Aparita

Filmmaker Ali Kazimi takes on two types of project. Personal stories or projects that pay the bills. But he must believe in both.

Continuous Journey, Kazimi’s latest documentary, is a personal project. It screened at the Hot Docs festival, which took place from April 22 to May 1. Besides taking the second place in the audience’s favourite category, the dark documentary also received a Special Jury Prize for Best Direction in the Canadian Spectrum Programme (feature length) category.

The documentary follows the story of Komagata Maru, a Japanese ship chartered by a Sikh entrepreneur Gurdit Singh to ship Indian immigrants to Canada.

According to Kazimi’s website, “On May 23, 1914, the ship arrived in Vancouver Harbour with 376 passengers aboard: 340 Sikhs; 24 Muslims and 12 Hindus. Many of the men on-board were veterans of the British Indian Army and believed it was their right as British subjects to settle anywhere in the Empire they had fought to defend and expand. They were wrong…

“Continuous Journey is an inquiry into the largely ignored history of Canada’s exclusion of the South Asians by a little known immigration policy called the Continuous Journey Regulation of 1908. Unlike the Chinese and the Japanese, people from British India were excluded by a regulation that appeared fair, but in reality, was an effective way of keeping people from India out of Canada until 1948. As a direct result, only a half-mile from Canadian shores, the Komagata Maru was surrounded by immigration boats and the passengers were held in communicado virtual prisoners on the ship. Thus began a dramatic stand-off which would escalate over the course of two months, becoming one of the most infamous incidents in Canadian history.”

Sitting in a café in the Yonge-Bloor area, Kazimi chooses his words carefully. Taking occasional swigs of coffee, he takes time to reflect on his Continuous Journey, a documentary that would take eight years to make and still have him deeply in debt.

“I was, in some senses, trying to locate myself in the Canadian landscape as it were,” he says. “It took me many, many years to figure out that I was (making Continuous Journey), in part, as an exercise to truly claim this country as whole. And I felt I could only really claim it if I was to connect myself with people who’d come before me, from India. In fact, the very first people who came before me.

“But the initial intent was to make (the documentary) because I was angered by the way I was dealt with Canadian immigration literally since the time I landed. At the time, there was a level of - and I think it’s shifted considerably since then - of arrogance and sheer exercise of power, of specifically the immigration officer. And their discretionary power to say yes and no, as to who can come into this country.”

It’s been more than 20 years since Kazimi first came to Canada. He was a film student back then. He already had a BSc from New Delhi’s prestigious St. Stephens College. His first trip to Toronto, as an exchange student at York University, will forever be etched in his memory.

“I was pulled out of the (immigration) line by this middle-aged, white man,” says Kazimi. “He had silver hair. And a kind but patronizing tone. I was taken into a room and questioned for over 20 minutes. The basic gist of the conversation was whether I had bought the visa at some back alley in Delhi, for $10. At the end of it, he told me the only reason I was let go was because I spoke such good English. And because I’d remember him for the rest of my life.”

“This was a stark change from when my brother immigrated 10 years ago, when he welcomed warmly by a similar looking man. My experience was definitely an individual incident. But at the same time, the fact that this individual had the ability and power and lack of accountability to do (what he did) - it fascinated me.”

His first experience with the immigration officer stayed with Kazimi.

The exchange program turned into a four-year scholarship at York University’s film department. And Kazimi found himself looking up the Immigration Act in York University’s law library.

“The Immigration Act gives very wide discretionary (powers) to the immigration officer,” he says. “That got me interested in the history of immigration. And then I was trying to answer a basic question. Why do most people in the world consider that a Canadian is blond and blue eyed?

“In 1968, Canada made a decision, when its traditional source of immigration from the British Isles and Northern Europe was drying up, to open its doors. It was an economic necessity. Today that decision is part of Canada’s mythic narrative. And while I understand how national mythology works, I am not a fan of nationalism, any sort of nationalism.”

While Kazimi wants to question that national mythology, his intent isn’t to blame, he clarifies.

“I didn’t make the film to berate Canadians for being exclusionary,” he says. “It’s not to wag my finger and say, ‘You think you are multicultural but look what you did back then.’ That’s not the purpose. The purpose is that we reflect on history and that we contextualize our presence within a historical framework. It’s important to understand the context within which we live, work and understand the future.”

Although the Komagata Maru is mentioned in “two lines” in Indian history books, Kazimi first came across the story when he came to Canada, when he was trying to understand the demographics of immigration.

“I’d heard about the Chinese head tax and the Japanese internment, but the Continuous Journey Regulation is such as clever piece of regulation that it seems non- exclusionary on paper,” he says. “But it has a far more exclusionary effect. At least with the Chinese head tax and Japanese internment, there was a possibility of coming in. But for South Asians, unless you came on a continuous journey, there was no way you could come into the country, no matter how much money you had. And the numbers back it up. And yet, in the national narrative of Canada, Canada has never excluded South Asians.”

Putting the documentary together was an arduous process on many levels. There was limited archival documentation and no period film footage at all. There wasn’t much funding beyond arts council grants. Broadcasters, who are the primary way of getting funding, weren’t very keen on the story.
“One broadcaster, mainstream, told me, only half jokingly - ‘It’s a terrible, terrible chapter in Canadian history. Do us a favour and blame the British’,” Kazimi recounts.

Minimal research has been done on Komagata Maru, and so experts were hard to come by. Those who do make it on Kazimi’s documentary were people he met by happenstance. But Kazimi wanted to go back to the primary sources.

It was very hard to locate descendants of the original voyagers of the Komagata Maru. Or descendants from that era of Canadian history, who would have stories passed down the family, who would be willing to talk.

“A lot of people just don’t know their history,” says Kazimi. “Nobody wants to talk about it. People find it difficult to articulate. I had a hard time finding old-timers who’d talk about issues of race. People really started to talk about it in the 1970s, when the Komagata Maru started to become discussed in the mainstream. It’s how people deal with trauma and shame, and the desire to fit in.”

With the final edit complete, Continuous Journey is now ready to be showcased. Kazimi hopes the documentary will become one way of remembering the story of the Komagata Maru and its travellers.

“Well, they’re already teaching about Komagata Maru in high schools across Canada,” he says. “So now there’s a whole generation of kids who know about it, while their parents don’t.

“But it’s important that all Canadians remember. The Continuous Journey Regulation wasn’t written just for the Sikhs. It’s a story that affects all of us.”

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