ABSTRACT
The Komagata Maru episode of 1914 best brings out the disjuncture between imperial facilitation of regulated migrations and restriction of the free flows of hypermobile Sikhs. The episode has become the site for the contestation over discriminatory policies regulating South Asian migrations to Canada. This chapter borrows Bryan Turner's theory of the "enclave society" to throw light on imperial tactics and strategies deployed to immobilize the transnational movements of Sikhs under imperialism focusing on the Komagata Maru episode. The 1900s was the peak period of regulated migration of different segments of the colonized to different parts of the British Empire. The imperial regime of mobility essentially regulated movements through exercising control on direction, gender, class and, in the Indian context, caste. Calling attention to Carl Schmitt's definition of "sovereignty as an exception to the law, and as the capacity to declare that an emergency exists".
