Arts, Faculty of
Asian Studies, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Bhardwaj, Ajay
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
University of British Columbia
The central preoccupation of this dissertation is human mobility and how mobility in form of myriad diasporas has transformed our world. In charting diasporas, I focus on a community of progressive South Asian Canadian labour cultural activists termed as the Desi Left in British Columbia. Theoretically, I seek to interrogate Robin Cohenâs concepts of ethnoreligious diasporic community and homeland nationalism that produce a singular immigrant history. Gyanendra Pandeyâs conceptual understanding of unarchived history and trifling/exile within provides the framework to write the Desi Leftâs history and uncover the structural inequality of gender within it. By discussing labour cultural activism around a strand of the Desi Left- the Canadian Farmworkers Union in British Columbia (1978-1989)- I connect the early fragments of the Desi Leftâs history with that of local socialists, trade union activists and the broader South Asian community. The cultural work of progressive writers and their literary societies in the 1970s and the 1980s generated a massive archive that allows me to document the history of the Desi Left. To further enrich resources for this study, I recorded extensive video interviews with labour cultural activists who crossed racial and communal boundaries in cultural solidarity work during the period. My list of cultural activists is made up of women organizers, leaders of the farmworkersâ movement, musicians, writers, visual artists, theatre activists, and filmmakers. Their cultural productionâ photos, posters, artwork, radio interviews, plays and videos documentaries gave a distinct cultural turn in the history of the Desi Left. The rich multimedia archive informing this dissertation has given me an opportunity to explore new methodological directions, including the production of a two-hour video documentary When the Tide Goes Out. This documentary is an integral part of this dissertation.
WHEN THE TIDE GOES OUT: DESI LEFT IN BRITISH COLUMBIA, 1978 TO 1989 by Ajay Bhardwaj A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Asian Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) March 2022 © Ajay Bhardwaj, 2022 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: WHEN THE TIDE GOES OUT: DESI LEFT IN BRITISH COLUMBIA, 1978 TO 1989 submitted by Ajay Bhardwaj in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in ASIAN STUDIES Examining Committee: Dr. Harjot Oberoi, Professor, Department of Asian Studies, UBC. Supervisor Dr. Adheesh Sathaye, Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies, UBC. Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Sebastian Prange, Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies, UBC. Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Geraldine Pratt, Professor, Department of Geography, UBC. University Examiner Dr. Christina Laffin, Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies, UBC. University Examiner iii Abstract The central preoccupation of this dissertation is human mobility and how mobility in form of myriad diasporas has transformed our world. In charting diasporas, I focus on a community of progressive South Asian Canadian labour cultural activists termed as the Desi Left in British Columbia. Theoretically, I seek to interrogate Robin Cohenâs concepts of ethnoreligious diasporic community and homeland nationalism that produce a singular immigrant history. Gyanendra Pandeyâs conceptual understanding of unarchived history and trifling/exile within provides the framework to write the Desi Leftâs history and uncover the structural inequality of gender within it. By discussing labour cultural activism around a strand of the Desi Left- the Canadian Farmworkers Union in British Columbia (1978-1989)- I connect the early fragments of the Desi Leftâs history with that of local socialists, trade union activists and the broader South Asian community. The cultural work of progressive writers and their literary societies in the 1970s and the 1980s generated a massive archive that allows me to document the history of the Desi Left. To further enrich resources for this study, I recorded extensive video interviews with labour cultural activists who crossed racial and communal boundaries in cultural solidarity work during the period. My list of cultural activists is made up of women organizers, leaders of the farmworkersâ movement, musicians, writers, visual artists, theatre activists, and filmmakers. Their cultural productionâ photos, posters, artwork, radio interviews, plays and videos documentaries gave a distinct cultural turn in the history of the Desi Left. The rich multimedia archive informing this dissertation has given me an opportunity to explore new methodological directions, including the production of a two-hour video documentary When the Tide Goes Out. This documentary is an integral part of this dissertation. iv Lay Summary Diasporic communities have often been studied by scholars as ethnoreligious communities influenced by homeland nationalism. This dissertation writes an alternative history of a cosmopolitan community of progressive South Asian Canadians in British Columbia, described by me as the Desi Left. The literary and cultural work of South Asian Canadian progressive writers and their literary societies in the 1970s and the 1980s is at the heart of imagining the Desi Left in British Columbia. During 2019, I recorded extensive video interviews with labour cultural activists who crossed racial and communal boundaries in order to create alternate subjectivities. Their cultural production yielded a rich multimedia archive that has enabled the writing of this dissertation and the production of the accompanying full-length documentary. The dissertation text and documentary also aim to address the representational absence of South Asian Canadian women from the Desi Leftâs history under consideration. v Preface This dissertation is an original intellectual product of the author, Ajay Bhardwaj. The fieldwork reported in Chapters 2-4 and the accompanying dissertation video documentary was covered by UBC Ethics Certificate number H19-01192. vi Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ iii Lay Summary .............................................................................................................................. iv Preface ........................................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ vi List of Supplementary Materials ............................................................................................. viii List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................................. ix Dedication ..................................................................................................................................... x Chapter 1: Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 Unarchived Histories ................................................................................................................ 1 Problematizing Diaspora ........................................................................................................... 4 Sources .................................................................................................................................... 12 The Formation of a New Archive: Interviews ........................................................................ 17 Archiveology ........................................................................................................................... 21 Imageâs Indexicality and the Interview as Testimony ............................................................ 22 Recording Interviews .............................................................................................................. 28 Post-production ....................................................................................................................... 31 Chapter 2: South Asian Diaspora in Canada .......................................................................... 36 Legislated and Societal Racism .............................................................................................. 40 Prehistory of the Desi Left ..................................................................................................... 43 Women .................................................................................................................................... 55 Entrepreneurs ........................................................................................................................... 60 First Phase of the Desi Left ..................................................................................................... 63 Second Phase of the Desi Left ................................................................................................. 74 Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) ...................................................................................... 81 Chapter 3: Singing from the Same Hymnbook ........................................................................ 84 Aesthetic Activism .................................................................................................................. 85 vii A Tradition of Labour Cultural Activism ............................................................................... 87 Imagining a Subcommunity of Progressive Punjabis ............................................................. 93 Emotions of the Times .......................................................................................................... 101 The Cosmopolitan World of Punjabi Writers ....................................................................... 103 Theatre of Social Change ...................................................................................................... 105 Exciting Time for the Arts and Politics ................................................................................ 109 Cultural Infrastructure in a Movement ................................................................................. 114 The Long Memory ................................................................................................................ 119 Doing Oneâs Shift ................................................................................................................. 130 Chapter 4: Women Should Take a Stand ............................................................................... 135 Contextualizing Gender and Labour ..................................................................................... 136 Interiority and Agency .......................................................................................................... 140 Struggle Behind the Strength ................................................................................................ 145 Women in Theatre ................................................................................................................. 150 Women in Films and Photographs ........................................................................................ 155 Women in the CFU ............................................................................................................... 160 Women in their Own Words ................................................................................................. 168 Chapter 5: Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 180 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 193 Appendix : Interview Questions ............................................................................................. 203 viii List of Supplementary Materials Video documentary : When the Tide Goes Out ix List of Abbreviations BCGEU British Columbia General Employees Union BCOFR British Columbia Organization for Fighting Racism CFU Canadian Farmworkers Union CPR Canadian Pacific Railway CCF Co-operative Commonwealth Federation CPC (ML) Communist Party of Canada (Marxist Leninist) DEC Dominion Executive Committee EIDC East India Defence Committee EISA East India Students Association EIWA East India Workers Association ESL English as Second Language FCOR Farmworkers Organizing Committee IMA Indian Mahila Association IPANA Indian People's Association in North America IPTA Indian Peopleâs Theatre Association IJW Independent Jewish Voices IWA International Woodworkers of America IWW International Workers of the World KKP Kirti Kisan Party LARA Labour Advocacy Research Association NDP New Democratic Party PAAR Punjabi Arts Association Richmond SANSAD South Asian Network for Secular and Democracy SORWUC Services Office and Retail Workers Union of Canada SPC Socialist Party of Canada TWPC Third World Peopleâs Coalition UBRE United Brotherhood of Railway Employees UBC University of British Columbia UFWA United Farmworkers of America WC-CARS West Coast Coalition Against Racism Society YCL Young Communist League x Dedication To Dr. Chinmoy Banerjee, in loving memory.1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION While our century is chronologically young, historically it has in great measure been shaped by much older forces like globalization, transnationalism, technological disruptions and the mobility of capital and labour. The central preoccupation of this dissertation is human mobility and how mobility in the form of myriad diasporas has transformed our world. The theoretical framework for understanding such unprecedented mobility is still largely unarticulated. Equally, what exactly constitutes the archive of such mobility within a deterritoralized space remains an open question. Can we track and document the traces of transnational mobility within the bounded spaces of national archives? Unarchived Histories To answer these questions, I would like to begin by referencing a persuasive essay, by Gyanendra Pandey, a leading member of the Subaltern Studies collective. In this critical essay, Pandey proposes that un-archived histories are not histories for which there is no archive. Instead, these are histories that are un-archived in the very process of archiving specific dimensions of our pasts and present as history.1 The historian in Pandey compels him to note that the archive and memory are generally controlled by political power, and unarchived histories are histories to which we are generally denied access. He deploys Derridaâs argument that the archive is a âcommencementâ (origin), âcommandmentâ (authority)â¦ as well as the exclusive and unquestioned ground for historical knowledge.â2 In Foucauldian terms, Pandey proposes the 1 Gyanendra Pandey, âUnarchived histories: The âmadâ and the âtriflingââ in Unarchived Histories: The âmadâ and the âtriflingâ in the colonial and postcolonial world, ed. Gyanendra Pandey (London: Routledge, 2013), 3. 2 Ibid. 2 archive authorizes the rules of what is âsayableâ and what is ânon-sense,â the latter often dispatched to a domain outside of rational history.3 For example, in South Asia, the colonial stateâs archive of land records focuses on revenue, and its archive of peasant protest and rebellion rests on the category of crime. As such, the very process of archiving is simultaneously a process of âun-archiving,â which renders many aspects of the past and the present as âincidental, chaotic, trivial, inconsequential and therefore unhistorical.â4 Pandey argues that by the process of âtextualizing and orderingâ a âusableâ past, the discipline of history privileges, âparticularized and quite distinct identitiesâclearly marked boxes, labels, domains of activity and recognizable characteristics, procedure and practices.â5 Moreover, the disciplinary frames once established, Pandey argues, make âthe Text, the Reason, the Volitions and the Identitiesâ what history is about and consign the rest to what is âthe unarchived and unhistorical.â6 Pandey builds on the Foucauldian premises of the border of reason and history, versus madness or unreason; and creates another boundary of history and archive, what he calls an exile within or âtrifling.â It is formed of prejudices and activities so ordinary, everyday, and ever-present that they are just ignored as non-knowledge.7 Knowledge, states Pandey, often operates on the ââpower-knowledgeâ nexus and passes over things that one knows too much about. It becomes the filter that keeps out what one notices and what one doesnât notice about things in 3 Ibid., 4. 4 Ibid., 4. 5 Ibid., 5. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 5-6. 3 everyday life. Non-knowledge then is, a âknowledgeâ of whatâs beneath notice, not worthy of the designation.â8 The function of three domains, reason, madness and trifling, is illustrated by Pandey through the arc of violence. In the realm of reason, the violence of the state, ruling classes and powerful people manifests as âpunishment,â âlaw and order,â and âwar.â In the realm of madness /un reason, the subaltern- rebellious peasants, tribals, abroginals and âcivilizational othersâ- are placed in the âpole of the madness of the primitive and the other,â who are described as violent as they threaten the existence of âreason, state, order.â 9 Finally, in the domain of trifling, violence becomes so much part of everyday life, it appears ânaturalâ as in the case of âdomestic violence and rape (including rape within the family)â and âunacknowledged domestic labour (reproductive and productive).â10 The conceptual vocabulary of unarchived history and trifling/exile within provide me the theoretical framework for my goal of establishing an archive of the Desi Leftâs history of cultural activism, labour organizing, and gender within the South Asian Canadian diaspora. It is a history that falls outside the history of conventional diaspora studies that imagines a community through such concepts as ethnoreligious community and homeland nationalism. There are three main challenges in archiving the Desi Leftâs history. Firstly, as Harjot Oberoi points out, the textual archive that imagines the transnational communities of the diaspora does not confine to a single 8 Ibid., 6. 9 Ibid., 8. 10 Ibid. 4 genre.11 Secondly, the conceptualization of a homogenous ethnic/religious community that privileges a singular, mostly male ethnic/religious immigrant history is antithetical to a cosmopolitan Desi Leftâs history. Thirdly, the structural inequality of gender in society makes the archiving of the experiences of immigrant women the most daunting task in immigrant history. This research project on the Desi Leftâs history is a retelling of the Punjabi immigrant farmworkersâ self-organizing in British Columbia (1978 to 1989) through inter-community cultural activism, gendered experience of women farmworkers and their representation in the arts.12 It is a diaspora history nestled in the British Columbia province of Canada, which leads me to start by discussing theoretical aspects of diaspora formation. Problematizing Diaspora In the second edition (2008) of his pioneering Global Diasporas: An Introduction, Robin Cohen engages with social constructionistsâ critiques of the terms âhomelandâ and âethnic/religious community,â which were hitherto considered fundamental to defining the idea of diaspora.13 Cohen acknowledges social constructionistsâ intervention in consolidating the idea of diaspora. He especially recognizes William Safranâs notion of a âfound homeâ instead of the 11 Harjot Oberoi, âImagining Indian Diaspora: An Epic Without a Text? in Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora, eds., Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh and Steven Vertovec (London: Routledge, 2003), 186. 12 In 1978, a group of lawyers associated with the Labour Advocacy and Research Association (LARA) got involved in filing claims against labour contractors to recover the unpaid wages of the farmworkers. As most farmworkers spoke Punjabi and knew little or no English, Harinder Mahil, Raj Chouhan, and Charapal Singh Gill pitched in as translators and interpreters to help them. In 1979, Mahil, Chouhan and Gill formed the Farm Workers Organizing Committee (FWOC), which led to the founding of the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) in 1980. In 1989, Sarwan Boal, the then president of the CFU, resigned, and gradually the organizing work came to an end. 13 Robin Cohen, Global Diaspora: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2008), 10, 14. 5 homeland, Martin Sökefeldâs argument that the diaspora is an imagined community for which a diasporic consciousness is needed which has to be mobilized, and David Chariandyâs post-colonial approach that a diasporic consciousness is only one form of mobilizing in the broader struggle for social justice.14 However, Cohen contends that giving away the core concepts of homeland and ethnic/religious community would deprive âthe notion of the diaspora of much of its analytical and descriptive powers.â15 At the core of Cohenâs idea of the diaspora are its nine common features, which he formulates by amending, tweaking, and adding to the six main characteristics of diaspora that Safran first developed.16 The first two features are a typology of diaspora based on the causes that led to the dispersal from the original homeland. If a cataclysmic event and violence is the cause, it produces a victim diaspora. If it is to seek work or pursue trade, or colonial ambitions, it produces a labour diaspora, trade diaspora, or imperial diaspora, respectively. The following three features are about retaining a âcollective memoryâ of the homeland, its âidealization,â or even âcreation,â which leads to a return to the homeland movement. The last four features include maintaining a âstrong ethnic group consciousnessâ over a long time, including group identity and culture, a âtroubled relationship with host societies,â a sentiment of âco-responsibility with ethnic membersâ in other countries, and the possibility of a distinctive creative life of âtolerance for pluralismâ in host countries.17 Further, Cohen argues that a feeling of âco-responsibilityâ can produce a âdeterritorialized diasporaâ among multiple displaced 14 Ibid., 12, 13, 15. 15 Ibid., 2. 16 Ibid., 6. 17 Ibid., 17. 6 groups and religious groups without exclusive territorial claims, historically speaking.18 Punjabi Sikhs are placed in this category by Cohen, who classifies them as âambiguously a nation, a people, an ethnic group and a religious communityâ just like Jews.19 Cohenâs empirical mapping of global mobility to create a metanarrative of diasporas fixates on ethnic/religious diasporic communities. Such a conceptualization of modern diasporas is interrogated by Virinder Kalra, Raminder Kaur and John Hutnyk in their book Diaspora and Hybridity. They admit that though âdiasporic groups and ethnic groups are not mutually exclusive categories,â the nation-stateâs ability to police borders of ethno-religious identities within their states is disrupted by diasporic formations.20 Thus, the term diaspora navigates attention away from a single nation-state âtowards a potential multiplicity of nation-states or regions within states,â which, they argue, âallows us to survey different kind of identity formation as well as of social organization.â21 The possibility of imagining diasporic identities at a variance with Cohenâs formulation of ethno-religious identity opens the way for me to conceptualize a progressive subcommunity of South Asian community, their activities, and organizations all together as the Desi Left in Canada.22 The Desi Left identified with communism and workers internationalism and dedicated 18 Ibid., 8. 19 Ibid., 112. 20 Virinder Kalra, Raminder Kaur and John Hutnyk, Diaspora and Hybridity (London: Sage Publications, 2005), 17. 21 Ibid. 22 Vijay Prashad âSmashing the Myth of Model Minority,â interview by Michelle Caswell, Asia Society, accessed October 23, 2021. Prashad argues that, âPhrases like African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, etc. are bureaucratic words that do not hold within them the revolutionary aspirations and histories of a people (categorized but not controlled). I prefer words like Black, desi, Latino, Chicano, because these words raise associations of struggles, such as the Black Power movement (âBlack is Beautiful,â etc.), the Chicano struggles of the farm workers, of La Raza, and what not. Desi seems to be a similar word, one filled with so much historical emotion.â 7 themselves to its cause. Jody Deanâs description of the term Comrade perhaps best elucidates Desi Leftâs acts of solidarity with other such movements within Canada, in India and across the world. She contends: Comrade is a generic figure operating as an ego ideal. It provides the perspective comrades take when they see themselves acting politically, a perspective generated by their relation to others on the same side of a political struggle. This equality is the utopia element of comradeship. The determinations of a sexist, racist, capitalist society unavoidably intrude, but comrade names a relation no longer determined by these factors, providing a site from which they can be judged and addressed.23 In this dissertation, the term interracial and intersectional has been used to describe the kinds of organizing I want to characterize as Desi Left.24 My intention is not to interrogate specific dimensions of their race and gender politics but rather focus on their organizing practices through their own terms which evoked sentiments of comradeship and solidarity. My work does not go into a broader theoretical discussion of critical race or feminist scholarship, though in my empirical account gender and race are themes that I discuss. Dean also draws attention to a sizable body of work in past several decades in the US, where strong relations between communists, black liberation, and anti-colonial struggles have been extensively documented.25 The Desi Left in Canada is a part of this long tradition whose history remains to be written. This dissertation aims to archive this history in text and accompanying video documentary. 23 Jody Dean, Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging (New York: Verso, 2019), 36-37. 24 For background on intersectionality see Kimberle Crenshaw, âDemarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,â University of Chicago Legal forum, Article 8, Volume 1989, https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8. 25 Dean, Comrade, 37. 8 In the context of South Asian Diaspora, the Desi Leftâs history acquires special importance as Cohenâs formulation of ethno-religious community continues to hold a strong influence on South Asian diasporic scholarship. For example, Darshan Singh Tatla makes the same conclusion about the diasporic Sikhs as Cohen. Tatla argues that though the overseas Sikh community has yet to fully meet the conditions to be described as a diaspora, the âpsychological and sociological natureâ for the emergence of its consciousness has taken roots.26 Tatla draws on Cohenâs concept of âbreak eventâ and argues that the entry of the Indian army into Sikhs holiest shrine of Golden Temple in 1984 was the âcritical eventâ that triggered a âcomplex set of attachments towards an imaginary homeland,â and, from this point, Sikh identity was redrawn through âreligious traditions and collective symbols of the community instead of geography, language and cultural traits.â27 As a hyphenated Sikh identity emerged among the diaspora, argues Tatla, Sikhs â British-Sikhs, Canadian-Sikhs, American-Sikhs, replaced ethnic identities they shared earlier in different contexts such as an Asian, an Indian, a Punjabi, and a Sikh.28 Should the diaspora then be credited with authoring Sikh ethnonationalism as it may appear from the works of Cohen and Tatla, or is it a manifestation of deeper ongoing processes in India? With Partha Chatterjeeâs The Nation and its Fragments, the spotlight shifts away from the diaspora to the history of anti-colonial nationalism in India. Chatterjee argues that if nations are an imagined community, as Benedict Anderson powerfully demonstrated, then nationalisms in Asia and Africa would not choose their imagined community from a âmodularâ form 26 Darshan Singh Tatla, The Sikh Diaspora- The Search for Statehood (London: UCL Press, 1999), 209. 27 Ibid., 210. 28 Ibid., 201. 9 prefabricated by Europe or the Americas.29 Instead, such communities would be imagined âon a differenceâ with the western âmodularâ forms of the nation.30 The anti-colonial nationalism in India accomplished this by creating two mutually exclusive material and spiritual spheres in colonial society. The material domain was the exterior world, constituted of statecraft, economy, science and technology where the Westâs superiority was unquestioned. However, the spiritual domain included religion, caste, women, family, and peasants, was the world of the interior which carried the marks of cultural identity to constitute a âmodernâ national culture that was not âWestern.â Any colonial intervention in this domain was strongly resisted.31 Thus, nationalism began its political journey in the material domain only after it had invented itself in the sovereign inner spiritual domain. Chatterjee argues that the problem with such nationalism was that âIt created a subjectivity not founded on universal humanity but particularity and difference: the identity of the ânationalâ community against other communities.â32 By discussing the works of Bankim Chandra and other Bengali writers of the 1880s, Chatterjee points out that for them, Indian nationhood was a struggle against colonialism, which included both British and Muslim rule.33 The singular national historiography imagined a Hindu majoritarian state which conflated Hindu nationalism with Indian nationalism. What was the destiny of those excluded from the imagined nation or who refused to be subsumed under the Hindu national identity? Chatterjee 29 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 4-5. Note: Benedict Anderson had argued that the historical experience of nationalism in western Europe, the Americas and Russia had provided a set of modular forms for subsequent nationalisms from which nationalist elites in Asia and Africa could choose from. 30 Ibid., 5. 31 Ibid., 6. 32 Ibid., 75. 33 Ibid., 109. 10 concludes that all others aspiring for a community identity will have to make âalternative claims to nationhood with rights to an alternative state.â34 Oberoi makes a critical intervention by counterposing Chatterjeeâs theorization of Indian nationalism with the fragment of the Ghadar movement as a point of departure.35 He argues that unlike Chatterjeeâs thesis based on Bengal, there was no difference in interiority and exteriority of rhetoric and everyday life of the Ghadar revolutionaries, a transnational social movement constituted largely of Punjabi Sikhs located on the Pacific Northwest. Unlike the nationalist militant groups in India, argues Oberoi, Ghadar âwas a secular and non-denominational armed struggle looking boldly towards the future rather than being held hostage by the past.â36 Vinay Lal argues along the same lines in The Other Indians: A political and cultural history of South Asians in America. He affirms that the Ghadr movement constituted âa sufficiently large coterie of cosmopolitan Indian rebelsâ on the West Coast in the second decade of the twentieth century, which became âa diaspora within a diaspora.â37 By drawing attention to Ghadarâs universalistic and egalitarian values, Oberoi argues thereâs a need to theorize the role of the Indian diaspora in our framings of Indian nationalism.38 He makes an important break by framing a strand of the South Asian Canadian diaspora outside the confines of the religious and ethnic community and the homeland. Oberoi rests his argument 34 Ibid., 238. 35 For Ghadar movement see Harish K. Puri, Ghadar Movement: Ideology, Organisation and Strategy (Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University Press, 1983). 36 Harjot Oberoi, âGhadar Movement and Its Anarchist Genealogy,â Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.44, No 50 (December 12-18, 2009): 46. 37 Vinay Lal, The Other Indians: A political and cultural history of South Asians in America (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2005), 26; Note: authors of various works spell the term Ghadar differently. 38 Oberoi, âGhadar Movement,â 45. 11 on the âalternate cosmopolitanismâ of a transnational social movement which was a political-ideological project influenced by the theory and practice of Russian anarchists.39 The self-fashioning of the Ghadarite revolutionaries beyond their immediate identity makes for an interesting point. How is the diaspora consciousness constituted, and is there only one way diaspora could be imagined? Oberoi argues that if the novel was the key textual institution to inscribe the âimagined communitiesâ as theorized by Benedict Anderson, then âflashes of memory that are often explicated in moments of danger,â as conceptualized by Walter Benjamin, are the textual archives to imagine the transnational communities of the diaspora.40 Further, he argues these can take the form of âanecdotes, rumours, gossip, poetry, fiction, drama, memories and literary fragments.â41 Oberoi is not surprised by the challenge posed by such archive. Referring to the literary production of South Asian Canadian writer Rohinton Mistry, he observes, âPerhaps it is far easier to be a Thomas Hardy of Indian domesticity in Bombay than to sketch the interior landscape of displacement, ghettoization and racialized labour sites.â42 Oberoi finds the answer in intertextuality across literary forms and proceeds to examine two autobiographical texts, Sadhu Singh Dhamiâs semi-autobiographical novel Maluka (1977) and Tara Singh Bainsâs memoir, The Four Quarters of the Night, The Life Journey of an Emigrant Sikh (1995) to explore how âthe ruptures, traumas and contradictions of migrant communities are resolved.â43 He affirms that the central character Maluka explores life beyond 39 Ibid., 44. 40 Ibid., 186. 41 Ibid., 186. 42 Ibid., 187. 43 Ibid., 186. 12 the boundaries of his homeland and race and creates a multicultural world beyond Sikh or Hindu diaspora.44 Bains remains embedded within his religious life and ethnic community, travelling back and forth between Canada and India. Oberoi thus makes an important point that the diaspora group is not homogenous and monolithic. It has a strand of cosmopolitanism of Maluka as well as a strand of cultural nationalism of Bains.45 He suggests that more work is needed to develop a comprehensive account of the cultural and social life of Indian diasporic populations.46 This research project on the Desi Leftâs history is an effort in that direction. Sources There are a number of unpublished masterâs and doctoral theses that have touched upon aspects of the Desi Leftâs history in British Columbia. Quite a few of these that were written in the 1980s have focused on the work of the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU). The key works among these early interventions include Carol R. Jhappanâs âResistance to Exploitation: East Indians and the rise of CFU in BCâ (1983),47 David Lee Jacksonâs âESL for Political Education: A critical evaluation of the Farmworkers ESL crusade and its Freire-inspired philosophyâ (1987),48 and writer-activist Sadhu Binningâs thesis, âThe Canadian Farmworkers Union: A case 44 Ibid., 190. 45 Ibid., 193, 195. 46 Ibid., 195. 47 Carol R. Jhappan, âResistance to Exploitation: East Indians and the rise of Canadian Farmworkers Union in BC,â (masterâs thesis, University of British Columbia, 1983), https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/831/items/1.0095667. 48 David Lee Jackson, âESL for Political Education: A critical evaluation of the Farmworkers ESL crusade and its Freire- inspired philosophyâ (masterâs thesis, University of British Columbia, 1987), https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/831/items/1.0078362. 13 study in Social Movementsâ (1986).49 More recently, theses on cultural activism also focused on cultural work done to support the CFU. Craig Berggoldâs thesis, âFields of Power: The Canadian Farmworkers Union, an illustrated historyâ (2014),50 is a visual history of the CFU based on photographs of its struggles taken by Berggold himself. He was the resident CFU photographer from 1982 to 1986. Diana Frances Lobbâs PhD thesis, âCanadian Literatures Beyond the Colour Line: Re-Reading the Category of South Asian-Canadian Literature,â discusses the activism of Vancouver-based Punjabi theatre group, Vancouver Sath.51 Aurian Hallerâs thesis, âClass Act: Mayworks and the Spaces of Cultural Activism, âexamines the solidarity between CFUâs cultural activists, especially the theatre group Vancouver Sath and the larger Canadian labour culture movement.â52 Journalist Murray Bushâs Zindabad! BC Farmworkers Fight for Rights, an online book on the history of the CFU, provides snapshots of multiple aspects of the union struggle chronologically.53 The Canadian Farmworkers Union Project at Simon Fraser University Libraryâs Special Collections has a rich collection of documents and photographs of the CFUâs activities, including the CFUâs bilingual newspaper, the Farmworker. The annual reports provide details of its 49 Sadhu Binning, âThe Canadian Farmworkers Union: A case Study in Social Movementsâ (masterâs thesis, Simon Fraser University,1986), http://summit.sfu.ca/item/6069. 50 Craig Berggold, âFields of Power, The Canadian Farmworkers Union: An Illustrated Historyâ (masterâs thesis, Queens University, 2014), http://hdl.handle.net/1974/12556. 51 Diana Frances Lobb, âCanadian Literatures Beyond the Colour Line: Re-Reading the Category of South Asian-Canadian Literatureâ (PhD diss. University of Waterloo, 2011), https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/bitstream/handle/10012/5819/Diana_Lobb_Dissertation_3.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. 52 Aurian Haller, âClass Act: Mayworks and the Spaces of Cultural Activism (PhD diss. Simon Fraser University, 2004) http://summit.sfu.ca/item/8617. 53 Murray Bush, Zindabad!: BC Farmworkers Fight for Rights (Vancouver: Canadian Farmworkers Union, 1995), accessed March 18, 2020, http://www.vcn.bc.ca/cfu/about.htm. 14 women organizers who sat on the unionsâ executive and who led various struggles.54 A few issues of alternative arts and culture magazine, Fuse, provide fascinating details of cultural production by activists and artists supporting the CFU. Perhaps one of the most important sources of information on cultural activism, gender issues, labour organizing, anti-racism, literature and art by the immigrant Punjabi community during the 1980s is the Punjabi literary magazine Watan (earlier Watano Dūr). With its first publication date in 1973, it is acknowledged as the oldest Punjabi magazine published in Canada. Most recently, the editors of Watan, Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, have published a book written in Punjabi chronicling the hundred years history of Punjabis in the trade union movement, the womenâs movement, the anti-racism movement, the farmworkerâs movement, and the Punjabi literary movement in Canada. Titled SanÌghrash de sau varhe: kanedÌ£Ä vicc PañjÄbÄ« Pragtīshīl Lahir (One Hundred Years of Struggle: The Punjabi Progressive Movement in Canada), their monograph builds on the work they have done and provides crucial leads to further investigation.55 The Punjabi literary organization PañjÄbÄ« Lekhak Mañch (Punjabi Writers Forum), Vancouver, originally called PañjÄbÄ« SÄhit SabhÄ (Punjabi Literary Association), is the oldest literary society of the Punjabis in Canada established in 1973. The records of its monthly meetings and a souvenir published to mark its twenty-fifth anniversary provide insightful information on the Punjabi writersâ cosmopolitan visions, socialist influences on their writings, cultural and social activism, and solidarities with causes locally and globally. A collection of 54 âThe Canadian Farmworkers Union Project,â Special Collections, Simon Fraser University Library, accessed April 20,2020. https://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/branches-depts/special-collections/canadian-farmworkers-union. 55 Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe: kanedÌ£Ä vicc PañjÄbÄ« Pragtīshīl Lahir (Ludhiana: CetanÄ PrakÄshan, 2000). 15 Vancouver Sathâs plays written in Punjabi by Binning and Hundal, Picket Line and Other Plays, provides a intersectional and gendered understanding of the issues faced by the Punjabi immigrant community in Canada. One particular play, Picket Line, is based on the struggles of the women CFU members who worked at the Hoss Mushroom Farm: Jasbir Kaur Brar, Satwant Rai, Sukhdarshan Pal Kaur Malli, Balwinder Kaur Jhandu, Jasbir Kaur Sagoo, Surinderjit Bath, to whom the play is dedicated.56 Besides these texts, Nandi Bhatia and Sadhu Binning wrote a few scholarly articles on Vancouver Sath and the Punjabi literary movement in Canada. Along with photos and texts, audio interviews and videos documentaries are important sources on the farmworkersâ movement and its times. For example, two radio interviews, one by Dave Barret (NDPâs first premier of BC, 1972-75) on July 18, 1986, and the other by Lucy McNeil on July 17, 1986, discuss the challenges of female farm workers as participants in the CFUâs activities. In addition, the website of a local benefit rock band, Ad Hoc, opens a world of interracial-intersectional solidarity in cultural activism which expressed solidarity with, or which came out in support of the CFU. Between 1978 to 1982, Ad Hoc performed about 100 benefits for a wide range of causes, groups, and movements.â57 The other musicians and bands who performed at the CFU benefit events were The Ginger Group and the Communique.58 These 56 Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, Pikaṭa LÄÄ«n, (Chandigarh: BalrÄj SÄhanÄ« YÄdgÄrÄ« PrakÄshan, 1995), 107. 57 Ad Hoc: Givinâ a Funk directed by Dugg Simpson (Vancouver: Dugg Simpson, 1982), accessed June 29, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0wrGeB90Kk&feature=youtu.be. 58 âFundraising correspondence, photographs, and other records,â 2014. Canadian Farmworkers Union Chronology. 1 through 3 (2006, 2010, 2012) - MsC 102 (Sub-series 1.3: Box 4, File 13-14), 28-32. Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) Project, Special Collections and Rare Books, Simon Fraser University Library, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, accessed April 20, 2020, https://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28909/FINDING%20AID%20CFU.pdf. 16 interracial solidarities in cultural activism resulted in producing a fundraising audio cassette Talking Union for the CFU in which multi-ethnic musicians and singers jointly contributed. One of the most important documents on the farmworkersâ struggle is the documentary film directed by Anand Patwardhan and Jim Munro entitled A Time to Rise (1981).59 From quite early on in the farmworkersâ struggle, it played a significant role in exhorting workers to unionize themselves and carried their story of their struggles to the rest of the world.60 Binning notes that Judy Cavanagh, a staff person and organizer of the CFU, screened the film extensively to hundreds of different groups. He quotes Cavanaghâs reasoning in that she did not have to explain too much to people because the film âgraphically said a hell of a lot more than what I could do.â61 A few years later, in 1985, a twenty-minute video fiction film, Farmworkers Zindabad, based on the struggle of the Hoss Mushroom Farm, was co-scripted and co-directed by Craig Berrgold, Alex Charleton and Sukhwant Hundal. Cultural activists of the theatre group Vancouver Sath doubled up as actors in the video fiction film retelling the story of the women members of the union and the challenges they faced as women workers.62 59 A Time to Rise, directed by Anand Patwardhan and Jim Munro (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1981), DVD. 60 The film had run into trouble with the Censor Board of India for its âstraining-of-cordial-relations-with-nations.â It had won the Silver Dove award at the Leipzig International Film Festival and the Tyneside International Festival, UK. More information and trailer of the film is available at Anand Patwardhanâs website http://patwardhan.com/wp/?page_id=640, accessed October 26, 2021. 61 Binning, âThe Canadian Farmworkers Union,â 101. 62 Farmworkers Zindabad, directed by Craig Berggold, Alex Charleton and Sukhwant Hundal, (Vancouver: Deol Agricultural Education and Research Society, 1985), DVD. 17 The Formation of a New Archive: Interviews This section outlines my methodological approach and the matrix of community ties that enabled me to produce this project. I have supplemented existing primary and secondary sources by interviewing, in many cases for the first time, former labour organizers and cultural activists who supported the farmworkers movement in the Lower Mainland in the 1980s.63 They include women organizers, activists, leaders of the CFU, musicians, writers, visual artists, theatre actors and directors involved in cultural production to support the CFU. I aimed to scale up coverage with my interviews and at the same time identify key organizers in the farmworkers movement and cultural activists supporting the CFU that were essential to my research. I had known many of the labour and cultural activists of the community personally, which started with my association with the Vancouver-based organization, South Asian Network for Secular and Democracy (SANSAD). My own positionality and experiential knowledge factors into my archival work. I was a SANSAD board member from 2014 to 2021, its secretary in 2017-2018 and President in 2018-2019. SANSAD is a successor of the Indian Peopleâs Association in North America (IPANA), formed in 1975. I got to know many Desi Left activists through SANSAD, which include Chinmoy Banerjee, co-founder of IPANA and SANSAD; Charan Pal Singh Gill associated with the CFU and President of the BC Organization for Fighting Racism (BCOFR); Raj Chouhan, founder President of the CFU, and Harinder Mahil associated with IPANA, CFU, SANSAD and presently the Secretary of Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation. Besides SANSAD, I was a member of the Gursharan Singh Memorial Lecture Organizing Committee, where I met many 63 My use of Lower Mainland includes Vancouver, Richmond, Delta, Burnaby, New Westminster, Surrey, Abbotsford and other cities of the Fraser Valley. 18 leading Punjabi activists of the 1980s and 1990s, including Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, Makhan Tut, member of the Vancouver Sath; Sarwan Boal, former President of the CFU (after Raj Chouhan); and cultural activist Paul Binning. In the past few years, I invited Sadhu Binning and Raj Chouhan to the class I was teaching at the UBC to give lectures on aspects of activism in the Punjabi Canadian community in the 1980s. Through close interactions with Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, I made friends with other writers and activists of the community, especially Ajmer Rode and Surjeet Kalsey. Hundal introduced me to Harjinder Sangra, who volunteered as an organizer with the CFU and was an active member of the Vancouver Sath. Similarly, Chinmoy Banerjee introduced me to Judy Cavanagh who worked with the CFU as a staff person and organizer for seven years. Cavanagh and Sangra were the only women activists I knew from the 1980s activism phase in the lower mainland before I began interviewing for my PhD research. Through Hundal, I got in touch with Julius Fisher of the Ad Hoc band, and I contacted Alan Zisman through the bandâs website. I had known about Craig Berggold from the archival photographs of the CFU women taken by him in the 1980s that are available in CFU Archives at Simon Fraser University. However, it was the Canadian documentary filmmaker Min Sook Lee who formally introduced me to Berggold. I sought out additional participants through a selective âsnowball methodâ based on the leads that that my respondents provided me after obtaining permission from the potential participants. In this manner, Judy Cavanagh helped me get in touch with the CFUâs English Second Language Program Coordinator, Vanneau Neesham, who worked closely with women organizers of the CFU; Alan Zisman connected me to the artist and singer Claire Kujundzic, who designed artwork for the CFU; Julius Fisher connected me to the Vancouver Folk Music Festival 19 co-founder, Gary Cristall, who supported the cause of the CFU through Vancouver Folk Music Festival; Gary Cristall introduced me to filmmaker James Monro co-director with Anand Patwardhan of the documentary A Time to Rise, and James Munro put me in touch with another filmmaker, Nettie Wild who was the sound recordist of A Time To Rise. I had known Anand Patwardhan since 1997 when I made my first independent documentary, Ek Minute Ka Maun (A Minuteâs Silence), in India.64 I was lucky that Patwardhan was in Vancouver to screen his latest documentary, Reason, on October 6, 2019, and he gladly agreed to be interviewed. What I lacked was the perspective of the CFU women organizers from farmworkers ranks. As Judy Cavanagh communicated in her interview, there were only a handful of women who came to the CFUâs executive at different times. To explain their inconsistent presence, Vanneau Neesham pointed out they were looking for better-paid labour jobs with better working conditions than farmwork. As such, they must have moved on to other jobs, and none of the union activists or lead organizers were in touch with them. Fortunately, I was able to interview Pritam Kaur, who had worked on the farms for more than forty years and was featured in A Time To Rise documentary as a union organizer. At the time of the interview, she was ninety-five years old and did not know where some of the farmworker women activists who worked with her had gone. She was not able to re-connect with them again. I gathered from Harinder Mahil that one of them, whose brother was an IPANA member, had moved to a different province. A theatre activist who knew the whereabouts of one such woman activist living in Surrey contacted her, but she declined to be interviewed. As a result, although their stories are reflected in many of 64 A Minuteâs Silence, directed by Ajay Author (Delhi: JNU Students Coordination Committee and Jan Sanskriti Manch, 1997), https://vimeo.com/356328670, accessed October 26, 2021. 20 the interviews I was able to conduct, the stories of these women activists from farmworkers ranks are not directly represented in this history. When I was interviewing Judy Cavanagh, she was keen to know what happened to them. She wondered if they could carry their experience of union organizing to other places wherever they went to work after leaving farmwork. Due to their small numbers, the transitory nature of farmwork and structural inequality of gender and class, there are no traces of the testimonies of the CFU women members in the archive. However, they are present in photographs in the CFU newspaper, the Farmworker; photos clicked the CFUâs photographer, Craig Berggold, Anand Patwardhanâs documentary A Time To Rise, and the Vancouver Sathâs play Picket Line is based on their struggle. It is my hope that someday, my PhD thesis and accompanying documentary film will lead researchers from the South Asian Canadian community to bring out the stories and experiences of these women activists from farmworkers ranks as their family histories. I take inspiration from Amarjit Kaur Pannunâs masterâs thesis, Pardesan Ka Kam: an essay on Punjabi-Sikh women cannery workers in Northern British Columbia, an ethnographic account of her mother and her friendsâ life as Cannery workers.65 My interviews with labour cultural activists brought together diverse voices to this research, including those of non-South Asian Canadians who are generally not placed in singular immigrant histories. Each interview was 1.5 to 3 hours long and mostly recorded at respondentsâ homes where they felt most comfortable participating in this project. In all, interviews with 33 65 Amarjit Kaur Pannun, âPardesan Ka Kam: an essay on Punjabi-Sikh women cannery workers in Northern British Columbia,â (masterâs thesis, University of British Columbia, 1994), https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/831/items/1.0087693. 21 people were video recorded, which generated around 67 hours of footage (the questionnaire is available as Appendix of the dissertation). Archiveology The primary audiovisual sources of my research are archival video footage, audio recordings, video films (a documentary and a video-fiction) and video interviews, which enabled me to engage with two conceptual frameworks. First, video footage and documentaries in the archive offer a radical potential for archiveology of the Desi Leftâs history, albeit through a different medium: video documentary. Second, the use of video interviews problematizes the interview as testimony through scholarship on âimage-based practices.â66 At one level, archiveology is the âreuse, recycling, appropriation and borrowing of archival material that filmmakers have been practicing across film genres for decades.â67 However, today, the film archive has been reimagined as a âfilm bankâ to retrieve collective memories. It is âa means of displaying and accessing historical memory,â which has implications for how cultural history is imagined.68 Rooted in Walter Benjaminâs cultural theory, archiveology provides tools to explore the fragments of audiovisuals from the past to create ânew ways of accessing and framing histories that might otherwise have been forgotten and neglected, and to make these histories relevant to contemporary concerns.â69 Catherine Russell draws on 66 Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz, eds., Visualizing Anthropology (Oregon: Intellect Books, 2005), 7. 67 Catherine Russell, Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), 1. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid., 11-12. 22 Walter Benjaminâs mode of criticism âentirely consisting of quotationsâ and argues that the same form manifests in the video essay film today, where films are analyzed by using the excerpts of the films themselves.70 Russell is concerned with the âdeep-seated gendering of twentieth-century image culture and the systematicity of misogyny within its archive.â71 Archiveology thus provides the framework for integrating a video documentary into my PhD thesis to archive the Desi Leftâs history of interracial cultural activism and gender of South Asian Canadian diaspora. The video documentary that accompanies this dissertation consists of fragments of the documentary A Time to Rise, a video fiction Farmworkers Zindabad, still photographs and interviews. My research project, therefore, emerges out of two interconnected ways of telling a âsingleâ story. These ways embrace different media, disciplinary approaches, and content but are linked historically and conceptually by the film and text. The first telling is through a video documentary. The second telling is the textual exploration of the history of Desi Left under examination, which provides the context, and extended commentary on the materials presented in the documentary. The CFUâs location within the fold of Desi Left enriches both the film and textual work by bringing the local histories of Punjabi immigrant women workers into a broader discussion and larger history of the Desi Left. Imageâs Indexicality and the Interview as Testimony Reading documentary film as a historical memory that archives the Desi Leftâs history raises the question of the interview as testimony; this has been discussed extensively in 70 Ibid., 4. 71 Ibid., 185. 23 scholarship on âimage-based practicesâ that shape the (dissertation) filmâs narrative. In his Culture Moves in the Long Civil Rights Struggle, Larry Isaac argues that the âCulture of movements past are constructed and reconstructed over time in an often highly contentious process sometimes leading to a dominant movement story that gets replicated in multiple cultural contexts.â72 To substantiate his argument, Issac calls our attention to the erasure of women and class, and the privileging of men and race, in the âconsensus memoryâ of the civil rights movement constituted through visual arts, official narratives and institutionalization of movement memory.73 Supplementing the scholarship of Issac, R. Bruce Brasell points to the issue of erasure, specifically in documentaries on the civil rights movement made much after the movement. He argues that the need for visuals often leads to over-reliance on what is available within archival media materials, replicating the ârepresentational absencesâ within the archive and a kind of âmedia determinism.â74 As a result, what was not captured by the media remained unrepresented in the movementâs popular history, audiovisually authored through documentaries and videos. Brasell examines two documentaries, Eyes on the Prize (Jan 1987 to March 1990) and A Time for Justice (1995), based on the incident of a brutal police attack on peaceful voting rights marchers in Marion, Alabama, on Feb 18, 1965. It led to the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, an African American civil rights activist.75 He discusses how the two documentaries address the 72 Larry Issac, âMovement of Movements: Culture Moves in the Long Civil Rights Struggle,â Social Forces Vol.87, No.1, 2008: 51. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20430849. 73 Issac, âMovement of Movements,â 55. 74 R. Bruce Brasell, âFrom Evidentiary Presentation to Artful Re-Presentation: Media Images, Civil Rights Documentaries, and the Audiovisual Writing of History,â Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 56, No. 1 (SPRING 2004): 4 and 9. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20688439. 75 Ibid., 9. 24 challenge of representation. Eyes on the Prize chooses the device of talking-head interviews, and A Time for Justice relies on the footage of the spaces now empty of people, where some of the lesser-known but significant events related to the movement happened.76 In the former, the individuals interviewed are a substitute for the historical audiovisual material. In the latter, the audio track of dismembered and unidentified interview testimonies interprets the scenes of empty spaces to fashion the retelling of the history. Thus, it eschews both the indexicality of the image and use of the interview as testimony in a film on memory. David MacDougall expresses severe doubts on the validity of the interview as testimony and argues, â[W]e end by filming something far removed from memory as it is experienced, but instead a mixture of dubious testimony, flawed evidence, and invention. Films of memory could thus be said to represent only the external signs of remembering.â77 Besides, MacDougall finds the interview anathema to his film practice, where he allows the events to be captured unfolding on camera to create a feeling of âbeing there.â78 John Ellis adds another dimension to this discourse by arguing that in the interaction between the âfilmerâ and âfilmed,â both parties are not only speaking to each other, â[t]hey are addressing an eventual viewer, who exists at that moment only in their imagination, yet adds another framing to the exchange.â79 Ellis proposes recording the less formal, off-camera activity around the formal activity of the interview to help 76 Ibid., 9-10. 77 David MacDougall, âFilms of memoryâ, in Transcultural Cinema, ed. Lucien Tailor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 239. 78 Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Taylor, âReframing ethnographic film: a âconversationâ with David MacDougall and Judith MacDougallâ, American Anthropologist, vol. 98, no. 2, (1996): 380 quoted in Roxana Waterson, âTrajectories of Memory: Documentary Film and the Transmission of Testimony,â History and Anthropology, 18:1, (2007): 51-73. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02757200701218239. 79 John Ellis, Documentary: Witness and self-revelation (New York: Routledge, 2012), 5. 25 document the encounter between the âfilmerâ and âfilmed,â which reveal more about the participants than the interview.80 The dialogue between the âframerâ and âframedâ is also discussed by Trinh T. Minh-Ha who draws attention to the power relation between them, which she works to expose through her cinematic devices. Minh-Haâs interest lies in the âinterâ in interviews which she sees as an encounter between âlanguages, cultures, concepts, events and processes.â81 What is common to MacDougall, Ellis, and Minh-Ha is their refusal to concede the interview the status of testimony. The scholarship on âimage-based practices,â where MacDougall, Ellis and Minh-Ha are theoretically grounded, argues that â[t]he truth claims of documentary and its status as âevidenceâ of a given historical world have increasingly been problematized in the contemporary postdigital cultural context.â82 In this line of reasoning, the documentary does not indexically represent a real world, and the documentary image canât mimetically produce reality to provide knowledge about it.83 Thus, Jean Rouch eschews the imageâs indexicality by shifting from documentary to a collaborative polyvocal mode of ethnographic film practice of ethnofiction in Jaguar (1967). In this film, protagonists Lam, Damoure, and Illo play fictional characters without an indexical relationship between their screen image and the ârealâ people as in a conventional documentary. The protagonists watched their silent footage shot by Rouch, wrote, and recorded improvised dialogue and commentary, which was then inserted into the film. In this way, the protagonists 80 Ibid. 81 Trinh T. Minh-Ha, D-Passage: the digital way, 141-163 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013, 151. 82 Kizhavana P. Jayasankar and Anjali Monteiro, âDocumentary and Ethnographic Film,â in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 6, s.v. 2015, 620-624, accessed October 17, 2018, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.95013-X. 83 Ibid. 26 overwrite Rouchâs authorship of the film with their narrative and reclaim their subjectivities from their silent representation produced by Rouchâs lens.84 On a similar note, Kate Nash applies Emmanuel Levinasâs moral philosophy to the observational cinema and underlines the necessity to engage in representation without subsuming the other under the filmmakerâs totalizing gaze. Nash cites Michael Renov on ethical documentary and maintains that spaces should be left for ambiguity within the documentary text. The ethical encounter is possible only when filmmakers acknowledge the contribution of the other and accept limits to their power and knowledge.85 Pointing out the irony in the totalizing quest of meaning and imageâs indexicality in the documentary, Trinh T. Minh-Ha asks,â [N]ot true, for what is one to do with films which set out to determine truth from falsity while the visibility of this truth lies precisely in the fact that it is false?â86 The falsity of the visibility of the truth poses a challenge. If the image is nonindexical, then how could the recorded interview be treated as testimony? Here, it is important to recall Thomas Waughâs critique of Minh-Haâs non-verbal language and use of the tropes of architecture, music and dance in her West African film Naked Spaces: Living Is Round (1985). Waugh argues that such treatment crowds out the culture of speech and leads to a culture-centric silencing of the postcolonial subject.87 If this is so, would the case of the Desi Left be any different who are yet to find their voice and representation? 84 Ted Nannicelli, âRepresentation to Evocation: Tracing a Progression in Jean Rouchâs Les magiciens de Wanzerbé, Les maîtres fous, and Jaguar.â Visual Anthropology, 19:2 (2006): 135-137. 85 Kate Nash, âDocumentary-for-the-Other: Relationships, Ethics and (Observational) Documentary.â Journal of Mass Media Ethics 26:3 (2011): 223, 225 and 238. 86 Trinh T. Minh-Ha, âThe Totalizing Quest of Meaning,â in Theorizing Documentary, ed. Michael Renov (London: Routledge, 1993), 92. 87 Thomas Waugh, The Right to play Oneself: Looking Back on Documentary film (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota,2011): 252-254. 27 I draw here on Roxana Watersonâs defense of the interview as testimony, which asserts the potential of film to preserve memories as âtrace,â âevent,â and as âtrajectory,â and opens the potential of film as evidence. She conceptualizes the trace as the form of historical evidence; event as the performative act of testifying that requires dialogical engagement with/by an audience; and trajectory as an act of transmission by which individual memories become social memories.88 Watson postulates that âthere remains the irreducible materiality of the enduring trace that film records of people and objects in the real world. Can it possibly be argued that such testimony has no value? Is there any reason to suppose that a film is less true than a text?â89 She argues that historians use the eyewitnessesâ interviews in writing history. Does it make it different just because the interviews are video recorded or filmed?90 Waterson refers to a sequence in Jean Rouch and Edgar Morinâs path-breaking film Chronique dâun Eté [Chronicle of a Summer] (1960) where filmâs protagonists watch the footage and debate among themselves which protagonists are acting naturally, and which were performing for the camera. Their discussion alludes to fundamental difficulties with the camera in capturing the unmediated âreality.â She contests this by referring to sociologist Erving Goffman, who argues that we perform our self one way or the other, even in our simple everyday conversations irrespective of whether filmed or not.91 She argues that the performance of testimony by Marceline, a protagonist of the film, âdrew her back into a sensory and emotional reliving of the moment, 88 Waterson, âTrajectories of Memory,â51. 89 Ibid., 61. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid., 64. 28 going beyond the merely verbal or cognitive account of what happened to her,â an act preserved by the film for the audience.92 Thus, testimony, Waterson asserts, must be understood as an event in itself that is very much a part of the present. She refers to Portelliâs argument that filmed testimony, or the act of testifying, is a historical event in itself as, âSubjectivity is as much the business of history as the more visible facts. What the informant believes is indeed a historical fact (that is, the fact that he or she believes it) just as much as what âreallyâ happened.â93 Waterson concludes that â[T]he act of testifying as an event which itself becomes part of history, of the ongoing work of memory in re-evaluating the past.â94 Scholarship on the making of documentaries shaped the authoring process of the dissertation documentary that accompanies this text. The documentaryâs narrative problematizes the representational absence of the gendered experience of women farmworkers from art produced in support of the CFU-led farmworkers movement. Furthermore, it reveals how this representational absence is reproduced in the collective memory of the Desi Left shaped by it. Recording Interviews Since this is a hybrid research project made up of a text dissertation and a video documentary, the function of the interview here is twofold. First, as an oral history interview, provide knowledge on the history under consideration for the text thesis. Second, as a filmed interview, provide footage for making the dissertation documentary. The two functions of the 92 Ibid., 62-63. 93 Portelli, Alessandro, âThe peculiarities of oral historyâ, History Workshop, vol. 12 ((1981): 100. 94 Waterson, âTrajectories of Memory,â66. 29 interview are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as quite a few fragments of interviews surface both in the text thesis and the documentary. Yet, as the documentary scholarship illuminated, as an image and an encounter, the interview might demand a different treatment as a film fragment. So wherever possible, I planned ways of addressing it as I met people and filmed interviews. For example, to break the formal interview mould, we filmed the leading members of the activist theatre group Vancouver Sath at a party hosted for them by the groupâs youngest member, Harjinder Sangra, in her back garden in Burnaby. Eight members who came to the party included three activist couples who were members of the theatre group. The atmosphere was informal, spontaneous, and festive as they reminisced on the times spent together doing theatre. Reflections, anecdotes, bonding, personal lives, activism, gender issues, and passions tumbled out without a prompt as they animatedly talked to each other. There was no questionnaire to follow, and I joined the party and interjected when I wanted to ask something. They had taken charge and led the conversation by themselves. There was a necessity for this being the process. The stories about their activism and the intimacies of personal lives and connections emerged in an open and often lighthearted manner that was enjoyable to the Vancouver Sath members. The party reached a crescendo when their conversation veered to their roles and dialogues in the plays. Almost spontaneously, a collection of their plays emerged out of nowhere. As two members started reading their dialogues from it, the party turned into a Vancouver Sath theatre performance in which each member was enthusiastically participating. The âparty interviewsâ dismantled the difference between the formal activity/interview and the informal off-camera activity surrounding it. The camera captured everything as guests moved around plucking grapes from the grapevine, bringing out wine glasses, opening beer cans, cracking jokes and laughing at themselves. My awkwardness as an outsider among Vancouver 30 Sath members was exposed to the camera. As long-time comrades of Vancouver Sath energetically conversed about their lives and times with each other, the boundary between the âframerâ and the âframedâ became hazy, if not completely erased. The âparty interviewsâ made possible conversations on gender play in the personal and professional lives of women members of the Vancouver Sath by way of humour which could not have been possible in a formal interview setting. It entered and enriched both the video documentary and the text thesis. The text thesis also utilized these interviews to create biographies of the women members, which the documentary did not carry. The membersâ joy in spontaneously narrating dialogues of their plays that they could still recall years later and their bonhomie with each other is captured in the documentary but missing from the text thesis. Thus, the two are interwoven ways of telling a âsingleâ story. The âparty interviewsâ was not an interview strategy I followed with each respondent interviewed for my dissertation. For formal one on one interviews, I had made two different sets of questionnaires, one for volunteers, organizers, and leaders of the CFU and another for artists and cultural activists who supported the CFU one way or another (See Appendix). The former focused on gender issues within the farmworkers movement and community by exploring the work front and home front. The latter centered on interracial collaborations in cultural activism and the politics that undergirded it in the 1980s Lower Mainland Vancouver. The outcome of these interviews was unexpected and has driven the theoretical framework of this dissertation. Gender arose as an issue in the interviews conducted for exploring interracial cultural activism and interracial solidarity emerged in the interviews conducted for exploring the gender issue within the farmworkersâ movement. The intermingling of interracial cultural activism and gender narratives formed the dissertation documentaryâs narrative, perhaps opening a window to 31 imagining a rich, multifaceted non-singular immigrant history. The text thesis excavates the interiority of this interracial cultural and gender immigrant history with the help of textual, visual, audio archives and oral history interviews. The two questionnaires start with questions about the respondentâs involvement with the CFU and cultural activism to support it, and then bifurcate into two separate trajectories. In the case of the CFUâs organizing, it explores gender issues at the workplace, in labour organizing environments, and at home. In the case of cultural activism, it opens into the larger solidarity movements of the time in Vancouver across causes and their politics. I conducted interviews in conversational mode. Often, I asked the first few questions to initiate a conversation. Then, as respondents went into a way of remembering, struggling with memory, recalling, reflecting and at times self-introspecting their lives, activism, and times, I stepped back not to disrupt their chain of thoughts, which often yielded rich results I had not expected. As such, I mostly asked questions from what they said during the interview to nudge a more profound understanding or widen the scope of our conversations to include aspects left out. Post-production It is important to record here that the accompanied documentary was filmed by a small two-member crew where most of my previous documentary films had crews of at least four. My filmmaker friend and colleague from India, Rajula Shah, flew to Vancouver to shoot the film with me. We filmed all interviews and locations between mid-August 2019 to mid-October 2019. Later, the unexpected situation created by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 upset my original plan to edit the documentary in India in 2020. I had already made a short visit in November 2019 to prepare for it. In keeping with ethical codes around travel during the pandemic, the only 32 option was to work remotely, which neither my team members nor I had anticipated. It was an unprecedented situation for which we were unprepared. Working through nearly 70 hours of footage and huge archival material of videos, images, and audio to search for the documentaryâs narrative was an overwhelming task. As a first step, in June 2020, I wrote a two-page story outline and shared it with the crew. The story outline was the foundation on which the script gradually emerged after exchanging 18 script drafts with Rajula Shah, co-scriptwriter, over the next three months. Simultaneously the editor of the documentary, Lavanya Ramaiah, was tasked with immersing herself in the project with almost no familiarity with the theme. First, she was provided with English transcripts of all the interviews in Punjabi to help her understand what was being said. Next, she previewed the 70-hour footage and shared her reflections in writing elaborate responses of 32 pages by email on 4th, 8th, and 15th September 2020. Finally, on 23rd October, I presented my 39 pages documentary script, which had 23 segments to my crew, including my co-scriptwriter, editor, and sound designer. My purpose was to give them a sense of the script, bring the team into the flow of things, and pitch for various stages of its making. Yet, it was an idea on paper that had to be turned into a concrete film, a process in which ideas transform countless times before finding the filmâs narrative and crystalizing into a final form. The most difficult aspect of working across long distances (and time differences) is the missing sense of the embodied experience of putting the images and sounds together. The physical absence of the director poses a challenge to the editor too. We tried to address these issues through frequent Skype conversations and email exchanges, which was the only solution available. Based on my script presentation, Lavanya presented the first rough cut of the documentary on 5th December 2020. It was three hours long. Over the next eight months, and 33 after eight rough cuts of the documentary, we arrived at its final visual cut in August 2021. Besides this, there were twelve versions of various sequences that Lavanya edited simultaneously within different rough cuts. At the same time, I was writing version after version of the filmâs narration, recording it and sending it to Lavanya for embedding in the documentary. These tracks worked as the scaffolding in the construction of the documentary. The work consisted of hectic and energy-consuming tribulations which included facilitating two-way exchanges, continuously uploading versions of the documentary, and sharing narration recordings over the internet. We finally made a two-hour dissertation documentary with this trial-and-error method on the run, thus completing my hybrid project. This dissertation works as a connective link which provides the context, and extended commentary on the materials presented in the integrated companion project of a full-length documentary. Chapter two maps the theorization of the South Asian Canadian diaspora and explores the early South Asian Canadian history, beginning around 1900 when the first Indian immigrants, mostly Punjabis, arrived in British Columbia. It discusses the impact of societal and legal racism on the lives of early South Asian immigrants, the complex processes of community formation, the setting up of community spaces, organizing resistance against racism locally, and colonial rule in India. It draws on Simon Fraser University Libraryâs online archiveâ âKomagata Maru, Continuing the Journey,â to fill crucial gaps in this history, especially the absence of the story of Punjabi immigrant women.95 Within this large canvas of South Asian Canadian diasporic history, the chapter traces the scattered fragments of the history of the Desi 95 âKomagata Maru: Continuing the Journey,â Simon Fraser University Library, Burnaby, accessed April 20, 2020, http://komagatamarujourney.ca. 34 Left, which was made possible by the solidarity of the local socialists and their trade unions with South Asian Canadians. These fragments should be construed as the prehistory and the first phase of the Desi Left. The chapter concludes by introducing the Indian Peopleâs Association in North America, a strand of the Desi Left formed in the 1975. IPANA took the initiative to organize farmworkers, predominantly South Asian Canadians in the Lower Mainland, by forming the Canadian Farmworkers Union. Chapter three delves into the1970s-1980s phase of the Desi Leftâs history by discussing labour cultural activism around the Canadian Farmworkers Union in British Columbia. It explores the imagining of a self conscious Desi Left tradition shaped by cultural and literary works of South Asian Canadian progressive writers and their literary societies. A complex dynamics of global revolutionary and socialist currents of the 1970s marks this phase of the Desi Leftâs history in which labour cultural activists crossed racial and communal boundaries in cultural solidarity work. Their cultural production of photos, posters, artwork, radio interviews, plays and videos documentaries gave a distinct cultural turn in the history of the Desi Left. This chapter analyzes this entwined network of activism by South Asian Canadian writers and their literary societies, activist theatre group Vancouver Sath, local rock band Ad Hoc, Vancouver Mayworks Festival, and the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. It offers a window onto institutionalizing of the Desi Leftâs labour cultural activism during the period. Chapter four places South Asian Canadian women in the foreground of struggles waged by the Canadian Farmworkers Union and writes them into the history of the Desi Left. Women formed an overwhelming majority among the South Asian Canadian workforce on the farms in the Lower Mainland. By putting together a patchwork of text, plays, films, photographs, and interviews, the chapter seeks to recover the Canadian Farmworkers Unionâs women membersâ 35 voices and subjectivities missing from the historical record. It is an effort at uncovering womenâs negotiation with patriarchy and male domination within their families and homes before hitting the picket lines. The chapter brings into the open the prevalence of patriarchal norms in South Asian community and its mechanism in the activism spectrum of the Desi Left. Moving in and out of labour organizing, theatre activism, and cultural work, the chapter for the first time offers a flesh and blood account of the women members of the activist theatre group Vancouver Sath. The interiority of South Asian womenâs lives and negotiation with unequal gender relations is as crucial for writing the Desi Leftâs history as their participation in activism and organizing. 36 CHAPTER 2: SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA IN CANADA This chapter maps the theorization of the South Asian Canadian diaspora and explores its framing of early South Asian Canadian history. It recovers the Desi Leftâs history traces during the first half of the twentieth century and registers its reemergence as a self-conscious tradition in the 1970s British Columbia. The Canadian historian Hugh Johnston locates the South Asian migrantsâ story within the story of the British empire by examining its global operations and local implications in Canada, particularly British Columbia.96 By focusing on the journey of the ship Komagata Maru to the shores of British Columbia in 1914, Johnston examines the history of exclusionary laws across the settler colonies of the British empire, focusing especially on the resistance put up by a tiny community of South Asian migrants in British Columbia, Canada; while the majority of the resistance against these racist laws was comprised of Punjabi Sikhs, it also included a minority Punjabi Muslims and Hindus. Norman Buchignani, Doreen M. Indra with Ram Srivastivaâs Continuous Journey, A Social History of South Asians in Canada provides perhaps the most authoritative social history account of South Asian Canadians from 1902 to 1984.97 With the support of extensive ethnographic evidence, they divide almost a century-long South Asian Canadian history into three parts. The early years, 1902-1918, when the early immigrants made a small beginning and courageously fought rampant and legalized racism; the quiet years, 1919 to 1948, when the 96 Hugh J. M. Johnston, The Voyage of The Komagata Maru, The Sikhs Challenge to Canadaâs Colour Bar (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014, first edition published in 1989.); also see Renisa Mawani, Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in Time of Empire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018). 97 Norman Buchignani, Doreen M. Indra with Ram Srivastiva, Continous Journey, A Social History of South Asians in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd, 1985.) 37 community stabilized and a robust entrepreneurial class emerged within it; and the post-war years, 1948 to 1984 when the community settled down and took firm roots. Together, these two books provide a comprehensive and nuanced account of the South Asians who migrated to Canada in the early twentieth century. In the context of the present research project, however, both the books fall short of providing a complete account on two fronts. First, the South Asian activistsâ affinity with radical labour unions and political trends like the International Workers of the World (IWW) (also called the âWobbliesâ), and the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC) in British Columbia are overlooked by both. And second, the life of Punjabi women, even if they were so few in numbers in the early phase is not a matter of concern for these early scholars. Moreover, in the later phase of the 1930s and 1940s, the same lacuna is noticeable in fully acknowledging the role of early South Asian Canadian labour union leader, Darshan Singh Sangha (Canadian). I will return to these issues later on in this chapter but for now, let us turn to the beginning of the South Asian immigrant history in Canada. Unlike Indiaâs impoverished indentured labour diaspora who worked under fixed contracts in British, Dutch and French plantations from the 1830s to 1920s, the Sikhs were wayfarers. They had a strong background of serving in the British Imperial Army and were long employed in Malaysia and Hong Kong in various capacities such as policemen, guards, and caretakers. Some of them migrated to Thailand, Sumatra, Shanghai, Manila, and as far as Australia and New Zealand. They were a homogenous group, largely from a single caste, the Jatsâa prosperous landowning farming community who spoke the common language Punjabi.98 Most of the early Sikh immigrants of Canada came from primarily the districts of Hoshiarpur 98 Johnston, The Voyage, 12. 38 and Jalandhar and after that from Ludhiana, Firozpur and Amritsar, all within 200 miles in east-central Punjab.99 Many were farmersâ young unmarried sons who realized that their share of the familial lands would be too small to sustain themselves.100 All of them, irrespective of their backgrounds, travelled overseas independently, self-financed, and were thus free on arrival to work as they pleased, something which was of great alarm to the white settlers of British colonies.101 The immediate factor that initiated the migration of Sikhs to Vancouver was a racist law, the Chinese Immigration Act, passed in 1885 that imposed a head tax of $50 for Chinese migrants. The tax was then raised to $100 in 1900 and to $500 in 1903 which practically put an end to Chinese migration to Vancouver in the early 20th century.102 The agents of the Canadian Pacific Railwayâs trans-Pacific service in Hong Kong sought replacements to fill up the loss of Chinese passengers, so they encouraged Sikhs in Hong Kong to travel to Vancouver, which led to the beginning of Sikh migration in March 1904.103 These immigrants were men, some single, others married, who had left their families behind and arrived in Vancouver. Nobody noticed this tiny number who quickly found work in sawmills, a cement factory, or cutting wood and clearing land. Their income was $1.25, $1.50 or even $2 a day, which was 25 percent less than the normal worker rates.104 By living frugally, three to four to a room, they saved most of what they earned. By March 1906, the Sikh workers were in great demand, and they were 300 of them in BC. As the word spread, they started 99 Buchignani and Indra, Continous Journey, 11. 100 Ibid., 12. 101 Johnston, The Voyage, 5, 6. 102 Ibid., 7. 103 Ibid., 11. 104 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 17-18. 39 coming directly from India, leading to a rapid increase in their numbers.105 Many journeyed by train from Punjab to Kolkata, where they spent a few weeks waiting for a ship going to Hong Kong from where they embarked on the long voyage across the Pacific to Vancouver.106 By the latter half of 1906, some 2000 South Asian immigrants had arrived, and on Nov 16, 1906, some 850 more arrived.107 Their increasing numbers brought them to the notice of the public and labour and trade councils asked the government to stop it immediately. What added urgency to their actions was the realization that South Asian immigrants were eligible to vote as British subjects. Due to latent racist practices in the province these immigrants were denied accommodation, or access to purchasing essential goods such as firewood or food. Things became even more challenging as the economy slowed down in the winter of 1906-07, and workers were laid off.108 However, in such difficult times, the community came together to help each other, offering food and housing and providing information about job opportunities.109 During the winter of 1909, there were about 1000 unemployed South Asians, but they were all taken care of internally by the Punjabi community without seeking public relief.110 Like the recently arrived Nihal Singh, the educated among the community became a go-between for the immigrants and the local white population. Harnam Singh, an entrepreneur, set up rooming houses at a very low rent for his compatriot immigrants to solve the housing problem.111 The 105 Johnston, The Voyage, 11, 12. 106 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 13. 107 For comparative numbers of other immigrants see Patricia E. Roy, A White Man's Province: BC Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858-1914 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1989). 108 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 19. 109 Johnston, The Voyage, 14. 110 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 34. 111 Ibid., 20. 40 most significant initiative of all such efforts was the establishment of the Vancouver Khalsa Diwan Society in 1907, mainly as a Sikh religious institution that advocated on behalf of South Asians regardless of religion.112 The Khalsa Diwan Society played a crucial role in South Asians immigrants struggle for their rights in Canada. Legislated and Societal Racism Johnston argues that the British empire was a mixture of jurisdictions, and the idea of common citizenship had no legal basis. Canada, a settler colony was a self-governing democracy that made its own domestic laws, whereas a colony of plunder, such as India, was directly ruled from London since 1857. The empireâs posturing that its citizens had the right to move freely without racial discrimination within its territories camouflaged the reality of discriminatory laws.113 Johnston traces a pattern in framing such racist laws against immigrants from India to the Natal Act of 1897, passed by the British South African colony of Natal. The Act involved use of a language test to screen Indian immigrants without naming anyone as an unwanted racial or national group. Soon the discriminatory language test was replicated towards the same end in New Zealand, three Australian colonies, Cape Colony, Transvaal and the new Union of South Africa in 1913.114 The two exclusionary executive orders passed by the government of Canadaâs prime minister Sir Wilfred Laurier in 1908 were framed in the template of the Natal Act towards the same end â to stop immigrants from India from entering Canada. The first order was that the Indian immigrants should have $200 in their possession on arrival, and the second was that they 112 Ibid., 20-21. 113 Johnston, The Voyage, 3-4. 114 Ibid., 6. 41 should be coming straight from India on a continuous journey. In case of violation of any of the two orders, they were to be turned back immediately. In those days, South Asian immigrants usually had $30 to $35 in possession after the voyage ended, enough to meet the required $25 on arrival like all other immigrants. $200 was a small fortune for them. Continuous journey on a single ticket from Calcutta was an impossible task as steamship companies had succumbed to the pressure of the Canadian government and withdrawn their services and wouldnât sell through-tickets to Indians from Indian ports. The immediate and direct implication of the two orders for Indian immigrants in Canada was that even their families or relatives could not join them.115 Earlier, in April 1907, a change in the Municipal Incorporation Act in Vancouver had deprived South Asians of the right to vote in both Municipal as well as Federal elections. The denial of this right debarred South Asian immigrants from entering certain professions like law and pharmacy for forty years.116 Johnston points out that during the construction of Canada Pacific Railways in the 1880s and 1890s in British Columbia, employers imported Chinese labour, which was resented by the white working-class who perceived it as an attack on their wages and jobs. The same fault line came alive in the early 1900s when the growing numbers of Sikh immigrants were seen as a threat to the white workersâ jobs in a labour market they considered already saturated with the Chinese and Japanese immigrant populations. The lumber companies, railway contractors, orchid 115 Ibid., 16-17. 116 Gurchran S. Basran and B. Singh Bolaria, The Sikhs in Canada: Migration, Race, Class and Gender (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 124. 42 plantation owners in Okanagan wanted these Sikh workers, but the labour unions, local politicians and media were opposed to them.117 According to Gurcharn S. Basran and B. Singh Bolaria, âIn many respects, Sikhs were a sub-proletarianized, marginalized and subordinated workforce who were preferred as workers but considered as undesirable immigrants and permanent settlers.â118 Basran and Bolaria critique the âpush-pullâ factors of demographic studies that overlook socio-economic and political contexts in which individuals migrate and bring in a perspective of political economy to focus on exploitative structural realities of capitalism as a world system. They frame the global migrations and Sikh immigrantsâ lives in Canada through a âCore and Periphery Model of the World Systemâ theory and argue that: [T]he political and economic forces that produce wealth in core capitalist countries simultaneously produce and sustain underdevelopment, unemployment and poverty in periphery countries. The transfer of labour is one aspect of the unequal and exploitative relations between labour producing and labour exporting countries.119 Basran and Bolaria argue that institutional racism is a fundamental feature of Canadian settler state. Racialized migrant labour saves the cost of labour force renewal to the core country like Canada, and the immigrant labourerâs stateless status deprives them of legal and political rights. On the one hand, it makes workers vulnerable to exploitation and on the other hand, the working class is divided racially, which neutralizes their collective bargaining power. Additionally, they point out, the immigrant worker is an easy scapegoat to divert the anger of the local working class in times of capitalâs crisis of accumulation.120 However, in their account of 117 Johnston, The Voyage, 13-14. 118 Basran and Bolaria, The Sikhs in Canada, 219. 119 Ibid., 79. 120 Ibid., 80-83. 43 operations of global capital, settler state and international division of labour, Basran and Bolaria are silent about the agency of the immigrant worker. They acknowledge the role of unions in attacking racial hierarchy and segregation in the workplace but they have not discussed how this crucial process operates. Who were the South Asian labour organizers and their Canadian counterparts who contributed to it?121 Prehistory of the Desi Left With rare exceptions, Canadian labour histories do not provide enough clues on the tenuous connection between South Asian immigrant labour and Canadian leftists and labour unions. It marginalizes and invisibilizes Desi Leftâs history, which has yet to emerge as a narrative on its own but instead finds fleeting and argued references in scholarly works. I seek here to rectify this absence and make the Desi Leftâs organizing visible to understand the matrices of immigrant histories better. Buchignani and Indra note that by 1912 local Indian revolutionaries in Vancouver were employing political theory drawn from the Socialist Party and International Workers of the World (IWW) in their rhetoric. Some of them were members of the Socialist Party of Canada and expressed interest in other national liberation struggles such as those in China and Ireland. In widespread racism of the period, the IWW was the only labour movement that strongly supported South Asian immigrant workersâ rights.122 The details, though fragmentary, allude to a 121 Ibid., 136. 122 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 42, 46. 44 larger picture that works at a different register, one that has not developed to the extent that it would accommodate a nascent Desi Leftâs history. Some of the literature on the IWW highlights the unionâs close relations with migrant workers, immigrants, and people of colour but offers nothing concrete about local South Asian labour. For example, Franklin Rosemont in Joe Hill, The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass[sic]Counterculture writes, âFounded in Chicago, the IWW concentrated on organizing workers that the American Federation of Labor (AFL) considered âunorganizableâ or undesirable, the unskilled, immigrants, people of color, and migratory workers in agriculture.â123 Rosemont points out that the IWW had five locals in BC almost a year after being formed in Chicago in 1905. The IWWâs commitment towards unorganized immigrant workers emerges powerfully in Mark Leierâs work on the Free Speech Fights in Vancouver in 1909 and 1912. Leier argues that street meetings were crucial to the IWWâs organizing as it was the only way to reach out to immigrant workers who were quickly sent away to distant camps. The city officials passed a by-law prohibiting the IWW from public speeches in streets which the union resisted with full force and faced mass arrests and brutal police violence. Leier quotes Ralph Hosea Chaplin, the famous Wobbly illustrator, organizer and poet/writer of the labour anthem, âSolidarity Forever,â that the city officials were not keeping free speech out but keeping unions out.124 Leier makes a crucial point that the IWW was the union of immigrant workers who didnât meet property and residency 123 Franklin Rosemont, Joe Hill, The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture (Oakland: PM Press, 2015), 7. 124 Mark Leier, âSolidarity on Occasion, The Vancouver Free Speech Fights of 1909 and 1912,â Labour/ Le Travail, 23, (Spring 1989): 40. 45 requirements and had no right to vote. During the 1909 BC elections, out of 5000 Wobblies present in BC, only 75 were eligible to vote. As a union of discriminated, racialized and disenfranchised workers, the IWW embraced free speech and direct action over the ballot box to fight for workersâ rights.125 In the Free Speech Fight court battles, Leier draws attention to the crucial role of the âwell know socialist attorneyâ J. Edward Bird, who represented Wobbly and SPC men in the court.126 He unravels the larger world of Birdâs ideological commitment, and solidarity with immigrant South Asian community. Bird was a member of the Socialist Party of Canada for years and one of BCâs pioneering labour and human rights lawyers. In April 1903, he addressed a protest meeting against the murder of Frank Rogers, a socialist union organizer who was shot on a picket line of the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees (UBRE). Bird represented several trade unions, including coal miners (members of United Mineworkers Union of America), during the Vancouver Island miner dispute in 1913 and the Winnipeg General Strike leaders in 1919.127 All this was in addition to his remarkable contribution to fighting epic legal battles against discriminatory continuous passage law against the South Asian immigrants during the 1910s. Peter Campbell adds a South Asian name, Hussain Rahim, to Vancouverâs nascent interracial socialist world and provides an authoritative account of South Asianâs association 125 Ibid., 61-62. 126 Ibid., 42. 127 âBird. J. E (1868-1948),â Komagata Maru: Continuing the Journey, Simon Fraser University Library. Accessed April 20, 2020. http://komagatamarujourney.ca/node/4359 ; Janet Mary Nicol, ââNot to Be Bought, Nor for Saleâ: The Trials of Joseph Edward Bird,â Labour/ Le Travail 78 (Fall 2016): 219, 222. 46 with the Socialist Party of Canada.128 By February 1912, Hussain Rahim was involved in the Free Speech Fights and helped the IWW by furnishing bail to release its activists arrested during the movement. Around the same time, he addressed a meeting supporting the IWW and the Free Speech Fights. Later in the year, when immigration inspector William C. Hopkinson searched his house, evidence was found that Rahim raised more than $100 in funds from South Asians for the Socialist Party and IWW.129 The Socialist Party inducted Hussain Rahim to the partyâs Vancouver-based Dominion Executive Committee (DEC) in late 1912 or early 1913. It was a historic moment when for the first time, a South Asian attained such an influential position in the Socialist Party, or perhaps any political party of Canada. The party had considerably weakened by the desertion of a majority of its members in Ontario and Manitoba, who joined the Social Democratic Party in 1910-1911. The party organ, the Western Clarion, was out of publication for six months (November 1912-March 1913). In the DEC meeting of February 13, 1913, Rahim played a key role in relaunching the party paper and providing the SPC rent-free office room at his Canadian India Supply Companyâs offices at 516 Main Street, where DEC held its meetings till late 1914.130 Rahim was politically active ever since he arrived in British Columbia in January 1910. He had built a formidable reputation among local South Asians by successfully challenging two attempts to deport him.131 When he first came to Vancouver on October 27, 1910, he was arrested upon his arrival, âhis confiscated effects included letters from Taraknath Das, notes on manufacturing explosives, and the addresses of Indian agitators in France, the Peter Campbell, âEast Meets Left: South Asian Militants and the Socialist Party of Canada in British Columbia, 1904-1914,â International Journal of Canadian Studies, 20 Fall, (1999): 41, 48. 129 Ibid., 47. 130 Ibid., 45. 131 Ibid., 46. 47 United States, Switzerland, Natal and Egypt.â132 Soon, Rahim was busy building networks by founding organizations of South Asians, the Hindu Temperance League in 1911 with G.D Kumar and Dr. Spenser, which was the first South Asian-white organization in Canada, and later the United India League with Atma Ram.133 In 1914, he published six monthly issues of his paper The Hindustanee in English to reach out to Canadians and educated Anglicised Indians.134 Bird and Rahim were the two powerful voices of solidarity between the Socialists and South Asian immigrants in Vancouver. The Socialist Party of Canada undergirded their alliance. Being active members of the Socialist Party, Bird and Rahim knew each other well, and thatâs how Rahim could solicit Birdâs legal services to fight immigration cases for South Asian passengers on ships, Panama Maru in 1913 and Komagata Maru in 1914 that shook the Canadian establishment. There was much in common between the two, not least their shared socialist ideology as well as middle-class backgrounds. Rahim came from a Lohana Gujarati merchant caste family well known for their trading in cotton. He was brought up in Delhi and spoke at least four languages, Hindi, Punjabi, Gujrati and fluent English, he had travelled in Europe, the East Asia and North America. He had spent fifteen years in Kobe, Japan trading in cotton before leaving for Honolulu, where he adopted a Muslim name, Husain Rahim. He was earlier known by his Hindu name, Chagan Kairaj Verma. In Vancouver, he ran the Canada India Supply and Trust Company that traded in real estate, a lucrative business in which Sikh millworkers, labour contractors, storekeepers and businesspeople invested heavily. Within ten years of their arrival, the worth of the collective property owned by South Asians was estimated 132 Ibid., 46. 133 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 40. 134 Johnston, The Voyage, 26. 48 to be between $1 to $2 million.135 Bird spent the early parts of his career practicing with law firms in Toronto before moving with his family to Vancouver in 1902, a rapidly expanding city. Previously a Liberal, he turned into a supporter of the Socialist Party in Vancouver after it was founded in 1901. He advertised his legal services in the partyâs paper, the Canadian Socialist, later named the Western Clarion for the next six years.136 As a lawyer, he was part of the middle class of an expanding city whose population crossed 1,00,000 in 1911. His family lived in a middle-class neighbourhood and employed a live-in servant. As a lawyer, he practiced corporate law, was on the board of private companies and made investments in capitalist ventures.137 In one of his speeches, he said that he was âborn to a good faith Methodist and a Liberalâ and that he probably continued to remain so along with his association with the Socialist Party.138 The solidarity between local South Asian militants and the Socialist Party of Canada has deeply interested Sushma J Verma and Radhika Seshan, who propose that we further explore the links between the two and their implications.139 Jayant Lele argues that the early Indian diaspora was predominantly working-class who had the experience of life under colonial rule in India before coming to Canada. The âuniversalist revolutionary idealsâ of South Asian pioneers were a product of their cross-continental experience.140 Campbell differs from Verma and Seshan, and Lele and argues that instead of Marxism or socialism, South Asian militants in Vancouver were 135 Johnston, The Voyage, 23, 25. 136 Nicol, âNot to Be Bought, Nor for Sale,â 220. 137 Ibid., 224, 225. 138 Ibid., 223. 139 Sushma J. Verma and Radhika Seshan eds., Fractured Identity, the Indian Diaspora in Canada (New Delhi: Rawat publications, 2003), 6, 140 Jayant Lele, âIndian Diasporaâs Long Distance Nationalism: The Rise and Proliferation of âHindutvaââ in Fractured Identity, the Indian Diaspora in Canada, eds. Sushma J. Verma and Radhika Seshan (New Delhi: Rawat publications, 2003), 71. 49 attracted by the idealist belief of the Socialist party that once workers understood how capitalism operated and how it exploited them, it was inevitable that they will overthrow the capitalist system. It enthused local South Asian militants to wrongly believe that the subjugated people of India were ready to overthrow British rule, which eventually led to the Ghadar misadventure.141 Campbell argues the socialist ideas appealed to the local Sikh militants when these affirmed and upheld the ideals of their own religion. Thus, the Khalsa Sikhs, closely associated with the Socialist Party of Canada, âreturned to fight on their own terms and in dedication to their own traditions.â142 However, Campbell warns against misreading Sikh militants as religious exclusivists as non-Sikhs like Husain Rahim and Sohan Lal Pathak were active members of the Shore Committee formed at the Vancouver Sikh Temple to provide support to the passengers on the Komagata Maru.143 Campbellâs otherwise excellent narrative on the collaboration between the South Asian immigrants, especially Husain Rahim and the Socialist Party, misreads the local Khalsa Sikh actors without contextualizing them within the larger transnational Ghadar movement and its political ideology. As discussed earlier, Oberoi frames this as a more complex âpre-colonial cosmopolitanismâ or alternate cosmopolitanism of the Ghadar activists, which Campbell misperceives to be a religious-secular binary. Oberoi underscores that the Ghadar party recruited its members and leaders from across castes, religions and regions and was highly averse to any narrow identity based on religion, caste, ethnicity or region.144 141 Ibid., 38. 142 Ibid., 38. 143 Ibid., 41. 144 Oberoi, âGhadar Movementâ 44-45. 50 Rahim worked closely with his Khalsa Sikh comrades, Bhag Singh and Balwant Singh, on the shore committee and hired Edward Bird to provide legal support to the Komagata Maru passengers.145 Bhag Singh was secretary, and later president of the Khalsa Diwan Society and Balwant Singh was the priest (granthi) of the Sikh temple in Vancouver. Both were veterans of the British Indian army. While many Sikh veterans took pride in their past association with the British army and wore war medals while welcoming the Governor-General visiting Vancouver in 1912, Bhag Singh, as secretary of Sikh Temple society, refused to accept the invitation to Sikhs to take part in a military review for the Governor-General. He had burnt his honourable discharge certificate of the army in 1909, denouncing his past association with the British empire.146 With the hope of triggering a similar sentiment of revolt among the Sikh troops in the British army in India, Indian activists like Taraknath Das, an educated young Bengali Indian nationalist fugitive from the Indian police and his associate Guran Ditta Kumar, a Punjabi speaking native of West Punjab (now in Pakistan) had been carrying out with their propaganda through their newspapers like the Free Hindusthan in English and Swadesh Sewak in Gurmukhi which was sent to India in bulk until March 1911 when it was put on the prohibited list.147 It is important to mention here that the Free Hindusthan, which started in April 1908, was the first-ever South Asian publication in Canada. It was published in the pressroom of the Socialist Party of Canada, which also published the Western Clarion, the partyâs organ. Campbell underlines this early collaboration between the South Asian militants and the Socialist Party by referring to 145 Johnston, The Voyage, 74. 146 Ibid., 28. 147 Ibid., 23-24. 51 an article that Das wrote in the Western Clarion in February 1908 in which he espoused the key role of a revolutionary minority in initiating a revolution. The paperâs editor D. G. McKenzie indirectly contested it in an article in May 1908 where he emphasized the importance of workersâ education through a slow and lengthy process that represented the political line of the Socialist Party.148 It points to the different approaches of the Socialist Party and the Ghadar militants towards the emancipation of the people, which became one of the reasons for their parting ways in late 1914. Johnston notes that the westernized, educated Indian activist leadership like Das, Kumar and Rahim inhabited a world of ideas far removed from most Sikh immigrants with peasant backgrounds for whom they worked. Only the leadership of the Sikh immigrants like Bhag Singh and Balwant Singh joined the United India League.149 For others, the Khalsa Diwan Society was their organization. Interestingly, the Socialist Party of Canada, an avowedly atheist ally of religious Khalsa Sikhs in anti-imperialist and anti-immigration struggles, seemed comfortable with Sikh religious beliefs. Its party members considered South Asian immigrants to be âsojourners, not citizens.â150 On the eve of the First World War, there was rampant unemployment in British Columbia, and the majority of white workers were worried about losing their jobs. They and their labour unions believed that the Chinese, Japanese and Indian âundesirablesâ were snatching their jobs. Campbell argues that in such times a petit-bourgeois committed socialist, Rahim was on an impossible twofold mission â to reach out to the âilliterateâ masses and bridge the gap 148 Campbell, âEast Meets Left,â 44, 45. 149 Johnston, The Voyage, 23-26. 150 Campbell, âEast Meets Left,â 42. 52 between the white and South Asian workers. The problem, however, was that Rahimâs and other members of the socialist partyâs conception of the working class was not the working class as it existed at that moment in British Columbia but the European working class that Marx had talked about.151 Unfortunately, the âideal typeâ of working class simply did not exist. Most white workers were not bothered about seeking solidarity with their South Asian comrades, and South Asian workers found it hard to accept their racist and prejudiced white worker colleagues. So, fighting racist immigration laws in Canada and British rule in India remained the priority of the South Asian workers instead of wages and working conditions.152 The Socialist Partyâs priorities also changed as they became busy with resisting the Canadian stateâs crackdown on trade unions and its socialist allies. It was more focused on uniting workers in industrial unions than the war of independence in far-off India.153 There were other factors as well that contributed to the SPC distancing itself from the South Asian radicals. After the Komagata Maru passengers lost their case in the BC Court of Appeals on July 23, 1914, the ship was forced to sail back to India. It led to a spate of killings within the Sikh community in Vancouver. Two of immigration inspector William Charles Hopkinsonâs Sikh informers were killed, and Bela Singh, an informer, killed Bhag Singh and Badan Singh right inside the Vancouver Sikh temple. This finally led to the murder of inspector Hopkinson by Mewa Singh in the Vancouver Court House on Oct 21, 1914. Rahim, Balwant Singh, Sohan Lal and Kartar Singh were named co-conspirators in Hopkinsonâs murder, but at the trial on Jan 11, 1915, Sohan Lal was acquitted, and charges against the rest were dropped, 151 Ibid., 49. 152 Ibid., 49, 50. 153 Ibid., 49, 55. 53 while Mewa Singh was condemned to be hanged. The SPC considered these acts âessentially individualistic,â rather than a âcollectivist, mode of actionâ to which it was ideologically committed. As a result of these cumulative factors, the SPC drifted away from the South Asian militants. It seems that the DEC meeting of SPC held on Oct 23, 1914, was the last one that Rahim attended. The committee shifted to a new address within a month, probably to avoid coming under the governmentâs attack for its close association with Rahim and South Asian militants. There is no evidence of Rahim attending the DEC again.154 He continued to live in Vancouver and participate in activities of the South Asian immigrants until he passed away in 1937. Almost eighty years later, on Sept 18, 2018, the Vancouver City Council endorsed a plaza at the north end of Spyglass Place, to be named âHusain Rahim Plazaâ in his memory.155 Husain Rahim was cast in the same mould as Sadhu Singh Dhamiâs central character, Maluka, who, as Oberoi argues, explores life beyond boundaries of home and race to create a multicultural world that âcannot be compressed into âSikhâ or âHinduâ diaspora.â156 The legacy of the political-ideological project of the Socialist Party of Canada and the South Asian militants like Husain Rahim was carried forward by the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) founded in 1932 in British Columbia. It wholeheartedly supported South Asians in the 1930s and 1940s to win back their right to vote. Itâs a coincidence that the year Rahim died, a 19-year-old Darshan Singh Sangha from Punjab arrived in Vancouver who took Rahimâs socialist legacy of labour organizing and 154 Ibid., 54, 55. 155 City of Vancouver, Commemorative Naming of Civic Assets, September 18, 2018, 4, accessed May 18, 2020, https://council.vancouver.ca/20180918/documents/a14.pdf. 156 Oberoi, âImagining Indian Diaspora,â 190. 54 interracial solidarities to new heights as a labour leader and organizer of the Industrial Woodworkers of America (IWA). Desi Leftâs organizing legacies continued to echo in the Lower Mainlandâs South Asian immigrant labour history. Bruce Duncan âUtahâ Philips (May 15, 1935 âMay 23, 2008) was an American labour organizer, poet and folk singer who carried the IWWâs legacy to another generation by singing songs of unionsâ own Little Red Songbook. âUtahâ Philips was a card-carrying member of the IWW.157 In the 1970s and 1980s, the South Asian immigrants found themselves in the thick of self-organizing for immigrant farmworkersâ rights. The Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU), formed by them on April 26, 1980, was the first-ever union of the farmworkers in Canada. It âbecame the driving force behind a larger social movement for South Asian immigrants, Quebecois and Canadian workersâ rights that brought together a community coalition of faith, health, legal, multicultural and arts groups.â158 At the second national convention of the CFU, âUtahâ Philips performed a benefit concert for the CFU on Sept 27, 1981, at John Oliver High School, which over seven hundred people attended.159 âUtahâ Philipsâs benefit concert holds in its embrace another story of Desi Leftâs solidarities in the 1980s, which deserves more scholarly attention than it has received so far. I will discuss this very aspect of immigrant history in the next chapter of this dissertation. 157 Rosemont, Joe Hill, 415. 158 Canadian Farmworkers Union Project. Simon Fraser University Library Special Collections. The Canadian Farmworkers Union Project | SFU Library. 159 âUTAH PHILLIPS BENEFIT CONCERT FOR THE CANADIAN FARMWORKERS UNION AND THE VANCOUVER FILM PREMIERE OF A TIME TO RISE.â September 27, 1981. Photos-071. The Canadian Farmworkers Union Collection, Simon Fraser University Library Digitized Collections. Burnaby, British Columbia, accessed October 23, 2021, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/cfu-40/utah-phillips-benefit-concert-canadian-farmworkers-union-and-vancouver-film-premiere-time. 55 Women The Continuous Journey regulation seriously impacted the South Asian population as well as their gender ratio. By the end of 1913, there were six South Asian wives and 20 children in Canada. In 1925, 90% of the population was men over 40 years old, and in addition, there were 40 wives married to immigrant men. Even as late as 1930, there were less than 200 South Asian families all over Canada.160 A combination of factors led to a concession granted at the Imperial War Conference of 1918 to admit the wives and children of Indianâs living in Canada. The South Asian community had been making efforts towards this for a significant period. There were compulsions of the British Imperial government too during the First World War as Punjab was the main recruiting ground of the British imperial army. However, the process was so tedious that in the period between 1914 to 1921, only 11 dependents could come to Canada. It was not until June 12, 1924, that a system of registering wives and children to facilitate their entry into Canada was established.161 Meanwhile, rules were so amended that those who left for India before 1920 were never allowed to return to Canada.162 As a result, the total South Asian population in 1921 was 1,016, which, according to the Canadian census, would increase only to 1400 by 1931.163 According to Basran and Bolaria, the main argument offered by the Canadian government for denying the entry of wives and children of South Asian men was that they were unfit to live in Canada or assimilate into Canadian society. The underlying notion of racial 160 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 42, 73 and 74. 161 Ibid., 65-66. 162 Ibid., 72. 163 Basran and Bolaria, The Sikhs in Canada, 101. 56 inferiority used to deny families of the immigrant men to join them in Canada was a form of control through the control of kinship. It ensured that the immigrant men remained sojourners and did not become permanent settlers.164 For example, in 1912, the entire South Asian community was standing behind Bhag Singh and Balwant Singh, demanding their families be allowed to stay with them in Vancouver. The Womenâs National Council, and the Ministerial Association of Vancouver strongly opposed it as they feared such a move would lead to Indo-Canadians developing roots in British Columbia.165 By controlling women and childrenâs entry, the Canadian government deferred the emergence of a Canada-born Indo-Canadian community who would claim it their home.166 Though the South Asian community had been present in British Columbia since the beginning of the 20th century, the first marriage of South Asians who had been born in Canada was only in 1941.167 These racist policies restricted the presence of South Asian women. For this reason, there is hardly any evidence that informs us of these pioneer South Asian women and their role in the communityâs life. They are mentioned in history nonetheless as the âfamilyâ of their husbands. Mrs. Uday Ram, the wife of Mill store owner, labour contractor and activist Uday Ram Joshi, arrived in 1910 and gave birth to the first South Asian born in Canada on January 12, 1911.168 Bhag Singh and his wife Harnam Kaur were on a prolonged to and fro journey in 1911 from Hong Kong to San Francisco to Hong Kong and Vancouver. It took such a long time that Harman Kaur delivered her baby, Joginder, in transit in Hong Kong. Balwant Singh, his wife 164 Ibid., 123-124. 165 Johnston, The Voyage, 31. 166 Basran and Bolaria, The Sikhs in Canada, 124. 167 Sarjeet Singh Jagpal, Becoming Canadians: Pioneer Sikhs in their Own Words (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 1994),134. 168 Johnston, The Voyage, 38. 57 Kartar Kaur, and two children were travelling together with Bhag Singh and Harnam Kaur on this journey.169 After much struggle, community mobilization and moving the court, the two women and their three children were allowed into Canada as an act of grace on May 23, 1912.170 Similarly, Hakim Singh, his wife and four children had to wait in Hong Kong for two years before they were permitted entry as the act of grace on July 16, 1913.171 Besant Kaur, the wife of entrepreneur Kapoor Singh Siddoo who arrived in 1923, hadnât seen her husband for sixteen years.172 Sarjeet Singh Jagpalâs Becoming Canadian provides glimpses of early South Asian women in their own words, like their journey on the ship to Vancouver, duration of stay in Hong Kong, the first day on arrival in Vancouver, and sartorial habits. However, substantial accounts of women are missing.173 Arjan Singh Chandâs Diary provides brief but first significant insights on the Punjabi women of the early period, especially Harman Kaur, wife of Bhag Singh, and Dr. Teja Singhâs wife (name not mentioned) to fill the gap. The Diary is in two volumes and contains information on the Vancouver Gurdwara and Khalsa Diwan Society 1906 and 1924, as recorded by Arjan Singh Brar (Chand), its secretary.174 Chand appears to have been a man with a genuine passion for chronicling. This Diary is a rich archival source deserving of further scholarly attention.175 169 Ibid., 30. 170 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 41. 171 Ibid., 42. 172 Johnston, The Voyage, 205. 173 Jagpal, Becoming Canadians. 174 Arjan Singh Brar, âKhalsa Diwan Society [Diary], Vancouver, B.C. [: Volume 1 - English Translation],â Khalsa Diwan Society [Diary], Vancouver, B.C. [: Volume 1 - English translation] | Komagata Maru Journey, accessed October 31, 2021, http://komagatamarujourney.ca/node/15901. 175 A few of the early Punjabi women that found their way into the diaryâs pages were discussed in The Nameless Collective Podcast. Naveen Girn, Milan Singh and Paneet Singh hosts, âEpisode 2: Detained and Deported.â The Nameless Collective Podcast, June 1, 2017, accessed April 25, 2020, The Nameless Collective Podcast: Episode 2: Detained and Deported on Apple Podcasts. 58 In his entry for December 6, 1908, Chand describes the visit of a secretary of the Canadian government from Ottawa to the gurdwara along with a few other people. They became late and could not come at an appointed time to meet the two hundred to three hundred Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus who were waiting for them at the gurdwara. After waiting for some time, Dr. Teja Singh began to recite from the Guru Granth Sahib, the religious scripture of Sikhs, to the gathering.176 When the delegation arrived, they sent a messenger to Dr. Singh to come out for five minutes and talk to them. Dr. Singh conveyed back to them that as per the Sikh tradition, he could not get up and leave the prayer and congregation. When they persisted, Dr. Singhâs wife, who was part of the congregation, decided to intervene and requested Dr. Singh that, âleaving the Diwan is something against the directions of Guru Maharaj. So you should keep on narrating the discourse to the congregation. Go after the conclusion of the congregation.â177 Chand describes Mrs. Singh âas noble, pious, truly religious and ready to lay down her life for the sake of Guru Sahib,â and well versed in English and Punjabi.178 She was perhaps the only Punjabi woman living in Vancouver in 1908. That she could speak out with conviction at a gathering of 300 men and no women, challenge the command of a Canadian governmentâs secretary visiting from the capital and the qualities attributed to her by Chand are clear indicators that her presence might have been more significant than what the history of the period has acknowledged. Yet, her name is not mentioned even in Chandâs Diary. 176 Prof. Teja Singh was a progressive moderate who believed in negotiations than armed action to bring about change. A strong advocate of the rights of Indo Canadian community in British Columbia, he guided the community from 1908 to March 1913. See Johnston, The Voyage, 28-32. 177 Brar, âKhalsa Diwan Society [Diary],â 28. 178 Ibid., 41. 59 In the case of Harnam Kaur, it is only in her death, documented in the archive in some detail, that we get a glimpse of her life about which the sources are otherwise silent. On page 41, dated Feb 2, 1914, Chand notes the sad news of the death of Harnam Kaur in childbirth within two years of her arrival in Vancouver. Harman Kaur was born in Peshawar in 1886 and was 28 years old when she died. He mentions the exact time of her death at fifty minutes past six oâclock on January 30, and the times of her cremation at six minutes past noon. One gets a sense of Harnam Kaurâs persona in her last wish expressed to her husband, Bhag Singh: (1) Every year, money be sent to Sikh Girls College Ferozepur for one dayâs food. (2) For one day to the Amritsar Orphanage. (3) One hundred rupees be sent to Peshawar.179 This passage demonstrates her priorities of womenâs education, care for orphans, and love for her place of birth are powerful pointers to her personhood, beliefs, and commitments. The details of her loyalties remain unclear; we do not know the connections to these places beyond her gratitude and seva towards them. Perhaps, she might have studied at the Sikh Girls College Ferozepur. The photographs of her funeral procession and cremation are also available in archives. Harman Kaurâs obituary was carried on the front page of Husain Rahimâs paper The Hindustanee, Sunday, March 1, 1914. In it, Rahim writes: The whole Hindu Colony of British Columbia was thrown into grief over the untimely and unexpected death of this highly respected Sikh lady in Vancouver. She was an inspiration of the whole community of Sikhs and Hindustanees, by her kind, courteous and patronizing qualities, and was the leading woman amongst the few Sikh ladies in these shores who are deeply grieved over her loss.180 179 Ibid., 41. 180 âHindustanee: The Official Organ of the United India League Vol I, No III, Sunday March 1, 1914.â Komagata Maru: Continuing the Journey, Simon Fraser University, accessed May 18, 2020. http://komagatamarujourney.ca/node/15810. 60 Describing her funeral, Rahim stated that it had the largest number of mourners ever seen at a âHindustaneeâ funeral in Vancouver, a fact that is duly mentioned at the Harman Kaur Plaza named after her at the Southwest corner of Trutch Street and West Broadway to commemorate her memory.181 These are solid pointers towards Harman Kaurâs short but powerful presence and the role she might have played in the communityâs life. Just like Mrs. Singh, the traces suggest that they both occupied larger roles than what the history of the period has acknowledged so far. Entrepreneurs In the post-World War decade of 1920 to 1930, the South Asian community put the turmoil of political protests behind them and turned their energies towards building their lives in Canada. The denial of the right to vote in 1907 had simultaneously excluded them from various vocations, professions and the holding of positions; however, many were not short of entrepreneurial abilities. These South Asians started as fuel dealers around 1908, supplying scrap wood for home heating, which required low capital costs and minimal English-speaking abilities. By 1930 there were sixty fuel dealerships in British Columbia. These were mostly small, operated by one or two owner-operators with the help of one or two carts or trucks. One of them, the Sohan Brothers of Burnaby, became a large dealer by 1927, owning sixty trucks.182 Gradually a small but solid South Asian entrepreneur class emerged in the 1920s, especially in the lumber industry. 181 City of Vancouver, Commemorative Naming of Civic Assets: 2018, September 18, 4, accessed May 18, 2020, https://council.vancouver.ca/20180918/documents/a14.pdf. 182 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 78. 61 Amongst them were the most prominent South Asian entrepreneurs, Mayo Singh and Kapoor Singh Siddoo. Both came separately to North America in 1906 as emigrants and worked as labourers in California for a few years before shifting to British Columbia with all their savings. On crucial business matters, Mayo Singh was advised by the socialist activist, Husain Rahim, who had stayed back in Vancouver while the Ghadrites left for India to fight the British. Rahim recommended Mayo Singh to bring Kapoor Singh on board as his business partner, an educated man well-versed in accounts. From October 1916, Mayo Singh and Kapoor Singh worked as equal partners with interests in several lumber mills, including large ones in Duncan and at Sooke Lake. They hired hundreds of labourers from various ethnic backgrounds including European, Japanese, Chinese and South Asians workers. These entrepreneurs provided leadership to the community, made an impact on white communities, notably on merchants and professionals classes, and earned respect for the South Asians with their philanthropy and honesty and integrity in dealings with others. Early on, Kapoor Singh and his friends were associated with moderate South Asians led by Dr. Sundar Singh. 183 Along with other Sikh, Hindu and Muslim immigrant Indians, they supported Dr. Singhâs two newspapers, Sansar, for Punjabi community and The Aryan, for English language readers published throughout 1911 and 1912. Through their independent organization United India Association, Dr. Singh managed to win many friends among white Canadians to support the cause of the South Asian community. Reverend Louis Walsh Hall, an Irish American missionary, was one of them. He had long worked with Chinese immigrants in the US and British Columbia.184 183 Ibid., 79; Johnston, The Voyage, 205-206. 184 Johnston, The Voyage, 31, 32. 62 However, in the highly charged political atmosphere of the 1914s, the South Asian community in Vancouver was badly polarized between Ghadar radicals and government informers and agents. As a moderate, Kapoor Singh did not stand a chance, despite his sympathies with the Ghadar cause and personal support to his Ghadarite friend.185 Johnston argues that Kapoor had made up his mind to make Canada his home, so he left British Columbia to stay out of the spiralling violence between the opposing camps, and came to Toronto, where he cut his hair and shaved his beard. He returned to Vancouver only in 1916 when Mayo Singh invited him to work together. By then, the Ghadar turbulence was over in Vancouver. During the 1930s and 1940s, Kapoor Singh Siddoo and Mayo Singh played a crucial role in supporting the South Asian communityâs struggle against racism and discrimination. Dr. Duraipal Pandia, a highly educated Tamil from South India and Naginder Singh Gill, Secretary of the Khalsa Diwan Society, were the community leaders. Their contribution to the struggles for the legalization of 225 illegal South Asian immigrants in 1940 and getting the right to vote in 1947 has been well acknowledged and discussed by Johnston, and Buchignani and Indra.186 First Phase of the Desi Left However, the struggles for getting the right to vote were not fought by the South Asian community in isolation from Canadian society. Much before South Asians, the Chinese and Japanese immigrants were deprived of their right to vote and mobilized support on the issue. A few Canadian allies extended their wholehearted support to immigrant communitiesâ demand for 185 Ibid., 206. 186 Johnston, The Voyage, 212, 213; Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 91-99. 63 the right to vote, which helped strengthen the South Asiansâ voice and made it a voice of the larger Canadian community. On Oct 19, 1900, Tomekichi (Tomey) Homma, a Japanese Canadian fisherman, head of the Steveston-based Japanese Fishermanâs Association, walked into a Vancouver polling station and demanded his name be placed on the votersâ list. Upon rejection, he launched a lawsuit that led to an extensive legal battle during which he scored many victories but ultimately lost.187 It is important to trace these moments of âfailureâ that are as much part of the political resistance. It had perhaps set a precedent for Husain Rahim, the South Asian socialist who followed the same strategy during the provincial elections held on Mar 28, 1912. He had walked into the polling booth, managed to get registered on the votersâ list for the provincial elections, voted in the polls and acted as a scrutineer of the Socialist Party of Canada in the Ward Four Polling Station in the Vancouver City Hall. But, of course, it was soon discovered, he was arrested and put on trial, where he was acquitted.188 In 1906, Cowichan Chief Charlie Tsulpiâmultw, Squamish Chief Joe Capilano and Shuswap Chief Basil went to London to submit a petition to King Edward VII protesting denial of the right to vote and seizure of their lands. From the 1930s onward, just as the South Asian Community led by the Khalsa Diwan Society and other South Asian activists were proactive on this issue, the Chinese Canadian activistsâ Foon Sien, Velma Chan, Esther Fung, Gordon Cumyow, Roy Mah who was an IWA organizer, the Chinese Canadian 187 John Price and Grace Eiko Thomson, âRemembering a B.C. civil-rights leader; Japanese-Canadian activist who fought to get minorities on the voting rolls to be honoured today,â Times Colonist; Victoria, B.C., December 10, 2017, accessed March 14, 2020. https://www.proquest.com/docview/1975002761?accountid=14656&pq-origsite=summon. 188 Campbell, âEast Meets Left,â47. 64 Association and the Chinese Youth Association mounted pressure on the government to demand the right to vote for their community. 189 With the onset of the Great Depression in September 1930, the Canadian government stopped all immigration from Asia (including South Asia). Excepting the wives and children of men already in the country, no immigration was allowed. In these depression years, according to Johnston, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the successor to the erstwhile Socialist Party of Canada and predecessor to the New Democratic Party (NDP), and labour unions, particularly the lumber workerâs union were allied with the South Asian community.190 Buchignani and Indra commend the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) as âthe first major organization to break the isolation between South Asians and others.â191 They mention that a few courageous South Asian activists went house-to-house to recruit workers from their community to the IWA. The big IWA strike of 1946, which saw the participation of unionized immigrant South Asian workers, earned them significant concessions from the mill owners.192 Buchignani and Indra consider the rise of the provincial CCF formed in 1932 as one of the major factors to pave the way for the South Asian immigrantsâ right to vote in 1947.193 Harnam Singh and Sundar Singh, president and secretary of the Khalsa Diwan Society Victoria, reiterated the same sentiment and wrote in their report that, âAlthough we continued to agitate for revision of the Franchise Law in our favour, it never again became a live issue until the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a socialist party, adopted it as one of the main issues in their 189 Price and Thomson, âRemembering a B.C, civil-rights leader.â 190 Johnston, The Voyage, 211. 191 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 99. 192 Ibid., 98. 193 Ibid., 94. 65 programme to remove racial discrimination.â194 In its Regina Manifesto, the CCF resolved, ââequal treatment before the law of all residents of Canada irrespective of race, nationality or religious or political beliefs.ââ195 The resolution offers an interesting reading into the evolution of the Canadian Socialists since the days of the Socialist Party of Canada in the 1910s. The Socialist Party was anti-racist, supported the anti-colonial struggle of South Asian immigrants and defended the right of Komagata Maru passengers to enter Canada, but many of their leaders continued to view South Asians as wayfarers rather than full citizens.196 This differed from the CCF who considered all residents of Canada as equal citizens. The CCF leaders consistently raised the vote issue inside the BC legislature, held public meetings in its support and joined South Asian delegations to press for their voting rights.197 While Johnston and Buchignani and Indra have acknowledged the close cooperation between the South Asians and the socialists/ IWA, they did not mention South Asian interlocutors who might have contributed to building this relationship. Buchignani and Indra praised the role played by a few courageous South Asian activists in this regard but did not mention who they were. However, powerful Canadian Communist and labour leaders Harold Pritchett who was the district president of the IWA, and socialist leader Harold Winch of the CCF have found a fleeting mention in their account.198 The intense rivalry between the opposing 194 Khalsa Diwan Society, âReport on Dominion, Provincial and Municipal Franchise for the Hindus in British Columbian,â (Victoria 1947), 5, In Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, âHow Indo-Canadians won back the right to vote in Canadaâ (unpublished manuscript, May 2020), typescript, 14. Note: The report originally published in Punjabi by Sath Publications (Surrey) April 2, 2017 is available at âDaily Archives,â Sukhwant Hundal (blog), https://sukhwanthundal.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/. 195 Price and Thomson, âRemembering a B.C, civil-rights leader.â 196 Campbell, âEast Meets Left,â 42, 52. 197 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 94-95. 198 Ibid., 95. 66 political factions of the North American based âwhite blockâ and the Canadian âred blockâ within the IWA could be another factor that led to the erasure of the immigrant South Asian workersâ legacy with the decline of the influence of the âred blockâ communists within the IWA.199 Thus, the history of South Asian immigrant labour organizing is not yet there as a narrative, and this project aims to contribute to writing it. The South Asian labour organizer, Darshan Singh Sangha (Canadian) who bridged the gap between Canadian labour unions and the South Asian immigrant community, was an illegal immigrant, one of the 215 legalized in 1940 with community efforts. Beyond the archival presence in the communist and labour newspapers of the period, an 18 hour-long interview that was recorded with him by Hari Sharma, Sadhu Binning, Sukhwant Hundal and Makhan Tut from March 11 to March 26, 1985, is an invaluable archive of his life history.200 Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal built on this dialogue by interviewing Sanghaâs former comrades, looking up archival newspaper reports, papers in the archive of the IWA, and tributes paid by his comrades on his death in 1986. From this, they published the first in-depth article on the ten years Darshan Singh Sangha spent in Canada from 1937-1947. âMy Ten Years in Canadaâ was first published in 2000 as a chapter of their book in Punjabi, SanÌghrash de sau varhe: kanedÌ£Ä vicc PañjÄbÄ« Pragtīshīl Lahir (One Hundred Years of Struggle: Punjabi Progressive Movement in Canada). 199 Denis Ottewell, âFeaturing: The IWA,â Labour History PSA Newsletter, Volume 1, No 1, March 1977, 7 to 10. BC Labour Heritage Centre, accessed May 12, 2020, http://www.labourheritagecentre.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Labour-History-Vol-1-no-1-March-1977.pdf. 200 Darshan Singh Sangha, interview by Hari Sharma, Sadhu Binning, Sukhwant Hundal and Makhan Tut, 11March 1985-26 March 1985, [Item] F-77-1-0-0-0-18-Darshan Singh Sangha (Vancouver), Indo-Canadian Oral History Collection (Hari Sharma Collector), 1984-1987, Simon Frazer University (SFU) Archives and Records Management Department, Burnaby, accessed May 5, 2020, https://atom.archives.sfu.ca/f-77-1-0-0-0-18. 67 Its front cover features a photograph of Darshan Singh Sangha leading a protest march alongside his IWA comrades.201 Binning and Hundal are not professional historians just as Sadhu Singh Dhami was not a professional writer. Nevertheless, the three seem acutely aware of the need for chronicling the lifeworlds of the immigrant Punjabi labour in Canada. Dhami chronicled it in his semi- autobiographical novel in English. Binning and Hundal chronicled it as Desi Leftâs activism history in Punjabi. The organic convergence of their politics of writing is established in Binning and Hundalâs act of translating the novel Maluka into Punjabi for a wider Punjabi readership, in diaspora and homeland alike, and inviting Dhami to Vancouver for the book release function in 1988.202 Binning and Hundal chronicled the history of immigrant Punjabisâ labour/social movements in Canada and participated in making this history. Chapter three of the dissertation will discuss their role as cultural producers and organizers who supported the immigrant farmworkersâ movement in Lower Mainland Vancouver in the 1980s. Four years after Binning and Hundalâs article on Sangha, a collection of essays, anecdotes and memoirs on Darshan Singh Sangha found a home in DARSHAN, a book edited by Harjit Daudharia in 2004. The book describes Daudharia as a progressive activist with a lifelong association with trade unions. He was an alternative member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada.203 201 Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, âSanÌghrash de sau varheâ49-76. 202 Sadhu Binning, âVancouver Sath: South Asian Canadian Theatre in Vancouver,â Canadian Theatre Review Issue 94 (March 1998): 17, accessed July 10, 2019. file:///D:/punjabi%20canadian%20history/sadhu%20binning/vancouver%20sath%20south%20asian%20theatre%20review.pdf. 203 Nazir Rizvi, âAbout the Author,â in DARSHAN, ed. Harjit Daudharia (Vancouver: Darshan Singh Sangha Canadian Heritage Foundation, 2004), 6. 68 In 1947 Sangha was a trustee of BC District IWA-CIO and the Labour Progressive Partyâs director of education in Victoria.204 He was in Canada for ten years and had decided to go back to India to work in the trade union movement. The Lumber Worker, the IWA paper, published his resignation letter. Sangha wrote: It was here in Canada that I was baptized into the labour movement and learned the ABCs of the working class struggle. Everything I have learned about the labour movement and life itself was pounded into me by my fellow workers in the mills and camps where I worked, and later on by my brothers of the International Woodworkers of America.205 Summing up the achievements of the IWA union, Sangha lauded its success in uniting the workers, âWhite, Indian, Chinese, Japanese-irrespective of race and colour.â206 Sangha was 19 year old when he came to Vancouver to study at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1937. At this time, this would have been the only way for him to enter Canada and a means of escaping the extreme poverty of his Jat Sikh peasant family with very small and scattered landholding in Langeri village of Hoshiarpur district of Punjab. His father sold half of the familyâs land to raise Rs 800 to fund his trip.207 He arrived in Vancouver on March 13, 1937.208 In the UBC calendar of 1938, he is registered as a first-year student in the Faculty of Arts and Science, indicating he was enrolled for the 1937-38 academic year.209 However, the immigration 204 Carmela Patrias, Jobs and Justice: fighting discrimination in war time Canada, 1939-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 95. 205 Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, âDarshan Singh Canadian: Ten Years in Canada,â Watan, (date not available,), accessed May 4, 2020, http://watanpunjabi.ca/pdf/darshan-singh-canadian-english.pdf. 206Ibid. 207 Darshan Singh Sangha, interview by Hari Sharma, Sadhu Binning, Sukhwant Hundal and Makhan Tut. 208 Clay Perry and Harold Pritchett, âInterview with Darshan,â in DARSHAN, ed. Harjit Daudharia (Vancouver: Darshan Singh Sangha Canadian Heritage Foundation, 2004), 42. 209 University of British Columbia Calander, Twenty-Fourth Session, 1938-1939,â University of British Columbia (UBC) archivesâ accessed May 5, 2020. http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/pdfs/calendars2/UBC_Calendar_1938_39.pdf. 69 authorities refused him permission to work, so he was not able to raise money for his tuition fees and was forced to drop out after a year. At UBC, Sangha met the Young Communist League (YCL) and became its member.210 He joined the Communist Party of Canada in Alberta almost two years after arriving in Canada.211 Sangha remained a lifelong communist in Canada and later in India, working with the labour movement. Along with Sangha, two other South Asians, Kuldip Singh Bains and Ratan Singh, joined the Communist movement in Canada. According to Sangha, though the leftist politics did not influence South Asian immigrants, the Canadian Communists were forthright on issues of racial equality, working-class rights, especially the rights of racial minorities, anti-imperialism, and support for the Indian national liberation movement.212 In 1940, communist labour leaders Nigel Morgan and Harold Pritchett strived hard to establish IWA in BC. A dire need for a labour organizer who could reach out to the South Asian immigrant workers brought Sangha to the forefront of the labour movement as an IWA organizer and leader.213 Craig Pritchett, son of communist leader Harold Pritchett and Sanghaâs comrade in the union, remembered him as an excellent speaker with a remarkable command of English.214 Sangha recalled that organizing was a challenge. Punjabi immigrant workers were from rural backgrounds with no idea of workersâ rights or unions; moreover, they were often directly related to South Asian mill owners which meant a degree of familial loyalty or otherwise, simply too grateful to them for giving them a job. The multiple barriers to labour rights included fear of 210 Binning and Hundal, âDarshan Singh Canadian.â 211 Perry and Pritchett, âInterview with Darshan,â47. 212 Binning and Hundal, ââDarshan Singh Canadian.â 213 Ibid., 5; Perry and Pritchett, âInterview with Darshan,â 50-51. 214 Binning and Hundal, âDarshan Singh Canadian.â 70 losing jobs and what little economic security they had established, and they were also fearful of being terrorized by the owners or the police.215 Two Punjabi brothers, both lumber workers at Kapoor Singhâs mill, recalled that they lost their jobs just for wearing union buttons in the early 1940s.216 The lack of space to interact with the South Asian workers was another big challenge. Most workers lived in bunkhouses, mainly on the mill ownerâs property and were under surveillance.217 The management committees of the community spaces like gurdwaras were under the sway of the mill owners and entrepreneurs who were influential members of the South Asian community. Like other millowners, the Punjabi mill owners too were opposed to unionization.218 After initial years of meeting workers clandestinely and gaining their confidence, Sangha started holding open meetings by late 1942. The turning point came in 1945 in a mill in Youbou, BC when eighty South Asian workers threatened to walk out with Sangha in protest when the mill superintendent asked him to leave the bunkhouse where he was holding a meeting with the workers. Worried about running the next shift without workers, the superintendent relented and allowed Sangha to continue to meet in the bunkhouse. The South Asian workers had tasted success in collective action.219 Earlier, in 1943, a joint campaign by Chinese Canadian and South Asian Canadian sawmill workers of Youbou sought IWAâs support to get parity in pay with other workers. It was a joint campaign by workers of the two immigrant communities.220 The 215 Ibid., 5. 216 Kamala Elizabeth Nayar, The Punjabis in British Columbia, Location, Labour, First Nations, and Multiculturalism (Montreal: Mc-Gill-Queenâs University Press, 2012), 160. 217 Binning and Hundal, âDarshan Singh Canadian.â 218 Nayar, The Punjabis, 160-161. 219 Binning and Hundal, âDarshan Singh Canadian.â 220 Patrias, Jobs, 92-93. 71 paucity of scholarly work on the immigrant labour histories in Canada makes this a reference to collective action by the two communities a rare one. The solidarity between the two communities manifested again in 1944, when the BC minister of Labour, George S Pearson, justified denying citizenship rights to âEast Indiansâ during a debate in the BC legislature, â on the grounds that Sikhs, Chinese and Japanese were âunreliable, dishonest and deceitful.ââ221 On behalf of the Chinese community, the Chinese Youth Association of Victoria handed a letter of protest to the South Asians delegation, which included Sangha (Canadian), who went to meet the minister to press him to retract his comment.222 It was not just a coincidence that the secretary of the Chinese Youth Association, Roy Mah, was an IWA organizer in charge of organizing Chinese Canadian lumber workers and responsible for writing the Chinese language edition of the BC Lumberman, the IWAâs newspaper.223 It is an indicator of how the IWA union activities of the two immigrant communities might have facilitated their cooperation in other spheres of life, for example, in struggles against racism and for the right to vote. Discussing the role that Sangha played in the IWA, Roy Mah said, âI was only an organizer, but Darshan was, for many years, a Trustee in the district council and part of the upper layer of the leadership.â 224 Roh Mah and Sangha had started organizing Chinese and East Asian woodworkers simultaneously, and Sangha was elected to IWAâs regional council as trustee in 1942.225 221 Ibid., 95. 222 Khalsa Diwan Society, âReport on Dominion, Provincial and Municipal Franchise.â5. 223 Patrias, Jobs, 94. 224 Binning and Hundal, âDarshan Singh Canadian,â 9 225 Perry and Pritchett, âInterview,â 54-55. 72 Sangha was an organizer and leader of the Canadian labour movement. He was also a prolific writer contributing to the labour and communist newspapers. From 1940 to 1947, he regularly wrote articles for the progressive press. He was also sent on lecture tours across Canada by many organizations to highlight the problems faced by South Asians in Canada.226 His most significant work as a writer was Rise of the New Asia, which remains mostly neglected in the scholarly works on this period. Written in 1943 and published by Progress Publications, Toronto in 1948, Rise of the New Asia is an expression of pan-ethnic, cross-national solidarity with the people of Asia, intellectually located in Sanghaâs socialist, anti-imperialist political-ideological praxis. The bookâs paratext is of particular interest. The dedication opens as the following: âHumbly dedicated to imperishable memory of Dr. Norman Bethune, a gallant and great Canadian, and Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis, a true and heroic son of people of India, both of whom sacrificed their lives while nursing the people of China in their battle against Japanese imperialism.â227 In this symbolic act, Sangha alludes to the solidarity of the people of Canada, India and China in the anti-colonial struggles that transcends the divisions of race, the homeland and the home. The internationalist Sanghaâs 260-page book has five sections. There are 36 pages on the anti-imperialist struggle in China and 27 pages on the young democratic forces resisting fascism in Japan. He devotes 46 pages to the anti-colonial struggle in two sister dominions, India and Pakistan. The developments in Siberia and Central Asia, which he called âSoviet Asia - our northern neighbours,â are described in 22 pages. Finally, 40 pages are devoted to the âAnti-imperialist struggles, the birth of new republics and the in the near east, Korea, Philippines, Indo- China (Vietnam), Indonesia, Iran and Turkey.â In the bookâs foreword, Sangha writes that â[A] 226 Ibid.,60. 227 Darshan Singh Sangha, Rise of the New Asia (Toronto: Progress Publishing, 1948), v. 73 titanic battle rages today between the democratic forces of the people and anti-democratic imperialist reaction in Asia. This struggle has deep importance for the people of Canada and America. The outcome will determine their own future.â228 Sangha concludes the book by affirming, âThe march of humanity towards a progressive and just social order is historically inevitable.â229 However, he cautions, âeach nation will resolve these issues in the light of its own peculiar problems and historic tradition.â230 Rise of the New Asia imagines Asia as a composite canvas of consciousness embracing each nation and its people with all their diversity. Would its publication meet the requirements of offering an alternative history of defining âAsiannessâ in Canada? Christopher Lee argues that the moment when a sense of Asian Canadian culture takes hold that brings together social activism and literary production is Inalienable Rice, an anthology published jointly in 1979 from two Asian Canadian communities: Japanese Canadians and Chinese Canadians.231 According to its editors, the absence of their histories, the shared pasts of experiencing racism, and the pressure to assimilate into the liberal white middle class contributed to establishing a pan-ethnic collectivity.232 Lee argues that notwithstanding the significance of race in Asian Canadian studies, a work like Inalienable Rice cannot be historicized merely within the anti-Asian racism narrative. He argues, âInstead, the very act of publication establishes the conditions for an 228 Ibid., viii. 229 Ibid., 254. 230 Ibid. 231 Christopher Lee, âEnacting the Asian Canadian,â Canadian Literature ISS 199, (Winter 2008): 1, accessed October 19, 2018, https://www.proquest.com/docview/218827790?accountid=14656&pq-origsite=summon. 232 Ibid., 2. 74 alternative history; in doing so, it enacts an identity that is both a site for remembrance and an instrument of political contestation.â233 What does the long-forgotten moment of publication of Rise of the New Asia in solidarity with the anti-colonial struggles of people of Asia mean today? It is a question that deserves the attention of scholars of Asian Canadian and South Asian Canadian Studies. Second Phase of the Desi Left In the struggle for the right to vote, vocal members of the South Asian community organized delegations and submitted memorandums of demand. The labour unions passed resolutions in its support, the CCF members of the BCâs legislative assembly moved amendments to BCâs election act. Finally, the right to vote was restored to the South Asian community in 1947. The granting of the right to vote concludes the early phase of South Asian immigrants in Canada, which had two aspects established. First, the rights struggle acquired solidarity of the Canadian left and labour unions. Second, the entire spectrum of public activism was represented as the domain of men. There is little documented information on the South Asian women from this period in spite of the inarguable factor of their presence. As already discussed, the racist policies of the Settler Canadian state blocked and delayed the entry of wives and children of immigrant men into Canada. The immigration rules, in any case, had ensured that the total population of South Asian immigrants was very small. A fundamental change in immigration laws in 1962 eliminated all restrictions of race and nations from immigration regulations which increased the South Asians numbers exponentially. 233 Ibid., 9. 75 Five years later, in 1967, socio-economic selection criteria were made more rigorous by the federal government, which further catalyzed the immigration of South Asians. As a result, the rate of immigration remained high throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, and approximately 200,000 South Asians entered Canada between 1971 to 1982. At the end of 1982, there were 310,000 South Asians in Canada.234 Binning and Hundal point out that most people who entered Canada in this period were young men between 20 to 35 years of age. If they were already married, they were soon joined by their spouses from India; if they were single, they often went to India, were married and brought their spouses to Canada.235 The changes in immigration policies led to a massive increase in Punjabi immigrants in Canada who powered the community with fresh energy. They were educated and young, and many were exposed to progressive political ideas or sympathizers of left-wing political organizations, especially the communist revolutionaries of the Naxalite movement in Punjab.236 Upon coming to Canada, when they faced new challenges of labour and racism issues, they formed new organizations to organize themselves and fight for their rights. Naturally, the ideological foundations of these organizations were rooted in progressive politics. Alongside this, they continued to organize activities to support the revolutionary movement in India.237 A similar process seems to have led to the formation of the Indian Peoples Association in North America (IPANA). Chinmoy Banerjee, the co-founder of IPANA in Vancouver, recalls: You come here, you are a nobody. You face racism. Having lived in a societal structure in which you had a certain status, certain position. You come into a non-status position where you are a nobodyâ¦and in fact, the underclass, the looked down upon. An object of 234 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 114. 235 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 221. 236 The Naxalite movement was an armed communist uprising that started in a remote village of Naxalbari in the Indian province of West Bengal in 1967. 237 Ibid., 78, 79, 85 and 122. 76 racismâ¦This dislocation, I think, enables consciousness, begins to awaken you to power structures and so forthâ¦Thatâs one thing that happens. The other thing is, if the circumstances, as you pointed out, the global circumstances are such that there are these struggles, the anti-colonial struggles, of students against power structures. So everywhere, power is being questioned. Hierarchy is being challenged. Structures are being shaken up, questioned. So, this general challenge and questioning across the world become the context in which a dislocated and destabilized subject finds the possibility of reidentification and reorienting. And I think this is what happened to many of us.238 There are hardly any scholarly works that comprehensively engage with the IPANA though it has been mentioned in passing by a few scholars, mostly inaccurately. Verne A. Dusenbery groups together a disparate variety of South Asian Canadian organizations based in BC, including leftist IPANA, to prove that it was essential to organize into âwhat are at least in theory pan ââEast Indianâ ethnic- organizationsâ to compete for funds and recognition.239 At the same time, he classifies IPANA as an affiliate of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist Leninist).240 Darshan Singh Tatla reproduces Dusenberyâs argument in order to affirm his theory on the emergence of a hyphenated Sikh diasporic identity. He argues that leftist organizations like the IPANA were virtually Sikh organizations that projected themselves under the âpan East Indiaâ label to meet the requirements of ânationalâ representation in the host society, ignoring the âreal communities.â According to him, IPANA was active during the emergency, but the lack of popular support led to itsâ quick folding up except for the temporary lifeline provided by the farmworkers union struggle.241 He also argues that it was only with the rise of the second and 238 Chinmoy Banerjee, interview by author, New Westminster, September 19, 2019. 238 Ibid. 239 Verne A. Dusenbery, âCanadian Ideology and Public Policy: The Impact on Vancouver Sikh Ethnic and Religious Adaptation,â Canadian Ethic Studies, January 13; 3, (January 1, 1981): 109, accessed on March 11, 2020, https://www.proquest.com/docview/1293211174/fulltextPDF/1AE3796881A640CBPQ/1?accountid=14656. 240 Dusenbery, âCanadian Ideology,â 115. 241 Tatla, The Sikh, 97-98. 77 third generation of Sikhs that the local issues of the home gained prominence over the first generationâs obsession with the homeland.242 Papiya Ghosh studies South Asian diaspora movements in the USA, Canada and UK, and identifies class-based organizing and mobilizing against fundamentalists, both in the home and the homeland, as their key features. She frames IPANA as one among the several groups formed in response to happenings in South Asia, in this case, the declaration of the emergency in India in 1975.243 The trajectory of IPANA in 1970s Vancouver tells a different story from the accounts presented above. The IPANA was formed in Montreal in June 1975, with active chapters in Vancouver, New York, Toronto and Boston, and links with organizations in Edmonton, Winnipeg, San Francisco, and Chicago.244 Most of its founder members were South Asians teaching at North American and Canadian universities, and many were actively involved in the left politics in India. Interestingly, the founders of IPANA in the Lower Mainland, Hari Sharma and Chinmoy Banerjee, who taught at the Simon Fraser University, were politicized by the Anti-Vietnam War movement while writing their PhDs in US universities.245 IPANA can be rightly considered the inheritor of Husain Rahimâs and Darshan Singh Sanghaâs legacy of class-based organizing by South Asian immigrants for their rights and fighting racism in British Columbia. While the communist Sangha left Vancouver in 1947 to organize the working-class and peasant movement in India, the IPANA was initially founded to generate awareness and raise a voice against the severe repression of the communist revolutionaries in India, popularly known as the 242 Ibid., 97. 243 Papiya Ghosh, Partition and The South Asian Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2007), 177. 244 Chin Banerjee and Harinder Mahil, âFour Decades of Activismâ in Celebrating Life in Struggle: A Tribute to Hari Sharma, ed. Chin Banerjee and Harinder Mahil (Delhi: Danish Books, 2009), 16. 245 Banerjee and Mahil, âFour Decades,â 14. 78 Naxalites.246 It did not take long for IPANA to defocus from the homeland and refocus on the home instead, even though it continued to respond to political situations in India. The IPANA leaders realized that âsupporting the struggle of people in India could not be carried out effectively and meaningfully without greater engagements with the issues that concerned the local Indian community in their daily lives.â247 Moreover, Banerjee recalls that as the Naxalite movement fragmented into smaller and smaller groups and almost withered away, they focused their energies on addressing the communityâs issues in Canada.248 Thus, they identified the prevalence of rampant racism and terrible working conditions of farm work for immediate intervention.249 Binning and Hundal argue that the two founder leaders of IPANA in Vancouver, Sharma and Banerjee, developed close contacts among the immigrant community in BC, largely working-class Punjabis. In this way, IPANA became so closely identified with Punjabis that it became an organization representing Punjabis in the real sense.250 IPANA published three papers - New India Bulletin, a quarterly from Montreal from 1975; India Now, a monthly from New York from 1976, and Punjabi paper Wangar (The Challenge), every two months from Vancouver from 1977.251 Gurnam Sahota, Harinder Mahil and Raj Chouhan were the first three members from the Punjabi community to join IPANA. Mahil was the editor of the Chipper, the newspaper of the International Woodworkers of Americaâs (IWA) New West Local. IWA was the same union where Darshan Singh Sangha was a leader and organizer in 1930-1940s. 246 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 146. 247 Banerjee and Mahil, âFour Decades,â 18. 248 Chinmoy Banerjee, interview by author, New Westminster, September 19, 2019. 249 Ibid. 250 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 147. 251 Banerjee and Mahil, âFour Decades,â 16. 79 Cultural work remained high on IPANAâs priorities for propagating its ideas. It sold its papers on the streets, held lectures and hosted cultural programs, and scripted and performed plays in Punjabi, that brought together people from all walks of life. IPANA also invited a large number of speakers from India and other parts of the world and organized their lecture tours across Canada. British activist Mary Tyler, author of My Years in an Indian Prison, anti-caste feminist writer Gail Omvedt, radical communist writer Jan Myrdal, feminist activist and writer Madhu Kishwar, political scientist and intellectual Rajini Kothari, were some of the people invited by IPANA. They also invited two cultural activists from East Punjab: communist playwright and theatre director Gursharan Singh (in 1983 and again in 1985) and communist poet and singer Sant Ram Udasi, from a Mazhabi Sikh landless labour family (in 1979). Udasiâs most popular twelve songs were recorded for the first time in a sound studio in Vancouver by IPANA and released on a vinyl record. Gursharan Singhâs first visit to Vancouver was with his whole theatre team, and he travelled across Canada performing his plays. During his second visit, Singh worked together with local Punjabi theatre actors in the Lower Mainland.252 The first conference of IPANA was held in June 1976 in Vancouver, where the problems of Canadians of Indian origin found a prominent mention in the political resolution passed at the conference. The resolution, as published in its Vancouver newspaper Wangar, stated that: IPANA supports the just struggles of the huge number of our compatriots living in North America and all other people for: a true liberation; a genuine democracy for the large majority of people; and, against the exploitation by big corporates and landlords. Being an inseparable part of these movements, IPANA firmly resolvesâ to oppose racial discrimination that its compatriots living in North America are being subjected to every day; to support the people, communities, and nations of the third world in their 252 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 150-51. 80 movements against the exploitation, repression, and domination of the superpowers; and to stand in solidarity with struggles of the working people all over the world.253 The conference was followed by a rally in which many local, as well as North American organizations like Workers Communist Party, Organisation of Palestinians, and Revolutionary Communist Party of America, sent their representatives with messages of solidarity.254 IPANA developed solidarities with people involved in the anti-imperialist movements in Chile, Philippines, Eritrea, Palestine and also worked with Canadaâs First Nations organizations on their political issues.255 It actively supported these groups and joined a Third World Peoples Coalition (TWPC), which, Banerjee and Mahil argue, created a culture of solidarity between different causes and movements in Vancouver.256 From the outset, IPANA took an interest in the anti-racism movement and working-class struggles. It supported the unorganized janitorial workers and Indo-Canadian drivers of Yellow Cab during their strike against discrimination. IPANA directly participated in Vancouverâs Bombay Restaurant workers strike during which it organized demonstrations outside its ownerâs other outlets in Montreal and New York through its city chapters. 257 On the anti-racism front, IPANA participated in the Chinese communityâs movement against the Campus Giveaway episode of CTV Television Networksâs W5 program, which presented a racist report, used false statistics and showed images of Chinese Canadian students as foreign students who deprived Canadians of higher education.258 253 Ibid., 148. 254 Ibid., 149. 255 Ibid., 151. 256 Banerjee and Mahil, âFour Decades,â 18. 257 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 155. 258 Ibid., 153. 81 What established IPANA solidly as an immigrant rights organization was its intervention on crucial issues of labour, racism and gender by setting up three new organizations, Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU), British Columbia Organization for Fighting Racism (BCOFR), and Samaanta, in collaboration with Indian Mahila Association for addressing womenâs issues. 259 Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) An initiative by Labour Advocacy Research Associationâs (LARA) coordinator, John Borst to help immigrant farmworkers by taking up their complaints against contractors and employees was taken forward by IPANA members Harinder Mahil and Raj Chouhan. It led to the formation of the Farmworkers Organizing Committee (FWOC) on April 8, 1979. FWOC was a precursor to the Canadian Farmworkers Union, formed on April 6, 1980.260 The FWOC tried to reach out to farmworkers across ethnicities from its initial days by bringing out a bilingual English/Punjabi newspaper, Farmworker. Additionally, it was brought out in French and Chinese when the union was mainly organizing French-Canadian fruit pickers in the Okanagan, and in the early 1980s tried to organize Chinese fruit pickers, respectively. The FWOC mobilized the support of the organized trade union, lawyers, teachers, churches, university students and progressive Canadians in solidarity with the predominantly Indo-Canadian immigrant farmworkers.261 The Canadian Labour Congress announced the support of $40,000 for organizing farmworkers without farmworkers even having made this request. The British Columbia General Employees Union gave a grant of $10,000. Some locals 259 Ibid.,153-154. 260 Binning, âThe Canadian Farmworkers Unionâ 88-89. 261 Banerjee and Mahil, âFour Decades,â 19 82 donated office equipment, and the individual members of many unions volunteered their time and skill.262 Beyond Canada, the CFU also found strong support from Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers of America, who made multiple visits to British Columbia as a guest of the CFU in 1980, 1981, 1983, and twice in 1985.263 For the first time in the history of Canada, the farmworkersâ issue was becoming a national issue.264 Unfortunately, for reasons beyond the scope of this research, the CFU could not continue its momentum for long. Murray Bush, in his study, has alluded to some of the reasons: Burnout was taking its toll as was the continued resistance from the growers. As well, the migrant nature of the work meant that after 3 or 4 years, older people often stopped farm work and younger people found better jobs elsewhere, so it was like starting all over again.â265 By 1989, the CFU had more or less stopped organizing farmworkers but was now engaged with pesticide control and education.266 After three years, the last issue of the CFUâs newspaper, Farmworker, came out in September 1992 and gradually the movement faded away. This chapter discussed the complexities in the theorization of South Asian Canadian diaspora. I sought to highlight the impact of societal and legal racism of the settler state on the lives of early immigrants. The complex process of a diasporic community formation involved pooling resources and building community spaces and institutions to fight against racism locally and colonial rule in India. Within this large canvas, I sought to trace the solidarity among South Asian labour activists and local socialists and their trade unions, a theme that is mostly absent 262 Binning, âThe Canadian Farmworkers Union,â 97. 263 âCanadian Farmworkers Union Chronology 1978 to 1997,â Simon Fraser University Special Collections, accessed May 18, 2020. https://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/branches-depts/special-collections/canadian-farmworkers-union-chronology. 264 Binning, âThe Canadian Farmworkers Union,â 3-5, 149. 265 Bush, Zindabad! Chapter 9. 266 Ibid. 83 from the scholarly works on South Asian Canadian history as well as Canadian labour history. The labour activistsâ solidarity played an important role in fighting racism and improving the working conditions of all workers, including South Asian Canadians. This solidarity marked the beginning of Desi Left in Canada which, as I discuss in the next chapter, was imagined as a self-conscious tradition by its activists in the 1970s and 1980s British Columbia. From the predominantly South Asian menâs history of the period, I gathered fragments of womenâs presence missing from the historical record. Chapter four builds on the strand of womenâs voices and subjectivity. It discusses women workersâ negotiation with patriarchy and contestation of male domination within families and homes. 84 CHAPTER 3: SINGING FROM THE SAME HYMNBOOK I think people were a little shy of going into details of what they had been involved in, but we were not fools. We knew they had probably been in the Maoist groups, perhaps the Naxalite movement, etc., but we were happy to collaborate. We knew, as the phrase goes, we were singing from the same hymn book. â Gary Cristall, Founder, Vancouver Folk Music Festival.267 The new waves of immigrants from the mid-sixties onwards swelled numbers of South Asian Canadians and infused new energy in the community. Being young and educated, the new immigrants reclaimed their predecessorsâ progressive histories of resistance in Canada and considered themselves inheritors of their legacy. It was a crucial phase in the history of the Desi Left when new and old challenges were met by building new organizations and movements. This chapter delves into this phase by focusing on Desi Leftâs cultural activism, which rallied to the cause of the Canadian Farmworkers Union and exploring the complexities of imagining an immigrant labour cultural activism tradition. It opens a window to a larger universe of artists and activists creating art to support a range of causes and communities in the 1980s Lower Mainland. Cultural activism and art production acquire a central stage for the first time in the Desi Leftâs history shaped by the revolutionary and socialist political currents of the 1970s and early 80s that carried forward the spirit of the turbulent 1950s and 1960s in India, Europe and North America. The entwined network of Desi Leftâs activism built during this period consisted of Punjabi writers and their literary societies, theatre groups like Vancouver Sath, local music groups such as Ad Hoc, Vancouver Mayworks Festival, and the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. The chapter analyzes the institutionalization of labour cultural activism with the emergence of a 267 Gary Cristall, interview with author, Vancouver, August 26 and September 26, 2019. 85 sub-community of the progressive Punjabi community, which gave a distinct cultural turn in the history of the Desi Left. Aesthetic Activism Larry Issac highlights the importance of cultural production in taking social movements forward. He argues that the powerful culture that the movements produce contributes to ways of acting collectively and creating âoppositional artsâ central to the âmovement of movements.â268 Craig Berggold, who worked as an artist-in-residence with CFU from 1982 to 1986, points out that, â[M]any journalists, musicians and artists, both new immigrant South Asians and Canadian artists were actively engaged with farmworkersâ social justice movement.â269 Referring to solidarities among cultural activists in support of the farmworkers movement, Sadhu Binning maintains that, â[A]long with these support groups and other organizations a number of individual artists and cultural groups, both from the Indo-Canadian community and the larger community, came forward to help the farmworkers struggle.â270 Berggold, who participated in various collaborative ventures with the theatre group, Vancouver Sath, argues that the CFU tried to create a cultural identity based on working class immigrant experience through theatre, dance troupes, documentary films and poetry readings.271 Issac argues along similar lines in his work highlighting the importance of activism in the Civil Rights Struggle. He proposes that cultural fabric is one side of the movement, and 268 Issac, âMovement of Movements,â 34. 269 Berggold, âFields of Power,â 52. 270 Binning, âThe Canadian Farmworkers Union,â 101. 271 Ibid., 7, 49. 86 organized resources are the other. He further explains that, âThe cultural side consists of an assemble of oppositional knowledge, dispositions and schemas that organize perpetual, conceptual, identity and action terrains,â which he describes as âoppositional habitus.â272 However, the âoppositional habitusâ doesnât happen by itself. It has to be created and circulated in which crucial contribution is made by, âmovement-related artistic producers â writers, musicians, poets, actors, academics â who can play a role in aesthetic activism, circulating movement culture in creative and inviting ways.â 273 Issac describes four moments through which cultural production and circulation makes movements moveâ âmoving across space,â âmoving emotions,â âmoving social arrangements,â and âmoving through memory.â Literature, theatre, music, political cartoons, and other cultural productions of the movement make it move through its four moments.274 Isaac argues, âAt root, movements are cultural production agents. Regardless of whatever else they accomplish, they produce new cultural forms in the course of struggle.â275 Expounding on the formation of a movementâs collective identity, Dorothy Holland, Gretchen Fox and Vinci Daro argue that, â[w]e define the collective identity of a social movement as participants shared sense of the movement as a collective actor â as a dynamic force of change â that they identify with and are inspired to support in their own actions.â276 Thus, according to them, belonging, solidarity, and social action are the three significant dimensions of the collective identity of a social movement; these dimensions are formed at 272 Issac, âMovement of Movements,â35. 273 Ibid., 36. 274 Ibid. 275 Ibid. 276 Dorothy Holland, Gretchen Fox and Vinci Daro, âSocial Movements and Collective Identity: A Decentered, Dialogical View,â Anthropological Quarterly, 81:1 (2008), 97. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30052741. 87 multiple sites such as at protests, in alliance-building, through the work of media.277 I explore these aspects of alliance building, solidarity, and social action to forge a collective identity of labour cultural activists in the work of the Desi Left discussed in the chapter. A Tradition of Labour Cultural Activism Poet, singer and songwriter Aurian Hallerâs PhD thesis, Class Act: Mayworks and the Space of Cultural Activism, provides the first scholarly account of solidarity in cultural activism between Punjabi theatre group Vancouver Sath and the Vancouver Mayworks Festival of Working People & the Arts from 1988 onwards.278 Craig Berggold, the primary interlocutor between the Vancouver Mayworks and Vancouver Sath, was an artist-in-residence with the CFU. Vancouver Sath founder members Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal supported the farmworkers movement since its inception in 1978, when the Farmworkers Organizing Committee (FWOR), a precursor of the CFU, was formed. They were reporting its activities in the Punjabi literary magazine, Watano Dūr.279 The documentary A Time To Rise provides a fleeting glimpse of both Binning and Hundal participating in a farmworkers rally in the Fraser Valley where much organizing was going on at that time.280 Participation in the CFUâs activities facilitated interaction between Berggold and, Binning and Hundal. In 1986, Berggold curated an art show at the first Toronto Mayworks Festival. The show, Art for Organizing: Canadian Farmworkers Union, was based on his photography and the work of Vancouver Sath. Later, he 277 Ibid., 98-99. 278 Haller, âClass Act,â1-338. 279 Sadhu Binning, âBÄ« SÄ« de Khet MazadÅ«r,â Watano Dūr, Vol.7, No 70 and 71, May -June 1979, 11, accessed on June 16, 2021, https://sukhwanthundal.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/wdurmayjune1979.pdf. 280 A Time to Rise, directed by Anand Patwardhan and Jim Monro (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1981), DVD. 88 co-founded the Vancouver Mayworks in 1988. He was its Founding President and one of the festival programmers, and from 1991 to 1993, festival director and programmer.281 Vancouver Mayworks was an annual festival of âworking class and labour cultureâ held in May. According to Haller, it was a space to recognize and celebrate the collective cultural heritage of political activists from a broad range of communities and strengthen the bonds between cultural activists and the labour movement.282 He says that the Vancouver Mayworks had precedents in May Day celebrations in Glasgow, Scotland, and also in the Toronto Mayworks Festival launched in 1986.283 However, what inspired many Vancouver Mayworks organizers was âthe 1983 Solidarity Coalition movement between community groups, unions, and cultural workers, where the possibilities for achieving solidarity across difference through cultural initiatives were demonstrated in exciting and powerful ways.â 284 Gary Cristall, the founder of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, was part of the Committee for the General Strike during the Solidarity Movement. He recalls that the leadership of the BC Federation of Labour betrayed the social movement and the left-wing of the trade union movement by capitulating to the right-wing Social Credit Party in BC. The defeat of the Solidarity Movement was a big blow.285 Musician and activist Alan Zisman of the rock band Ad Hoc says that âeveryone retreated to their areaâ after the movement was over.286 Haller argues that the community groups were disillusioned and disappointed with the labour leadership, which had created a political vacuum. In such a 281 Craig Berggold, e-mail message to author, June 15, 2018. 282 Haller, âClass Act,â 1, 2. 283 Ibid., 154. 284 Ibid., 257. 285 Gary Cristall interview by author, Vancouver, August 26 and September 26, 2019. 286 Alan Zisman interview by author, Vancouver, September 18, 2019. 89 situation, âMayworks presented itself as the natural vehicle for renewing these aborted ties (between community groups and labour).â287 He quotes Berggold that building bridges with the communities afresh was not an abstract idea. The communities realized the need to join hands to fight their common enemy: the racist laws of the Canadian government. These laws adversely impacted immigrant communities alike, be they Punjabi farmworkers or Filipino domestic workers.288 The story of the Canadian Multiculturalism Policy of 1971 and the Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1985 Act appear peripheral to the story of solidarity between Canadian labour, cultural activists, and immigrants. Under the heading âConnecting with Cultural Communities,â Haller spent just five pages discussing multiculturalism in his thesis. He argues that the festival incorporated diverse cultural interests but described itself as âa regional, local, labour, womenâs and multi-cultural festivalâ at different times to meet the specific expectations of funding bodies.289 Vancouver Sath members Binning and Hundalâs affinity with the CFU and camaraderie with Berggold led to their organic links with the Vancouver Mayworks from early on. They were invited to the founding committee meeting of the Mayworks in 1987 and the inaugural Mayworks meeting at the BC Federation of Labour in 1988.290 Binning represented Vancouver Sath in these meetings.291 Over several years, Vancouver Sath performed many of its plays like Picket Line, A Crop of Poison, Different Age Same Cage, and A Lesson of a Different Kind as part of Mayworks. In addition, some of the festival organizers secured grants and helped 287 Haller, âClass Act,â 277. 288 Ibid., 277-278. 289 Ibid., 269-271. 290 Ibid., 285. 291 Sadhu Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, August 29 and September 16, 2019. 90 organize Vancouver Sathâs theatre tours and performances.292 On their part, Binning and Hundal saw themselves as part of the larger community of Canadian labour and cultural activists. The Mayworks was perhaps the only space where they connected to this community. In an interview with David Jackson, the coordinator for the English as Second Language Program for the CFU, Binning said: Our long-term goal is to develop relationships with other political activists active in other ethnic communities and the wider Canadian community. We have our own Canadian experience, but other groups have different angles on it. We can read articles and books, but we really need physical contact with other groups.293 Vancouver Sath members had a twofold task. On the one hand, they sought to educate the Punjabi immigrant workers to consider themselves part of the Canadian working class. On the other hand, they hoped to reach out to the larger Canadian Society and draw attention to immigrant workersâ precarious conditions. For this, they translated their Punjabi plays into English and reached out to an audience beyond their Punjabi community. Binning and Hundal believed that what they were fighting against was not just an issue of immigrant workers, but it concerned all workers in Canada.294 Haller acknowledges the role played by Binning and Hundal as Punjabi immigrant cultural activists, but he is a human geographer researching how ânotions of class and cultural resistance are produced and reproduced.â295 Thus, the details of the immigrant activistsâ story are missing from his account. In her PhD dissertation, Diana Frances Lobb moves a step closer by engaging with the immigrant story in the political orientation of Vancouver Sath. She refers to an 292 Haller, âClass Actâ 285. 293 David Jackson, âUnion Activism: Punjabi Theatre in B.C.,â FUSE Magazine, Fall 1985, 6. 294 Haller, âClass Act,â 154. 295 Ibid., iii. 91 article by Sadhu Binning where he argues that the new wave of Punjabi immigrants in the 1970s changed the composition of Punjabi Canadian Society. This new migration included many educated Punjabi youths exposed to the Naxalite movement in Punjab. The Naxalite movement was an armed communist uprising that started in a remote village of Naxalbari in the Indian province of West Bengal in 1967. Some of the writers among these young immigrants chose to write about the revolution in India, while others were intent on building a leftist movement among Punjabis in Canada.296 By drawing on Binningâs article and analyzing Vancouver Sathâs plays, Frances Lobb makes two points. First, Vancouver Sathâs âWorkers Theatre was rooted in socialist philosophy and ideology,â and its plays were like those by the âCanadian Workers Theatre Movement.â She adds that while the Canadian Workers Theatreâs ties were with the Bolshevik movement in the USSR, Vancouver Sathâs ideological moorings were with the Maoist movement In India.297 Second, she then builds up her case by bringing out the difference between the politics/praxis of Vancouver Sath and the Naxalite movement as the difference between being âhereâ in Canada and âthereâ in India.298 The absence of biographies of Punjabi Canadian cultural activists, details of the organizations they had set up in Canada, and activities carried out by them, limited the scope of Frances Lobbâs work which this dissertation will help taking forward. Regardless of their different approaches to analyzing Vancouver Sathâs theatre activism, 296 Sadhu Binning, âPunjabi Canadian Literature: A Brief Introduction,â Journal of Punjab Studies, 12-13 (2005-6): 281, 283, accessed on June 17, 2021, https://punjab.global.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/sitefiles/journals/volume13/13.1.2_Binning.pdf. 297 Lobb, âCanadian Literatures,â 137. 298 Ibid., 137. 92 Haller and Frances Lobb both made sure to bring into discussion the formation of a tradition of labour cultural activism and, directly or indirectly, Vancouver Sathâs location in it. For example, Frances Lobb draws parallels between Vancouver Sath and the Canadian Workers Theatre movement to situate Vancouver Sath within this theatre movement in Canada. Haller does the same via the Mayworks Festival. He alludes to its claims to the legacy of the Labour Arts Guild of Vancouver in the 1940s and a âcontinuous though interrupted traditionâ of working-class cultural activism in BC. The Labour Arts Guild was an initiative that brought together the labour movement and cultural activists and artists.299 In addition, in a lengthy footnote, Haller discusses Sara Diamondâs âUnearthing Labourâs Cultural History in BCâ and points to several cultural moments within BCâs labour cultural activism identified by her. First, there were two fragments of indigenous communitiesâ working-class cultural expression in rural areas. Second, the conscious efforts of political artists associated with the BC Communist Party. Finally, Progressive Arts Players, whose play Waiting for Lefty, won the Dominion Drama Festival.300 Haller and Frances Lobbâs attention to the tradition of labour cultural activism is a reminder of the lack of scholarly account of such a tradition of Punjabi immigrant cultural activist groups and organizations. How does one write Punjabi immigrant cultural activists into the tradition of labour cultural activism of BC or Canada? What legacy could they possibly claim their own in this tradition? What is the earliest cultural moment that could mark the beginning of such activism? Haller and Frances Lobb have opened the way for writing into BCâs labour 299 Haller, âClass Act,â 55-56. 300 Ibid., 60. 93 cultural activism history, experience, world views, and institutions of Punjabi Canadian activists of the 1970s and 1980s. Imagining a Subcommunity of Progressive Punjabis Binning and Hundal point towards the convergence of three different socio-political currents that shaped the Punjabi immigrant labour cultural activism in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. First, the radical left movement in the colleges and universities of Punjab influenced many of the young Punjabi immigrants arriving in Canada. Second, upon arriving here, these immigrants faced widespread racism, against which they immediately started organizing. Third, they were inspired by other movements with global resonances, like the Anti-Vietnam war movement in the US, anti-colonial struggles in Latin America, and the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. It was a time full of possibilities and enthusiasm for the Punjabi Canadian community.301 Perhaps it is important to briefly recall here the long history and deep roots of the communist movement in Punjab. Gurharpal Singh argues that a small but strategically important communist movement has been inseparable from Punjabâs political life since the 1920s, whose fortunes have oscillated between âpromising growth and effective marginalization.â302 He traces its early beginning to the Ghadar Party in North America and its Punjab-based organization, Kirti Kisan Party (KKP) and describes it as âGhadar-Kirti Communismâ with a powerful pre-Soviet 301 Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, âPañjÄbÄ« Lekhak Mañch / SÄhit SabhÄ: SirajanÌ£Ä de Paccī Varhe,â in PañjÄbÄ« Lekhak Mañch: SirajanÄ de 25 Varhe, ed. Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal (Vancouver: PañjÄbÄ« Lekhak Mañch, 1999), 7-8. 302 Gurharpal Singh, Communism in Punjab: A Study of the movement up to 1967 (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1994), 1. 94 revolution history.303 Ghadar, a coalition of Indian nationalists founded in 1913 in North America, was largely made up of Sikh migrants who entered California and Vancouver in the first two decades of the 20th century. Later, Ghadar chapters opened in Latin America and the Pacific countries. Ghadar movement directly established contacts with Comintern, and Santokh Singh and Rattan Singh travelled from America to attend the Cominternâs fourth congress in Nov â Dec 1922.304 Ghadrites attributed their moral critique to a Sikh egalitarian ethos and socialism. In spite of this, they were staunchly secular as their âidiom was not communally exclusive for it appealed to the regionalist and syncretic strands of Sikhism.â305 The focus on organizing the peasantry in Punjab reflected their overwhelmingly rural Jat Sikh peasant base.306 According to Singh, the Naxalite movement in 1967 invoked the militant tradition of âGhadar Kirti Communismâ in Punjab.307 As discussed above, Binning and Hundal were themselves young leftist activists participating in the 1980s Punjabi immigrant struggles which were later chronicled by them. Thanks to their efforts, the Punjabi labour cultural history of the period is accessible through their writings, which have remained undocumented and therefore missing from academic discourse. The two travelled all over Canada, interviewed Punjabi leftist cultural activists, recorded the work done by their organizations and wrote a book SanÌghrash de sau varhe: KanedÌ£Ä vicc PañjÄbÄ« Pragtīshīl Lahir (One Hundred Years of Struggle: Punjabi Progressive Movement in Canada.)308 Immigrant activists chronicling their own activism histories were 303 Ibid., 43. 304 Ibid., 43-44. 305 Ibid., 48. 306 Ibid., 47-48. 307 Ibid., 300. 308 Sadhu Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, August 29 and September 16, 2019. 95 prevalent in many immigrant communities of Canada. It appears that the immigrant activists were self-conscious of their activism and realized that if they did not document the accounts of their activism, no one else would do it for them. Xiaoping Li points out that although Asian Canadian cultural activism has been on the scene for a long time, it is missing from scholarly works. The gap was filled by the Asian Canadian cultural activists chronicling their own activism accounts since the 1970s 309 Li specified that it was âa community consisting of scholars, university students, self-made or professionally trained artists and community activists.â310 Over the decades, they contributed to addressing issues of racialized communities and Canadian society at large. Fostering a collective Asian Canadian identity âby pushing both structural and discursive changes in the cultural sphere in order to realize the ultimate goal of racial equality and social justiceâ is at the core of the Asian Canadian activism project.311 The Punjabi progressivesâ cultural activism project shares some features with the Asian Canadian cultural activism project, but its core concerns are different. Rather than striving to forge a singular Punjabi Canadian or South Asian identity, it was an attempt to build a working-class immigrant identity as a part of the Canadian working-class movement. Therefore, its activists perceived their activism to be undergirded by socialist ideology. Another significant feature of their activism was that they were avowedly secular and steered clear of religion-based identity. The title of their book One Hundred Years of Struggle: Punjabi Progressive Movement in Canada, clarifies that Binning and Hundal are imagining a community of progressive Punjabi 309 Xiaoping Li, Voices Rising: Asian Canadian Cultural Activism (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 3-4. 310 Ibid., 2. 311 Ibid., 11. 96 immigrant labour and cultural activism in Canada. It is not dissimilar from the explorations by Haller and Frances Lobb to imagine a Canadian/ British Columbian labour cultural activism community. Some of the key moments in the history of Binning and Hundalâs Desi Left community, already discussed in chapter two, are the anti-colonial movement of Ghardites, Husain Rahimâs association with the Socialist Party of Canada, Darshan Singh Sanghâs active role in International Woodworkers of America (IWA), and Co-operative Commonwealth Federationâs (CFF) active support to South Asian Canadians struggles for the right to vote in the 1940s. Binning and Hundal affirm that this century of struggle in Canada was led by community activists who did not embody the ideas, ideals and energy of their Sikh religious heritage alone. Along with them, they brought progressive, humanist, and socialist ideas into their embrace. In fact, these new ideas equipped them to comprehend their unique position and organize for their rights. Such a vision had no place for narrow boundaries of religion, race, caste and nation that divide humanity. That is why these activists did not fight for the rights of Punjabi Canadians alone but stood in solidarity with other communitiesâ struggles and strived to make a just and egalitarian society for everyone in Canada.312 Binning and Hundal identify the Punjabi labour cultural activism of the 1970s and 1980s as part of Desi Leftâs long tradition of resistance in Canada. They argue that unlike some of the early Punjabi immigrants to Canada, those who immigrated in the 1970s did not consider themselves sojourners, with a singular motive of making money and returning home. By the mid-1960s and 1970s, Canada had made some amends to its racist immigration policies and officially committed to multiculturalism. As a result, a dream of making Canada home took root in the 312 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 2. 97 minds of new immigrants from Punjab. Already exposed to left-wing politics and ideas in India, these young and educated new immigrants felt strongly connected with their Desi Left roots in Canada.313 The spectrum of cultural activities undertaken by them aimed at strengthening their cultural identity and links with their progressive legacies of resistance in Canada. In the present moment, these legacies inspired them to fight against discrimination and oppression. Binning and Hundal make an important point that new immigrantsâ goals were to collectively understand the nature of new challenges, discover creative forms of expressing them, and document their history.314 The awareness of a legacy, the desire to reclaim it to âcollectivelyâ understand the present, and the urgency of chronicling their activism are pointers towards a progressive Punjabi activist community that was being formed in Canada. Binning observes that the progressive Punjabi activists and their activities soon became the centre of the Punjabi communityâs life and remained so until around 1985.315 According to Binning and Hundal, the main concerns of new Punjabi immigrants in the 1970s were racism, labour and cultural gap.316 In Vancouver, the oldest centre of Punjabi Canadians in Canada, most of the communityâs early institutions were religion-based, essentially Gurdwaras, excepting one or two establishments such as the East Indians Canadian Citizens Welfare Association.317 These religious institutions were common spaces of all Indian communities at one point in history and embodied the anti-colonial spirit of early Punjabis. However, by the 1970s, these institutions were firmly in the grip of well-established 313 Ibid., 78 and 86. 314 Ibid., 115. 315 Sadhu Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, August 29 and September 16, 2019. 316 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 78. 317 Ibid.,82. 98 businessmen, the dominant members of the community. When new Punjabi immigrants faced new challenges, they faced them head-on by launching left-wing movements and establishing new organizations.318 Starting with Vancouver, in 1971, which was the bigger and oldest centre of Punjabis in Canada, as new immigrants moved to different parts of Canada, they established a large number of progressive cultural and literary organizations. These include the Punjabi Cultural Association, Vancouver in 1971; PañjÄbÄ« SÄhit SabhÄ, Vancouver in 1973; Punjabi Literary Association, Edmonton in 1979; PañjÄbÄ« SÄhit Ate SabhiÄcÄrak SabhÄ (Punjabi Literary and Cultural Society), Winnipeg in 1982; Lok SabhiÄcÄrak Mañc, Calgary in 1983; Vancouver Sath, Vancouver in 1983; Calgary School of Drama, Calgary in 1988; PañjÄbÄ« SÄhit VicÄr Mañc, Winnipeg in 1991 and Punjab Arts Association, Edmonton in 1991.319 Similar organizations were also established in Toronto and Montreal. Binning points out that literary, cultural and political work was an inseparable dimension of the activities of the Punjabis immigrants left organizations. In fact, many of them bore only cultural or literary names, as in Edmonton and Calgary, though they engaged in political activities, such as supporting revolutionary movements in India and progressive causes in Canada and other parts of the world, like the anti-apartheid movement.320 Similarly, many social and political organizations, like East India Workers Association in Toronto, IPANA in Vancouver, East India Workers Association in Vancouver, 318 Ibid. 319 Ibid., 78, 115 and 116. 320 Sadhu Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, August 29 and September 16, 2019. 99 Indian Mahila Association in Vancouver and Samaanta in Vancouver, made cultural and literary activities as part of their activism.321 The activities of the 'Punjabi Literary and Cultural Society in Winnipeg, offer glimpses into the politics of a cultural organization of progressive Punjabis. One of the goals of the Society was to interact with organizations of other ethnicities. The Society believed that racism could be effectively dealt with only by coordinating and connecting with other organizations outside the community. Simultaneously, it stressed the need to fight racism through working-class solidarity and forged close relations with a working-class organization, âWorkers of Colour.â The Society contributed to the initiatives taken by the âWorkers of Colourâ in holding many conferences and joined hands with them to organize a protest in Winnipeg when some racists put up posters against the Sikh community.322 When the Manitoba government tried to make cuts to French language services through a referendum, it joined hands with the Manitoba Association for Promotion of Ancestral Languages and appealed to the South Asian Canadian community to vote against the proposal in the referendum. The Society was a grassroots organization. It engaged in door-to-door campaigns to inform the community about its programs, sold tickets for its events, raised funds and gathered feedback on its events and programs.323 Though it was not Societyâs objective to work in the political domain, it played a significant role in keeping the community informed about the progressive political issues of the time. Through 321 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 117. 322 Ibid., 179-181. 323 Ibid., 183-184. 100 poster campaigns, it appealed to the community to stay aware of the burning issues in Canadian politics like free trade, world peace, ecology and environmental protection.324 Looking back at the activism years of the 1970s and 1980s and the impact of cultural-political organizations of progressive Punjabis that were formed during the period, Binning and Hundal point out that though the activities carried out by each of these organizations independently might look insignificant and small today, as a collective network of organizations, they helped immensely in establishing the progressive ideology within the community and consolidated the bonds among progressive people across Canada. In this way, these organizations created and sustained a âsubcommunity of the progressive Punjabi communityâ in Canada.325 Speaking about the significance of the new spaces created by progressive Punjabi activists, especially in the context of the Punjabi Literary Association (PañjÄbÄ« SÄhit SabhÄ) in Vancouver, Hundal said it became a second social space after the Gurdwara for non-religious people in the community. The Gurdwara fulfilled the religious and social needs of religious people. However, those who were not religious and were involved in literary and cultural production and labour organizing were more likely to converge at the Punjabi Literary Associationâs fortnightly meetings. Besides writers, political activists of the Indian Peopleâs Association in North America (IPANA), East India Workers Association (EIWA), East India Defence Committee (EIDC), aspiring political leaders of the community like Ujjal Dosanjh, and 324 Ibid., 184-185. 325 Ibid., 118. 101 activists of womenâs rights organizations, like the Indian Mahila Association, would often drop by at the fortnightly meetings of Punjabi Literary Association.326 Emotions of the Times If progressive Punjabi immigrantsâ literary and cultural organizations of the 1970s and the 1980s constitute a labour cultural activism tradition, could the foundation of the Punjabi Literary Association in Vancouver mark its beginning? In chapter two, I have discussed the publication of newspapers and a book by trade union leader and organizer Darshan Singh Sangha in the early phase of the Desi Left. However, it was only in the 1970s and 80s that progressive Punjabis took to producing arts. Punjabi Literary Association, formed in Vancouver in 1973, is the pioneer literary organization of Punjabis in Canada. In the early 1980s, it was renamed Punjabi Writers Forum (PañjÄbÄ« Lekhak Mañch) due to some issues in managing it. 327 It presented the first original Punjabi Canadian play in 1973 on the communityâs experiences of racism. The play Dūja PÄsa (The Other Side) was written by poet Ajmer Rode, an active member of the Punjabi Literary Association.328 The Punjabi Literary Association members discussed literary issues, the challenges the community faced in Canada and the ongoing peopleâs movements in many parts of the world, including India. They embraced the dream of an egalitarian and humane world in their literary pursuits. As Binning and Hundal remark, these were the âfeelings and emotions of the times.â329 A souvenir PañjÄbÄ« Lekhak Mañch: SirajanÄ 326 Sukhwant Hundal, interview by author, Burnaby, Surrey, Abbotsford and Richmond, August 29 and 31, September 2 and 28, 2019. 327 Binning and Hundal (eds.), PañjÄbÄ« Lekhak Mañch, 7. 328 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 117. 329 Binning and Hundal (eds.), PañjÄbÄ« Lekhak Mañch, 8. 102 de 25 Varhe (Punjabi Writers Forum: 25 years of Creation), edited by Binning and Hundal, published by the Punjabi Writers Forum on its 25th anniversary in 1999, provides an overview of the times and the activities by its members in Vancouver. In the souvenir, Binning and Hundal argue that in the years around the 1970s, the progressive political currents swept across North America and Canada, and the labour movement was at its zenith. As US imperialism was experiencing its nemesis in the Vietnam war around this time, university students on campuses were organizing resistance movements defending the rights of the people in different parts of the world. At the same time, the powerful Civil Rights Movement was shifting the establishment in the USA. Though not directly part of any of these movements, the progressive Punjabi writers in Vancouver were inspired by the external atmosphere to do something. They made their contributions in two ways, first, through their literary production individually and second, by collectively investing their time and energies to strengthen the labour and anti-racism movements, locally and globally. The Punjabi Writerâs Forum members discussed the contemporary social movements and passed resolutions of solidarity as a collective of writers. They supported the farmworkers movement led by the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) and British Columbia Organization for Fighting Racism (BCOFR) struggle against racism locally and extended support to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.330 Binning recalls attending political rallies of the anti-Vietnam war movement and international solidarity movements in Vancouver. Powerful unions like the International Woodworkers of America (IWA), the Postal Workers Union, Hospital Employees Union, and the General Employees Union pushed back the BC elitesâ onslaughts to undermine the collective bargaining power of the 330 Ibid., 8, 10. 103 workers. Binning took part in these protests.331 Hundal recalls that in 1978 Farmworkers Organizing Committee (FWOR), a precursor of the CFU, was formed, and he would attend its meetings. Soon BCOFR started, and he got involved in it too. He would meet activists, write the reports of the meetings in Watano Dūr magazine, and at public meetings, he would provide simultaneous Punjabi translations if someone spoke in English.332 The Cosmopolitan World of Punjabi Writers Just like their solidarity with and participation in different social movements, the progressive Punjabi literary groups and writers were not only interacting with each other across Canada; they were simultaneously reaching out to literary organizations of other Indian and European languages.333 These efforts were made by writers personally as well as collectively through Punjabi Writers Forum. The Forum held joint gatherings of the writers of other Indian languages in Vancouver and those writing in English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, and other European languages. Works of writers like Surjeet Kalsey, Sadhu Binning, Ajmer Rode, Gurcharan Rampuri and others were published in English language anthologies and magazines. These poets also read out the English translations of their poetry and introduced non-Punjabi audiences to Punjabi literature. Kalsey played a leading role in translating Punjabi literature into English and organizing joint literary events of Punjabi and English writers.334 Through working with various left-wing movements, Binning became associated with writer Tom Wayman of the 331 Sadhu Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, August 29 and September 16, 2019. 332 Sukhwant Hundal, interview by author Burnaby, Surrey, Abbotsford and Richmond, August 29 and 31, September 2 and 28, 2019. 333 Binning and Hundal (eds.), PañjÄbÄ« Lekhak Mañch, 12. 334 Ibid., 12. 104 Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver. The Kootenay School had republished the historic Little Red Songbook of the International Workers of the World (IWW) or Wobblies.335 Chapter two discussed Wobbliesâ organizing of racialized immigrants in Vancouver and South Asian revolutionary Husain Rahimâs close association with them. Some of the Kootenay school writers were passionate about Work Poetry.336 Binning was part of this group and their discussant as he had written many poems related to work. His good friend, the Chinese poet, photographer and community organizer, Jim Wong Chew (January 28, 1949 â July 11, 2017), was also part of this group. Like Binning, Wong Chew worked as a letter carrier with the Canada Post and was the founder of the Asian Canadian Writersâ Workshop. Binning fondly recalled, âWe once went on a literary tour to a number of BC towns. I may have a couple of posters from that trip. Very interesting trip â and we were paid a small amount of money for that as well.â337 The Work Poetry group included Binningâs poems in East of Main: An Anthology of Poems from East Vancouver (1989), edited by Calvin Wharton and Tom Wayman. In 1991, two work poems of Binning were included in Paperwork: An Anthology edited by Tom Wayman. 338 Punjabi writers not only translated their writings into English, but they also translated literature from English to Punjabi. Likely for the first time, these efforts brought the literature and experiences of Indigenous writers and poets to the attention of Punjabi readers. Darshan Gill, writer and publisher of the weekly newspaper Canadian Darpan, was a member of the Punjabi 335 Sadhu Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, August 29 and September 16, 2019. 336 Gilbert A. Bouchard, "Poetry that Works in the Real World: Literature should Depict Workplace, Says Tom Wayman: [Final Edition]." Edmonton Journal, Dec 01, 1999. https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/poetry-that-works-real-world-literature-should/docview/252696764/se-2?accountid=14656. 337 Sadhu Binning, e-mail message to author, June 12, 2021. 338 Sadhu Binning, e-mail message to author, October 19, 2020. 105 Writers Forum.339 He translated and published the poetry collection of Chief Dan George, My Heart Soars, into Punjabi in 1980. In the bookâs introduction, Gill gave a brief biographical sketch of the highly accomplished Chief Dan George and stated that he was as proud of translating the book into Punjabi as Chief Dan George was proud of his people.340 Similarly, Binning translated a write-up on the history of Residential Schools in BC by Chief Bev Sellers, an award-winning author, first elected as chief of Xatâsull (Soda Creek) Indigenous People in Williams Lake, British Columbia, between 1987-1993. Binning explains that Seller had studied in a residential school, and this was a lecture she gave at a conference, Injustice in Canada, held in Vancouver. He was presenting it to Punjabi readers to inform them about residential schools. Binning sort to refute mainstream media representations of Indigenous Peoples which make many Punjabis believe they were alcoholics, hopeless, and quarrelsomeâ an impression formed by what mainstream media feeds them about Indigenous Peoples.341 Binning and Hundal also acknowledged the role played by Ajmer Rode in holding space for the writers of minority communities in the national body of the Writersâ Union of Canada, where he was a member.342 Theatre of Social Change What makes the progressive Punjabi labour culture activism distinct is that Punjabi writers doubled up as theatre directors and actors though they had no background in either theatre or acting. Hundal says they did not perceive theatre work, organizing work, going to 339 Binning and Hundal (eds.), PañjÄbÄ« Lekhak Mañch, 12. 340 Chief Dan George, UkÄb dī UdÌ£ÄnÌ£, trans. Darshan Gill (Amritsar: Ravī SÄhit PrakÄshan, 1980), 8. 341 Chief Bav Sellers, âKanedÌ£Ä de raizīḍaishīal SakÅ«l,â trans. Sadhu Binning, Watan, April, May, June, 1992, 13, accessed on July 6, 2021, https://ia801000.us.archive.org/14/items/watan-april-may-june-1992/Watan%20April%3AMay%3AJune1992.pdf. 13. 342 Binning and Hundal (eds.), PañjÄbÄ« Lekhak Mañch, 12. 106 farmworkersâ cabins, or staying on the picket line as separate activities. It was one complete task for them. 343 This approach to cultural activism is different from larger Canadian society. For example, Asian Canadian cultural activism involved artists from every art field: literature, visual and video arts, films, dance, or theatre.344 They used âwords, images, music, dance and theatrical performances to express themselves.â345 The local rock band of Vancouver, Ad Hoc, gave benefit concerts for the Canadian Farmworkers Union and many other causes as music activists from 1978 to 1982. The band members were a group of musicians.346 In the case of progressive Punjabi cultural activists, such specializations did not exist. Maybe the community did not have the resources then. The writers, self-aware of their cultural activism, had to make do with their own resources and talents. Kalsey recalls that the Punjabi activists involved in theatre activism, artists or directors alike, were a dedicated lot. There wasnât a community institution that could support them financially, and there were no Artâs Council grants. Actors and directors had to manage all the responsibilities, from logistics to finances. She remembers that for the plays by her and Rode, they rehearsed in the living room of their two-bedroom house. If it got late in the evening, everyone had dinner there. Rehearsals, booking a hall for a show, selling tickets, everything was handled personally by the small team of actors and directors involved in the play with one or two outside volunteers. Often, the team members had to pool in personal funds to pay for the venue rentals.347 A similar story of rehearsals by the Vancouver Sath theatre group at 343 Sukhwant Hundal, interview by author, Burnaby, Surrey, Abbotsford and Richmond, August 29 and 31, September 2 and 28, 2019. 344 Li, Voices Rising,1. 345 Ibid., 14. 346 Alan Zisman, interview by author, Vancouver, September 18, 2019. 347 Surjeet Kalsey and Ajmer Rode, interview by author, Burnaby, September 10, 2019. 107 Sadhu Binningâs house was shared by Jagdish Binning.348 The funding issues or lack of logistical support hardly ever come up in progressive Punjabi cultural activism history chronicled by Binning and Hundal. Like the act of chronicling their own progressive activism histories, theatre activism was a political commitment for which they were ready to assume all responsibilities without looking elsewhere for support. The progressive Punjabi cultural activists popularized social change theatre within the community all over Canada. Binning and Hundal consider it as one of the significant contributions of the Punjabi activists during this period. They maintain that activists paid serious attention to theatre, and it became central to the activism by progressive Punjabi immigrant activists. Organizations that could not perform plays for various reasons, like SÄhit Ate SabhiÄcÄrak SabhÄ, Winnipeg, promoted the social change theatre and organized its performances widely. These plays would mostly be on progressive or revolutionary themes and became popular among Punjabi communities throughout Canada.349 Hallerâs research informs us that Vancouver Sathâs theatre work was at the core of their collaboration with the Vancouver Mayworks. However, Binning and Hundal havenât discussed why theatre acquired such an important position in the cultural activism of progressive Punjabi immigrants across Canada. Binning acknowledges the communityâs lack of reading habits, and difficult daily struggles to establish themselves in Canada, precipitated Vancouver Sath activists consider experimenting with theatre to carry their messages to the community.350 Nandi Bhatia argues that, âSath 348 Jagdish Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, August 20, 2019. 349 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 116 350 Sadhu Binning, âVancouver Sath: South Asian Canadian Theatre in Vancouver,â Canadian Theatre Review. Spring 98, Issue 94, (1998): 14, accessed on July 10, 2019. https://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=de9b0e4c-8055-4b53-b750-f0a207a28c2c%40sdc-v-sessmgr03. 108 members questioned the effectiveness of print for raising critical awareness and instead found drama and theatre as more efficacious media for addressing their concerns.â351 If this was true for all progressive Punjabi activist groups across Canada, who invested in the art of theatre to advance their cause, we donât know. The Indian Communist movementâs powerful cultural organization, the Indian Peopleâs Theatre Association (IPTA), has a long tradition of using theatre for political propaganda and mobilization. Was affinity with the theatre part and parcel of the influence of the leftist politics the Punjabi immigrants brought to Canada then? Binning hasnât alluded to any direct impact or inspiration of the IPTA on Vancouver Sathâs theatre activism. He did mention the Vancouver Sathâs interaction with progressive Punjabi playwright and theatre director Gursharan Singh, who was touring Vancouver and Canada with his theatre group Amritsar Kala Manch on IPANAâs invitation around the same time. That was when Vancouver Sath members had a chance to watch his plays and discuss his community-based theatre with him. After meeting Gursharan Singh, Vancouver Sath members discovered that their concept of community theatre was just like what he had been doing.â352 It seems then that Vancouver Sath independently arrived at an understanding of theatre that matched Gursharan Singhâs. One reason, among others, could be that Vancouver Sath and Gursharan Singh shared a leftist vision of the role of art in society. Vancouver Sath members considered themselves part of a literary tradition that believed literature and art aim to improve human conditions. Binning says, âBy declaring that art must strive to improve the human 351 Nandi Bhatia, âDiasporic Meditations and the Meditations of âHomeâ: South Asian Voices in Canadian Drama,â Studies in Social Justice Volume 7, Issue 1, 128, accessed February 9, 2018, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/diasporic-activism-mediations-home-south-asian/docview/1315912870/se-2. 352 Binning, âVancouver Sath,â14. 109 condition, as artists we do not separate ourselves from life around us but become one with life.â353 Exciting Time for the Arts and Politics In terms of volunteering and the unpaid nature of their activism, the progressive Punjabi cultural activists were more like the musicians of the rock band Ad Hoc. Alan Zisman, a musician of the band, said they brought the musicians, the sound equipment, someone to run the sound equipment and played music for free to raise funds for many activist causes in the Lower Mainland.354 Within two years, from 1978 to 1980, the band had played over fifty benefits and âmade its reputation around town as one of the most politically aware bands [â¦] playing political benefits for womenâs and labour groups, third world groups and anti-nuke activities.â355 By 1982 it had played at about 100 fundraising dances, dinners and rallies for a wide range of activist events.â356 A look at the bandâs website painstakingly set up Zisman reveals a great collection of event posters displaying a diversity of causes for which the band played benefits. It includes International Womenâs Day, Anarchist May Day, Support the Chilean Refugees, Services Office and Retail Workers Union of Canada (SORWUC), Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU), BC Organization for Fighting Racism (BCOFR), Grandview Terrace Child Care, Womenâs Bookstore, Protesting Policies of Removing Native Children From Reserves, Central American Support Committee, Support El Salvador, Chilean Solidarity, End the Arms Race, 353 Ibid.,15. 354 Alan Zisman, interview by Author, Vancouver, September 18, 2019. 355 F. Magun, âCritics Previewâ Vancouver Free Press, April 18 - May2, 1980; Dwayne Finlayson, âCritics Preview,â Vancouver Free Press, April 4-April 11, 1980. 356 Ad Hoc- Givinâ a funk, directed by Dugg Simpson, 1982. 110 Domestic Workers Union, Nicaragua Health Brigade Campaign, KINESIS-womenâs newspaper, Rape Relief House, Endaco Mineworkers Strike, Law Union, Support Galindo Madrid- Stop Deportations, Teaching Support Staff of SFU, Concerned Citizens For Choice of Abortion, Spartacus Books, Postal Workers Defense Fund, Mental Patients Association, No war No Nukes, Vancouver Committee for Quebec Right to Self Determination, Coalition for Nuclear Free World, Chilean Unidad Populaire, and Gay Hoon-Betsy Wood Defense. In addition, the website has a scan of a letter by Chinmoy Banerjee, the Vice President of the BC Organization for Fighting Racism (BCOFR), written to the Ad Hoc band on 25th July 1982. Banerjee expressed his âdeepest appreciationâ to Ad Hoc for their solidarity and musical contribution in their fight against racism. It had helped them raise more than a thousand dollars.357 Ad Hoc was a band of part-time musicians. Their day jobs kept their art activism and survival going. Vancouver Sath members and other progressive Punjabi activists had followed the same route to sustain their theatre activism and lives. Perhaps, it was a feature of the labour cultural activism of the time. Among the Ad Hoc musicians, Julius Fisher was a bus driver, and Alan Zisman was a daycare worker.358 A newspaper report, âAd Hoc: Politically Sound Musicâ by Ralph Skinner on the bandâs website, notes that the band had eight musicians and one sound technician. Besides Zisman and Fisher, some other band members were Bill Andrews, a law student; Ron Labonte, a provincial health worker; Madelain Kieren, a postal worker; Peter Judd, an electrician; Kathy Willander, a post office driver and Claire Kujundzic, a graphic visual artist.359 Zisman says that between 1978 and 1982, the four years of its existence, Ad Hoc raised 357 âAd Hoc Band,â accessed 29 June 2018. http://adhocband.ca/. 358 Alan Zisman, interview by author, Vancouver, September 18, 2019. 359 âAd Hoc Bandâ accessed 29 June 2018. http://adhocband.ca/. 111 by a very rough estimate, about $100,000 to fund 40 to 50 activist groups. He says a couple of thousand dollars to each group might be just half a month of their office rent today, but it made a difference in the late 1970s and early 1980s.360 Like, Haller, and Binning and Hundal, Zisman was conscious that the music activists like him belonged to a labour cultural activist community. He says that if one was in âthat community,â it was expected that one would be âa supporter of anti-war, anti-nuclear, anti-arms race. You were supportive of the Latin America solidarity movements. You were supportive of the farmworkers and other independent trade unions and grassroots movements.â361 Zisman describes the 1970s evolving out of the 1960s as exciting times for the arts and politics. He said that a generation who had come of age in the anti-war, anti-racism era and hadnât abandoned their politics was growing old and settling down as teachers, doctors, lawyers, bus drivers, and letter carriers. They had not given up on their ideals but were mature enough to understand that changing the world was not as easy as they had thought when they were twenty years old. As a result, he says, these âwhiteâ leftists of Vancouver were having to learn new ways to stay politically in the forefront. 362 In 1973, the democratically elected government of Socialist President of Chile, Salvador Allende, was overthrown in a coup, and he was assassinated. The brutal repression let loose on the leftist activists forced many of them to flee the country to seek refuge in Canada. In addition, resistance struggles were going on in countries like El Salvador, and many leftist activists fighting for their lives came to Canada as political refugees. 360 Alan Zisman, interview by author, Vancouver, September 18, 2019. 361 Ibid. 362 Ibid. 112 Zisman believes that political refugees from Latin America played a crucial role in influencing their politics and new engagements in this phase. These political refugees made the local âwhiteâ activists pay attention to other racialized communities of Vancouver. As a result, fresh ties were formed with South Asian activists and Filipino activists, mainly organizing around Filipino domestic workers rights. Zisman also recalls the movement to stop the deportation of a Chilean political refugee, Galindo Madrid, who went to New Democratic Partyâs MP Svend Robinsonâs office and sought sanctuary. Robinson played a crucial role in protecting him.363 How political refugees and their struggles for status in Canada contributed to building inter-community solidarities among activists is a fascinating area that deserves further exploration.364 These were the times, says Zisman, when he left Montreal and came to Vancouver to work with a newly launched anarchist magazine Open Road. He was 27 years old. 365 He says growing up around the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-war movement in the 1950s and 1960s, Black American music was a major influence on him. Blues and rhythmic blues influenced him. He played folk music and jazz on guitar, banjo and piano. In Vancouver, he was playing banjo at a rally of striking workers for a small independent feminist union, Service, Office, and Retail Workers Union of Canada (SORWUC), where he met Julius Fisher met for the first time. Fisherâs previous band, Basement Faith, had just broken up, so he planned to start a new band to play at an event to celebrate International Womenâs Day that spring. Zisman says 363 Alan Zisman, interview by author, Vancouver, September 18, 2019; For more information on Canadian response to Chilean refugee crisis, Jan Raska, 1973: Canadaâs Response to the Chilean Refugees, accessed on July 12, 2021. https://pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/canada-s-response-to-the-1973-chilean-crisis. 364 Ibid. 365 âOpenRoad,â Open Road Collective, accessed November 1, 2021, http://www.zisman.ca/openroad/. 113 thatâs how Ad Hoc was thrown together, temporarily for an event in 1978, but it went on playing for another four years. It was a mixed band, with men and women making music together. They were mostly socialists of some shade or the other. Some identified themselves as feminists along with being socialists and internationalists. He came from an âanarchist perspectiveâ while Fisher was a trade unionist with a âsocialist perspective.â âInstead of hammering out unity,â he says, âwe believed in respecting differences and building something based on our differences.â366 Zisman says the band tried to support various causes and believed that people act for their own self-interest. For example, he says, the South Asian farmworkers will organize South Asian farm workers. The lawyers will have their lawyersâ union. The bandâs job would be to support all of them by building ties and building solidarities between different struggles in a fun way. It would try bringing supporters of one struggle to come and at least dance and spend some money to support another struggle. Zisman says the band believed that small unions like the CFU were growing from the bottom, responding to the need to organize without waiting for the big trade unions to make up their mind. It was, therefore, natural for the band to support them.367 A few years later, in 1987, Julius Fisher, the co-founder of Ad Hoc, produced a fundraising audio cassette for the Canadian Farmworkers Union. Talking Union: Songs for Organizing featured songs by the iconic North American folk singer and organizer, Pete Seeger, the womenâs band Aya, and The Ginger group. In addition, several songs like âUnion Jamâ and âWhoâs Feeding Youâ were specially written about the CFU struggle.368 Among them was a 366 Ibid. 367 Ibid. 368 Farmworker, âHeard Our Cassette?â Vol 2 No.1, July 1988, 5, accessed June 9, 2021, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/cfu-2226/farmworker-1988-vol-02-no-01. 114 song in Punjabi exhorting Punjabi farmworkers to organize themselves, written by Vancouver Sath member Sukhwant Hundal and performed by Hemi Dhanoa and Nizar Dhamji.369 Perhaps it is the only music album of its kind where Punjabi singers and Pete Seeger feature together, singing for the cause of the workers. The cassetteâs cover was designed by Claire Kujundzic, another member of Ad Hoc who was a singer/musician and visual artist. She had made a poster for the CFUâs fundraising in 1983-84, which later became the cover of the cassette Talking Union. The poster was later screen printed on t-shirts by Bill Horne, artist, and Claireâs partner, to raise funds for the CFU. 370 Cultural Infrastructure in a Movement Julius Fisher considers himself more of a political activist than a musician. He admits that though the music was more of a recreational thing for him, he continued to dabble with it for a long time. What explains this duality perhaps is the importance he gives to âmusical activismâ in building âcultural infrastructureâ in a movement, especially âwhen the music speaks to the struggles that people are actually having, and when lyrics of the songs are actually speaking about whatâs going on.â371 He had set up his first band in 1976, and its first event was for the Vancouver Resources Board, a community group being dismantled by the then minister Bill Vander Zalm of the right-wing Social Credit Party. Later, Fisher established Ad Hoc, the Communique and then The Ginger Group, named after the legendary socialist labour organizer of BC, Albert âGingerâ Goodwin. He said groups formed by him after Ad Hoc also played for the 369 Julius Fisher interview by author, Salt Spring Island, September 23, 2019. 370 Claire Kujundzic, interview by author, Vancouver, September 29, 2019. 371 Julius Fisher, interview by author, Salt Spring Island, September 23, 2019. 115 CFU, at least twice, to raise money for the Union.372 Over the years, he produced nine music albums to support different movements. Almost all of the albums were not funded. The only time he received some funds was when producing the album Time to Stand for the postal workers union. Albert Hughes, the President of the Vancouver local of Postal Workers, had managed to raise some funds. Fisherâs first album was Hold the Fort for the Unemployed Action Centre. The second album, Watch Over Liberty, was a short album with six songs for Operation Solidarity in BC in 1982-83. The third was Talking Union for the Canadian Farmworkers Union. A big strike in Northern BC at the Yellow Knife Mine was the struggle supported by his fourth album. Fiesta De Barrio (Party in the Neighbourhood) was the fifth album he did with Central American musicians in Spanish to support the refugees from Central America. Fisher had almost forgotten about the album of a live recording for the Peace March in 1985. He recalls that Vancouver was the peace capital of North America, and there were huge peace marches. Vancouverâs mayor led the marches, and it was quite a progressive time.373 Recalling the Talking Union album recording, Fisher mentions there were quite a few local folk musicians he knew from many left-wing benefits. They were happy to volunteer and do an extra song for the cassette, knowing fully well that they would not be paid. Fisher acknowledges Gary Cristall, the founder of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, for providing the title song of the album Talking Union by Pete Seeger. He had requested Cristall to help him get the song, and since Cristall knew Seeger, he talked to him and received his permission. 372 âThe Canadian Farmworkers Union Project,â Special Collections, Simon Fraser University Library, accessed July 15, 2021, https://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28909/FINDING%20AID%20CFU.pdf, 28-32. 373 Julius Fisher interview by author, Salt Spring Island, September 23, 2019. 116 Fisher feels that there was a very personal reason for him to take to activism. He is the son of a Socialist Jewish father from Vienna whose family died in the Holocaust. His father escaped Austria when Hitler annexed it in 1938. He went to China and lived there for eleven years and then somehow managed to come to Canada in 1949. Fisher was born in Canada in 1950. At that time, there was no Jewish immigration and the famous catchphrase in Canada describing the Jewish people was None Is Too Many, which later became the title of a book.374 A ship with Jewish refugees from Germany was forced back by Canada during the war is still fresh in his memory.375 Fisher is associated with Independent Jewish Voices (IJW), an anti-Zionist Jewish group in Vancouver, and mentions his friend Sid Shniad, well-known labour, peace and anti-racism activist and Co-Chair of the IJW.376 Shniad did and continues to work closely with Desi Left activists of Vancouver. He was the founding member of the BC Organization for Fighting Racism (BCOFR) in 1980, headed by Charan Gill. When the organization was reborn in 2019 as West Coast Coalition Against Racism Society (WC-CARS), Shniad was its co-founder and an Executive Member.377 Fisher recalls that much before his musical activism, part of his politicization started with the âmenâs groupâ when he was twenty-two. At that time, women had their own womenâs consciousness groups and supported each other, and some men felt inspired to do the same. They were progressive men and included gay men too. Some of the menâs group members who influenced him deeply were writers Stan Persky and Tom Sandborn, who were Marxists. He 374 Irving M. Abella and Harold Martin Troper, None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012). 375 Julius Fisher interview by author, Salt Spring Island, September 23, 2019 376 Ibid. 377 âAbout WC-CARS,â West Coast Coalition Against Racism Society, https://www.wc-cars.org/about. 117 started reading books that impacted his political awareness. Thus, he says, feminism was inextricably intertwined with his progressive politicization from early on. It was something that he and Zisman had in common.378 Finally, he recalls another significant influence on him and other members of the Ad Hoc groupâs politicization: the military coup in Chile in 1973. According to Fisher, the political scene in Vancouver at that time was highly segmented. There were many different currents of the left, and each claimed that only it knew the correct way to move forward to the socialist revolution. There were Maoists, Trotskyists, Social Democrats, and Anarchists among them.379 He was in his late twenties and worked as a bus driver. As a union activist, he evolved with the left caucus in the union. Bus driving was a boring job, but he loved playing music for the simple reason that no one else was doing it. The Ad Hoc was the only left-wing band in Vancouver at the time, and when they played at the popular Ukrainian Hall, people from all the left currents would come together to party. Fisher felt that music helped build solidarity among different left activists despite the political differences that remained. The role of artists in left movements, he says, is to point people away from the dogma. Fisher recalls it was a world of young people, âWe were young people playing music, and most of the people in the groups for whom we played for were also quite young.â380 We know that it was the same for the Desi Left activists. Zisman too alludes to this generational homogeneity of young musicians, audiences/listeners and activists. These interviews seem to confirm that the 378 Julius Fisher interview by Author, Salt Spring Island, September 23, 2019. 379 For various shades of leftwing activism in Vancouver see Eryk Martin, âBurn it down! Anarchism, Activism and the Vancouver Five, 1967-1985,â (PhD diss. Simon Fraser University, 2016), http://summit.sfu.ca/item/16129. 380 Julius Fisher interview by Author, Salt Spring Island, September 23, 2019. 118 1970s and early 1980s were decades of youth activism circulating around issues of labour, immigration, womenâs rights and international solidarities. Like Zisman, Fisher underlines the bandâs priorities to support feminist activism, labour activism outside the established labour movement and organizing international solidarity with Central Americaâin El Salvador, in Nicaragua. He says though the band did one song called âGlad to be Gayâ by Tom Robinson, he admits the LGBTQ issues were not of primary concern at that time. The Vancouver-based punk rock groups like DOA arrived on the scene after Ad Hoc and continued their solidarity work. Fisher traces the source of all this musical activism in Vancouver to the Rock Against Racism movement in the UK in the 1970s. He feels that that is what influenced all of them. 381 The influence manifested visibly in Ad Hocâs slogan âRock Against Repression,â inspired by the Rock Against Racism movement.382 The impact of the UKâs anti-fascist anti-racist cultural, political movement on Vancouverâs musical activism came up again in a conversation with Gary Cristall, the co-founder of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. It points to an interesting transnational stream of music, anti-racism and social justice activism during the period that deserves more attention in writing the local activist history of Vancouver. The crosscurrents of Chilean leftist political refugees and the Rock Against Racism cultural movement in the UK contributed to shaping the musical activism of the Ad Hoc and other musicians in 1970s and 1980s Vancouver. However, what helped Ad Hoc specifically identify to with the cause of the Canadian Farmworkers Union was yet another legacy of 381 Ibid. 382 âAd Hoc Band,â accessed on 29 June 2018. http://adhocband.ca/. 119 immigrant labour organizing near home in California. Ad Hoc band members Julius Fisher and Claire Kujundzic, and Gary Crystal of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, were all very familiar with the United Farmworkers of Americaâs struggle (UFWA) led by Cesar Chavez. This background helped them relate to what the CFU was trying to do in BC. Fisher recalls that a decade earlier than the CFU, the Grapes Boycott struggle led by Cesar Chavez in the US was supported by practically every left-wing person in Vancouver. It had educated them a bit about the issues on the farms. While in the US, the farmworkers mainly were Hispanic or Latino people, and in the BC, they were mostly South Asians. Fisher says his connection with the CFU was mainly through the CFU staff person and organizer, Judy Cavanagh and unionâs president Raj Chauhan. He especially remembers an excellent presentation by Cavanagh on farmworkers, which convinced him that this is a cause he wanted to support even though he did not know her personally. Fisher has many memories of the CFU benefits. He would also be there at the CFU parties, even when not playing music. The benefits were his introduction to South Asian culture. Often, he brought his elderly parents along to some of these parties at the Scottish Hall. These parties were a good cultural outreach beyond the South Asian community to all other groups. It included not just the white community but also Latin American communities, for example, who always turned up in support, he said.383 The Long Memory Perhaps the most prominent musician who played a benefit concert for the CFU was the American labour organizer, poet and folk singer Bruce Dunkan âUtahâ Phillips (1935 â 2008). 383 Julius Fisher, interview by author, Salt Spring Island, September 23, 2019. 120 Gary Cristall, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival founder, was a good friend of âUtahâ Phillips, who had invited him.384 As discussed in chapter two, âUtahâ Phillips was a card-carrying member of the International Workers of the World (IWW) or Wobblies. He sang songs from the IWWâs Little Red Songbook and carried their legacy to the next generations of workers. The IWW had a long history of organizing migrant and racialized workers ignored or discriminated against by the mainstream unions in the early 1900s. âUtahâ Phillipsâs benefit for the CFU invokes the memory of an earlier episode of solidarity between South Asian revolutionary Hussain Rahim and the Wobblies in their âFree Speech Fightsâ in Vancouver when Rahim helped in bailing out the arrested Wobblies in 1912. This early history of solidarity among the Desi Left and leftwing labour movement that almost disappeared from Vancouver since the 1950s was retrieved with the revival of the Desi Left activism in the late 1970s. As earlier discussed, these activists saw themselves as the inheritors of the Desi Leftâs long legacy in Canada. Marxist cultural activists like Gary Cristal were also engaging with the legacy of the early Canadian and North American leftist labour movement. The 1970s and 1980s struggles brought the earlier âentwinedâ activism streams of labour cultural activism together again in Vancouver. Cristall was a well-known member of this leftist cultural activist community. He founded the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in 1978 and was its director for seventeen years. He worked in creative music and arts for forty years and produced many festivals and hundreds of concerts. His company, Festival Records, grew into a major 384 Gary Cristall, interview by author, Vancouver, August 26 and September 26, 2019. 121 distributor of independent releases and dozens of labels from all over the world. In addition, his record label Aural Tradition released a few dozen recordings. 385 In 1981, the year âUtahâ Phillips played a benefit for the CFU in September, Cristall had recorded three live concerts with him in and around Vancouver in February, out of which he produced the record We Have Fed You All for a Thousand Years: Utah Phillips sings the songs and tells the stories of the Industrial Workers of the World. It had âUtahâ Phillips singing the songs and narrating the stories of the IWW movement, written by some great songwriters like Joe Hill (1879 â1915) and T Bone Slim (Matt Valentine Huhta,1880 â1942). Highlighting the significance of live recording, Cristall said that it captured the real spirit of the songs as these union songs are meant for singing together. The record came with a booklet with the history of the IWW, some of their publications, pictures, stamps and a variety of paraphernalia and ephemera. Cristall points out that IWW worked in many different languages in those days because so many workers were immigrants who didnât speak English. He says that âWe tried to capture with both songs and images, and texts, the history of that union movement which was a very important early union movement in North America.â 386 Cristall identifies himself as a revolutionary Marxist of the Trotskyist stream of the far left. His Marxist parents were in the Communist Party. In the 1960s, he actively participated in the solidarity movement with the struggle for Civil Rights in the US. During President Salvador Allendeâs period in Chile, he was directly involved in political work there. Cristall says that his political involvement comes first, and music comes second. He asks and then answers what one 385 Gary Cristall, âA short bioâ¦,â accessed July 21, 2021, http://www.garycristall.com/. 386 Gary Cristall, interview by author, Vancouver, August 26 and September 26, 2019 122 does with oneâs life, so he ended up running a music festival.387 In prioritizing his politics over music, Gary Cristall and Julius Fisher have similar priorities. As we know, the same was true for many progressive Punjabi cultural activists. Cristall says he utilized the opportunity provided by the festival to present things to the audience to build solidarity with various political movements inside and outside Canada. So he invited singers and bands from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and other places. Although it was a folk music festival, at the same time, they incorporated other related arts like storytelling, spoken word, poetry, and dance. This included the South Asian dance, bhangra that the Punjabi Arts Association Richmond (PAAR), a group aligned with the Farmworkers Union would perform. He felt what Vancouver Sath led by Sadhu Binning, was doing was important. So, he utilized the opportunity to present them to an audience of a few thousand at the Folk Music Festival. Also, the women-oriented theme of their plays was very important for the festival. He says, âIt was the first folk music festival to bring in feminist performers, lesbian performers and a strong representation of womenâs and feminist voices.â388 He recalls that the local bands who would do benefits or solidarity events for movements and activists groups were Ad Hoc, and Contagious, a band that was active in the womenâs scene and supported other political activists and activities. The political refugees who began to arrive in Vancouver after the defeat of the left-wing government of President Salvador Allende in Chile added another dimension to music activism. They regularly held concerts, fundraising events, solidarity events which eventually led to establishing Latina, a political coffee house on Commercial Drive. Speaking specifically about the benefit for CFU by âUtahâ Phillips, Cristall 387 Ibid. 388 Ibid. 123 recalls there was a solidarity movement in Vancouver with the farmworkers. Bruce (he mentions âUtahâ Phillips by his first name as they were good friends) had earlier worked with farmworkers in California and other places in the US and lived in Spokane in Washington State at that time. So he invited him to perform at the CFU meeting and âUtahâ Phillips was happy to do it. Cristall thought âit was interesting too because it wasnât necessarily the kind of music that the farmworkers or even the people organizing them knew very much about or had any experience with. So, it was a nice cross-cultural moment if you like.â389 Cristall was introducing the labour music activism tradition of North America to the immigrant Punjabi farmworkers and their union organizers. At the same time, and independently, the Desi Left activists were seriously engaging with this musical tradition of North America, especially the Wobblies. The publication of an anthology of the North American labour movement songs in Punjabi, Goda Lae Gīt (The Songs Adopted), by Sukhpal is a milestone in the Punjabi labour cultural activism history of Canada.390 It presents an organic link of left internationalism across race and nationality and affirms, as Cristall said, that they were singing from the same hymnbook.391 Sukhpalâs journey with the book is also an account of how the left movement in Punjab had influenced the Punjabi youth that eventually contributed to the progressive Punjabi activist history in Canada in the1980s. Sukhpal dedicates this songbook to âthose anonymous poets whose songs travelled faster than their names.â392 He especially thanks three Desi Left activists of Vancouver, Sadhu Binning, Harinder Mahil and Gurnam Singh 389 Ibid. 390 Sukhpal, Goda Lae Gīt. (Phagwara: PañjÄb Lok SabhiÄcÄrak Mañc PrakÄshan,1993) 391 Gary Cristall, interview by author, Vancouver, August 26 and September 26, 2019. 392 Sukhpal, God Le Gīt,3. 124 Sanghera, who helped him search for the songs featured in the book.393 It may be considered evidence of the popularity of the North American union songs among sections of Desi Left activists. The book has four segments. The first segment has twelve songs, mainly from North America, which I will discuss here. The second segment has revolutionary songs from Pakistan. The third section has songs from the anti-colonial struggle against British rule, and the fourth section has songs originally written by Sukhpal. Sukhpal started working on the book in 1982 when he was still in Punjab and was deeply involved in establishing a left-wing cultural organization, PañjÄb Lok SabhiÄcÄrak Mañc or PULS Manch (the Peopleâs Cultural Forum of Punjab). 394 He completed the book between 1983 and 1985 while studying in Vancouver.395 At a cultural festival organized in Nasrali, Punjab, on 14th March 1982 to establish the PULS Manchâs presence on the ground, an editor of a communist groupâs publication approached Sukhpal. He handed him a pamphlet exhorting Punjabi writers to translate Eugene Pollierâs song âInternationalâ in Punjabi. Sukhpal took the challenge and translated the song. Soon his Punjabi version of âInternationalâ was reverberating in the ambience of Punjabâs left movement.396 The Vancouver-based Punjabi literary magazine Watano Dūr picked up Sukhpalâs translation and published it on the cover of its May-June 1983 issue along with a write-up on Eugene Pollier by its editor at the time, Surinder Dhanjal.397 A year later, on March 11, 1984, Sukhpalâs Punjabi version of âInternationalâ was sung by Teerath 393 Ibid.,5. 394 Ibid., 9. 395 Sukhwant Hundal, email message to author, July 20, 2021. 396 Sukhpal, Goda Lae Gīt, 9. 397 Surinder Dhanjal, âEugene Pollier,â Watano Dūr, May â June 1983, 3, accessed July 5, 2021, https://sukhwanthundal.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/wdurmayjune1983.pdf. 125 Bains, Sajjan Bains, Manjit Pabla and Kamaljit Johal at the first public program presented by Vancouver Sath at Sexsmith Community School in Vancouver.398 Sukhpal arrived in Canada in January 1983 to study Physics at Simon Fraser University in BC. After finishing his degree by the end of 1985, he was offered admission into a PhD program at Carleton University, Ottawa, where he earned his doctorate and then worked as a research scientist. In 1993, Sukhpal moved to the US to take up a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell university.399 In the preface to his book, Sukhpal wrote that he had hoped that some of the songs he discovered in the past decade (the 1980s) could belong to his people. To make that happen, he adopted these songs, taught them his mother tongue, nourished them with his own interpretations, and when they were ready, he set them free to take a flight in the folk ambience of his people.400 He was aware that scholars and critics might find his translations not measuring up to the rules and norms of translating. However, he believed that the songs he selected deeply impacted the people in whose languages they were originally written. While rewriting them in Punjabi, his only yardstick was that the profound impact of the songs should not be lost in translation. Therefore, he took the liberty to address the changed social context of songs by tweaking words, images, symbols, and metaphors to make sure songs leave a powerful impact. That is why he calls them the âadopted songsâ rather than translated songs.401 Since Sukhpal has only mentioned the Punjabi titles of the songs, I tried to trace the original English ones and have been more or less successful except for one or two songs. The list 398 Amarjit Chahal, Wainakūwar Sathth dÄ SÄhitak ate sabhiÄcÄrak progrÄm,â Watano Dūr, March- April 1984, 10, accessed July 11, 2021, https://sukhwanthundal.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/wdurmarapri1984.pdf. 399 Sukhwant Hundal, email message to author, July 20, 2021. 400 Sukhpal, Goda Lae Gīt, 9. 401 Ibid.,10. 126 is as follows: âInternationalâ by Eugene Pottier; âSolidarity Foreverâ and another song which I couldnât trace, by Ralph Chaplin; âWe Shall Overcomeâ by Martin Luther King Jr.; âThereâs Power In The Union,â âWorkers of the World Awakenâ and the â The Preacher and the Slaveâ by Joe Hill; âAll Used Upâ by âUtahâ Philips; âUnion Maidâ by Woody Guthrie; âAboriginalâ by Chief Dan George; âIf Your Homeâ by an anonymous poet of Guinea Bissau. Except for the âInternationalâ and âIf Your Home,â all the songs are from North America.402 Sadhu Binningâs foreword, Mazadūr JamÄt de Gīt (Songs of the Working Class), to Sukhpalâs book offers a far-reaching account of North Americaâs union poets, songs, and their contributions to the labour movement. Perhaps it is the only detailed account of the union songs tradition by a Desi Left activist during the period, which indicates their embrace of the resistance traditions of the adopted homeland. Binning commends Sukhpal, a scientist, inhabiting the secluded space of university yet deeply concerned about his people and their struggles. He points out that these songs, sung in chorus by people in their struggles, are also songs about their struggles. Sukhpal took great pains to translate them so that his people could sing these songs zestfully in their mother tongue.403 The task had been performed so diligently, Binning said, that âthe songs born in strangersâ courtyards appear to be our very own when singing or humming in Punjabi.â404 Reflecting on the collective or group singing of labour songs, he writes that when people come together and sing in chorus -- same lyrics and same tunes-- in rallies, marches, and processions, it consolidates their bond with the movement and with each other. Binning seems 402 Ibid., 10. 403 Sadhu Binning, foreword to Goda Lae Gīt by Sukhpal (Phagwara: PañjÄb Lok SabhiÄcÄrak Mañc PrakÄshan, 1993),13. 404 Ibid., 21. 127 fascinated by the potential of the song in building a community of labour activists. After all, the Desi Left activists considered themselves to be a part of such a community. The discussion of labour songs led Binning to explore the history of the IWW to which the majority of the songs and songwriters belonged.405 Thus, we find him writing about the IWW or Wobblies, whose memories Cristall was retrieving by making a record with âUtahâ Phillips, who was himself an old Wobbly. Binning argues that one of the unique contributions of the IWW was creating the songs of unionization, which the workers still sing along to. The IWWâs slogan was âSing and Struggle,â and for this reason, he says, it is also remembered as the âSinging Labour Movement.â The IWW produced more than two hundred immensely popular labour union songs. Some of these songs were written by well-known labour poets and organizers, but many were straight from the heart by factory workers and miners with little education.406 The Little Red Songbook of the IWW has all the IWW songs, and no conversation about the IWW is complete without discussing the story behind the Songbook. Binning notes that the Little Red Songbook was first published in 1908-09, and by 1956 had seen 29 editions. He reminds his readers that it is published occasionally, even now by the IWW supporters including an edition by published by the Kootenay School of Writing with whom he was associated in the 1980s.407 According to the Wobblies website, by 2010, the Songbook had seen no less than 38 editions.408 405 Ibid., 15. 406 Ibid., 15 407 Ibid., 16. 408 âLittle Red Songbook,â The IWW Store: The official merch site of the Industrial Workers of the World, accessed November 22, 2021, https://store.iww.org/shop/little-red-songbook-38th-edition/ 128 Binning says that these songs cannot be appreciated by merely reading them. One has to experience the impact of collective singing when big groups or gatherings of workers perform them together. Like folk songs in all cultures, the labour songs are simple with a clear message which contributes to their popularity.409 Often based on folk or religious tunes with which people were already familiar, the songs are in fact far removed from any religious idea. On the contrary, many IWW songs used the composition of religious songs to make fun of religious obscurantism and orthodoxy.410 It is observable that a conscious strategy of activism was the utilization of a familiar form to communicate new ideas. The three main themes addressed in the IWW songs are worker unity, the significance of their collective struggles, and encouragement and inspiration for workers to love each other and commit to their shared goals. At times, songs directly mention names of labour heroes who dedicated their lives to fighting for workersâ rights. Binning gives the example of Mary (Harris) Jones (1837-1930), known as Mother Jones, about whom many labour songwriters have written songs. Born in 1837, she dedicated her entire life fighting for the rights of coal mines and other workers. Binning notes that labour songs could also express strong revulsion for the bosses and their stooges who betray their fellow workers. He gives the example that those who cross the picket line during a strike are called âscabsâ by workers, which is the worst kind of abuse. âCasey Jones,â a song by Joe Hill, is about such a scab that remains popular even today.411 After outlining the IWW labour song tradition, Binning delves into providing details about the songs and songwriters included in Sukhpalâs book. 409 For more on the left-wing activism and folk music in the US, see Ronald D. Cohen, âDepression Folk: Grassroots Music and Left-Wing Politics in 1930s America,â (North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2016). 410 Ibid., 21. 411 Ibid. 129 He begins by discussing âSolidarity Forever,â which, he says, is labourâs most beloved song, written in 1915 by the Wobbly poet Ralph Chaplin. According to Binning, every worker knows the song, if not entirely, then at least some part of it. They spontaneously sing along whenever this gem of a labour song is sung at union meetings, rallies, marches, processions, and strikes. Binning makes a special mention of two wobbly poets, Joe Hill and âUtah Phillips,â whose songs are in Sukhpalâs book. He says Joe Hill was perhaps the most loved and well-known of the IWW poets. He feels proud to have known about the beloved poet of the working class, though today, the union movement has become more of âBusiness Unionism,â and his name is not popular like it was at one time. However, Binning says that for some people, Joe Hill remains their hero, a beloved working-class poet, just like Bhagat Singh and his comrades are for progressive Punjabis.412 Binning gives a detailed account of Hillâs life, a Swede immigrant who came to the US at the age of nineteen in 1901 and worked with the IWW from 1910 till he was framed in a false murder case, kept in jail for two years under trial and sentenced to death in 1915. Despite massive support for Hill from the people in the US, Europe and Australia, the Swedish government raising its voice against his trial and US President Woodrow Wilsonâs attempt to intervene in the trial under the massive public pressure, he was executed by a five-member firing squad on November 19, 1915. Binning maintains that Hill had become too big a threat to the capitalist class, and they were willing to go to any extent to remove this thorn in their flesh. People still remember the immortal last words of Joe Hill, sent out in a written message a few hours before his martyrdom, âDonât mourn. Organize.â The Little Red Songbook has thirteen 412 Ibid., 16. 130 songs by Joe Hill; there are also three novels on his life, a very popular non-fiction book about him entitled Man Who Never Died by Barrie Stavis in 1954, and a Swedish feature film that won many international awards.413 Talking about âUtahâ Phillips in the same vein, Binning alludes to the popularity and respect that âUtahâ Phillips earned as a singer of labour union songs in present times who travels extensively to sing for labour struggles across North America and Canada. Binning recalls that when BCâs farmworkers, the majority of whom were Punjabis, were fighting for their rights by forming the CFU, âUtahâ Phillips came and played a benefit for them.414 Doing Oneâs Shift Binning, quite perceptively, delineates the IWWâs legacy in his introduction to Sukhpalâs book and makes it a point to mention âUtahâ Phillipsâs benefit for the CFU in it. The benefit concert was a historic moment that Binning could have utilized in this introduction to connect Sukhpalâs book, Gary Cristalâs activism, Ad Hocâs music activism and write a powerful narrative of Desi Leftâs activism in the 1980s Vancouver. However, for some reason, Binning didnât venture beyond Sukhpalâs book in exploring it. It was not as if he was unaware of Cristallâs music activism at Vancouver Folk Music Festival. In his article on Vancouver Sath, Binning mentions that they staged Picket Line in English at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in 1986, and for the first time, they were paid one thousand dollars for doing activist theatre. He notes that the English production of the play opened many doors for them and brought second-generation Punjabi Canadians into their activism fold. Moreover, there was a strong media 413 Ibid., 17. 414 Ibid., 18. 131 response which included Fuse magazine carrying out an extended interview with Binning and Hundal. It also led to radio interviews with them on their theatre activism, including one by Dave Barrett, the ex-Premier of BC and a very progressive politician of the New Democratic Party.415 Just like music activism, dance activism was present. The bhangra dancers of the Punjabi Arts Association Richmond (PAAR), led by Paul Binning, which both Gary Cristall and Julius Fisher remembered, does not figure in Binning and Hundalâs chronicling of Progressive Punjabi activism. Nevertheless, it is a significant strand of immigrant arts activism from the perspective of labour organizing. In his feature on cultural activism for the CFU, David Jackson writes that since 1979, Paul Binningâs young team of bhangra dancers became a regular feature at trade unions, the CFU and Progressive Punjabi organizationsâ events. PAAR replaced traditional Bhangra lyrics with revolutionary Punjabi poetsâ poetry and often wrote their own songs and new forms of choreography to accompany it. Bhangra had become essential for CFU public meetings, which were loved by its multi-ethnic audiences. Davidson inquires Paul Binning about the relation between his art and politics, to which Binning replies, âThe struggle and dance both belong to people; it makes sense to put them together. Why not talk about these issues from the heart.â416 Perhaps music and arts activism were not as much on Binning and Hundalâs radar as literary and theatre activities were. They were writers-activists, chronicling a vast canvas that includes literary production, alternative institution-building, theatre activism, immigrant labour activism, anti-racism activism, and the womenâs movement. It is equally important here to point 415 Binning, âVancouver Sath,â16. 416 David Jackson, âUnion Activism,â 13. 132 out that there has been no follow-up on their work, filling the gaps or raising new questions since then. Perhaps Cristall speaks for all the 1970s and 1980s activists when he says they are now getting old, but the world hasnât changed. Looking back, he says there is a notion of doing oneâs shift. So they did their shift. They organized, made records, produced benefits, raised money for groups and movements, and drew attention to things that needed engagement or support.417 He adds, âAt least we didnât sit back and say it has got nothing to do with me, or who cares, or I just want to make money, etc. etc.â 418 He says he was glad what he did, but it is easy for him to say so, for it also paid for his house in Vancouver.419 Alan Zisman, a musician in Ad Hoc, reflects on the changing times and says they were growing old, and the music that the twenty-five-year-olds were making right after Ad Hocâs generation was punk rock. But Ad Hoc musicians were from another generation and were âa little bit old and not quite crazy enough for punk rock.â He tried to continue playing the same kind of music with another band, The Tools, but they were older, and the times were different. In a reflective mood, he muses that the musicians would put in hours and hours of rehearsing and had to buy expensive equipment for concerts, but lots of people worked hard to make the events successful. If it was a benefit concert for the CFU, then the Union volunteers had to organize the dance, deploy people to sell tickets, food, beer, and then stay back to clean up afterwards. The musicians got the applause, but all the other people who had put in at least as many hours into it to make it a success received no recognition. So, the 417 Gary Cristall, interview by author, Vancouver, August 26 and September 26, 2019 418 Ibid. 419 Ibid. 133 $100,000 that the band raised over four years to support causes would not have been possible without the labour put in by so many other people. âHow about thanking them,â he muses.420 Similarly, Hundal says that he is sometimes surprised that they could do so much, but simultaneously, he feels activists like him could have done much more if they had more training and resources. He rues their inability to set up an institution that could have carried their work forward. So long as they were working, things kept happening, but everything ended when they could not stay active. For example, even their magazine Watan ceased publication. However, whatever work they could do through the histories they chronicled and the interviews they recorded with activists give him a feeling of satisfaction. He says the Punjabi literary and theatre world is relatively small as very few Punjabis have such inclinations. However, this small community responded positively to their theatre and literary activities and appreciated them. He feels that people have given them much more love and respect than the work they have done.421 His comrade in activism, the venerated poet, and writer Sadhu Binning reflects on incomplete tasks that deserve attention. He emphasizes the need to bring to light Punjabi womenâs experiences from their own perspectives. Be it womenâs struggles within the farmworkers union or in the Punjabi community at large or their experiences of racism in BC, womenâs experiences havenât come out the way they need to. With the contribution of women colleagues of Vancouver Sath, they could highlight some issues through plays like Picket Line and Different Age Same Cage but much more needs to be done. 422 420 Alan Zisman, interview by author, Vancouver, September 18, 2019. 421 Sukhwant Hundal, interview by author Burnaby, Surrey, Abbotsford and Richmond, August 29 and 31, September 2 and 28, 2019. 422 Sadhu Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, August 29 and September 16, 2019. 134 The Punjabi labour-cultural activism of the 1970s and 1980s in Canada is a powerful moment in imagining a long but interrupted tradition of the Desi Left since 1900. It is a unique phase of inter-community cultural activism made possible by the ascendency of the radical left influence among a section of the motherland Punjabi youth, relaxed immigration rules in Canada, and the residual impact of the revolutionary and anti-colonial upsurges of the 1960s and early 1970s interrogating power in many parts of the world. The literary societies formed by progressive Punjabis were key institutions that participated in and sustained this political and cultural activism and embraced the larger Canadian labour cultural activism tradition. The socialist ideology of various hues that undergirded the labour cultural activism community constituted white activists, Latin American political refugees, Filipino labour organizers, progressive South Asian activists, womenâs groups, and other immigrant communities. However, indigenous and the LGBTQ communities were not yet a part of this activist community. There is very little scholarly and academic literature available on this phase of labour culture activism in BC. Thanks to the initiative that progressive Punjabis cultural activists took to chronicle their activism history, mainly in Punjabi, this chapter is a small contribution towards placing this cross-cultural, multi-ethnic endeavor of Desi Left activists in the academic discourse. 135 CHAPTER 4: WOMEN SHOULD TAKE A STAND âWomen should take a stand. We have rights too, and itâs harder for us, being women, then [sic] being immigrants, then [sic] farmworkers. We are equal to men. We are working our way up, and after we join the union, weâre even stronger.â â Jasweer Kaur Brar, Union member at Hoss Mushroom Farm.423 This chapter seeks to recover Punjabi immigrant womenâs voices and subjectivities that have been missing from the historical record in great measure. It places them in the foreground of struggles that immigrant workers waged under the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) to get justice and dignity as a workforce in their adopted homeland of Canada. It highlights the specific challenges that Punjabi women had to face due to their triple marginalization indicated in the epigram above whereby they are marginalized as women, immigrants and farmworkers. The farmwork was and remains a low-paid seasonal work, and over time the workforce moved to better-paid and physically less-demanding jobs. The CFU could not sustain itself for long and practically stopped active organizing by 1989. CFU staff, leaders, and other cultural activists moved on and lost touch with the Punjabi women CFU activists, except for Pritam Kaur, who is now ninety-seven years old. Hardly anyone remembers their names, whereabouts or what happened to them today. Tracing the CFUâs women activists forty years later is a difficult act. They were just a few of them, and the archive carries very little information concerning them. There are no biographies, memoirs, or letters of these women activists. The three extant text interviews, a film, and the photographs that register their presence in the farmworkers movement barely detail their interiority and the gendered experience of labour and organizing. 424 Some of 423 The Farmworker, âI made up my mind that I must do something,â July 1984, accessed January 5, 2021, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/cfu-2138/farmworker-1984. 424 According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, interiority is inner life or substance: psychological existence, Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. âinteriority,â accessed March 13, 2022, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interiority. 136 the plays on themes of farm work and gender by local Punjabi writers and activists address this gap to some extent. By interviewing former CFU leaders, staff members, volunteers, and cultural activists, I have tried to uncover immigrant womenâs presence and their perspectives in immigrant labour organizing. By critiquing, contextualizing, and joining the fragments of text, performance, films, photographs, and interviews, I have strived to trace Punjabi immigrant womenâs agency and subjectivity in the history of the Desi Left in Canada during this period. Contextualizing Gender and Labour Kamala Elizabeth Nayarâs The Punjabis in British Columbia: Location, Labour, First Nations and Multiculturalism is the first significant work to explore the intersection of Punjabi immigrant women, work, race and labour unions and address a critical gap in South Asian Canadian immigrant history. Nayar examines the life of the Punjabi women working in canneries in the Skeena region in northwest British Columbia from the 1960s to 1980. The first point she makes is that women were treated as secondary wage earners, and men were thought to be the main providers in Punjabi families. Womenâs income was the extra money needed by the family to pay for house mortgages and to sponsor a relative to immigrate to Canada. Womenâs wages were also helpful in taking care of family members left behind in Punjab.425 Work in canneries was seasonal, occurring in March, April, and mid-June to the end of August, and it didnât require any education. As such, many Punjabi women found work there in the 1970s and 1980s. Nayarâs second point is that working in canneries empowered immigrant Punjabi women to break out of 425 Nayar, The Punjabis in British Columbia,100. 137 their social isolation and lonely lives. It gave them a space of their own to freely mingle and socialize with other Punjabi women without the presence of male family members. Cannery work became their social base. They formed a regionwide network with fellow Punjabi women workers with whom they carpooled and travelled from their homes in Kitimat, Terrace or Prince George to Prince Rupert, where they lived together in rented basement suites or rooms. A bus transported them from Prince Rupert to work in Port Edward every day. Travelling, living, working together, and socializing in lunch and coffee breaks, away from their families gave them the space and time to share their sorrows and joys, which created special bonds among them. Nayar argues that in this context, for the Punjabi women working in salmon canneries, their work time was also their âfemale time.â426 Nayarâs third point is that Punjabi women didnât take an active part in organizing union activities. They valued the union for improving their working conditions, respected the picket line but were more devoted to their families and homes. Nayar argues, âIn the traditional Punjabi culture, Punjabi men were involved in political matters, whereas women exercised their power within the home.â427 Nayar suggests that other reasons for them not actively participating in union activities included a lack of good English and the fear of losing their jobs.428 Nayar makes an important point when she argues that the families treated the Punjabi womenâs wages as additional income, not at par with the menâs income. She makes an equally important second point that the Punjabi women didnât take the lead in organizing union activities because the home was their priority. However, womenâs interiority of family life and the 426 Ibid., 84, 104-107. 427 Ibid., 165. 428 Ibid. 138 exteriority of workplace unionizing are closely entangled and point to an issue that has not yet been addressed. Unfortunately, Nayar stops short of extending her argument to address the underlying power of patriarchy and male domination within the Punjabi immigrant family and community. Instead, she treats this both the situations of the Punjabi women as normative South Asian immigrant reality and naturalizes them. Nayarâs idealization of the home as a womanâs domain where women âexercised powerâ ignores prevailing gender relations and realities of domestic violence and abuse; this includes indisputable evidence such as the murders that were taking place in the Punjabi Canadian community in the 1970s and 1980s.429 Nicola Mooney contextualizes womenâs sphere in Indian society by drawing attention to patriarchy and male domination. She argues: To varying degrees and depending in considerable part on the organization of everyday household and kinship relations, women lack agency and rights to property, are discouraged from attempts to claim authority or exercise power, are subject to male (and proxy female) scrutiny, hegemony and sovereignty, and are held to different standards of conduct, while men compromise womenâs social, economic, political, and bodily autonomy in multiple ways. Womenâs submission to this gendered hierarchy is policed and negotiated, or misogynistically coerced, via various cultural means, and in instances when it is not secured, it may be forced through violent subjugations of non-consenting womenâs bodies.430 Jennifer Jagire reiterates Mooneyâs position in her observation that when immigrant families come to Canada, women face the prejudice of some men who are unwilling to give up their traditional authority. She argues, âImmigrant women, therefore, encounter traditional male privileges, where men have a higher status at home as well as in the workplace.â431 Thus, Brarâs 429 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 221, 223. 430 Nicole Mooney, ââIn Our Whole Society, There Is No Equalityâ: Sikh Householding and the Intersection of Gender and Caste,â Religions 11, no. 2 (February 19, 2020): 11, doi:10.3390/rel11020095. 431 Jennifer Jagire,â Immigrant women and workplace in Canada: Organizing Agents for Social Change,â SAGE Open April-June 2019: 3, https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019853909. 139 articulation of the triple marginalization of Punjabi women due to gender, race, and labour makes the task of locating their agency in the immigrant labour movement a daunting one. Punjabi poet and cultural activist Sadhu Binning agrees with Brar that the Union empowered Punjabi women workers. In his masterâs thesis on the CFU, Binning has argued that the eleven Punjabi women fired by the Hoss Mushroom Farm owner were initially afraid of carrying placards and shouting slogans against its Punjabi owner. They had never done such a thing in their lives. The men in their families and the community, by and large, disapproved of their actions, which intimidated them. Referring to three Punjabi women workers he interviewed on strike at the Hoss Mushroom Farm, Binning says they found strength in supporters outside of their community who stood at the picket line in solidarity. The struggle made women stronger who were now ready to help others unionize.432 Binningâs subtle acknowledgement of women workersâ negotiation with male domination in the family and community to participate in union activities brings us back to the issue of Punjabi womenâs agency. The interiority of Punjabi womenâs lives where they had to negotiate unequal gender relations is a crucial part of the immigrant labour story that remains to be told. Raj Chouhan, the CFU founding president, lays bare the challenge and the significance of telling this story. He says: [A]lthough it wasnât talked about much, women farmworkers are often very mistreated and harassed. We heard a number of stories of women farmworkers being made pregnant by farm contractors, but the womenâs families and the community would move in to âprotectâ the women. We never managed to get a single name of one of the contractors responsible.â433 432 Sadhu Binning, âThe Canadian Farmworkers Union,â 141- 142. 433 Bush, âZindabad,â Chapter 1, Short Shifts Long Questions. 140 Chouhanâs observation brings forth two aspects critical to Punjabi women farmworkersâ self-organizing. First, the consequences of womenâs interiority for their potential to unionize themselves as farmworkers and second, their gender-specific challenges at the workplace, which differed from their male colleagues. The CFU had to take both the domestic lives and workplace lives of Punjabi women onboard to ensure their participation in CFU activities, a double challenge for a fledgling union and its male leadership. Interiority and Agency Punjabi writer and family therapist Surjeet Kalsey expands our understanding of Punjabi womenâs interiority by shedding light on domestic violence in Punjabi families. She often saw bruises or other injuries on womenâs bodies when they came to seek care from her. When asked, they gave reasons such as falling into the bathtub or down the stairs. Kalsey says these women were ashamed to admit that such a thing happened to them right inside their homes, and the perpetrators were none other than their own family members â their husbands.434 Shame did not make it easy to talk about it or seek help, just as shame did not permit families to speak up against womenâs sexual exploitation on the farms. The shame that silenced women and absolved the perpetrators of gender-based violence reveals how deep patriarchy and male domination ran in the community. Kalsey, who worked with the Battered Women Support Services in the 1980s and 90s, recalls, âI think whatever was happening behind the walls became visible to me. Those women (victims of domestic violence) would hide their faces and couldnât talk about it. Women 434 Surjeet Kalsey and Ajmer Rode, interview by author, Burnaby, September 10, 2019. 141 couldnât go out, couldnât speak to someone, and had so many restrictions on them.â435 She says violence against women spilled out of homes onto the streets, and the community lived in denial. It stigmatized those who raised the issue and then stigmatized the victims themselves.436 The alarming situation brought the communityâs activists together to form a new womenâs organization Samaanta on January 31, 1982. India Mahila Association, the womenâs organization working in the community since 1972, found itself overwhelmed with the wave of violence against women and menâs participation was urgently needed to challenge it.437 The activists felt that violence against women is not a womenâs issue alone but the entire communityâs issue. If men were the cause of the problem, then they should be part of the solution too.438 Samaanta made the provision for both men and women to be on its executive committee, but the presidentâs post was reserved for women. Its immediate and only goal was to end violence against women and provide immediate relief to women and children who had experienced abuse.439 Binning and Hundal discuss a popular expression in the community to mock women, âKanedÌ£Ä lag gyÄ.â It summed up how the community resented Punjabi womenâs changing role after immigrating to Canada. People would say that Punjabi women are becoming Canadian. They are crossing their limits. They want to become men. It is the cause of increasing tensions in families.â440 The removal of race and national origins quotas in Federal Immigration and Citizenship policies in the 1970s led to the second wave of South Asian immigration to BC. The trend was 435 Ibid. 436 Ibid. 437 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 221-222. 438 Ibid., 112. 439 Ibid., 223. 440 Ibid., 111. 142 aided by the family preference provision which allowed people to sponsor their family members to immigrate to Canada.441 The immigration rate of South Asians remained high throughout the 1970s to the early 1980s and approximately 200,000 South Asians entered Canada between 1971 to 1982. At the end of 1982, there were 310,000 South Asians in Canada.442 Binning and Hundal point out that most people who entered Canada during this period were young men between 20 and 35 years of age.443 The new South Asian immigrants found work in sawmills, canneries, garment factories and farms. The experience of immigrant labour was highly gendered. While the men found work in union jobs, in the lumber industry, and sawmills, women often found employment in low-paid agriculture work with almost none of the provincial labour protections, including minimum wages act and hours of work.444 Binning and Hundal argue that immigration gradually led to a change in Punjabi womenâs roles in the family. They were no longer housewives but worked and earned like their husbands and contributed to their income.445 Jennifer Jagire underlines immigrant womenâs role reversal as they become breadwinners, and in many cases, heads of the household for the first time. Thus, these shifts in immigrant womenâs empowerment or the rise in social status in new lands and environments need to be acknowledged along with new challenges they face.446 Binning and Hundal argue that the changing role of immigrant women pushed the pre-existing patriarchy and misogyny in Punjabi families to extremes. Punjabi women were financially 441 Adriana Paz Ramirez and Jennifer Jihye Chun, âStruggling against History: Migrant Farmworkers Organising in British Columbia,â in Unfree labour? Struggles of Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada, ed. Aziz Choudry and Adriana A. Smith (Oakland: PM Press, 2016), 90. 442 Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey 114. 443 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe, 221. 444 Ramirez and Chun, âStruggling Against History,â 90. 445 Binning and Hundal, SanÌghrash de sau varhe,110. 446 Jagire,â Immigrant women and workplace in Canadaâ 3. 143 independent but still managed the house, brought up children and performed household chores, which saddled them with a double burden. They expected their Punjabi men to share some of their responsibilities of household work. Brought up in a male-dominated society, Punjabi men resented reconciling with these changes. As women stepped into the outside world to earn a living, it shaped their personality and gave them an independent identity, which challenged menâs domination. These factors increased tensions within families, which led to violence and even murders of women in extreme cases.447 Binning and Hundalâs analysis of gender-based violence in the Punjabi community resonates with Kalseyâs observations of the communityâs victim-shaming mentioned earlier in the chapter. They argue that society held the women responsible for getting violence inflicted upon them rather than condemning the men for perpetrating it.448 In these circumstances, could Brarâs agency in joining the CFU be considered a representative case of Punjabi farmworker womenâs agency? Judy Cavanagh, the CFU staff person and organizer from around 1978 until 1985, provides valuable insights into the separation of gender roles when CFU organizers, men and women, returned home from work. She says that the men had wives, so they didnât have to deal with anything at home at all. They could go and spend hours and hours at work and come back and have hot meals and washed laundry. But the women organizers from within the ranks of farmworkers had full-on responsibilities at home, including looking after elder parents or in-laws.449 The unequal gender relations are reflected even in Brarâs interview, which obliquely points to menâs dominant roles in her family in spite of 447 Ibid.,110. 448 Ibid.,110. 449 Judy Cavanagh, interview by author, New Westminster, September 22, 2019. 144 their progressive attitude. Brar mentioned that her brother was involved in the CFU, and she had been to cultural events organized by the Union.450 Her brother, Gurcharan Brar, was an activist with the Indian Peopleâs Association in North America (IPANA). This South Asian leftist organization supported the CFU, so he encouraged her to engage in CFU activities.451 Brar claimed that she felt ever stronger after joining the union, however, we donât have evidence to uphold or dismiss her claim. The archives and interviews recorded with former CFU activists, both men and women, donât directly show how the CFU membership would have empowered women. Hundal said that Brar was young, unmarried, had fewer responsibilities, and had her familyâs support, so her case was different. It was not the same for other women union members at the Hoss Mushroom Farm. One of them was married, and she often talked about issues with her husband and her family. She was scared of what might happen if she wasnât called back to work. For two or three women members, being on the picket line was a struggle. Since they werenât working, their families would ask what they were doing on the picket line. Instead, they were told to go and do some other work.452 Cavanagh said that the women who became more active with the CFU work were strong Punjabi women who were very articulate. She said they had to be strong to step into that arena with all the organizing monopolized by men.453 It is clear from Cavanaghâs remarks that rather than the union making women strong, it was the other way around. The women who joined the CFU were, in the first place, strong women. Looking at a group photograph that Cavanagh had herself clicked of smiling women workers of the Hoss 450 Farmworker, âI made up my mind that I must do something.â 451 Harinder Mahil, Sarwan Boal and Charan Pal Gill, interview by author, Surrey, September 9, 2019. 452 Sukhwant Hundal, interview by author, Burnaby, Surrey, Abbotsford and Richmond, August 29 and 31, September 2 and 28, 2019. 453 Judy Cavanagh, interview by author, New Westminster, September 22, 2019. 145 Mushroom Farm, she expressed her keen desire to know what happened to them after the movement faded away. She mused on what made these women strong and said: There is only really a handful (of them), and they came into the union executive in various stages, so they had to have some support at home or were very dominant at home because they were the breadwinner? Maybe the husband wasnât making money or was also a berry worker, was ashamed of it, so he wonât be the public face, all the cultural stuff that I would pick up snippets of.454 The question remains: Does this mean that strong women had no challenges to deal with at home? Or was it that the representation of strong women hides the struggle that precedes being strong? Struggle Behind the Strength The task of locating the CFU women membersâ agency in negotiating with patriarchy and male domination within the home comes through by reading against the grain. Neither archives nor interviews offer autobiographical accounts that directly speak to us. This silence within the archive alludes to the structural erasure and invisibilization of the gendered agency. The Punjabi literary magazine Watano Dūr (Watan) carried interviews with Jensen Mushroom Farmâs union members in 1981 and Hoss Mushroom Farmâs union members in 1984. These are perhaps the only available in-depth interviews of CFUâs women members published during the struggle period. Punjabi writers and activists Sadhu Binning, Sukhwant Hundal and Amarjit Chahal conducted these interviews. The interviews do not reveal the names of the women respondents. Was it because Binning, Hundal, and Chahal perceived union members as a collective of workers instead of autonomous individuals with an independent identity and agency? Or were they being 454 Ibid. 146 cautious of gender realities and suspected that revealing these womenâs identities may not be appreciated by their families? As I dug deeper into the archival sources, it became clearer that perhaps it was the former rather than the latter. The authors of the interviews were aware that the consent of the men in the family was often necessary for women to accept a union membership or contribute to its activities. At the Jensen Mushroom Farm picket line, respondent number two replied that the family was okay with the strike because they felt she should fight against injustice to achieve her rights. Respondent number one said they (family) fully understood the struggle and supported her. The cursory question about the situation at the home front failed to elicit a definite answer.455 Binning and Hundal interviewed three of Hoss Farmâs union members at the BC Labour Relations Board, which are more detailed and provide clues to the situation. Respondent number two clearly articulates that thereâs hardly any work available, and their men are unemployed. 456 It corroborates Cavanaghâs conjecture about the strong women who took up the challenge of organizing. The question that followed their response was quite revealing. The interviewers asked: âWhen did you decide to become CFU members, and was there any pressure from your folks at home or relatives not to join it? Thereâs limited freedom to women in our culture, so did you have to seek your menfolkâs permission to take this decision?â457 The answers did not address the question directly but did provide glimpses of the underlying factors at work. One respondent replied that many families didnât like that while one 455 Sadhu Binning and Amarjit Chahal, âInÌ£tÌ£arwiÅ«,â Watano Dūr, May-June 1981, 18, accessed on January 18, 2021, https://watanarchives.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/watanodur-may-june-1984.pdf . 456 Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, âHunÌ£ asīṃ agge nÄlomÌ£ satÌ£araunÌg ho gÄ«ÄmÌ£ hÄmÌ£,â Watano Dūr, May-June 1984, 23, accessed on January 19, 2021, https://watanarchives.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/watanodur-may-june-1984.pdf . 457 Ibid. 147 member (man) is working, the other (woman) is unemployed, so there was family pressure on women who lost jobs for taking union membership. Another respondent added that families with members working in unionized jobs usually were expected to support forming a union on the farms as they knew the benefits of unionizing. However, the other woman union member pointed out that one of them had three family members in unionized jobs, yet her family did not like it when she took CFUâs membership. The third one said that families wanted the women to continue working due to a high unemployment rate.458 While Binning and Hundal asked direct questions to bring the gender dynamics into the conversation, the Hoss Farm women union members cited economic reasons that alluded to power relations within their families. It was evident from their responses that it was a taboo to talk about such issues in the community. Hundal admits that when interviewing the union members at Hoss Mushroom Farm, the members did not speak about gender issues at home. Instead, they focused on how as a group, they were becoming stronger and supporting each other.459 I turn to the Punjabi plays written and performed by local writers and activists to reconstruct the erased experiences of women union workers in the above interview. Vancouver Sathâs play, the Picket Line, fills the gap between questions asked and answers given in the interview setting. The invisible and unspoken interior of womenâs lives in Punjabi families was increasingly turned into theatre by writers and activists to break the taboo of silence surrounding it. Like Vancouver Sath, Surjeet Kalsey and Ajmer Rode were also staging plays on womenâs interiority. Kalseyâs Mahlin Wasdiyan Dhian (Behind the Palace Doors) on domestic violence 458 Ibid. 23, 24. 459 Sukhwant Hundal, interview by author, Burnaby, Surrey, Abbotsford and Richmond, August 29 and 31, September 2 and 28, 2019. 148 inflicted on Punjabi women behind closed doors was based on real-life stories of five to seven women survivors of domestic violence. The central character of the play, Taro, was a farmworker. Kalsey involved these women in the playâs production in sharing their life stories for writing the playscript and enacting their personal experiences on the stage, blurring the difference between reality and fiction, life and performance, and actors and characters. The play Picket Line was written in 1984 by Binning and Hundal, who spent a lot of time with the workers at the Hoss Mushroom Farm picket line. It was based on their observations and off-the-record conversations with Punjabi women farmworkers.460 To acknowledge this, they dedicated the play to the Hoss Mushroom Farm women union members on whose struggle it was based. The names of the women in the dedication were Jasbir Kaur Brar, Satwant Rai, Sukhdarshan Pal Kaur Malli, Balwinder Kaur Jhandu, Jasbir Kaur Sagoo and Surinderjit Bath.461 Vancouver Sath performed Picket Line in Punjabi for the first time in November 1984 in Vancouver. It was later performed several times in Punjabi as well as English until 1988.462 The play shows that even a few strong women that entered the organizing arena might not have found doing it easy at home. Whether women should join the union or not was a decision made by the men in their families, who generally did not approve of it. In scene two of the play Picket Line, Balwant, a woman farmworker, was talking to her husband, Hardev. She said that she did not think other girls would have a problem joining the union. Hardev replied that she should just watch how many families were going to object to it. When she quipped, if he thought people were idiots, he cut her short and retorted what would she know about people sitting at home. 460 Sukhwant Hundal, e-mail message to author, March 16, 2021. 461 Binning and Hundal, Pikaṭa LÄÄ«n, 107. 462 Ibid., 139. 149 Balwant went on to tell him that many womenâs husbands were out of work, still, they joined the union and were on strike. Hardev got irritated by her reply and said if all jumped in the well, would she follow them and do the same? This war of words between the couple provides us a glimpse into the quarrels that union membership issue could have triggered at homes.463 When a male union organizer Pal and Ninder, Balwantâs female co-worker, knocked at Balwantâs door, Hardev ordered Balwant to return to the kitchen and took charge of the situation. He just didnât let the male union organizer Pal meet her and instead asked Ninder to go inside and have tea with her while he would sit in the living room and talk with Pal. Ninder exercise her agency by choosing to stay right there despite Hardev ordering her to leave the manâs space to them. She gently persisted and politely asked Hardev twice if she could just call Balwant to join them. On both occasions, he insisted that she should go inside and have tea with Balwant. Eventually, she had no option but to go inside to meet Balwant.464 Sarwan Boal, the CFU president in 1988, admits in an interview that while, âMost farmworkers are women, at first men would always try to talk for them. It drove us crazy.â465 Hundal confesses that since they had written the play from the CFUâs perspective, it showed Balwant overcoming all restrictions imposed on her, walking up to the union organizer Pal and signing the union card. However, the second scene of the play, he said, depicted the reality of male domination and patriarchy that farmworker women had to struggle against at home before joining the union.466 463 Ibid., 115 -116. 464 Ibid., 116-118. 465 David Jackson, âStrength at the grassroots: An interview with Sarwan Boalâ The Farmworker, July 1988, Vol. 2, No 1, 20, accessed January 20, 2021, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/cfu-2203/newspaper0007-002. 466 Sukhwant Hundal, interview by author, Burnaby, Surrey, Abbotsford and Richmond, August 29 and 31, September 2 and 28, 2019. 150 Women in Theatre Vancouver Sathâs team that portrayed Picket Lineâs eleven characters had six women members. Jagdish Binning and Anju Hundal were spouses of the groupâs founder members, Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, respectively. Besides them, there were Harjinder Sangra, Bhavna Bhanhu, Sital Dhillon and Pindi Gill.467 Women members actively participated in all aspects of Vancouver Sathâs productions. The Different Age Same Cage was exclusively written and produced by Harjinder Sangra, Jagdish Binning, Anju Hundal, Bhavna Bhanhu and Pindi Gill, who also performed menâs roles in it. The play brought womenâs issues within South Asian Canadian families to the forefront by depicting three stages in a womanâs life: childhood, youth, and old age. It was one of the most popular Vancouver Sath plays, performed more than two dozen times.468 The play was specially written for a conference in Vancouver in 1988. Telling It: Women and Languages Across Cultures was âmeant to provoke discussion that seemed long overdue about differences on several crucial rift-lines, not the least of which are the rifts of race and gender orientation.â469 Keeping that in focus, women writers and performers from Indigenous, Asian Canadian and LGBTQ communities were invited to the conference. The conference aimed to celebrate their work, which was âgroundbreaking in different but related ways â and a space for dialogue between them and their audiences.â 470 Daphne Marlatt, the conferenceâs lead organizer, commended the four Vancouver Sath women for contributing âanother voice to the cultural 467 Binning and Hundal, Pikaṭa LÄÄ«n, 139. 468 Binning, âVancouver Sath: South Asian Canadian Theatreâ 17. 469 Sky Lee et al., eds., Telling It: Women and Language Across Cultures (Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1990), 12. 470Ibid. 151 diversity the Telling It conference was designed to celebrate.â471 The conference presentations resulted in a book edited by Lee Maracle, Sky Lee and Betsy Warland that included Different Age Same Cageâs script.472 The book acknowledges Vancouver Sathâs womenâs contributions to theatre activism on racism, violence against women, farmworkersâ rights, and religion in politics. It appreciates that they ânot only performed but have taken a very active part in the production and presentation of Vancouver Sath plays.â By then, Vancouver Sath had written and performed ten plays in Punjabi and three in English.473 It included No Small Matter, written by its women members (in association with Binning and Hundal) on violence against women, and was turned into a video play by the Peopleâs Law School of Vancouver.474 The early acknowledgement of Vancouver Sathâs women members in the South Asian Canadian theatre scene did not attract scholarly attention. Nandi Bhatia discusses Vancouver Sathâs people-oriented plays written and directed collectively on thematic concerns of labour, womenâs rights, and the impact of Punjabâs self-determination movement. She mentions that No Small Matter addressed âthe gendered diaspora through a focus on female farmworkers.â475 However, despite acknowledging the playâs women-centric theme, she did not consider Vancouver Sathâs women members and their contributions to the groupâs collective creative process. Lobb discusses Vancouver Sath in her PhD thesis and argues that it was a politically engaged theatre group.476 She appreciated Vancouver Sathâs intersectional approach to 471 Ibid. 472 Ibid., 17, 85-92. 473 Ibid., 205. 474 Binning, âVancouver Sath,â17. 475 Bhatia, âDiasporic Meditations,â133-134. 476 Lobb, âCanadian Literatures,â 137. 152 addressing âclass oppression,â âgender oppression,â and âracial oppressionâ and analyzes No Small Matter and Different Age Same Cage that explore theme of gender oppression.477 But, like Bhatia, she too leaves out Vancouver Sathâs women membersâ contributions to their collective creative process. Amid the prevailing general amnesia on South Asian Canadian women cultural activists, Binning and Hundal registered their presence in Picket Lineâs pages by acknowledging their names. As mentioned earlier, they also acknowledged the CFU members on whose struggle the play was based. Picket Line and other Plays was published in Punjabi in 1995. It appears that this time Binning and Hundal had devised a strategy of writing into history the same Hoss Mushroom Farm women union members whom they anonymized in an interview in 1984. Women members of Vancouver Sath and other Punjabi women theatre directors like Surjeet Kalsey featured in the Canadian Theatre special issue (July, August, September 1991) of the Punjabi literary magazine Watan. The special issue carried short profiles and photographs of thirty Punjabi Canadian theatre artists and directors. It also listed fifty-three Punjabi plays performed in Canada between December 1972 to May 1991, along with their directorsâ and actorsâ names.478 The issue carried a rare, perhaps the only piece of writing on Punjabi theatre in Canada by Vancouver Sathâs women members, Jagdish Binning and Anju Hundal. It provides us a peek into their inner lives, thoughts on gender issues, and participation in Punjabi theatre. Jagdish Binning and Anju Hundal began by pointing out that there were about a hundred men theatre artists in the two decades (then) old history of Punjabi theatre in Canada. In contrast, 477 Ibid., 145, 146 and 148. 478Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, âKanedÌ£Ä«an PañjÄbÄ« NÄtÌ£ak ManÌ£dÌ£alÄ«ÄmÌ£ de NÄtÌ£ak,â Watan, July, August, September 1991, 23-30 and 41- 44, accessed February 9, 2021. https://sukhwanthundal.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/julyaugsept1991.pdf. 153 the women artists were barely between ten to twenty. It reflected the gender inequality in Punjabi society, which impacted all aspects of life, including theatre. They point out that the pressure on Punjabi women to conform to patriarchal norms kept even educated women interested in theatre since their school days surrender their passion to getting on with their lives. Women could not participate in theatre activities unless they dared to rebel against the entire gamut of controls imposed on them.479 Jagdish Binning and Anju Hundal observe that not many women could do so because their upbringing was such that they felt dependent on men. The male domination did not allow them to feel confident to be on their own, even in Canada, where they go out and earn like men. Men make all the decisions and are so used to it that they do not want women to change this equation. A woman could not even muster enough courage to correct her husbandâs decision if she felt he was wrong. And when she gathers the courage to speak out, men would not listen to her as they do not want to give up their years and years of domination.480 Discussing the impact of patriarchy and male domination on womenâs participation in theatre activities, Jagdish Binning and Anju Hundal observe that even when a woman faces no direct barriers, the situation is unequal. In Canada, women go out and work full-time, but after returning home, they cook meals, look after children, clean up the house and do laundry. Men make no effort to lend women a hand. How could women think about doing something beyond their daily drudgery, they ask? Even if they surmount the challenge of domesticity to go for 479 Jagdish Binning and Anju Hundal, âCanada de ranghmach vich Punjabi auratan di shamooliyat,â Watan, July-September, 1991, julyaugsept1991.pdf (wordpress.com), 33 â 35; Ranbir Johal makes a similar argument around women in theatre in Punjab and the social stigma around it. See Ranbir Kaur Johal, âNegotiating Shame & Honour, Caste & Class: Women in Punjabi Theatre of East Punjab,â (PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2020), https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0390290. 480 Ibid., 33. 154 rehearsals and meetings, they face taunts of menfolk and family members that they are neglecting their responsibilities towards their children and are blamed for creating tension in the family.481 They also mention that the larger Punjabi society looks down upon pursuits like theatre and considers it a useless and inferior work. However, it affects men and women differently. Women doing theatre are regarded as immoral, without a character. They are accused of bringing shame to themselves and their families by performing with their male colleagues. It dissuades women from venturing out and participating in theatre. Almost sounding autobiographical, Jagdish Binning and Anju Hundal note that a major reason facilitating womenâs participation in plays is their spouses and family membersâ involvement in it. At the same time, not all men doing theatre are keen that their spouses should join them. When women were home, they looked after the children and ran the house while men hung out in pubs with friends and came home late. Many men did not dare to question the social norms that stigmatize women acting in plays. To cover their weakness and to preserve their privilege and freedom, men often gave laughable excuses that their wives were shy and could not perform on the stage or that they did not have the talent for theatre or acting.482 Summing up the womenâs experience, Jagdish Binning and Anju Hundal give a clarion call to other women. They assert: So this much is clear. We should not expect that the men will allow us complete freedom to be involved in activities such as theatre. It is up to us to gain our rights one way or the other. We think that as we demand the freedom to participate in theatre, we should also turn the theatre into a tool to fight for our freedom.â 483 481 Ibid., 33-34. 482 Ibid., 34. 483 Ibid. 155 Jagdish Binning and Anju Hundal maintain that in a country like Canada, women have rights which they should take advantage of and resolve that their daughters should not face the difficulties that women of their generation had to face.484 Women in Films and Photographs Films and photographs are strong sources in the CFUâs archive to reconstruct the movementâs history. On moving from performance to visual representation of Punjabi women workers, I discovered that the photographer and filmmaker worked differently than playwrights to bring out unequal gender relations. A Time to Rise (1981), directed by Anand Patwardhan and Jim Monro, is a work of historical significance that brought the images of Punjabi women farmworkers self-organizing to the screen for the first time. I met Patwardhan in 2019 when he visited Vancouver with his new film and asked him if he would agree that the gender dimension of women farmworkers was perhaps missing both from the CFU and his film A Time to Rise. He concurred with me and said: Yes, because it was not in the consciousness of leadership of the movement. So, as documentary filmmakers, we couldnât create the arguments that they were using. We had to record what they were doing. So yeah, thatâs probably an accurate reflection of the fact that the progressive sections of the Indian society abroad or in India are patriarchal. So, patriarchy is there to see. But all we could do, or I could do as filmmaker and editor, is to highlight Pritam because Pritam was so dynamic that she steals the show. So even though the film is not talking about gender issues, the film is not about womenâs rights, but in the character of Pritam, all those things are embodied.485 Pritam Kaur, a widow in her fifties, was interviewed by Patwardhan in the basement suite where she lived with her son and his family. Kaur proudly stated she had recruited more 484 Ibid., 35. 485 Anand Patwardhan, interview with author, Vancouver, 2019. 156 than a hundred union members and was celebrated at a union function in Surrey.486 A well-known Canadian filmmaker, Nettie Wild, was taking her first steps towards filmmaking as a sound recordist of A Time to Rise. She vividly recalled conversations with Kaur that morning and said, âShe (Kaur) was bursting open a lot, not just in terms of the union but in terms of roles, and there were a lot of assumptions in her culture that I didnât know as I was an outsider, but I could just sense it that perhaps she was crashing through those.â487 Kaurâs forceful expression of womenâs interiority and the gender dimension of labour recalled by Wild couldnât be captured in A Time To Rise. The representation of Kaur as a militant union activist but not as a militant woman union activist continues in photographs taken at various events, places, and protests. Over the years, Kaur has become a symbol of the Canadian Farmworkers Union.488 She is prominent in Craig Berggoldâs photographs of protests by farmworker women.489 In his photo exhibition, âA Time for Change,â Kaur is photographed at a rally holding a placard on which is written, âHow Many Deaths Will It Take.â490 Berggold recalled that he had once asked Kaur about her involvement with the CFU organizing when not many women participated. He said she told him that she did not have a man to tell her what to do and what not to do.491 In his masterâs thesis, Berggold cites the description provided by journalist Bruce McLean of The Province with Sukhdarshan Pal Kaur Malliâs photograph. She was fired for 486 A Time to Rise, directed by Anand Patwardhan and Jim Monro (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1981), DVD. 487 Nettie Wild, interview with author, Vancouver, September 30, 2019. 488 âUtah Phillips Benefit Concert for the Canadian Farmworkers Union and Vancouver film premiere of A Time to Rise. CFU executive member Pritam Kaur,â Canadian Farmworkers Union Collection, Simon Fraser University Digitized Collections, accessed October 20, 2021, SFU Digitized Collections. 489 Craig Berggold, âFields of Power,â 18. 490Ibid., 77. 491 Craig Berggold, interview by author, Richmond, September 28, 2019. 157 joining the CFU along with ten pickers. She was a mother of four and wife to an unemployed sawmill worker. Sukhdarshan Pal Kaur Malli, Jasbir Kaur Sagoo and Jasweer Kaur Brar are the striking workers at the Hoss Mushroom Farm picket line in another photograph.492 In one of the photographs, a group of six pickers of the Hoss Mushroom Farms are holding placards with slogans like Hoss is a bad boss; we want our jobs back; decent conditions now; and we have the right to our union.493 Harjinder Sangra, a Vancouver Sath member, surfaces in many photographs performing the play Picket Line with other Vancouver Sath women. In a photo captured by Berggold, she and the women farmworkers who lost their jobs at the Hoss Mushroom Farm were getting ready for lunch at the picket line. Berggold says the photo portrayed the camaraderie that develops on the picket line, despite their family issues and strength in being together, but he also has doubts. He admits that strong womenâs photographic representation in their âact of stagingâ for his camera does not reveal the challenges women faced in domestic and community settings that preceded the image of the strong women. He didnât have the opportunity to take photos of what was unfolding inside their homes. How accurate is this representation of strong women then, he ponders?494 Sangra corroborates Berggoldâs reflections and says she remembers these womenâs voices and slogans who would be on the picket line every day. She recalls that these were young women and providers of their families. They were outraged at being fired for joining the CFU. Sangra says, âThey didnât back down. They knew what they wanted. This was not right. They wanted their jobs back and the dignity that came with that.â495 Like Berggold, Sangra 492 Berggold, âFields of Power,â38. 493 Ibid., 19-20, 44. 494 Ibid. 495 Harji Sangra, interview by author, Burnaby and Richmond, August 19, 20 and September 28, 2019. 158 does not forget to reflect on womenâs gender struggles within the four walls of the domestic space, neither visible nor discussed by anyone. She says: There was much pressure on themâ¦I could tell it was taking its toll. If I had a husband at home, you know those kinds of pressures in the domestic home. You know, people think that women shouldnât be out marching like that. And there was a lot of news coverage, so that was another aspect. Some people felt these women shouldnât be doing it. It doesnât look good that they are shouting slogans.496 In 1985, Berggold tried to address the absence of Punjabi womenâs interiority in his photographs by taking up a video project.497 Mulling over the merits of whether the video should be documentary or fiction, he argued, âWith a documentary approach, it was going to be impossible to get the women speak on video on their personal conflicts with their families.â498 So he decided on a fictional narrative. He wanted to ensure that people identified with the gender conflicts portrayed in the video and that womenâs decisions to join the CFU didnât look âheroic or rhetorical.â499 Like Vancouver Sathâs play Picket Line, the video was based on the struggle of the women union members at the Hoss Mushroom Farm strike. The twenty-minute video was co-scripted and co-directed by Berggold, Alex Charleton and Sukhwant Hundal.500 However, the interiority of womenâs life that had escaped photographs of women farmworkers photographed by Berggold could not be captured by the video either. The video opens with Sarabjit, a woman farmworker, who goes to her mother working on a farm and tells her that she wants to join the union. Her mother asks her to check with her father 496 Ibid. 497 Farmworker Zindabad, directed by Craig Berggold, Alex Charleton and Sukhwant Hundal (Vancouver: Deol Education Society, 1985), DVD. 498 Craig Condy Berggold, âThe making of Farmworkers Zindabad-notes on labour arts production,â FUSE, February/March 1986, 33, accessed on April 15, 2021, Farmworkers Zindabad - notes of a labour arts production | SFU Digitized Collections. 499 Ibid., 33. 500 Ibid., 33-34. 159 before taking a step. At the end of the film, Sarabjit complains to the union organizer that she spends the whole day standing on the picket line and then must bear with the taunts of family members upon returning home. The union organizer empathetically replies that she is aware of the challenges Sarabjit is facing. Sarabjitâs fatherâs voice is heard in the voiceover. He threatens her, saying he would not spend a penny on her marriage if she did not cease working with the union. The union organizer tries to explain to Sarabjit that convincing their friends and family members is a part of their struggle.501 However, these scenes seem almost didactic and a feeble attempt at capturing womenâs interiority. The gender issue never acquires a space of centrality or a full embrace in the videoâs narrative. It focuses on the working conditions at the mushroom farm that make a worker fall sick. Her union member colleagues, after much persuasion, manage to get her to sign the workerâs compensation form. The whole sequence of dialogues between them is rhetorical; something Berggold had hoped to eschew in the film. What made Berggold erase the issues of gender and avoid that of the male domination directly, even after identifying them as the main reasons for making a fiction film? The filmâs sound recordist and editor, Glen McCauley, provides the answer. He says, âIf the union comes out and seems to promote the breakup of the family, they are going to lose the very people whom they are trying to get. So, itâs part of the hidden agenda.â502 It implies that both the CFU and the film shied away from upfront addressing the issue of gender. Did this approach to organizing women farmworkers work for the union? Or, did it change the perceptions of Punjabi men and families about the CFU? Sangra, who played one of the main characters in Farmworkers 501 Farmworker Zindabad directed by Craig Berggold, Alex Charleton and Sukhwant Hundal, (Vancouver: Deol Agricultural Education and Research Society, 1985), DVD. 502 Craig Condy Berggold, âThe making of Farmworkers Zindabad-notes on labour arts production,â 34. 160 Zindabad, recalls, âthe male dialogue going on (in the community) was to leave things as they are. Itâs womenâs work, and it is fine. Donât talk about the union. Go to work, come back home, do domestic work, and just donât talk to anyone else.â 503 Women in the CFU CFU leadership is the crucial missing piece of the farmworkers movementâs puzzle. For some reason, the archival sources, films, and photos documented women CFU members only at the Jensen Mushroom Farm and Hoss Mushroom Farm. These are the struggles where Binning, Hundal and Chahal interviewed the women union members. The play Picket Line is based on the struggle of the CFU members at the Hoss Mushroom Farm. Brar, whose interview was published in the Farmworker, was a CFU member at the Hoss Mushroom Farm. Berggold identified the CFU members and farm-level organizer women by their names in his Hoss Mushroom Farm photos. For all the CFUâs active organizing, including its predecessor Farmworkers Organizing Committee (FWOR) from 1978 to around 1989, we see only a few women union members and farm-level organizers documented in archives. Most of them worked at mushroom farms. An anonymous woman union member at the Hoss Mushroom Farm says that farm work was seasonal. Most people working there were more worried about collecting unemployment benefits after the season got over than thinking about unionizing. Those workers who had full employment gave more attention to the CFU, and they worked mostly at mushroom farms. 504 It is a valid argument. A union of farmworkers operating within traditional unionsâ parameters, 503 Harjinder Sangra, interview by author, Burnaby and Richmond, August 19, 20, 29 and September 28, 2019. 504 Binning and Hundal, âHunÌ£ asīṃ agge nÄlomÌ£ satÌ£araunÌg ho gÄ«ÄmÌ£ hÄmÌ£,â 25. 161 year-round work and permanent workforce were prerequisites for organizing. But the lack of information about women members of the CFU other than the two mushroom farms appears to point in some other direction. Kaur acknowledged that only four or five young women stood by her for union work on the farms. She couldnât recall what happened to them later and had even forgotten their names. Maybe they were married off or went somewhere else to work, she said.505 The CFUâs newspaper, the Farmworker, carries many reports of the struggles and successes in winning certifications, leading protests, getting contracts, and organizing drives. The CFU mobilized the farmworkers on various issues: pesticide poisoning, unfair unemployment insurance, decent minimum wages and better working conditions. Its outreach, therefore, was certainly far beyond the mushroom farms. The same cannot be said about coverage of women members, organizers from within farmworkers, volunteer organizers or other activists of the CFU. The union newspaper itself was an irregular one. Only eleven issues were published, the first one in 1979 and the last one in 1992. The glimpses of women CFU members come through in photographs and snippets of interviews, but their details are missing. When a fifteen-month strike ended on July 30, 1982, at the Jensen Mushroom Farm, it brought to an end months and months of struggle led by the CFU. The photograph of signing the contract with the grower has a woman standing next to CFU President Raj Chouhan, whoâs signing the contract. She is Cindy Dhillon, CFU Vice President. We have no other information about her in the archives.506 A demonstration of 300 farmworkers led by CFU marched in Clearbrook to end the labour contract system. A woman farmworker walked out of the fields to join the march and later addressed it. 505 Pritam Kaur, interview by author, Vancouver, October 7, 2019. 506 Farmworker, âAgreement Signed at Jensen Mushroom Farm,â December 1982, Vol. 5, No 1, accessed April 17, 2021,1, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/cfu-2178/newspaper0006-001. 162 She spoke in Punjabi and said, âIf we donât fight ourselves, nobody is going to do anything for us, and we will just go on like this.â507 She complained of low wages, bad working conditions and urged workers to join the union. We donât know anything about her as even her name is missing from the report. Earlier, in 1979, another farm workersâ march was organized in the same area by the CFUâs predecessor, the Farmworkers Organizing Committee (FWOC), which the report describes as the most militant and inspiring action to date in which about a hundred FWOR members participated. The photograph with the report has four women on a truck, one of them holding a horn in her hand. The photo caption reads, âFarmworkers shouting militant slogans during the demonstration.â508 Again, there are no details of the women farmworkers, not even their names, who seemed like organizers, and were shouting militant slogans. Bell Farm was a 300-acre cranberry farm with fifteen regular workers and twenty to thirty seasonal workers hired through labour contractors. The Farmworker reported that the agreement signed with the management was âthe first collective agreement ever signed by a union representing farmworkers in Canada,â which abolished the labour contract system at the Bell farm.509 It mentioned that some of the Bell farmworkers âhave become excellent union organizers for the CFU as they can now easily explain the benefits of joining the union to other workers.â510 However, there was no information given about them. Except for the formal interview with Jasweer Kaur Brar, the Farmworker hardly provides any substantial account of women members 507 Farmworker, âCFU demonstration to press demands,â September 1980, Vol. 3, 3, accessed on April 17, 2021, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/cfu-2154/newspaper0004-003. 508 Farmworker, âFarmworkerâs march in fields,â April 1980, Vol. 1. No.2, 3, accessed on April 17, 2021, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/cfu-2151/farmworker-1980-vol-01-no-02. 509 Farmworker, âCFU Signs First Agreement,â April 1981, No 4, page 2, accessed April 18, 2021, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/cfu-2177/farmworker-1981-vol-04. 510 Ibid. 163 and the CFU. There is almost no evidence of any engagement with womenâs interiority. What was the CFUâs perspective on the womenâs dimension of organizing the farmworkers then? How did they deal with it? The unionâs perspective is provided in an editorial titled, âImmigrant Women Exploitedâ in 1980, Vol. 4 of the Farmworker. It focused on the implications of the Immigration Act of 1976 for immigrant women. The editor of the Farmworker, Charan Gill, begins by reminding its readers that immigrant women are employed in Canadaâs lowest-paid labouring jobs, such as farm work, domestic work, or other such jobs. They are exploited as cheap labour, but their contribution to the Canadian economy is not unrecognized. He points out that the Immigration Act makes immigrant women dependent on their husbands to access many social services and benefits available to other Canadians. Their husbands are legally responsible for accessing these services. The sponsored immigrant women (wives) are ineligible for accessing them independently unless they can prove a break with their sponsor (husband). This dependency on husbands made them vulnerable and disempowered.511 The editorial shows the CFUâs awareness about unequal gender relations in the Punjabi immigrant family, which posed challenges in organizing women farmworkers. Was the editorialâs concern for gender parity and womenâs freedom reflected in the unionâs general practice? Was it merely good optics like the photographs of protesting women farmworkers in its newspaper, the Farmworker? The CFU demanded corrective measures from the state to do away with a discriminatory law. Was it easier 511 Farmworker, âImmigrant Women Exploited,â April 1981, No.4, accessed on April 18, 2021, https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/cfu-2169/newspaper0005-005. 164 than directly confronting the patriarchy within the community? How did the Union negotiate such apparent contradictions? Cavanagh reiterates the gender dimension of farm work in the 1980s Lower Mainland. She says that the Punjabi men working on the farms were mostly elderly, but most farmworkers were Punjabi women, and unlike men, they were of all ages. The reason for the overwhelming employment of Punjabi women in farm work was the language barrier. While most men could find well-paid jobs, women worked on the farms. Cavanagh says there was no discussion about doing something different for women farmworkers in the CFUâs early stages. The first thought was to improve conditions for everyone working on the farms. Things began to change when some Punjabi women became more active, and the community organizing character of the Farmworkers Organizing Committee (FWOC) evolved to a formal structure of the traditional union in the form of CFU in 1980. The CFU considered training its activists on the shop steward model, similar to the conventional unions.512 It is here that CFUâs English as a Second Language (ESL) program played a critical role. Both Cavanagh and Chouhan underlined ESLâs importance for the CFUâs women activists. Cavanagh perceived it as the vehicle through which increased organization of women farmworkers could take place.513 Chouhan believed that its basic idea was to provide self-confidence to women farmworkers to stand up and talk about their rights themselves.514 Cavanagh elaborates further. The union would always invite their key and very vocal women activists from farmworkersâ ranks to address its meetings if they knew functional English or were ready to speak. Raj Chouhan, Sarwan Boal or Charan Gill would often translate 512 Judy Cavanagh interview by author, New Westminster, September 22, 2019. 513 Ibid. 514 Raj Chouhan, interview by author, Burnaby, September 30, 2019. 165 what women said into English. The women activists of the CFU were the focus of the ESL program so that they could tell their stories themselves in English. Cavanagh says that the men within the union strongly supported ESLâs emphasis on equipping women activists with English language skills. A scenario where men had to tell womenâs stories by translating them alluded to male domination within their culture.515 Cavanagh shares a fascinating story about her initiative to set up a committee for just the unionâs women activists. It was their forum to discuss how they wanted to work, their needs, and their concerns. The committee met several times, but it became difficult to continue with it. There would be a flood of phone calls from women activistsâ male family members inquiring what they were doing and when they would come home, bringing the women activists under patriarchal pressure from the domestic realm. The union leadersâ home visits to have women workers sign up for union membership also revealed that the âmales, the husbands, I guess the brothers, fathers whoever was involved, were not liking the fact that this organizing committee, a womenâs committee (was) being set up within the union.â516 Cavanagh quipped that even though she had proceeded with the womenâs committee formation and its functioning âvery gently, very softly,â still, it was ruffling too many feathers. She said women organizers were already dealing with enough pressure at the workplace and pressures from homes. She didnât wish to add the burden of feminism to them.517 Cavanagh felt they did what was acceptable to the community, and a male voice was more acceptable at that time.â518 515 Judy Cavanagh interview by author, New Westminster, September 22, 2019. 516 Ibid. 517 Ibid. 518 Ibid. 166 The interview with the CFUâs ESL programâs first coordinator, Vanneau Neeshman, confirms Judyâs testimony that the unionâs engagement with gender inequality and male domination remained limited. Except for an editorial in the unionâs newspaper that attacked the Immigration Act of 1976 for making women dependent on men, it didnât address gender inequality directly. The Farmworker remains a testimony of the unionâs silence on the matter. Neeshamâs brief was to use Paul O Freireâs approach to literary education so that the farmworkers know their rights. For example, they should not get exploited by contractors, have signage to indicate when pesticides were recently sprayed, and demand fresh water and toilet facilities, which are especially necessary for women working long hours. Most workers, particularly elderly ones, were content with these goals, except for a group of young Punjabi women farmworkers Neesham taught. She says that these women in their thirties and forties had better English skills and sought âsomething differentâ out of their classes. 519 This âsomething differentâ takes us into women activistsâ interiority for the first time that the interviews, film and photographs failed to evoke. Neesham provides a vivid description of her engagement with this group of women. They were interested in the social issues that concerned women. They were aware of the difference between their lives and the lives of Neesham and other Canadian women volunteer tutors studying at the university. They saw that Neesham had no husband. She came in her car with her daughter, and they wanted to know if she lived by herself and if she was divorced. They wanted to know what is required for having this as an option for oneâs life. Neesham says: I think they wanted to know their rights, specifically as women. They were very interested in their own personal social relationships in which some of them, I can only 519 Vanneau Neeshman, interview by author, Vancouver, October 1, 2019. 167 speak of those who spoke to me about it, that they found they were not as free as they would have wished to be now living in Canada. So, you could see change happening in them.520 Neesham says they wanted to express themselves as independent women. Some of them wanted to leave their relationships as they were unhappy for many reasons and the alcoholism of their husbands was one major issue. Many wanted to learn English, leave backbreaking farmwork and move to better paid and less strenuous labour jobs which gave them the possibility of upward mobility. Neesham also provides an insightful account of the union staffâs attitude when issues specific to women came up for discussion in their meetings to decide what else volunteers could teach farmworkers besides curriculum. The union men were pretty straightforward, she says: [T]hey didnât want the eager ESL volunteers, who were university students, European women, Canadian women, mostly young white women, coming in and sort of talking about feminist ideology or ideas around womenâs liberation, and when I think back itâs almost shocking to me when I think back, and I certainly understand where they were coming from. First of all, they didnât want to get off track from the mandate from the unionâs point of view, but I think now that would not happen, and the (other) kind of issue was that these volunteers were not coming with their own cultural perspective of how women might be thinking and behaving in this society. 521 Chouhan says that the union was aware of womenâs issues at home, but they decided not to confront husbands and partners directly. Instead, they tried to involve them in union activities, even if they did not work on the farms. The idea was that this way, the husbands, fathers and brothers would better appreciate the role their wives, daughters or sisters were playing in organizing activities of the CFU and the challenges involved in it. He feels it brought about a change in many families and said: 520 Ibid. 521 Ibid. 168 When they saw (their wives) as working together, as partners rather than, oh you have been radical at the picket line or somewhere to organize, and you are trying to impose your radical views at home, so that changed, that helped, so thatâs how we reached out.522 To what extent the CFUâs strategy was successful is hard to guess though it reveals the dilemma of its male leadership. The Punjabi community had to be kept on their side if they hoped to expand union membership, which meant leaving the unequal gender relations at home untouched. Cavanagh says there were always many men and many women at the CFUâs demonstrations and big events. However, it was hard to tell if these men were partners or husbands of women farmworkers or if they were supporters of the union from the within the community.523 Women in their Own Words Vancouver Sath represented the South Asian women membersâ interiorities through plays like Picket Line, Different Age Same Cage, No Small Matter, Lunch Room, and many others. Its women members Harjinder Sangra, Anju Hundal, Jagdish Binning, and others actively contributed to developing and performing the plays. Their life stories provide an insightful account of their agency, their association with theatre activism, and what it meant to them in their personal lives. Each of them has a distinct voice, and like the farmworker women organizers, their stories remain untold. Sangra, a third-generation South Asian Canadian, was a student at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in the 1980s when the Canadian Farmworkers Union was organizing in 522 Raj Chouhan interview by author, Burnaby, September 30, 2019. 523 Judy Cavanagh interview by author, New Westminster, September 22, 2019. 169 the Lower Mainland. Her initiation into the world of activism is unlike that of Jasweer Kaur Brar of the Hoss Mushroom Farm strike, whose brother was a CFU supporter, or Balwantâs character in Picket Line, who finally gathered the courage to defy her husband and signed up for union membership. Young and single, Sangra actively participated in all the progressive social movements of the Punjabi community in Vancouver in the 1980s. She was a tutor volunteer with the CFUâs English as a Second Language program and was later hired as an organizer for two summers by the CFU. It is an association she continued as a volunteer, besides working with Vancouver Sath. Born and educated in Canada and associated with a spectrum of progressive activist currents, Sangraâs testimony illuminates gender realities in her family, the community and society, as well as her agency as a young Punjabi woman. The only child of a farmworker mother and sawmill worker father, Sangra says that things could have been very different for her if she had a male sibling.524 Sangra picked berries on the farms with her mother during the summer holidays to support the family, and in any case, she says, there were no facilities for leaving kids behind. It is on the farms that she formed her early impressions of the gendered farm labour. She vividly recalls women doing all the work while men were in positions of power as labour contractors and farm owners, barking orders, weighing their pick, and punching their cards. She says all social issues like sexism and alcoholism prevalent in the community also existed in her extended family, and domestic violence was a major issue at the time.525 524 Harjinder Sangra, interview by author, Burnaby and Richmond, August 19, 20, 29 and September 28, 2019. 525 Ibid. 170 Her account of sexism and male domination in Punjabi families contextualizes her achievements as an independent woman. In doing so, she adds her distinct voice to the Desi Leftâs story. Like Surjeet Kalsey, Sangra calls out the âshameâ that the community associated with women. Many of her friends from high school were married off because their parents believed that girls bring shame. Sangra says, âand that concept is still thereâ¦Punjabi girls couldnât do this. You couldnât go out, couldnât cut your hair, couldnât date, not go to the movies.â526 There were too many restrictions on them, and their parents kept their activities under watch. Girls were not encouraged to go for higher education. People would complain that girls ran away or find partners after going to UBC. Such stories circulated in the community, so girls were told they were not allowed to go to university and instead would be married off. âIt was a weird sense of collective shame that was imagined. We canât do this, what will people think? Thatâs how everybody thought then.â527 Sangra crossed barriers against women with the strength of a collective of her girl cousins. She said she was lucky to have so many of them. With perfect understanding and unity, they were always able to convince their parents to support them in their pursuits. She corrects herself and adds, âNot even convinced, we did what we wanted to do but in a sort of respectable kind of way.â 528 This is how she and her cousins joined UBC and opened doors for many of their younger cousins at a time when there were not many women in higher education. However, Harjinder landed herself in trouble when selected by the international development and education 526 Ibid. 527 Ibid. 528 Ibid. 171 non-profit, the Canadian Crossroads International, in 1986 for volunteering in Indonesia for six months. The fundraising campaign for her trip by the non-profit organization gave her away as their news release with her photo, name and address was published by a South Asian Canadian English newspaper, the Overseas Times. One of her uncles read it and was very angry at her. Why was she asking for money, with whose permission was she going? She is not to be allowed to go; he thundered over the phone and informed her parents. Sangra hadnât yet informed her parents, so they told her that she could not go. Sangra said she would, and she did. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, she pushed past the domination that her family had over her life.529 The Canadian Crossroads changed Sangraâs life. The grassroots experience with a community centre and its mobile medical team in rural Indonesia was one of the early influences that deeply shaped her worldview. The centre was run by a group of former communists persecuted by President Suhartoâs government, and their lead organizer had just come out of prison after many years. Sangra volunteered at the psychiatric hospital run by the centre doing light rehab exercises like knitting, crocheting with some psychiatric patients who were âpersecuted, livelihoods were taken away, put on the edge of society under Suharto.â She researched and learnt more about Indonesiaâs military operations at that time and in the past against its homegrown rebels and educated herself on how people organize, struggle and live their lives.530 Upon returning from Indonesia in her universityâs first year, Sangra looked out for progressive people in the local South Asian community, wondering where they were.531 She 529 Ibid. 530 Ibid. 531 Ibid. 172 joined East India Students Association (EISA), which she said was a very successful UBC club and soon became its social coordinator. Together with her friend, who was president of EISA, they organized cultural shows, seminars and made many friends, including Punjabi Canadians and Muslim students from India. She emphasized that their group was very secular, and there were not any religious-based clubs on campus then.532 Around the same time, her sociology professor happened to screen Patwardhanâs documentary A Time to Rise in the class. Sangra was thrilled to discover that such progressive people existed in her community who were doing incredible work. She had found her niche that eventually led to her involvement with the CFU and Vancouver Sath, where she met educated, well-read politically active people, and she learned a lot from them.533 The person who helped her connect with Vancouverâs wider progressive South Asian community was Hari Sharma, a sociology professor at Simon Fraser University and one of the founding members of the Indian Peoples Association of North America (IPANA). Sharma was the wellspring of the Desi Left activism, and Sangra would regularly visit his house, where progressives held their meetings. She was mostly an observer and listener at the meetings as she was very young.534 Recalling her days of theatre activism, Sangra says the energy of her activist friends always surrounded her. It was an energy that emanated from the outrage caused by social justice issues, and the struggle against it had many facets. She says she did not do theatre just for acting. It was a logical outcome of her outrage against racism, sexism and other issues and the need to take the message out even though her Punjabi wasnât that good at the time. As a young 532 Ibid. 533 Ibid. 534 Ibid. 173 adult, she liked the roles where she had to yell, raise a clenched fist, and express outrage. Any character that she played, she felt the rush of outrage inside. She thought, âThis is not fair. This shouldnât be happening. Children shouldnât be dying in water buckets. People shouldnât be dying in vans. People shouldnât be exposed to hazards, pesticides while they are working.â535 Jagdish Binning and Anju Hundal are two other women members of Vancouver Sath. Their respective spouses, Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal, authored most of the Vancouver Sath plays. Jagdish Binning and Anju Hundalâs testimonies reveal that they had the full support of their spouses to participate in theatre activities. Does it make their experience similar to that of Jasweer Kaur Brar, whose brother was an IPANA member and supporter of the CFU? Unlike Harjinder and Jasweer, Jagdish and Anju were married, and Jagdish looked after her two infants. Their motivation to participate in activist theatre work reveals their distinct agency and personhood, though still partially influenced by what the male partners do. Soon after Sadhu Binning made forays into literary and cultural work, his new platformsâ activities started at home, drawing Jagdish Binning into its fold. However, even before she came to Canada, Jagdish Binning was always interested in cultural activities right from her school days, which her grandparents opposed vehemently. Not only that, but they were also against sending girls to school. It was a rural setting in Punjab, and her educated father, a schoolteacher, overruled his parentsâ wish and sent her to school to be educated. Right from junior school, she loved participating in cultural programs. She never missed an opportunity, be it to recite a short poem or sing songs. She was good at her studies too. When she moved to high school, she took all her experience of cultural programs along with her. Unlike the village primary school, it was 535 Ibid. 174 a big school where girls from fifteen villages came to study. There was a competition among girls of the same age, but Jagdish had resolved she would participate in each cultural activity. She recalled, âWhenever a function was held, I always felt how could they ever do any item without my participation.â536 Especially if it were theatre, she would make sure that she had a role to play. Since it was a girlsâ school, the male parts/characters in the plays were also enacted by girls. She says that though it sounds such a silly thing now, she just wouldnât let anyone else play a male character back then. She thought how anyone else could even think of doing a role that was meant for only her, and she went on to play all male characters. Her involvement in cultural activities came to an end upon arriving in Canada with her parents in 1967. Except for a few books that she bought with her from India, there was nothing to read, not even a Punjabi magazine. The Punjabi community in the Lower Mainland was too small and did not even have a Punjabi radio program. Malkit Praharâs Punjabi program, which was broadcast around 7 am, started a year and a half later, in which he played Hindi film songs.537 She recalls that her father would not give her too much freedom, but he let her do a few things because he trusted her. She requested him to buy her a transistor, which she would put close to her ears to listen to the Hindi film songs when travelling to work each morning. The songs livened her up, and she would keep humming them all day at work. She recalls another memory when she met a Fijian Indian woman on the bus who spoke to her in Hindi. After knowing Jagdish Binningâs interests, she brought a bagful of Hindi magazines and novels, 536Jagdish Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, August 29, 2019. 537 Ibid. 175 including one by Indiaâs famous Hindi writer, Premchand, and some Fijian magazines in Hindi from home and gave them to her. Around two years later, in 1970, Jagdish and Sadhu were married. As the community increased within a few years, Sadhu started his literary activities and later theatre activities. Jagdish recalls, âIt was as if these activities were all readied for me and offered to me on a platter. I had no reason to say no because I wanted to do it. That something like this should be there for me to do.â538 When Sadhu took over the Punjabi literary magazine Watano Dūr, their son was very young. Jagdish did not say more, but soon it is evident that the literary activities were not easy for a mother who had the full responsibility of looking after a small child. When she describes her involvement in the literary activities of Sadhu, it is clear that her role was that of assisting him. In spite of all the passion and talent for literature and cultural activities since her childhood, she did not have a chance to put the same amount of time and energy into it as her husband did. While reminiscing about her participation in Sadhuâs literary works, Jagdish says, âWhen Sadhu wrote his poems or stories, he would give them to me to proofread. Now one shouldnât be saying it in his presence, he committed many grammatical errors, and I would correct them.â539 In those days, the magazine would be written by hand. Jagdish said that Sadhu knew her handwriting was good. He requested her if she could write the magazine as his handwriting would be hard for the readers to decipher, so she started writing the magazine. Jagdish makes clear that she had no problems doing the work. She says, âI didnât mind it. It was not that he forced me because I too wanted something to do.â540 So, eventually Jagdish found an 538 Ibid. 539 Ibid. 540 Ibid. 176 outlet for her creative pursuits when space was offered to her by her male partner, in which, the terms of engagements were already set. He was the editor while she wrote the magazine with her hand. He was the face of the magazine and she worked behind the scenes for which the magazine did not even acknowledge her contribution. The division of labour within the family was not limited to the creative domain alone. Jagdish had a full-time job, took care of her child, and participated in literary and cultural activities. Soon Sadhu and Jagdish had their second baby. It was with all these responsibilities that Jagdish participated in Vancouver Sathâs activities. Like the magazine Watano Dūr, Sadhu and Jagdishâs house became the centre of Vancouver Sathâs activities. Writing each play would begin with extensive discussions over multiple rounds of tea and snacks, which Jagdish continuously served the group members while contributing to their discussions. Her running between the kitchen and creative space did not end here. Jagdish would return from work and rush to the kitchen to give food to her children. Her daughter was barely 3 or 4 years old. So, she would be cooking meals for them just when Vancouver Sath members were rehearsing for a play at home. They would yell out for her when her part came. She would drop everything, rush out of the kitchen to speak her dialogue, and run back to the kitchen to resume cooking. She recalled that her little daughter Priya had learnt some of the dialogues by heart. Holding the milk bottle in one hand and Jagdishâs shirt with another, she tailed Jagdish all over the house, repeating them.541 Jagdish did not even once grudge all the extra work she had to do to use the space available to her for her creative pursuits. She says, âI did it with all my heart and thoroughly 541 Ibid. 177 enjoyed the time doing plays. It might be any role.â542 She especially remembered doing a play on the Main Street (Punjabi Market) and beating the dhol to collect an audience. People shopping in stores and stepping out of shops stared at them in surprise while they changed costumes right there. She says, âto have this kind of experience in here was so remarkable.â543 Unlike Sangra, who was born in Canada, and Jagdish Binning, who arrived with her parents in 1967, Anju Hundal was a new immigrant in Canada when Vancouver Sath was formed. âOn a personal level, it was like, letâs experience this experience. It was a really good experience,â is how she sums up the time spent participating in the Vancouver Sath activities.544 She arrived in Canada in 1980 after her marriage with Sukhwant Hundal. Hundal and Binning were already involved in Punjabi literary activities and bringing out the literary magazine Watano Dūr (Away from Homeland). Participation in Vancouver Sath activities fulfilled many of Anjuâs social needs besides being an adventure of a unique experience in a new land. Referring to Binning and Hundalâs engagements with the Punjabi community, Anju says that so many people would visit them, and discussions would take place on community issues, giving her exposure to life in Canada. She especially mentions Vancouver Sathâs women members Harjinder Sangra, Jagdish Binning, Jas Binning, and Pindi Sangra, from whom she learned a lot. These women were in Canada for a long time and were involved in cultural activities, which inspired her. She cherished her friendships with the Vancouver Sath members in whom she 542 Ibid. 543 Ibid. 544 Anju Hundal, interview by author, Burnaby, August 29, 2019. 178 found a community in the new land and makes it a point to mention she has been socializing with them past forty years.545 Anju had not seen a play before arriving in Canada. Though her well-educated family lived in Delhi, and she was doing her masters, her only exposure to the theatre was the annual neighbourhood Ramlila.546 Even in Ramlila, a man performed the role of a woman. She says that even in Canada, the community didnât appreciate that women should dare to climb on the stage and act in plays on unconventional themes. Sexism is something that women face everywhere, so she feels women who did theatre on unconventional issues should be doubly appreciated. Anju credits her husband because she didnât have to deal with all the challenges that a woman might face to participate in cultural and political activities. It could have been very different if she had been married into some other family. She admits that she was not knowledgeable like Sangra and Gill or her spouse, Hundal, so it would have been hard for her to get into theatre activism without her husbandâs support. She also notes that Sangra and Gill were single and that marital status did have a significant part to play for many.547 In terms of what she gained from her association with Vancouver Sath, Anju felt that her life was enriched. She gained self-esteem when she climbed on the stage, worked on peoplesâ issues, and took the communityâs message. It was a very positive experience for her. She says that she came in later and left early and was active only for a short while and has done nothing compared to what Jagdish has done. She also felt that Binning and Hundal remained active for a 545 Ibid. 546 Ibid; Note: Ramlila is annual theatrical enactment of the life of Lord Rama as depicted in ancient Hindu epic Ramayana. See Paula Richman and Rustom Bharucha, Performing the Ramayana Traditions: Enactments, Interpretations, and Arguments (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021). 547 Ibid. 179 long time, and she considered them as âexperts.â However, what she seemed to value is that they always helped her and never made her feel otherwise.548 Anju concludes by mentioning the visit of renowned progressive theatre director Gursharan Singh from Punjab. When he performed theatre here, his daughter and wife also acted in it. She felt that is how role models are established for women. In that sense, like Jagdish Binning, Harjinder Sangra, and Pindi Gill, were her role models, and all of them together, she hoped, might be role models for other Punjabi women. Punjabi immigrant womenâs subjectivity and agency in the Desi Leftâs history speak through fragments of text, performance, film, and photographs strung together and interpreted with former activistsâ interviews. Reflections of former activists and organizers bring to the story its critical dimension by breaking the silence around Punjabi womenâs interiority, mostly invisible, muted, and left out of all fragments. What speaks out is a scream of immigrant women against patriarchy and male domination, erased from the labour register. The absences and silences tell this story, which the local Punjabi playwrights tried to address through theatre. However, in real life, women theatre activistsâ testimonies illuminate the larger domain of patriarchy and their negotiations with its structural reality alongside subtler aspects that coexist in their personal lives. 548 Ibid. 180 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION In both its textual and filmed components, this dissertation explores the transformative effects of human mobility and diaspora through the specific case of the South Asian Canadian community in British Columbia. Gyanendra Pandeyâs conceptual understanding of unarchived history and trifling/exile within provides the theoretical framing to meet the challenge of tracking and documenting the traces of South Asian Canadiansâ transnational mobility within the bounded space of Canadaâs archive. It makes it possible to shine a light on the otherwise unrecorded interracial-intersectional history of the Desi Left, which has been excluded from the repertoire of conventional diaspora studies, which tends to imagine a community through such concepts as an exclusive ethnoreligious community and homeland nationalism. Furthermore, applying the lens of trifling/exile within illuminates the exclusion of immigrant women from the Desi Leftâs history, thereby giving it a gendered dimension. The overall result is a non-singular immigrant history of cosmopolitan South Asian Canadian diaspora that reveals the structural inequality of gender within it. The Desi Leftâs history is recovered from the diverse fragments of the extant primary and secondary sources, alongside a new archive created by interviewing former labour organizers and cultural activists who had supported the Canadian Farmworkers Union in the Lower Mainland in the 1980s. Thus, it affirms Pandeyâs argument that unarchived histories are not histories for which there is no archive but rather that these histories are âun-archivedâ in the very process of archiving specific memories and events from our pasts.549 This epistemological shift 549 Pandey, âUnarchived histories: The âmadâ and the âtrifling,ââ 3. 181 in framing the relationship between history and the archive opens the door for writing missing histories consigned to the realm of outside rational history. The audiovisual sources in the archive offer a unique possibility to engage with Catherine Russellâs conceptual framework of archiveology and make a video documentary integral to this project. Russell argues that the video essay film uses the same form as Walter Benjaminâs mode of criticism in that it is made up entirely of quotations. It collages together excerpts of archival material borrowed from film archives to retrieve collective memories. In this way, the video essay film offers new ways to access and frame histories of the past that might have otherwise been forgotten and left out.550 Like Pandeyâs trifling/exile within, Russellâs specific concern was with gendered histories, through unravelling, and to a degree undoing, the deep-seated prejudices against gender equality in the twentieth-century image culture and its archive. Along the lines of the video essay film of archiveology, I use excerpts of films on the Canadian Farmworkers Union, especially from A Time to Rise, in my dissertation documentary to demonstrate how image/film shapes the collective memory of the movement. The extensive visual documentation of protest rallies and militant actions on the picket lines did not capture the gendered experience of women farmworkers in the private realm of organizing, as this experience did not assume a public visual form. Whatever was not photographable has been left out of the collective memory of the movement. My documentary analyzes the representational absence of unequal gender relations in the movementâs visual archive and, as a result, in the collective memory of the Desi Left. However, to do so, my filmâs narrative had to make space for this displaced history by telling the larger story of the Desi Leftâs cultural activism, art 550 Russel, Archiveology, 4, 11-12. 182 production, the voice of its women activists, and their gendered interiority through gentle conversational nudges, deep diving and at times, meditations. Thus, my dissertation film and text are two interconnected ways of telling a single, coherent story. They embrace different media, disciplinary approaches, and content but are linked historically and conceptually. This is where the similarity between dissertation film and video essay film of archiveology ends. Unlike making a video essay film out of a collage of film excerpts with a voiceover, I improvised upon the conceptual framework of archiveology. I used a variety of materials available in the archive like recordings of radio plays and radio interviews, posters, still photographs, teleplays, and video footage of the protest by the Canadian Farmworkers Union to register immigrant women workersâ voices and subjectivities missing from the Desi Leftâs history. In addition, interviews with cultural and labour activists are the centrepiece of my dissertation film and text. They contributed to filling the gaps in fragmentary scholarly works to write the dissertation text and make a film on the history of the Desi Left. Through them, I pointed out the absences within the Desi Leftâs art production and provided meditations on the movementâs limitation. For example, filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, sound recordist Nettie Wild of A Time to Rise documentary, and Craig Berggold, the Canadian Farmworkers Unionâs photographer, reflected back on their works produced almost forty years ago to analyze the absence of gender issues or the interiority of women farmworkers lives in the movementâs art and within the movement itself. But in the very act of doing so, they were alluding to other aspects of this history, namely interracial cultural activism, cultural production and the ideological solidarities of the Desi Left and local progressive artists. With archiveology as a take-off point, the dissertation film improvised and embraced diverse sources and a different narrative strategy to tell the multilayered story of the Desi Left. 183 The theoretical framework of archiveology was joined by scholarship on âimage-based practicesâ that deal with aspects of the imageâs indexicality and truth of the interview format to shape the authoring process and narrative structure of the thesis documentary. These scholars and practitioners share the archiveologyâs concern for the representational absence in the film archive. They advocate a different strategy to ensure that this absence does not replicate in subsequent films that borrow footage from the archival films for âauthenticâ representation and reconstruction of a past event or movement memory. R. Bruce Brasell discusses the use of talking-head interviews and dismembered, unidentified interview testimonies in documentaries on the Civil Rights movement to address it.551 It is one of the reasons why the interview is at the core of my dissertation film. However, the interview format opens up other issues in a film that demands engagement according to the scholarly work in this field. First is the nonindexical nature of the photographic image, and second is the relationship between the âinterviewerâ and âintervieweeâ or the âobserverâ and âobserved.â The latter is described as the encounter between âfilmerâ and âfilmedâ by John Ellis, a dialogue between the âframerâ and âframedâ by Trinh T. Minh-Ha and flawed evidence by David MacDougall. Together with the imageâs nonindexical nature, Ellis, Minh-Ha, and MacDougall argue that the film should interrogate the falsehood of the interview encounter, question its power relationship, and not give it the status of evidence. Different filmmakers have followed different approaches in dealing with these issues in their practice. Kate Nash proposes ambiguity within the documentary narrative, and that filmmakersâ 551 Brasell, âFrom Evidentiary Presentation,â 9-10. 184 acknowledgement of the limit to their power and knowledge could make the interview an ethical encounter. 552 Having been a documentary filmmaker for a quarter of a century, I have developed my own aesthetic style of addressing these issues in my work. Lucia King discusses my filmmaking methodology, and while theorizing one of my earlier documentaries, Kitte Mil Ve Mahi (2005), she notes that: [T]he authoring process between filmmaker and filmed subject is imagined as a dynamic movement. In other words, the argument that the film presents (even whilst we may consider it a âfinishedâ film) is suspended in a state of becoming; it tracks an ongoing argument between the protagonists and filmmaker.553 King affirms that my film practice is neither voyeuristic nor aimed at producing âknowledge,â and argues that: Bhardwajâs camera is not becoming a âfly on the wall,â nor is it a weapon for totalizing knowledge. Rather his attitude of listening makes the cameraâs significance recede behind the receptivity of the human encounter.554 She examines the play of âambiguityâ in the film and argues that the âabsenceâ of the filmmaker as a redeemer of the âvoiceless,â or saviour of traditional practices from its âsupposed anonymity,â makes my film âopen-ended.â555 She reasons that: âBecoming invisibleâ in this sense can be seen, rather, as an active desire by Bhardwaj to abnegate himself before his subjectsâ greater authority, becoming a kind of loyal secretary for posterity.556 552 Nash, âDocumentary-for-the-Other,â 223, 225 and 238. 553 Lucia King, âPerformance on screen in India: methods and relationships in nonâfiction film production, 1991â2011â (PhD diss. SOAS, University of London, 2012), 242. 554 Ibid., 138. 555 Ibid., 241. 556 Ibid., 137. 185 The dissertation documentary, When the Tide Goes Out, has differed from my earlier works, and I have had to exercise different aesthetic and authoring choices in shooting and making it. This time I was not behind the camera framing the subjects and shooting them. Instead, I was facing the camera and interacting with labour and culture activists. I did not have the power of wielding the camera, nor was it my gaze that framed the interviews. Instead, I too became its subject, and my vulnerability was captured on camera and included in the filmâs narrative. In the filmâs opening sequence, I acknowledge my vulnerabilities as an international student, an outsider who set out to make this film on Punjabi immigrantâs labour history. I admit that I had neither personal memories nor intuitive knowledge about the subject on which I was making a film. The element of ambivalence introduced in the filmâs narrative is further emphasized by my voiceover throughout the film. The filmâs narrative is made of two countervailing strands that flow through it. Such narrative structure eschews rhetoric or claims to truth. Instead, it retells the Desi Leftâs history through the play of two memory strands-collective and personal memory. As the film narrates the collective memory of the movementâs cultural activism and organizing, the personal narrative of gender inequality simultaneously interrogates it. Thus, archival images and footage of cultural activism are destabilized by their missing narrative, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly in the film. The vulnerable filmmakerâs voiceover continues to point in this direction lest the audience misses out on this play of âmeaning.â Ambivalence, therefore, remains paramount in the film as it searches for what is missing in its own narrative, which does not leave scope for the totalizing of knowledge. The dissertation film deals with the interracial cultural activism, the production of movement arts, the absence of womenâs voices and the structural reality of unequal gender relations. The thesis text provides the context and extended commentary on the 186 materials presented in the documentary. The CFUâs location within the fold of the Desi Left in British Columbia enriches both the film and textual work by bringing the local histories of Punjabi cultural activists, both men and women, and the CFUâs women organizers into a broader discussion of the interracial solidarities in cultural activism for immigrant labour and a larger history of the Desi Left. The chronicling of Desi Leftâs history begins with Sadhu Singh Dhamiâs semi-autobiographical novel Maluka. It is set in the 1920s Lower Mainland Vancouver, where Punjabi workers in a lumber millâs bunkhouse exhort teenage Maluka to gain an education and write the story of their hard lives lived with courage and honour for posterity. Dhamiâs novel Maluka tells that story. The life of Maluka, or its author Dhami, represents a cosmopolitan strand of South Asian Canadian diaspora explored in this dissertation. The Punjabi cultural activists of the 1970s and 80s were Malukas of their times who told the story of immigrant labour through myriad literary forms and theatre. They were conscious of their role as chroniclers of this history â a history inscribed with their left activism that generally falls outside of the singular immigrant history of a homogenous ethnoreligious community. In this dissertation on the Desi Left, I provided a chronicle of the chroniclers of this history. From their early phase in Canada, South Asian Canadian workers found allies in Canadian socialists and their unions, which facilitated solidarity between them. The fragmentary accounts of the period show that between 1910 and 1915, Husain Rahim was closely associated with the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC) and was a member of the partyâs Dominion Executive Committee (DEC). The SPC was staunchly anti-racist and fully supported the anti-colonial struggle of South Asian Canadian immigrants against the British rule in India. It defended the right of Indian passengers, mostly Punjabis of the infamous Komagata Maru steamship incident, 187 who arrived in Vancouver in 1914 to enter Canada. In 1937, Darshan Singh Sangha (Canadian) emerged as a foremost South Asian Canadian union leader of the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) who played a pioneering role in organizing South Asian workers and making them IWA members. By uniting workers of different ethnicities, he strengthened the union movement, bringing significant benefits to all workers. The growing solidarity between the Canadian Socialists and South Asian Canadian labour led the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the successor to the erstwhile Socialist Party of Canada and predecessor to the New Democratic Party (NDP), in the 1940s to demand the removal of racial discrimination and implement equal treatment of all before the law. In addition, the CFF and labour unions wholeheartedly supported the South Asian Canadiansâ struggle to regain the right to vote. The next phase of the Desi Leftâs history began only in the 1970s under the unique circumstance of that period. It revealed its pronounced generational and gender dimensions. The first-generation South Asian Canadian men took initiatives to establish labour, cultural and literary movements, and organizations. Most of their members, too, were men. The Desi Left didnât flourish beyond a generation as Canada-born, second generation South Asian Canadians didnât take an interest in these movements. As a result, institutions and organizations, political consciousness, and historical memory built around the Desi Leftâs struggles ended up in a sort of amnesia. This phenomenon demands closer examination by scholars of social movements. Presently, sporadic news of self-organization by international students from Punjab, India, to recover their wages appear on social media, particularly from Ontario. It sounds like a repetition of the experience of South Asian Canadian farmworkers in the 1980s and struggles led by the Canadian Farmworker Union to recover unpaid wages from the rich farmers. A nascent organization, Naujawan Support Network, is leading a campaign under the banner âStop Wage 188 Theftâ to recover unpaid wages of new immigrants and international students by holding protests and naming and shaming the wage theft culprits on social media. Labour struggles often rupture the myth of a homogenous ethnoreligious community possessing a uniform identity. Only time will tell if contemporary labour organizing initiatives will sprout a new phase of the Desi Left in Canada. What seems evident is that, as in the past, the first-generation South Asian Canadians are organizing themselves around labour issues. This small development offers the clue that the history of the Desi Left is, in fact, the history of waves of immigration to Canada. In that regard, South Asian Canadian immigrants of the 1970s and 1980s were no exception. Many were sympathetic to the radical communist movement sweeping across Punjabâs university campuses in the seventies. Upon immigrating to Canada, these young and educated Punjabis faced labour issues and racism, and they immediately started organizing. They found inspiration in the rebellious political currents of the seventies in the Lower Mainland that carried forward the spirit of the turbulent fifties and sixties, such as the Black Civil Rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement in the US, the studentsâ movement in Europe, anti-colonial struggles in Central America, and the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. The outcome was an entwined network of Desi Leftâs interracial labour culture activism to strengthen the farmworkers movement, mostly comprised of South Asian Canadian farmworkers in the Lower Mainland. The communist ideology and internationalism undergirded such a vision of solidarity with struggles across ethnic, religious or national boundaries. It had no place for sectarian ethnoreligious identities as cultural activists supported a range of causes and communities, local and global, in 1980s Vancouver. The progressive South Asian Canadian activists, mainly Punjabis, embraced the larger Canadian 189 labour cultural activism tradition of white activists, Latin American political refugees, Filipino labour organizers, other immigrant communities and some womenâs groups. There were two main achievements of the Desi Left during this period. First, the setting up of labour, literary, and arts organizations. And second, the evolution of a sub-community of the progressive Punjabi community who shared an avowedly cosmopolitan outlook. Interestingly, the progressive Punjabi writers were at the core of both these developments. In many parts of Canada, the newly established Punjabi literary associations were, in fact, centres of political activism and organizing. For example, in the Lower Mainland, the Punjabi Literary Association became the second social space of the community after the Gurdwara. It was where non-religious people like writers, cultural activists, labour organizers, women rights activists, and progressive politicians would converge. Such literary associations of progressive Punjabi writers played a crucial role in spreading the progressive ideology within the community and consolidating the bonds among progressive Punjabi people across Canada. These associations nurtured and sustained a sub-community of the progressive Punjabi community. Whether this sub-community of the progressive Punjabi community consisted of Punjabi women or was predominantly a menâs domain is a question that does not have an easy answer. The absence of womenâs representation has remained a persistent feature of South Asian Canadian history and that of the Desi Left in Canada. In the early phase, the Canadian state wanted immigrant men to remain sojourners. Consequently, its racist immigration laws curbed women and childrenâs entry to defer the emergence of a Canadian anchored South Asian Canadian community that would claim it their home. As such, there were just a few South Asian Canadian women during the period. Yet, there are hardly any writings that inform us who these pioneer women were and what role they played in the communityâs life. 190 By the 1980s, the demography of the South Asian Canadian community had seen enormous growth. However, the presence of a large number of women did not alter their representation in the Desi Leftâs history of the time. They formed an overwhelming majority among the South Asian Canadian workforce on the farms, yet their voices, subjectivities and experiences as members of the Canadian Farmworkers Union are missing from the historical record. The portrayal of strong women in the movementâs visuals and archive obscures the broader realities and implications of structural gender inequality in their lives. The search to locate their agency through a patchwork of text, plays, films, photographs, and interviews in this dissertation was an act of reading against the grain to uncover their negotiation with patriarchy and male domination within the family and home before hitting the picket lines. Interviews with former activists and organizers brought to the story its critical dimension by breaking the silence around Punjabi womenâs interiority, erased from the labour register and historical archive. The interiority of Punjabi womenâs lives where they negotiate unequal gender relations is crucial for the Desi Leftâs history as their participation in activism and organizing. The story of South Asian womenâs organizations in the Lower Mainland â the Indian Mahila Association and Samaanta â are crucial to framing womenâs agency in the labour struggles and writing an intersectional history of the Desi Left from womenâs perspective. I hope to pursue these missing fragments as my next research project. Finally, by no means is the Desi Leftâs account presented in this dissertation a comprehensive one. Many significant initiatives of Indian Peoples Association in North America in the 1970s and 1980s Vancouver, like the interracial anti-racism movement led by the British Columbia Organization for Fighting Racism, have not found a place in it. Moreover, the IPANAâs own history, with chapters in many cities across Canada and North America, remains 191 untold. The Hari Sharma Collection at Simon Fraser University Archives is an excellent but unexplored source to write IPANAâs history. Other than IPANA, the East India Defence Committee (EIDC), which took to âactive self-defenceâ to fight racism on the streets, was a powerful progressive South Asian Canadian current in the Lower Mainland in the 1970s and 80s. It had chapters in Vancouver, Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal, Winnipeg and Edmonton. EIDC was affiliated with the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), led by its charismatic South Asian Canadian founder leader, Hardial Bains, well known in the Marxist-Leninist circles internationally. Archiving the Desi Leftâs history in Canada remains a work in progress. Its significance to the labour and anti-racism struggles of immigrant communities in the present or future hardly needs emphasizing. Arguing that the struggles of Punjabi Canadian farmworkers in British Columbia for social justice in the past is an inspiration for Mexican migrant farmworkers in the present, popular educator and cofounder of Justicia for Migrant workers in British Columbia (J4MW) Adriana Paz Ramirez and sociologist Jennifer Jihye Chun asks: What lessons can be learned from the CFUâs historic struggles, as a new generation of migrant farmworkers and their advocates strive to challenge the unequal and unjust power relations in BCâs agricultural industry? What impact do the histories of resistance and struggles by racially subordinated groups of workers, histories that go unrecorded and often exist as fleeting memories, have on current struggles to bring about a more just and emancipatory world?557 The questions raised by Ramierz and Jihye Chun open another trajectory of research and engagement with the history of immigrant activists for which this dissertation prepares the ground. 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What were your fears or hesitations, and how did you overcome them? 5 Did the movement raise women-specific demands? 6 Why do you think there were not many women in the leadership of the movement? 7 Who were your other colleagues active in the movement? 8 Was your family supportive of the work you were doing for the movement? 9 Do you remember any cultural activity/performance/film screening to support the struggle? 10 How do you look back at that phase of your life today? For Artists and Cultural Activists 1 As an artist, how would you describe the cultural life of Vancouver in 1970s and 1980s? 2 Would you like to share your life journey as an artist with us? 3 Why did artists like you support the struggle of farmworkers? 4 In what specific ways artists and cultural activists supported the farmworkers movement? 5 Was it easy to survive by creating art for the movement? What were the real challenges that you faced? 204 6 Did you participate in cross-racial collaborations in cultural production? How did it happen, and why do you think it was important? 7 Do you remember any cultural production of that time that you enjoyed creating the most? 8 How do you look back at that phase of your life today?
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Asian Studies
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Oberoi, Harjot
When the tide goes out : Desi Left in British Columbia, 1978 to 1989
Text
Moving Image