ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the equation of aliens with radicals and the racist, repressive and exclusionary policies and mechanisms of control deployed by the British and British Indian in collusion with the Canadian state politicized ordinary workers and engendered a counter-Empire of resistant flows and exchanges in which the Sikh multitudes played a pivotal role. The first decade of the twentieth century witnessed the exodus of Indian anti-colonialists and students to North America that coincided with the movement of Sikhs to California and British Columbia. The Rowlatt Report insinuates a premediated Ghadr design behind Gurdit Singh's chartering the ship and projects Gurdit Singh as the central figure in Ghadr conspiracy alleging that his main object was to "cause an inflammatory episode". Gurdit Singh represents his decision to charter the ship as a commercial enterprise albeit driven by an altruist motive to facilitate the movement of fellow passengers stranded in Hong Kong and those in other places desiring to travel abroad.
