Singing from the same hymnbook: South Asian Canadian solidarity in the long sixties in British Columbia

ABSTRACT

This essay breaks new ground in writing the history of the long sixties by bringing in a strand of the Third World diasporic activism shaped by transnational mobility. It alludes to the role of the Naxalite movement in politicizing the youth of the Panjab, many of whom moved to Canada in the late 1960s and 1970s encouraged by changes in Canada’s immigration policies. This new wave of immigrants was confronted with racism and labour exploitation upon arrival. In response, they quickly formed new Left-wing organizations to defend their rights. The literary association of progressive Panjabi writers in British Columbia and other places was one such institution. It directly involved itself in political and cultural activism, besides literary activities by crossing racial and communal boundaries to create intercommunity solidarities. These Panjabi writers were also chroniclers of the global consciousness of their times as well as the local histories of resistance by their diasporic community. Through text and performance, their intercommunity cultural solidarity activism organically connected them to an older North American radical tradition of the anarcho-syndicalist Wobblies. The archive of the literary production of progressive Panjabi writers has been used in the essay alongside the video interviews recorded by the author with members of Panjabi theatre groups, musicians of a former rock band, a visual artist and photographer, and the founder of a local folk music festival. It brings to the fore new voices, perspectives, and experiences that shaped the intercommunity cultural solidarity activism of the long sixties in British Columbia.

KEYWORDS:

• Long sixties
• South Asian Canadians
• Global Maoism
• Punjabi cultural activism
• social movements
• oral history

Notes

1 See Jameson (1984); Connery (2006); Katsiaficas (2018).

2 The Naxalite movement began as an armed uprising of a group of peasants, Adivasis and local communists revolutionaries in a remote village of Naxalbari in the Indian province of West Bengal in 1967. The revolutionaries, until then, members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), later broke away to form a new party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). The movement found wide support, especially among students and youth and quickly spread to many parts of India. See Judge (1992); Aditya Bahl, "Fragments of Revolution,"SideCar,16 December 2001, https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/fragments-of-revolution.

3 The Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) was formed with the support of the Indian People’s Association in North America (IPANA) to organize farmworkers who were mostly Punjabi immigrants in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, which includes Vancouver, Richmond, Delta, Burnaby, New Westminster, Surrey, Abbotsford and other cities of the Fraser Valley. IPANA was a prominent stream of South Asian diasporic left radicalism in the long sixties in Canada and the USA⁣. Founded in Montreal in 1975, IPANA initially focused on generating support for the Naxalite movement in India.⁣ A few years later, in 1979, IPANA members in British Columbia, Harinder Mahil and Raj Chouhan, along with a few others like Charapal Singh Gill, formed the Farm Workers Organizing Committee (FWOC), which led to the founding of the CFU in 1980. See Bhardwaj (2022, 75–82) for a brief account of the Indian People’s Association in North America and Canadian Farmworkers Union.

4 Sath is an informal gathering space in the villages of Panjab where people drop by, talk, and leave as they wish. The theatre group was named Vancouver Sath to invoke an informal and nonhierarchical gathering of theatre activists in Vancouver.

5 Zisman, Alan. “Ad Hoc Band.” Accessed 26 November 2023. http://adhocband.ca/

6 The Canadian Farmworkers Union Project. Special Collections. Simon Fraser University Library. Accessed 20 November 2023. https://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/branches-depts/special-collections/canadian-farmworkers-union.

7 See Spaner (2021) for BC’s Solidarity Movement of 1983.

8 Sadhu Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, 29 August and 16 September 2019.

9 Sadhu Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, 29 August and 16 September 2019.

10 Sukhwant Hundal, interview by author, Burnaby, Surrey, Abbotsford and Richmond, 29 and 31 August, 2 and 28 September 2019.

11 Sadhu Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, 29 August and 16 September 2019.

12 Sukhwant Hundal, interview by author Burnaby, Surrey, Abbotsford and Richmond, 29 and 31 August, 2 and 28 September 2019.

13 Sadhu Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, 29 August and 16 September 2019.

14 See Gilbert A. Bouchard, “Poetry that Works in the Real World: Literature should Depict Workplace, Says Tom Wayman: [Final Edition].” Edmonton Journal, 1 December 1999.

15 Sadhu Binning’s e-mail message to author, 12 June 2021.

16 Sadhu Binning’s e-mail message to author, 19 October 2020.

17 Sukhwant Hundal, interview by author, Burnaby, Surrey, Abbotsford and Richmond, 29 and 31 August, 2 and 28 September 2019.

18 Alan Zisman, interview by author, Vancouver, 18 September 2019.

19 Surjeet Kalsey and Ajmer Rode, interview by author, Burnaby, 10 September 2019.

20 Jagdish Binning, interview by author, Burnaby, 20 August 2019.

21 Alan Zisman, interview by Author, Vancouver, 18 September 2019.

22 Magun, F. 1980. “Critics Preview” Vancouver Free Press, 18 April – 2 May 1980; Finlayson, Dwayne. 1980. “Critics Preview,” Vancouver Free Press, 4 April – 11 April 1980, Accessed 20 November 2023. https://www.zisman.ca/Ad-Hoc/.

23 Alan Zisman, interview by author, Vancouver, 18 September 2019.

24 Zisman, Alan. “Ad Hoc Band.” Accessed 26 November 2023. http://adhocband.ca/.

25 Alan Zisman, interview by author, Vancouver, 18 September 2019.

26 Alan Zisman, interview by author, Vancouver, 18 September 2019.

27 Farmworker. July 1988. “Heard Our Cassette?” Vol 2 No.1, July 1988, 5. Accessed 20 November 2023. https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/cfu-2226/farmworker-1988-vol-02-no-01.

28 Julius Fisher interview by author, Salt Spring Island, 23 September 2019.

29 Claire Kujundzic, interview by author, Vancouver, 29 September 2019.

30 Julius Fisher interview by author, Salt Spring Island, 23 September 2019.

31 Julius Fisher, interview by author, Salt Spring Island, 23 September 2019.

32 Julius Fisher, interview by author, Salt Spring Island, 23 September 2019.

33 Gary Cristall, interview by author, Vancouver, 26 August and 26 September 2019.

34 Cristall, Gary. “A short bio … .” Accessed 20 November 2023. http://www.garycristall.com/.

35 Gary Cristall, interview by author, Vancouver, August 26 and September 26, 2019.

36 Gary Cristall, interview by author, Vancouver, August 26 and September 26, 2019.

37 Gary Cristall, interview by author, Vancouver, 26 August and 26 September 2019.

38 Gary Cristall, interview by author, Vancouver, 26 August and 26 September 2019.

39 Gary Cristall, interview by author, Vancouver, 26 August and 26 September 2019.

40 Sukhwant Hundal’s email message to author, 20 July 2021.

41 Sukhwant Hundal’s email message to author, 20 July 2021.

42 “Utah Phillips benefit concert for the Canadian Farmworkers union and the Vancouver film premiere of a Time to Rise.” 27 September 1981. Photos-071. The Canadian Farmworkers Union Collection, Simon Fraser University Library Digitized Collections. Burnaby, British Columbia. Accessed 23 November 2023. https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/cfu-40/utah-phillips-benefit-concert-canadian-farmworkers-union-and-vancouver-film-premiere-time.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ajay Bhardwaj

Ajay Bhardwaj is a scholar and documentary filmmaker. He’s a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. His research focuses on South Asian Left-wing diasporic activism in the long sixties. In his recently completed doctoral research at the University of British Columbia, he examined Punjabi Canadian Left-wing cultural activism in British Columbia during the period.