Baba Gurdit Singh (25 August 1860 – 24 July 1954) was the central figure in the

Komagata Maru incident The ''Komagata Maru'' incident involved the Japanese steamship ''Komagata Maru'', on which a group of people from British India attempted to immigrate to Canada in April 1914, but most were denied entry and forced to return to Budge Budge, Ca ...

of 1914, one of several incidents in the history of early 20th century involving exclusion laws in both Canada and the United States designed to keep out immigrants of only Asian origin. Singh was born in 1860 at

Sarhali Sarhali Kalan is a town and a municipal council in Patti subdivision of Tarn Taran district in the Indian state of Punjab. Origins The nearby village of Dadehar is more than 400 year old. It was created by a man named Dadehar who originated fr ...

, in the

Amritsar Amritsar (), historically also known as Rāmdāspur and colloquially as ''Ambarsar'', is the second largest city in the Indian state of Punjab, after Ludhiana. It is a major cultural, transportation and economic centre, located in the Majha r ...

District of the Punjab province in

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

. In 1914 he chartered a Japanese ship, the ''

Komagata Maru was a cargo steamship that was built in Scotland in 1890, was in German ownership until 1913, and then had a succession of Japanese owners until she was wrecked in 1926. She was launched as ''Stubbenhuk'', renamed ''Sicilia'' in 1894, ''Komaga ...

'', to go to Canada, reaching

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

on 23 May 1914. The government did not allow the ship to anchor and the ship was attacked by the police at night. The attack was repulsed by the passengers and it created a great stir among Indians in Canada.

Early years

His grandfather, Sardar Rattan Singh was a high-ranking military officer in the

Sikh Khalsa Army The Sikh Khalsa Army (), also known as Khalsaji or simply Sikh Army, was the military force of the Sikh Empire. With its roots in the Khalsa founded by Guru Gobind Singh, the army was later modernised on Franco-British principles by Maharaja Ran ...

and had fought against the British during the

First First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

and

Second Anglo-Sikh War The Second Anglo-Sikh War was a military conflict between the Sikh Empire and the East India Company, British East India Company that took place in 1848 and 1849. It resulted in the fall of the Sikh Empire, and the annexation of the Punjab r ...

s. He declined the British offer of a

jagir A jagir ( fa, , translit=Jāgir), also spelled as jageer, was a type of feudal land grant in the Indian subcontinent at the foundation of its Jagirdar (Zamindar) system. It developed during the Islamic rule era of the Indian subcontinent, start ...

after the annexation of the Punjab. Later on, his father Sardar Hukam Singh went to Malaya where he settled down as a contractor.

Education

Gurdit Singh received little education in his childhood, partly due to the harsh treatment of his teacher which caused him to leave school. However, at the age of 13, he privately acquired elementary education so as to be able to correspond with his father in Malaya.

British Malaya

Gurdit Singh visited Malaya in about 1885 and conducted business in Singapore and Malaya as a contractor. He returned from there in 1909. In 1911 he raised his voice against forced labour. He wrote to the government complaining against officials who forced poor villagers to work for them without remuneration, and when he received no response, he exhorted the people of his village to refuse to be subjected to

begar Veth (or ''Vethi'' or ''Vetti-chakiri'', from Sanskrit ''visti''), also known as Begar (from Persian), was a system of forced labour practised in the Indian subcontinent, in which members of populace were compelled to perform unpaid work for the ...

(forced labour).

Legacy

Though he himself was a well-to-do fisherman in Singapore, Gurdit Singh chartered a Japanese ship, the ''

'', in 1914 to go to Canada, with the aim of helping his compatriots whose journeys to Canada were being blocked. The government of Canada had put restrictions on the entry of Indians. The ship had a total of 376 passengers out of whom 351 were

Sikh Sikhs ( or ; pa, ਸਿੱਖ, ' ) are people who adhere to Sikhism, Sikhism (Sikhi), a Monotheism, monotheistic religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Gu ...

s and 21 Punjabi Muslims. The ship sailed from Hong Kong to Vancouver on 3 April 1914. The obstructions put up by the alien authorities and the hardships faced by its passengers turned them into staunch nationalists.{{cite book, last=Singh Duggal, first=Kartar, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VtuOZBTkHAMC&q=Baba+Gurdit+Singh&pg=PA62, title=Philosophy and Faith of Sikhism, publisher=Himalayan Institute Press, year=1998, isbn=0-89389-109-6, location=Honesdale, Pennsylvania, pages=61–62 The ship reached Vancouver on 22 May 1914, it was not allowed to anchor and was attacked by the police at night. The attack was repulsed by the passengers and it created a great stir among the Indians in Canada. This is known as the

. An agreement was reached and the ship sailed back to India. It reached

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

on 29 September 1914. However, the passengers were not allowed to enter Calcutta; they were rather ordered to board a Punjab-bound train especially arranged for the purpose. They refused to do so and many of the passengers were killed, though a great many escaped. Gurdit Singh was aware of the problems that Punjabis were facing in getting to Canada due to exclusion laws. He was apparently also aware of the January 1914 regulations when he chartered the Komagata Maru, with the purported goal of challenging the

continuous journey regulation The continuous journey regulation was a restriction placed by the Canadian government that (ostensibly) prevented those who, "in the opinion of the Minister of the Interior," did not "come from the country of their birth or citizenship by a contin ...

and opening the door for immigration from India to Canada. He believed he could circumvent this law by hiring a boat to sail from Calcutta to Vancouver. At the same time, in January 1914, he publicly espoused the

Ghadarite The Ghadar Movement was an early 20th century, international political movement founded by expatriate Indians to overthrow British rule in India. The early movement was created by conspirators who lived and worked on the West Coast of the United ...

cause while in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

.Johnston, H., op. cit., pp. 24 and 25. The Ghadar Party was an organisation founded by Indians of the United States and Canada in June 1913 with the aim of liberating India from British rule. It was also known as the Hindi Association of the Pacific Coast.

Later years

Baba Gurdit Singh escaped and remained underground for many years until 1920 when, on the advice of

Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...

, he made a voluntary surrender at

Nankana Sahib Nankana Sahib () is a city and capital of Nankana Sahib District in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is named after the first Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Nanak, who was born in the city and first began preaching here. Nankana Sahib is the most ...

and was imprisoned for five years. Later, he settled in Calcutta. He died on 24 July, 1954, in Amritsar and was cremated at his native village Sarhali Kalan, Tarn taran. In 1937, Pratap Singh Kairon, the future Chief Minister Punjab and then an Akali nominee, entered the Punjab Legislative Assembly, defeating the

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of a ...

candidate, none other than Baba Gurdit Singh of Sarhali. Baba Gurdit Singh had one son, Baba Balwant Singh. Baba Balwant Singh had two sons, Ajit Singh & Jaswant Singh, and five daughters: Harbhajan Kaur, Sawant Kaur, Amarjit Kaur, Balbir Kaur & Dalbir Kaur. His sons both died in late seventies and early eighties. He has two paternal grandsons, one of them lives in Zira and the other (Tejpal Singh Sandhu) lives in Canada while their mother (his daughter-in-law) is settled in the US. His grandson, living in Zira, died in 2014 in a car accident near Sarhali.

References

External links

Descendants of the ''Komagata Maru'' Society Website, a site dedicated to educating people about the ''Komagata Maru'' Incident
1860 births 1954 deaths History of human rights in Canada Indian revolutionaries International maritime incidents