Law, Identity and Imperial Logics of Exclusion: The Case of the Komagata Maru Passengers

This article investigates the journey of the Komagata Maru in 1914, and the multiple exclusions of its primarily Sikh passengers from various colonial jurisdictions, through the lenses of global and local legitimacy contestations across the British Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. The paradox of its subjects' mobility (i.e. accommodating the aspirations of 'white-only' self-governing colonies and disapproving the race-based exclusion of its 'non-white' subjects) had consumed the Empire for almost two decades. This contradiction necessitated justifications of exclusion that would be compatible with the liberal ideology of all subjects having equal rights and palatable to the political expediency considerations of different colonies. The transformation of the legal identities of the ship's passengers from 'farmers' to 'labourers' to 'seditionists' during a short span of five months facilitated the institutionalisation of alternative logics of exclusion based on class and loyalty to the Empire. Through an in-depth study of an important episode in colonial history, this article attempts to foreground how intricate linkages among law, legitimacy and identity played out during a critical juncture for the British Empire.