Canadian Journal of Political Science: Voices of Komagata Maru: Imperial Surveillance and Workers from Punjab in Bengal Suchetana Chattopadhyay,, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2018, pp. 192

• Main Author: Dhamoon, Rita Kaur
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.12.2019
• Subjects: Borders; Colonialism; Diaspora; Imperialism; Interest groups; Migration; Political activism; Political science; Surveillance; Canada; Singapore; United Kingdom > UK; Bay of Bengal; Japan; Hong Kong China; East Asia; India; Kolkata India
• ISSN: 0008-4239; 1744-9324
• DOI: 10.1017/S0008423919000647

[...]Chattopadhyay notes that migration from Punjab to the wider British Empire was initially fuelled by colonial land revenue policies that disrupted agrarian life; she tracks the exchanges between Canada, Calcutta, New Delhi, Hong Kong, Kobe, Singapore and Britain that convinced the colonial authorities in India that the Komagata Maru passengers were a political threat and that other ships had be closely observed; she highlights the way in which communications between different revolutionary groups crossed regional and national borders; and she explores the official interactions between British colonizers in India and other stakeholders, such as the Japanese captain of the Komagata Maru, who appeared keen to present himself as a British ally at a time when Japan was remanoeuvring its own place on the world stage. [...]the book offers a critical assessment of the close relationship between inter-imperial geographies of surveillance and the power of colonial capital. [...]the book beautifully illustrates the importance of “histories from below”—what Chattopadhyay refers to as micro-histories of the urban, local and everyday intertemporal and long-term settings of colonialism.