Description
Book SynopsisUnmooring the Komagata Maru challenges conventional historical accounts to consider the national and transnational colonial dimensions of the
Komagata Maru incident.
Trade ReviewUnmooring is an important transnational text that sheds light on the history of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest as well as their present. -- Dharitri Bhattacharjee, Western Washington University * BC Studies, Issue 209 *
Overall, this book is a well-written, rich and complex exploration of an event that illuminates Canadian nationalism and racisms and the transnational disciplining of brown bodies across borders, as well as historical anti-imperialist and contemporary anti-racist and anticolonial struggles. As a book that makes a vital contribution to political science and, indeed, the social sciences more broadly, Unmooring the Komagata Maru deserves an important place in university classrooms and research libraries across Canada and beyond.
-- Elaine Coburn, Glendon College, York University * Canadian Journal of Political Science *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Itinerant Subjects of Empire: Unmooring the Komagata Maru / Davina Bhandar and Rita Kaur Dhamoon
Part 1: The Politics of Anti-Colonial Resistance in the Journey of the Komagata Maru
1 Right to the Empire?: British Imperial Citizenship before the First World War / Ian Christopher Fletcher
2 The Last Stretch of the Journey: The Komagata Maru, War-Time Political Radicalism, and Migrant Workers from Punjab in Calcutta / Suchetana Chattopadhyay
3 Resistance Struggles: Facing Lies, Deception, and Racism / Satwinder Kaur Bains
Part 2: Migration Regimes in Colonial Contexts
4 The Komagata Maru as Event: Legal Transformations in Migration Regimes / Radhika Mongia
5 Borders, Boats, and Brown Bodies: Reading Tamil “Irregular Arrivals” through the History of the Komagata Maru / Nadia Hasan, Sailaja Krishnamurti, Omme-Salma Rahemtullah, Nayani Thiyagarajah, and Nishant Upadhyay
6 Temporary Arrivals: The Komagata Maru Passengers and Migrant Labour / Davina Bhandar
Part 3: Colonial Temporalities of Memory and Cultural Production
7 The Komagata Maru Incident as Described in Two Japanese Works / Kaori Mizukami
8 (Mis)Representing the Komagata Maru in Indian Print Cultures / Irina Spector-Marks
9 The Time and Sound of the Nautical Border / Ayesha Hameed
Part 4: Disrupting Colonial Formations of Nation
10 When Home and Harem Collide: The "Hindu Women’s Question": A Mass Spectacle of the Canadian Nation, Family, and Modernity / Enakshi Dua
11 The Komagata Maru Recontextualized: Memory, History, and Diasporic Sikh Subnationalism in Anita Rau Badami’s Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? / Rajender Kaur
12 Past Wrongs and a New National Imaginary: Remembering the Komagata Maru Incident / Alia Somani
13 The Politics of Empire: Minor History on a Global Scale / Renisa Mawani
14 Poems: Still Chanting Denied Shores / Tariq Malik
Appendix 1: Historical Figures cited in the Chapters
Appendix 2: BC Government Apology, May 23, 2008
Appendix 3: Canadian Government Apology, May 18, 2016
List of Contributors; Index
