Kids Corner

Image below, 2nd from bottom: America's Shame. US troops herding Japanese-Americans onto a train to be shipped off to an internment camp during World War II. Their homes, businesses and properties were confiscated without recompense.

Columnists

The Boys of Boparai:
The Diaspora Diaries # 4

SARBPREET SINGH

 

 

 

"The Diaspora Diaries" is a series of articles by Sarbpreet Singh as he continues to collect oral histories and stories for ‘Lions In The West’, a work of non-fiction, that documents the 129-year history of the Sikhs in America.



Tuesday, July 18, 1928.

A wet day has dawned in San Angel, Mexico City, after days of persistent rain. Elections for the presidency of Mexico have been held a little over two weeks ago.

The sole candidate is former President and warlord, Álvaro Obregón Salido, who has become eligible to serve as President again, after the repeal of term limits by Mexico’s Congress.

The President elect and his entourage are off to lunch at the La Bombilla restaurant in San Angel. Obregón arrives at La Bombilla around 1 pm in a Cadillac, dressed in a dark grey suit. An orchestra is playing and as the meal progresses, a young man, nattily dressed in a brown suit with a red tie is seen to be sketching a portrait of the President elect, arousing his curiosity.

His name is Jose De Leon Toral and as he is summoned to the leader to show him his sketch, he pulls out a gun and fires six shots at the president elect, killing him.

Pandemonium ensues as political leaders, hangers-on and body guards swarm the gunman and capture him. Despite death threats received in the days prior to the luncheon, Obregón has brought only three bodyguards with him, all of whom have failed to protect him.

One of the bodyguards is a man called Manuelo, who drops from sight in the confusion following the assassination.

It turns out that Manuelo isn’t Manuelo at all. He speaks flawless Spanish, loves Mexican music and has married a Mexican woman, but his name is really Arjan Singh and he hails from the village of Boparai, close to Jalandhar in the Punjab.

Arjan Singh is more commonly known as ‘pulsiya’ among his Punjabi compadres, having served as a policeman in British India.

Four years earlier, five young men from Boparai decided to leave their village and go out into the world to seek their fortune. What prompted their departure is not clearly known, but most likely it was the quest for greater opportunity and a desire to build more prosperous lives than they possibly could in their Punjabi village or India.

Arjan Singh ‘Pulsiya’ was one of them. Also in the group were Lal Singh Rai and Chanchal Singh Rai, who were close friends and would go on to have many adventures together and remain friends for the rest of their lives.

The young men left Punjab to sail to Hong Kong, where one of them, whose name has been forgotten, decided to stay. The rest of them sailed onwards to the Fiji Islands, where Chanan Singh, the fifth member of their party, decided to make a home. The remaining three chose to press on and went to New Zealand, from where they managed to find a ship that would bring them to Panama.

From Panama, the three young men started walking northwards to Mexico. On the way, Lal Singh contracted malaria and got very ill. His concern, however, was for his companions who had to slow down to tend to him and he exhorted them to leave him behind. Chanchal Singh refused and literally carried his sick friend on his back as they trudged northwards.

After a long, hard trek, the lads reached Las Mochis, on the west coast of Mexico.

Las Mochis was founded in 1893 by a group of American Utopian Socialists. In the early 1900s it became a major sugarcane producer with its own sugar mill and was home to the United Sugar Company.

It is not known what attracted the young men to Las Mochis, but they decided to start farming there, building an irrigation system and making improvements to the land they were able to acquire, possibly lease, and planting beans. Farming was in their blood; they were hard workers and the land was fertile.

They raised a crop but days before the harvest, they were struck by misfortune in the form of Federales, the Mexican Federal Police, who had perhaps been tipped off about these ‘Hindoos’ who were farming the land.

As British subjects, the authorities decided that the best course of action was to deport the young men to the nearest British colony, then known as British Honduras, now the nation of Belize. The lads, of course, had no intention of living under British rule and the meager opportunities it afforded them. So, sure enough, they escaped, traveling northwards again, hiding out by day and trekking at night, facing every imaginable hardship on the way.

Arjan Singh decided to stay on in Mexico, but Lal Singh and Chanchal Singh had decided that they would press on to America and they kept walking. As they crossed the Sonoran Desert they found themselves without any water at point, desperate and near death.

Deliverance came in the form of an abandoned car they found. The radiator still had some water in it, which they gratefully drank.

The young men crossed the Sonoran Desert and came to Mexicali, close to the California border and sought refuge in the home of Sucha Singh Gill, who owned a ranch there.

Sucha Singh was part of a community of Punjabis who farmed 15,000 acres in Mexicali. The area they lived in came to be known as ‘Colonia Hindu’.

After recuperating here, the young men did what enterprising border crossers do even today, a hundred years later; they hired a ‘coyote’ (an immigrant smuggler) to help them cross into the US. Without further incident the coyote help them cross the border and brought them to Fresno, where Sher Singh, Chanchal Singh’s brother-in-law, lived.

Much to his chagrin, the young men wouldn’t pay him but instead insisted on plying him with one drink after another until Sher Singh returned home, after which he was duly paid. What he never learned was that the young men were completely broke!

*   *   *   *   *

I sit across the table at the Curry Leaf restaurant in Yuba City and chuckle as David Rai, the late Lal Singh’s son shares this colorful tale with me.

David, in his early sixties is a retired farmer. He is an affable man and a great storyteller. By him sits Gurdev Singh Thiara, one of the most successful Sikh farmers in Yuba City. He reminisces as well. Fondly. About his own early days as a young farmer in Yuba City in the early 1960s.

By then, of course, Lal Singh and Chanchal Singh had established large landholdings and were among the leading farmers in Yuba City, ever ready to help new arrivals and offer them support and advice.

After arriving in Fresno, Lal Singh and Chanchal Singh got to work as laborers and farm-hands. Working in cherry and apricot orchards in places like Pacheco Pass and Dos Palos, Chanchal Singh worked his way up to become a foreman in Dos Palos, where they lived for several years. By the mid-thirties, the two friends made their way to Yuba City where they decided to settle. There they bought their first 20-acre property for six thousand dollars as partners and went on to establish Rai Brothers Farms, which developed into one of the most successful farming enterprises owned by Sikhs in Yuba City at that time.

The upswing in the fortunes of the boys from Boparai coincided with a shameful chapter in American history. David Rai recounts that ‘Bogue Road Camp’, which was the first property that the Rais bought, was purchased in the mid-1940s in the aftermath of World War II, from a Japanese American family, who surely must have suffered discrimination and most likely internment after Executive Order 9066 was issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942 which allowed military commanders to designate exclusion zones, from which ‘any and all people’ may be excluded, clearing the way for Americans of Japanese origin to be uprooted from their homes and be sent to internment camps.

Decades later, when the second gurdwara in Yuba City was to be built, Chanchal Singh donated 10 acres from this property to the new gurdwara. The Guru Nanak Gurdwara of Yuba City stands on this property today.

The story of the Rais will be continued as there is much more to recount. For now, I will just share this.

Years passed. Manuelo, aka Arjan Singh ‘Pulsiya’ decided to leave Mexico and made his way up to Yuba City, where he was welcomed by his erstwhile comrade, Chanchal Singh. He lived in Chanchal Singh’s home for several years.

Gurdev Singh Thiara tells me that while all the other Punjabi men of Yuba City liked to listen to Punjabi and Indian music, all that Arjan Singh listened to until the end of his days, was Mexican music.


October 21, 2013

 

Conversation about this article

1: Kaala (Punjab), October 23, 2013, 11:02 AM.

This is the true spirit of Sikhs, adventurous and enterprising. Not being afraid to come out of the cocoons of misery, face adversity and persevere towards a better future. A salute to these pioneers.

2: Nav Kaur (Australia), October 27, 2013, 7:26 AM.

Interesting read! Thanks for sharing the remarkeable stories of these early settlers.

3: Kuldip Singh Rai (Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada), November 05, 2014, 12:00 AM.

This is one of the most interesting stories I have read. Punjabis are truly an adventurous bunch.

Comment on "The Boys of Boparai:
The Diaspora Diaries # 4"









To help us distinguish between comments submitted by individuals and those automatically entered by software robots, please complete the following.

Please note: your email address will not be shown on the site, this is for contact and follow-up purposes only. All information will be handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Sikhchic reserves the right to edit or remove content at any time.