Komagata Maru: Discriminatory Immigration Policies

100 years of Komagata Maru case

Komagata Maru Ship 23May 1914

Canada observes centenary of a historic 'failure' of Komagata Maru case.
On May 23, 1914, the Japanese ship arrived outside Vancouver Canada. With discriminatory immigration policies of Canada in place, nearly 400 passengers, mostly Sikhs from India, were could not get permission of entry so they were prevented from disembarking. Two months later, it was sent back to India.

The Komagata Maru incident involved a Japanese steamship, the Komagata Maru,which was actually a cargo ship, that sailed from Hong Kong to Vancouver,(British Columbia in Canada), in 1914 via Shanghai, China to Yokohama Japan. It was carrying 376 passengers India out of them 24 were got entry Canada, but the 352 remaining passengers were not allowed to enter in Canada. Then the ship was forced to return back to India. The passengers were counts of 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims, and 12 Hindus, all British subjects. This was one of the several incidents took place in the history of early 20th century involving exclusion laws in Canada and the United States both countries designed to keep out immigrants of only Asian origin.
This incident of return of Komagata Maru became known in India as the Budge Budge Riot.
The Canadian government’s first attempt to restrict immigration from India was to pass an order-in-council on January 8, 1908. In practice this applied only to ships that began their voyage in India. India to Canada had a great distance which usually necessitated a stopover in Japan or Hawaii. These regulations existed at a time when Canada was accepting massive numbers of immigrants (in 1913 alone over 400,000 immigrants entered into Canada and this figure that is still remains unsurpassed), most of them came from Europe.