Vancouver Komagata Maru memorial vandalism ends in arrest
Posted March 23, 2022 10:37 am.
Last Updated March 23, 2022 5:38 pm.
Vancouver police have made an arrest months after the city’s Komagata Maru memorial was defaced.
The memorial was covered with paint, hand prints, and graffiti in August 2021.
The VPD says a man was taken into custody Monday night. He was charged with one count of mischief in January and was wanted on a B.C.-wide warrant.
The memorial is dedicated to the passengers of the Komagata Maru ship, which sailed from India and was denied entry to Vancouver in 1914 due to racist policies.
The ship was forced to turn back to India after its stock of food and water was depleted. Upon return, 19 passengers were killed in a skirmish with British authorities and dozens of others were imprisoned or forced into hiding.
The names of the 400 Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu people who were on board the ill-fated ship are listed on the Coal Harbour memorial set up in 2013.
Raj Toor is the vice president of the Descendants of the Komagata Maru Society, and his grandfather, who came to Canada from India in 1914 is one of the people on the memorial.
“When the Komagata Maru was forcefully sent back to India the British were ruling at that time, so to short them many were killed on the spot, and the rest of them were put in jail, including my grandfather,” Toor told CityNews.
He tells CityNews it was an incredibly painful time for many people, and he hopes to look forward and rember them as heroes rather than as a tragedy.
“They took to protesting, the passengers, they joined the freedom movement, including my grandfather. It was the last struggle.”
Many were left shaken by the vandalism in 2021. Jindi Singh, who spoke with CityNews in August, says his great great uncle was among those who were blocked from disembarking in Canada.
“We were quite devastated,” he said of the graffiti. “I was explaining to my children the history of the Komagata Maru, what it meant to the South Asian community here in Canada as part of our history — as as part of their history — and then to come here and see this vile defacing of this very important memorial was quite upsetting.”
Since the arrest, Toor tells CityNews he is incredibly grateful to the police for for giving the community justice.
-With files from Vanessa Doban and Martin MacMahon and Lasia Kretzel
