Komagata Maru incident

The Komagata Maru incident involved the Japanese steamship Komagata Maru on which a group of citizens of the British Raj attempted to immigrate to Canada in 1914 but were denied entry.

Komagata Maru sailed from Hong Kong, then a holding of the British Empire, via Shanghai, China, and Yokohama, Japan, to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1914, carrying 376 passengers from Punjab, British held India. Of them, 24 were admitted to Canada, but the other 352 passengers were not allowed to disembark in Canada, and the ship was forced to return to India. The passengers comprised 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims, and 12 Hindus, all British subjects. This was one of several incidents in the early 20th century in which exclusion laws in Canada and the United States were used to exclude immigrants of Asian origin.

Within the British Empire, the main class of people who were not British subjects were the rulers of native states formally under the protection of the British Crown, and their subjects. Many such smaller states, especially in India, were for most practical purposes administered by the imperial government, but sovereignty rested in their rulers and not in the British Crown, and all such persons were (and still are) considered to have been born outside the sovereignty and allegiance of the Crown, and are known as British Protected Persons.

The Canadian government's first attempt to restrict immigration from India was an Order in Council passed on January 8, 1908, that prohibited immigration of persons who "in the opinion of the Minister of the Interior" did not "come from the country of their birth or citizenship by a continuous journey and or through tickets purchased before leaving their country of their birth or nationality". In practice this continuous journey regulation applied only to ships that began their voyage in India, as the great distance usually necessitated a stopover in Japan or Hawaii. These regulations came at a time when Canada was accepting huge numbers of immigrants, almost all of whom came from Europe. More than 400,000 arrived in 1913, an annual figure that has not been equaled since.

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