A page from history...

'Canadians cannot...afford to

waste sympathy where it is not needed'

I continue to explore Canadian history as part of my preparation for the forthcoming citizenship test. Last week I wrote about World War I (see 22-01-14 entry below).

Today, it’s about Canada’s immigration policies.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, during his recent trip to Israel, pointed out the grievous error Canada committed in preventing Jews to immigrate into Canada during World War II, when Jews in large parts of Europe were victims of genocide by the Nazis.

Our teacher at the citizenship class (held at the Agincourt public library) informed us last week about the significant role that the Chinese Canadian played in building the Canadian Pacific Railway (Ribbons of Steel).

Subsequently, of course, the Canadian government didn’t want the Chinese labourers to settle in Canada and imposed a head tax of $50 in 1885, which was increased to $500 in 1904. That is roughly equivalent to more than $10,000.

Of course, in 2006, Prime Minister Harper offered a full apology for the Chinese head tax that people of Chinese origin had to pay from 1927 to 1947 to immigrate to Canada.

In Chapter VI (A Nation on the Move – 1867-1921) of the History of the Canadian People – Volume II, authors Margaret Conrad and Alvin Finkel say, “The Chinese, who performed the most dangerous jobs in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), were almost universally despised. 

In defending his policy of importing Chinese workers, John A Macdonald (Canada’s first Prime Minister) revealed his contempt when he told a Toronto political meeting: “Well, they do come and so do rats. I am pledged to build the great Pacific Railroad in five years and if I cannot obtain white labour, I must employ other.  

The two volume book has two CDs that contain historical nuggets that reveal interesting facets of Canadian history. The following passage from the Industrial Banner of 1897 is a shocking testament to the then prevailing prejudices against Chinese immigrants across North America.

Head tax document

Here’s an extract from a publication called Industrial Banner published in 1897.

The Curse of Chinese Immigration: What It Has Done for Other Countries and What It Is Doing for Canada

In a large measure the people of eastern Canada are blind to the grave menace that Chinese immigration is to the interests of the country. The action of the Dominion Trades and Labor Congress in asking the Dominion Parliament to raise the tax on Chinamen entering Canada from $50 to $500 is a step in the right direction. A great deal of false sympathy is expended on behalf of John [a man from China] by people who have never investigated the question or asked why organized labor seeks to prevent the unrestricted immigration of Chinamen. We are assured that if we wish to make a Christian of John we should welcome him with outstretched arms and try to do him good; but we candidly confess, without any apology, if those are the only terms on which he can be Christianized he had better remain a heathen, for a little while longer at any rate.

Now, as a matter of fact, every country that has suffered through the immigration of the Mongolian race has had sooner or later to take active steps to combat the evil ...We have it on the authority of a prominent clergyman, who made a study of the question as it affected San Francisco, that for every Chinaman converted to Christianity in that city he was confident that, at a very low estimate, twenty Americans went to hell. Children in that city, to his personal knowledge, were in hospitals through the contraction of loathsome vices and diseases as a direct result of their contact with Chinamen. In the Chinese quarters of the city the inhabitants are herded like rats, an ordinary room in many cases having as many as two additional floors placed in it so as to make three with not space for a man to stand upright; and here, packed like sardines in a box, the Chinaman lives, works, eats and sleeps. He can subsist on a few cents a day; and this is the kind of competition that self-respecting white labor is asked to meet.

As more directly affecting Canadians we can state that at the present times the Chinese are increasing in British Columbia to an alarming extent, and they are bringing with them the same vices that have worked such dire effects in San Francisco. They are entering all avenues of trade and are slowly, but surely, displacing white labor on every hand; they are in the mines and canneries, and, in fact, it is hard to find an avocation that sooner or later they do not enter. Even the clergymen in British Columbia are standing shoulder to shoulder with organized labor, as indeed do all classes of the community; for there, where the evil is recognized, no maudlin sentimentality or false sympathy is wasted.

It is not only British Columbia that is threatened but the whole Dominion. Mr. Chinaman does not stand still; once he has secured a footing he gradually works his way, and, once established, it is next to impossible to get rid of him. During the last year the increase of the Chinese in Winnipeg, Manitoba, was over 25 per cent, and even there people are beginning to realize the danger.

Here in London (ON) and in points further east, we have them, and though as yet in no great numbers they are increasing. So far they have confined themselves to the laundry business; this is always the first step, but, inevitable as fate, when the time comes they will invade other fields, and when too late the people of the east will realize that the people of the western provinces should have had their support before the evil had gained too great a footing. Australia has had to grapple with this question and they have already done what the Dominion Trades and Labor Congress has asked the Dominion Parliament to do.

Wherever free and slave labor has come into competition, free labor has always inevitably been forced to the wall. Living as he does under the most degrading conditions, subsisting on the outlay of a few cents a day, the Chinaman is in a position to take a situation for a pittance that no self-respecting white man could live on, leave alone support a family. The Chinaman has no desire to be raised to a higher position or plane of life; he has no intention of becoming a citizen; on a miserable pittance he can live and accumulate what will be a fortune when he returns to China. It is because of this that the people of the Pacific province are crying out for relief. It is for this that the Dominion Trades and Labor Congress has asked for an increase of the tax.

Canadians cannot, at this time, afford to waste sympathy where it is not needed. Organized labor has been actuated by no narrow or contracted spirit, it has no fight with the Chinaman because he is a Chinaman or foreigner but because of the grave menace which his presence is to the welfare of the country. Shall we stand idly by and see free labor displaced by slave labor, because slave labor means a larger profit for those who employ the Chinese; or shall we insist that Canadian labor shall be protected and stem this tide that threatens such dire calamities to the working classes. Agitate this question everywhere until the government shall be compelled to act and stem the tide of undesirable Mongolian immigration.

We will have more to say on this matter in the future for we believe that if not resolutely encountered now it will have to be faced when it has grown to more alarming proportions. Now is the time to crush the danger, and it cannot be undertaken a moment too soon.

Source: Industrial Banner (October 1897).

Thankfully, today there is no overt prejudice against immigrants. But one merely needs to scratch the surface to face an imperceptible yet impenetrable wall racism and bias. It takes different forms, and the most common is the lack of Canadian experience in employment. There are many other forms, and newer ones like the Quebec charter of values are emerging to put immigrants on the defensive.  

Image: http://www.ccnc.ca/toronto/history/info/info.html

Are we more peaceable?

I’m preparing for my Canadian citizenship test, and one of the important sections in the book Discover Canada is the important role that Canada and Canadians played in World War I. Over 600,000 Canadians served in the war, most of them as volunteers; 66,000 died. Canadian Corps captured Vimy Ridge in 1917. One Canadian officer said, “It was Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific on parade…in those minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation.” April 9 is celebrated as Vimy Day.

In the past, I have found it paradoxical that for a country that has essentially been a pacifist for most of its history, and one that invented the concept of peacekeeping, Canada is richly proud of its military engagements.

In my 2011 column in the Canadian Immigrant, I wrote: “Like most sensible people, I’m opposed to war and to military intervention by one state or many states into another. Personally and ideologically I find Canada’s presence in Afghanistan unjustifiable. Many Canadians share this view. However, even when a majority remain opposed to Canadian presence in Afghanistan, an equal number or more love and respect the armed forces and especially those who are killed while serving the country.”

A senior journalist (Paul Hambleton) had explained about the Canadian tradition to recognise and respect the sacrifices of the armed forces – right from the World War I veterans to the young soldiers in Afghanistan. This veneration overrode ideological opposition to war and militarism. This was an issue of national consciousness and identity.

This year, the world will observe the centenary of World War I – the Great War that killed over nine million people, and (till WWII) was one of the worst wars in recorded human history.

I’ve been reading Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature why violence has declined. It argues that despite the death, destruction and savagery that human beings inflicted upon each other in the 20th century, there has actually been a steady decline in war and violence. The contention is seemingly untenable, but Pinker’s marshalling of historical facts and his interpretation make for a compelling read.

He notes, “…in the West today public places are no longer named after military victories. Our war memorials depict not proud commanders on horseback but weeping mothers, weary soldiers, or exhaustive list of names of the dead. Military men are inconspicuous in public life, with drab uniforms and a little prestige among the hoi polloi. In London’s Trafalgar Square, the public across from the big lions and Nelson’s column was recently topped with a sculpture that is about as far from military iconography as one can imagine: a nude, pregnant artist who had been born without arms and legs. The World War I battlefield in Ypres, Belgium, inspiration for the poems ‘In Flanders Fields’ and the poppies worn in Commonwealth countries on November 11, has just sprouted a memorial to the thousand soldiers who were shot in that war for desertion – men who at the time were despised as contemptible cowards…Conspicuous pacifism is especially striking in Germany, a nation that was once so connected to martial values that the words Teutonic and Prussian became synonyms for rigid militarism…yet today German culture remains racked with soul-searching over its role in the world wars and permeated with revulsion against anything that smacks of military force.”

An interesting point of view was presented by Historian Niall Fergusson in his 1999 book The Pity of War. He termed World War I as the “greatest error of modern history,” and argued that had Britain not entered World War I, the course of history would’ve been very different. Germany would’ve taken control of Europe, “and Continental Europe could…have been transformed into something not wholly unlike the European Union we know today – but without the massive contraction in British overseas power entailed by the fighting of two world wars.”

For good measure, he adds, “with the Kaiser triumphant, Adolf Hitler could have eked out his life as a mediocre postcard painter . . . in a German-dominated Central Europe about which he could have found little to complain. And Lenin could have carried on his splenetic scribbling in Zurich, forever waiting for capitalism to collapse -- and forever disappointed.”

(quotes from The Pity of War taken from the book's review in The New York Times)

For a previous post on Niall Fergusson, click here: History as Opinion

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Image: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152817425065663&set=a.186987155662.160435.177183000662&type=1&theater

Sufi Poets Series - III: American Sufi

Sheniz announcing the launch of Sufi Poets Series III

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Anand Mahadevan’s American Sufi is a story of a family based in Pakistan one of whose member has turned into an Islamic fundamentalist, is jailed in an Indian prison, and released in exchange of hostages taken in an airplane hijack.

The fundamentalist’s cousin goes to the United States for education, and returns to Pakistan with friends (including a white woman friend) for a brief sojourn.

But in the post 9/11 investigations, is apprehended by the FBI and deported to Pakistan.

Anand Mahadevan,
reading from his forthcoming novel
American Sufi

Anand’s reading from his soon-to-be-published novel was the mainstay of the third episode of the Sufi Poets Series organized by Sheniz Janmohamed’s Ignite Poets.

The blurb of the novel posted on the event’s online poster describes the novel thus: “The novel weaves in elements of Sufi storytelling, sub-continental history, and Urdu poetry to reveal the tragedy of a land and its people rent between their devotion to the pacifist strain of Sufi Islam and the growing clout of Saudi-funded militancy.”

Anand has a sonorous cadence to his reading. It became intricately enmeshed with the muted ambience at Beit Zatoon, Toronto’s favourite arts and culture venue that has unmistakable political underpinnings, in an evening of music, poetry and prose.

Jawaid Danish, theatre veteran and filmmaker, whose film Bada Shayar Chota Aadmi was released to wide acclaim in 2013, read Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Urdu poems.

Tariq Hameed, on his harmonium, sang devotional and romantic Sufi songs and qawwalis. The pièce de résistance was Lal Meri Pat “Oh red robed” (Amir Khusro, Bulleh Shah), which led to the audience demanding an encore.

 

Anand Mahadevan, Sameer Shahid Khan,
Tariq Hameed & Ravi Naimpally

Sameer Shahid Khan, strumming his guitar, and interpreting Bulleh Shah’s classic Bulla Ki Janna “Who Knows Who I AM” was soulful, original and adventurous, even.

The dexterous Ravi Naimpally was on the tabla.

Among the other Sufi compositions performed that evening included Maula Naam (Shahbaz Qamar Fareedi), Saeen (Junoon), Allah Hu, Aukhe Painde (Bulleh Shah).

Sheniz Janmohamed

Sheniz has become a master at organizing such culture-rich events, and that cold December evening, she had once again woven her deft magic to bring to life an evening that had everyone enthralled and asking for more. 

Photos by Ashutosh and Shivankur Sharma

On unpacking a carton of books - I

Guest post 

by Ashoak Upadhyay

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About three years ago, my wife and I moved to Pune from Mumbai, a shift that involved throwing out a lot of knick-knacks collected over the years and for me bringing home the collection of books that we had kept stored in cartons in a small flat in the northern most suburb of the city.

I decided to set up my library in the Pune apartment and so had the sealed cartons sent over by a bronchial tempo on that may well have been its last journey spewing smoke all along the expressway till it sputtered to a halt below our house.

Many boxes hadn’t been opened in all these years; their contents hadn’t seen the light of day for more than a decade. I had forgotten their existence, the bland, marker-pen inscription scrawled across a side, “AU-Books” offering few clues about their individual identities.

To the assonant sounds of my new neighborhood’s frenetic modernization--vehicular horns blasting, bleating mindlessly, drills screeching through iron rebars at construction sites that spring up like warts overnight on a green landscape and the fetid stink from open garbage dumps overtopped like ice-cream cones that lingers like bad memories, I began wrenching open those boxes. Huffing and puffing.

I tore apart the top-end folds, lifted the files sheltering the piles below from God knows what, began excavating. My breathing slowed, a tinnitus hiss drove off all sounds as I gazed down upon the pile I had pulled out, setting aside one book at a time onto the floor beside my stool. I felt like Alice falling into Wonderland Titles and cover illustrations flitted before my eyes like ethereal images from a forgotten life.

To say that these images awakened an elegiac mood of an age when I had read so many of these works of great literature would be half the story. They altered time from a chronological sequencing, day to night, minutes to hours into time moving elliptically, from one temporal plane to another, fusing, separating but always vivid.

They seemed to have a smell of their own too. A handful of paperbacks, Penguins, let off a musty smell of mothballs and newsprint, pages crinkling as I flipped them. Miss Havisham and her wedding cake! I was young Pip! Then Joseph Conrad floated before my eyes. Conrad! I hadn’t read him in a decade! I pulled one novel out after another: The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, his magisterial Nostromo, paperbacks. And then, as if holding them all up, An Outcast of the Islands---a tattered hardback 1929 edition, his scrawl on the last page, “…Cordially Yours…”

All senses, sight, smell tactile immured me into this elliptical time zone. I shut my eyes and saw this callow young man, a promiscuous reader scouring the pavement stalls near Cross Maidan for bargain paperbacks to help him define his place in this world.

Why did he buy Antonio Lobo Antunes’ South of Nowhere? I flipped through it amidst the gathering pile around me. Was it the blurb that described it as a first person narrative of Portuguese colonialism in Angola, its depravity?

I picked up Under Western Eyes, paperback. The bronze horseman on the cover, his forelegs reared up as if to crush a puny figure fleeing before that terrifying prospect took me to pre-revolution Russia just as The Secret Agent brought me to an England that Conrad savaged in that great work. 

Image: http://villabourani.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/1027551-834322958.gif

Continued in the post below: