The rights fight
Exhibition explores South Asians’ long struggle for equality in Canada.
South Asians who immigrated to Canada in the early twentieth century often faced discrimination when they arrived in British Columbia. Many had their rights suppressed and their voices silenced.
However, a recent exhibition about the four-decade fight by South Asians in British Columbia to win the right to vote has given a voice to the members of the community and is reinforcing the community’s place in the history of Canada.
(Dis)Enfranchisement 1907–1947: The Forty-Year Struggle for the Vote highlighted the experiences of South Asian immigrants on Canada’s west coast. The exhibition ran from February 2016 to June 2018 at the Sikh Heritage Museum in the Gur Sikh Temple National Historic Site in Abbotsford, B.C.
“The inspiration behind the project was to provide the research on South Asian history that is largely missing or omitted from the Canadian historical record in terms of challenges and successes in nation-building,” said Satwinder Kaur Bains, director of the South Asian Studies Institute of the University of the Fraser Valley and the exhibit’s organizer.
Using personal accounts, newspaper clippings, photographs, and copies of travel documents, the display offered a closer look into the historical policies and laws that discriminated against South Asians. Those included racist rules such as the “continuous journey” regulation that specifically targeted emigrants from India; the law that required South Asian immigrants to possess two hundred dollars upon entry into Canada, compared to the twenty-dollar requirement for European immigrants; and rules that restricted the immigration of women and children.
Bains said that approximately 7,500 people — including 3,000 students — have seen the display. While the exhibition has ended, the information it presented can be explored digitally. See CanadasHistory.ca/DisEnfranchisement.
History Makers is an ongoing celebration of community-based history initiatives across Canada. The (Dis)Enfranchisement 1907-1947 project was shortlisted for the Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Community Programming.