Indo-Canadian Scriptwriter’s Opus Revives History

by Basil Nainan

History, it’s often said, repeats itself.

On Thursday, February 3rd however, history more like unravelled itself like it was caught in a time warp, as an audience of twelve sat transfixed in the program room of the Wychwood Library in downtown Toronto, barely conscious of their senses being overrun by the desires, actions and emotions of characters pressured by escalating collective forces, in an event that made the annals of Canadian history a whole century ago.

The orchestrator then, 1914 to be precise, was a hard, forceful man with a violent streak by the name of Mewa Singh.

The orchestrator of the event’s retelling last week, was a strong, intelligent, creative artist by the name of Sugith Varughese.

All they had in common was that they were pissed off… … about something.

Back in 1914, almost 400 Punjabi immigrants braved weeks and months of hardship against the elements, aboard a ship called the Komagata Maru, in a bid to reach the shores of Vancouver, BC, Canada and be accepted as fellow human beings seeking to begin a new life. Their dreams were not to be. They were turned back by immigration authorities without even so much as a fair hearing.

A British immigration officer by the name of Hopkinson, drew particular ire from Mewa Singh, one of the inmates of the ship, who later assassinated him.

The event known as the Komagata Maru incident became one of the pillars of Indo-Canadian history and should have been included in history books for the benefit of future generations.

It wasn’t. And that was what rankled in the mind of Sugith Varughese – an award-winning film and television writer, director and actor with innumerable credits under his belt – who penned the script for the stage play ‘The Fate Of Mewa Singh’ being read out by participating audience members at what is known in stage and film industry circles as a ’roundtable’ that Thursday night at the Wychwood Library.

Says Sugith, “Initially, many years ago, I had heard of the story of the Komagata-Maru but I wasn’t happy with the fact that we were not taught the same in school. This was my country’s history and yet I knew nothing about it. I knew all about the English and French colonization of Canada, but nothing of the arrival of Asian people from China and India at the beginning of the 20th century. I believe that if I’d known people from India had been in Canada for 50 years before my family came, my own sense of belonging would have been different. To right this historical and educational censorship, I wrote what eventually became the stage play ‘The Fate of Mewa Singh’.

At the end of the reading one reader was heard to say, “I wanted to stop following along and race ahead to find out what happened!” Participants enjoyed the vivid characters and personal relationships that Sugith Varughese had drawn from the historical incident.

‘The Fate of Mewa Singh’ had been initially commissioned as a screenplay a number of years ago and was then reworked into a radio drama (Entry Denied) for CBC and broadcast worldwide as part of the WorldPlay Festival of radio plays. Sugith is now turning this script into a stage play incorporating elements from both the original screenplay and radio drama.

Sugith has written scripts for TV shows and movies as diverse as ‘Fraggle Rock’ and ‘Blue Murder’. He has appeared on stage, film and TV (most famously, ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’), and has directed a number of award-winning short films. He has taught at Humber College and Centennial College and currently teaches writing at the Toronto Film School.

Says Sally Jones, Artistic Director of Rasik Arts who facilitated the roundtable reading of the stage play, “Everyone was transfixed as the story unfolded from the page. Everyone admired the universality the play had as these characters were pressured by forces greater than themselves. The consensus at the end of the reading was that the play illuminated an important aspect of Canada’s history as well as made it personally compelling. I only wish that funding will be found in the not-too-distant future for such a worthy project to be staged”.

In short, the world in general and Indo-Canadians in particular await the fate of ‘The Fate of Mewa Singh’.