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Sunday, Jan 16, 2005

National

National

Canadian Prime Minister coming

By Our Diplomatic Correspondent

The Federal Minister of Health, Canada, Ujjal Dosanjh, with his wife, Raminder.

NEW DELHI, JAN. 15. The Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin, arrives here on Monday on a two-day visit to India for talks with his counterpart, Manmohan Singh, and other leaders.

He will explore with Dr. Singh the ways in which India and Canada can collaborate on tsunami-warning procedures for the Indian Ocean region, according to a Canadian press release.

The Canadian Health Minister, Ujjal Dosanjh, the National Security Adviser, Arthur Carty, and several Canadian Members of Parliament will accompany Mr. Martin.

Mr. Martin is also visiting Thailand, Sri Lanka, Japan and China during his January 15 to 23 foreign tour.

* * *

Ujjal Dosanjh: surpassing the immigrant dream

On the eve of his visit to India with the Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin, Ujjal Dosanjh, Health Minister of Canada, shares milestones from his remarkable journey with Ashish Dewan, in Vancouver. They delve into the genesis of Dosanjh's political roots in India and their moorings in Canada.

The journey of the 17-year-old boy who left his village in Dosanjh Kalaan, Punjab, for the United Kingdom and onwards to Canada, began in 1964. Today, teenage Ujjal Dev Singh has grown up to be the Honourable Ujjal Dosanjh, Federal Minister of Health, Canada. He has mapped this path for himself, with his ideological partner and wife, Raminder, by his side.

Like thousands of Indian men migrating to Canada's west coast since the turn of the 19th century, Mr. Dosanjh too went to Vancouver and joined the flourishing lumber industry there. A serious back injury as a sawmill worker and surgery made physical labour impossible.

Silver lining

This accident and the consequent dead end work situation turned out to have a silver lining. It accelerated his dreams of educating himself, starting with evening classes. Later, he went on to graduate from Simon Fraser University, and earn a law degree from the University of British Columbia. Not surprisingly, one of the first causes the young lawyer took up, in what would be a legal career devoted to human rights activism, was of the farm workers in his State — BC. Mostly migrants from rural Punjab, they were marginalised, unaware of their rights in Canada and so highly exploited.

While still at law school, along with a colleague who had worked with Caesar Chavez in the United States, he set up the Labour Advocacy and Research Association to familiarise the immigrant farm labour with both the concept of workers' rights as well as Canada's labour laws. This was the genesis of the Canadian Farm Workers Union, which greatly improved wages, work and health conditions. By 1995, the teenage boy who had ventured out of his village and country with no money, nor an ability to speak English, was appointed the Attorney-General of British Columbia.

Progressive values

Mr. Dosanjh is nationally recognised in Canada for his strong progressive values. Yet when freedom of speech crosses responsible boundaries, his is often the sole voice of moderation and reason. It was in 1984 that he stood in public opposition to Sikhs in Canada who were espousing the cause of Khalistan. The extremists hit back by inflicting severe blows on his head. Eighty stitches later, he was back to giving interviews right from his hospital bed. He reiterated his stand: India must not be divided once again on the basis of religion and hatred. Not surprising, he has been described as a person "without an iota of cowardice."

Presently, Mr. Dosanjh is the Federal Minister of Health, a Cabinet job considered the most challenging in Canada's recently-formed Liberal Party Government. On the one hand, the standards of the country's state-supported health care system urgently need to be raised. On the other, the inevitable pressure to privatise health care is being resisted.

The choice of Mr. Dosanjh, whose professional and political concerns have centred around the wellbeing of Western Canada's working class, reflects his Government's priorities.

This present position makes him the most prominent, if you like, powerful political leader of South Asian origin in North America.

Freedom fighters all

Clearly, Mr. Dosanjh's socialist liberal political roots are deeply embedded in India. From both sides, his was a family of freedom fighters.

The young boy did not grow up in Punjab on tales of Sikh valour and patriotism. Instead, he experienced these qualities — on the face of it — perhaps a bit too early, and a bit too up close. The seven-year-old who recently lost his mother, spent nights awake, wondering where his father and Nanaji's nightly ideological debates might end up. His father, Master Pritam Singh, was a Congress supporter, while his grandfather, Jarnail Mula Singh, a Communist. The years he spent in Shanghai as a security guard-cum-part time wrestler made a great impression on him. The boy's worries about the political maturity of these two men, his sole minders now, proved to be unnecessary. They could well draw the lines between political ideologies and pragmatic family issues such as how to balance school and farm work for the children — Ujjal and his brother. Come morning, all would be calm in the Dosanjh household again.

Grandfather the pioneer

Interestingly, Mr. Dosanjh's grandfather had chalked out a new route for himself that he would soon forsake, but his grandson would walk on some decades later. Nanaji was on his way from China to Victoria, Canada, where his brother worked.

He had decided to take the journey via India to visit Punjab and meet up with his family. But the stopover became the destination. Indians were struggling for their freedom and Nanaji could not drag himself away, even though he ended up spending a total of eight years in prison at different times. In the 30s, he became a member of India's Peasants and Workers Party. Later, he joined the Communist Party of India.

Since Mr. Dosanjh spent his early school years with his grandfather, he has vivid memories of the political giants, who, in those days of intense nation building, visited their home.

Among those who left lasting impressions were prominent Communist leaders such as Darshan Singh Sangha, whom a free India attracted back from academic life in Canada. Sangha moved to Canada in the 1930s or 40s.

He gave up his studies at the University of British Columbia to found the International Wood Workers Union of America. Soon after Independence, he decided his destiny lay back home. Back in Punjab, he was christened Darshan Singh Canadian. He became a member of the Legislative Assembly in Punjab. Unfortunately, in the 1980s, he was assassinated by extremists.

Peace demonstrations

Mr. Dosanjh carries these political influences of the time in his subconscious. As a child, he sang on stage at peace conferences and joined in peace demonstrations. Many of these were organised by the CPI. At a conference in Chabewal, he had the privilege of sitting on the lap of the great activist and orator, Dr. Saiffudin Kitchleu, while reciting a poem.

Mr. Dosanjh's father, a schoolteacher, had Gandhian ideals to live up to.

His was a memorable wedding in the 1940s, particularly for a Punjab village ridden with illiteracy, caste and gender biases.

He chose to be married without a baraat or dowry. Because the father of his bride to be was in jail once again, he went ahead to her village, helping with his own marriage arrangements.

On the wedding day, he rode the long dusty road to his sasural on his bicycle. Pheras done the newly-married couple returned, bride safely seated on the handlebars.

She was then enrolled at the village high school in her sasural, from where she completed class 8.

Mr. Dosanjh may well be right when he says if one searched through the history of the Punjab of those days, his mother might probably be the only married woman with children to be educated in her husband's village.

Such support to women in rural Punjab would be a memorable milestone even today.

No wonder Mr. Dosanjh has a glint in his eye as he recounts the story.

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