"...some confusion to this day what exactly occurred at Canada Pacific Railroad's Pier A in Coal Harbour. Though Canadian immigration policy, most infamously the head tax, was set at the federal level, enforcement generally fell to a mix of provincial and federal officials with overlapping and oft-confused jurisdiction. In the socially and politically tense climate of 1914 Vancouver, this meant that enforcement and greeting these newcomers fell to local policemen and customs officers who were perhaps even more hostile to Asian Indian immigrants than federals who thought of India merely as some far-off exotic land. Though anti-Oriental agitation in Vancouver had previously largely been focused on the region's Chinese, the population of Japanese, Korean and particularly Sikh immigrants had boomed along with the city over the past decade, and "the Hindoo" (though few of the Punjabis in Vancouver were, in fact, Hindus) was as much a target of the large race riots in 1907, 1911 and 1912 as had been other "Asiatics." One thing that set Indians apart in particular was their reputation for political radicalism; unlike the Japanese and Koreans who often converted to Christianity and endeavored to assimilate, or the politically disorganized Chinese who typically kept to themselves in their enclaves, many of the Punjabis in British Columbia were educated and connected to a particular intellectual current throughout their diaspora, with the militantly revolutionary Ghadar Party that advocated an imminent and violent Ghadar, or revolt, first in Punjab and then to spread throughout India to secure the subcontinent's Swaraj, or independence from British rule. While Ghadar was becoming increasingly potent in Punjab proper, it was first and foremost a movement tied to radicalized and left-wing Punjabis on the North American West Coast, with its intellectual epicenter in San Francisco but increasingly in the socialist-friendly Northwest, such as in International Workers of the World strongholds like Seattle and now Vancouver, where many prominent Ghadarites had made a home and were eagerly anticipating the arrival of many of their countrymen.
The Ishii Maru was prevented from even tying up to the slip at first, kept 200 feet offshore as Canadian officials tried to decide what to do. Unlike the more bureaucratic American customs officials who were posted in Asian ports, the Canadian laws were more dependent on the cooperation of British officials in Hong Kong or Singapore, and how nearly four hundred Indians had slipped through the cracks to now arrive, packed tight aboard a Japanese cargo vessel, was a question vexing them. The federal government even got involved to debate next steps, with Whitney taking the pulse of Cabinet members on whether to seek a court opinion. There were a variety of problems at play that the ever-pragmatic Whitney had to consider, such as nervous cables from the India Office in London that communicated concerns about how handling the situation poorly could backfire in the subcontinent, but also public opinion in Vancouver. If the passengers of the Maru were allowed to disembark, their illegal gambit to immigrate to Canada would have worked, proving that Canadian immigration laws were not worth the paper they were printed on and presaging a rush of not just Indian but potentially East Asian immigrants overrunning British Columbia as the exclusion policy proved unenforceable - this was precisely the nightmare scenario ferociously Nativist western voters had feared for a generation.
Whitney's hand was forced before long as the long-serving and reformist Conservative Premier of British Columbia, Richard McBride, had gotten out ahead of his allies in Ottawa with a statement definitively ruling out any chance of the disembarkation of the people aboard the vessel. McBride had made a name for himself with a policy program of economically progressive reforms to stimulate his province's oft-volatile economy that included railroad construction, the establishment of a university, and a novel course of deficit reduction through spending cuts and tax raises, but had balanced this approach with a populist, nativist appeal demagoguing against Asian immigration. He was partially pushed into this position by the enormous local popularity of the "Vice Crusader" H.H. Stevens, who had parlayed his campaigns against opium dens, brothels and even ordinary taverns into serving as an MP for the city in Parliament, and was now thought to be looking for a more lucrative role either in British Columbia or Ottawa. Becoming the public face of the opposition to the Ishii Maru served his purposes very well and he quickly staged rallies and legal interventions to "keep the Hindoos on the water." In turn, local Punjabi immigrants began organizing their own "shore patrols" who started agitating and holding meetings to push for the boat to finally dock and resolve that if the Maru was not allowed to deposit its cargo, they would follow it and its passengers back to Punjab to instigate Ghadar. The circumstance of this one Japanese ship was now a red line for both sides from which they could not back down, the situation in the Burrard Inlet spiraling out of control as Ottawa and even the new Cecil government in London panicking as it tried to discern the path forward.
Onboard the Ishii Maru, in cramped conditions and frustrated with bobbing aimlessly offshore, the men started to find their patience wearing thin. On the morning of May 28, the Maru was brought up to the dock so it could be properly inspected after the Japanese government complained. A mutiny had already occurred onboard the boat, however, with several Ghadarites having relieved the Japanese captain of his command. When the ship touched to the dock and Canadian immigration officials led by Stevens and the intransigent chief officer RJ Reid attempted to board, they were rushed by the passengers, who also began pelting policemen down on the dock with pieces of coal and bricks from the ship's hold. Punjabi bystanders from the city's local community rushed out onto the dock to help their countrymen, and were immediately fired upon, as were men on the boat; the situation quickly descended into pandemonium as white Canadian dockworkers got wind of the situation and hurried down to Pier A to help. A full-blown riot on the docks and onboard the Maru erupted simultaneously. Twenty passengers died, as did four policemen and three dockworkers, while over a hundred total people were wounded. Dozens of Punjabis from both the vessel and Vancouver were arrested, with three shot outside the courthouse due to claims of resisting arrest. The night of the 28th was tense, but violence returned upon the news on the afternoon of the 29th that Reid had succumbed to his injuries in the crush aboard the Ishii Maru. On the steps of Vancouver General Hospital, where Reid had died, an injured and visibly shaken Stevens followed up the Premier's public call for calm with a fiery speech in which he denounced "our enemy within" and "this city's most savage element" and further elaborated that the "barbarism of the Panjab-man underlines why it is we must exclude them from our civilized shores."
Whether the ever-ambitious Stevens had intended to incite Vancouver's fourth major race riot in seven years is debatable, but the impact of one of Canada's most infamous polemics is without dispute. While the previous anti-Oriental race riots had managed to avoid any loss of life, the incident of the Ishii Maru had inflamed the opinion of the city's white majority into an all-out pogrom. Dominion Hall, a popular meeting place for the Punjabi assemblies of the prior weeks, was attacked during a meeting; six men were beaten to death and another five lynched outside. A further ten men and women were killed in Vancouver during a night of violent rioting in Punjabi-heavy boroughs, and dozens of businesses and homes destroyed, leaving hundreds Indo-Canadians homeless and destitute. Every man arrested for his behavior during the riot was eventually acquitted if charges were even brought, while seventeen Punjabis from the boat and Vancouver were eventually sentenced to die for their role in the events on Pier A while a further forty were deported back to India rather than imprisoned. As for the Ishii Maru itself, it was escorted out of Vancouver Harbour and back to Calcutta, where attempted arrests of Singh and other leaders aboard the vessel resulted in yet another riot started by the ship's unlucky and angry passengers, resulting in a further twenty-one deaths.
The Ishii Maru Affair is often cited on both sides of the Pacific Ocean as one of the most important events in Indian history, curious as it may be for that distinction to be levied upon an incident that occurred in Vancouver. The inflammation of Indian public opinion and spiking popularity of hardline Anglophobic sentiment, particularly Ghadarites in Punjab, would lead to the following year's Ghadar Mutiny and the beginning of the civil conflict in the Punjab; as for Canada, its impacts still reverberate today. Politically radical movements had found a fertile breeding ground in British Columbia on both left and right. H.H. Stevens was now a rising star to nativist Canadian Tory activists and following the death of James Whitney in September, his inclusion in Leighton McCarthy's Cabinet, even in junior portfolio, was seen as a necessary sop both to the grassroots and to McBride, who worried that Stevens wanted his job, and the "Vice Crusader's" demagogic brand of populist politics soon was finding purchase not just across the West but in Ottawa. [1] Punjabi-Canadians, meanwhile, to this day hold the event up as the formative experience of their community. Ghadarite publications did not cease but flourished even with attempted censorship rules, and suspected informants were murdered, as was British immigration official WC Hopkinson, to whom information had been passed on Ghadarites aboard Ishii Maru. Commemorations to the dead are held to this day both in Vancouver and in India, and indeed many leaders of the coming Mutiny were Vancouverites who had indeed meant it when they resolved to return to the mother country in the event of the Ishii Maru being denied her dock...
- Faultlines: The Complicated History of Canada's Ethnic Tensions [2]
"...anger. The Viceregal office, already reeling for over a year since the assassination of Hardinge and following crackdown on Indian political activity, was terrified by the rapidness with which the Swarajis were able to organize. Intellectual and elite opinion, which had previously viewed Punjabi agitation as a distraction, was firmly sympathetic to Singh's cause upon his return and the men slain in Vancouver and at Budge Budge were immediately martyrs. More than anything, the event had a huge impact inside Congress itself, where the hardline Garam Dal faction was suddenly re-ascendant after years of tension and equanimity with the "soft" of Naram Dal, who were done no favors with Gokhale's death less than nine months later in February 1915, leaving the path for Tilak and his fellow "hots" clear to fully take over Congress's internal machinery to the dismay of the moderates..."
- Seeking Swaraj: The Struggle for Indian Independence
"...that even moderates such as Motilal Nehru had begun to concede to reality made an impression on the elite students at Presidency. It was the first time in his life that Subhas had felt any stirring of nationalist feeling, with his privileged background within the bhadrilak elite having previously inured him from such passions. Ishii Maru changed everything, though. "I was not a Punjabi by birth, but in the summer of 1914, especially as one traveled through the Raj on break from studies, one realized that all politically aware Indians were suddenly Punjabi by sentiment," he wrote years later. Indeed, upon returning to school after his long and strange journey searching for a spiritual guru that same year, the debates on campus had taken on an entirely new tenor, one in which the well-educated minds of Bengal's wealthiest men had suddenly lost much, though certainly not yet all, of their sympathies for Britain..."
- Bengal Tiger: Subhas Chandra Bose and India [3]
[1] Or, the "Orange Crush Gets Worse"
[2] A lot of this is basically just lifted from OTL's similarly-important Komagata Maru incident, just with the name of the ship changed and in my typical fashion making things way bloodier/worse for everyone
[3] And so we are introduced for the first time to a very important character in Cincoverse history
) it was the oldest tobacco brand in the United States. Founded in New York in the 1760s and was an independebt company til being bought out in 2014.
