Komagata Maru

·         On August 4, 2008 Indo-Canadian community refused to accept an apology by PM Stephen Harper for the 1914 Komagata Maru ship incident in which hundreds of Indian passengers were not allowed to enter Canada.

·         The Komagata Maru was a Japanese ship hired by Malaysia-based wealthy Sikh Gurdit Singh to bring 376 Indians from Hong Kong to Canada in 1914 to challenge its racist laws.

Mission IAS’2009

·         The Indians were not allowed to disembark in Vancouver and forcibly sent back to India where many were shot on arrival in Calcutta, as it was then called.

·         Tendering the apology at the annual Mela Gadari Babian Da at Bear Creek Park in Surrey on August 3, Harper said Canada was sorry for the mistreatment of the passengers in 1914 and apologised for it.

·         Stephen Joseph Harper PC MP (born April 30, 1959) is the twenty-second PM of Canada, and leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

·         Harper became PM after his party won a minority government in the January 2006 federal election.

·         He is the first Prime Minister from his current political party, and the first since 1993 from any "Conservative" party, following twelve years of government by the Liberal Party. Harper is the first Canadian prime minister born in the second half of the twentieth century.