Fact-based journalism that sparks the Canadian conversation

Articles Business Environment Health Politics Arts & Culture Society

Special Series Hope You’re Well For the Love of the Game Living Rooms In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration Terra Cognita More special series >

For the Love of the Game

In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration

More special series >

Events The Walrus Talks The Walrus Video Room The Walrus Leadership Roundtables The Walrus Leadership Forums Article Club

The Walrus Video Room

The Walrus Leadership Roundtables

The Walrus Leadership Forums

Subscribe Renew your subscription Change your address Magazine Issues Newsletters Podcasts

Renew your subscription

The Walrus Lab Hire The Walrus Lab Amazon First Novel Award

Amazon First Novel Award

Diljit Dosanjh on Jimmy Fallon: A History Lesson in Canada’s Mistreatment of Immigrants

The global Punjabi icon talked about a 1914 incident when a ship carrying Sikhs was denied entry at Vancouver

Punjabi music icon Diljit Dosanjh—who has achieved global stardom through a new album, sold-out stadiums, and an inimitable bhangra style—appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night The Tonight Show for a second time last week. Dosanjh was there to promote his latest album, Aura, and his North American tour, which opened with a show in Vancouver on April 23. Midway through the interview, though, he turned to something quite different: the story of the Komagata Maru, whose mostly Punjabi passengers were denied entry to Canada in 1914.

Decode the stories behind the headlines with The Walrus newsletter. Sign up for The Walrus newsletter and get trusted Canadian journalism straight in your inbox.

For descendants and scholars, the exchange with Fallon was about more than just celebrity. It placed a painful chapter of Canadian immigration history—a story of rejection and the search for belonging that’s all too familiar to the larger Indian and South Asian diaspora—before a mainstream global audience.

Dosanjh was referring to the voyage of the Komagata Maru, a Japanese steamship also remembered in the Punjabi community as the Guru Nanak Jahaz. The ship arrived in Vancouver in May 1914, carrying 376 passengers from British India, most of them Punjabi........

© The Walrus