ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the multidirectional dimensions of memory and generation as intertwined sociological concepts. South Asian Canadians of different regional, linguistic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds have been actively engaged in a multitude of social practices to commemorate key events of migration and community formation in Canada through struggling over citizenship rights and belonging, by coming to terms with collective loss as the result of political violence in South Asia, and by creatively forming alliances to other communities and actors in the context of reconciliation and decolonization. The chapter discusses three specific sites of memory formation that relate to commemorative events of the Komagata Maru incident 1914, 1984 Sikh memory activism, and postmemory discourses amongst the Ahmadiyya community in Canada. Each site of memory formation entails differently positioned social actors and contexts, which allows us to compare the conjunct work of memory and generation in comparative perspective.
