety, discussing how competing regimes of justification were used to advance stakeholder’s positions.

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Making and Unmaking of Strangers – The Komagata Maru Episode and the Alienation of Sikhs as Undesirable Persons

Cited by 9 publications

References 6 publications

The limits of imperial incorporation: Alternative sociological frameworks to study Asian American subjects

The limits of imperial incorporation: Alternative sociological frameworks to study Asian American subjects

Sikh Self-Sacrifice and Religious Representation during World War I

Fighting Human Smuggling or Criminalizing Refugees? Regimes of Justification in and around R v Appulonappa

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