Specters of Indigeneity in B ritish‐ I ndian Migration, 1914

Colonial legal histories of indigeneity and B ritish‐ I ndian migration have not often been placed in conversation with one another. This article pursues such a project by tracing indigeneity as a spectral presence that emerged with uneven regularity in juridico‐political conflicts over B ritish‐ I ndian migration. Specifically, I focus on the 1914 journey of the K omagata M aru , a Japanese steamship carrying 376 P unjabi migrants that sailed from H ong K ong to S hanghai, M oji to Y okohama, and across the P acific, eventually arriving in V ancouver, C anada. Crisscrossing continents and approaching law in its broadest sense, I explore three struggles over the ship and its passengers: a satirical cartoon published in the H indi P unch ( B ombay), a legal test case heard by the B ritish C olumbia C ourt of A ppeal ( V ancouver), and a public debate on the racial meanings of Imperial subjecthood that ensued among Indian middle‐class supporters of the ship and unfolded in E nglish newspapers in various I ndian cities. In each moment of struggle, I examine the changing conceptions of indigeneity that were strategically appropriated, never by indigenous peoples themselves or on their own terms, but by the D ominion of C anada and by B ritish I ndians, each deploying indigeneity to its own advantage and to achieve particular effects. Ultimately, this article considers the political and legal work that the spectral figure of indigeneity performed, the conceptions of time that underwrote its recurrence, and the temporalities that it sustained and called into question.