Diaspora: Ujjal Dosanjh; Hitting Big Time


	March 6, 2000

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UJJAL DOSANJH
Hitting Big Time

A clean image and a multicultural political philosophy takes the Punjabi boy from a dusty village in India to premiership in a Canadian province

By Arthur J. Pais with Ramesh Vinayak

India Today issue dt March 6, 2000 For the little boy perched atop the bullock cart trundling along the unpaved road, the one-hour ride to his grandfather's house was anything but tedious. Week after week, he listened in wonder to his grandfather dramatise the stories of how Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru forced the British out of India. "I owe a lot to those rides between my home and my grandfather's across the dusty roads," says Ujjal Dosanjh, the newly elected premier of British Columbia, Canada's third-most populous province. "Politics was a noble calling then. And to many of us, it still is," adds Dosanjh, the first Asian to become a premier in Canada.

Step by Step

1964: Arrives in England at 17

1968: Migrates to Canada and joins NDP

1973: marries feminist and social activist Raminder

1981: Contests elections, loses

1991: Elected MLA for Vancouver-Kingston. Becomes minister for multiculturalism.

1995: Becomes attorney general (AG)

1996: Reappointed AG; minister for human rights and immigration

Dosanjh's election as NDP leader took place at the party's convention last week in Vancouver following the resignation of premier Glen Clark due to a casino gambling scandal a few months ago. However, in about 18 months, Dosanjh has to lead his fractious, left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) into a general election. The soft-spoken Sikh from Punjab, who walks with a slight stoop due to an accident 32 years ago, was defeated twice in his early efforts to enter the provincial assembly. But once he became a lawmaker in 1991, there was no looking back. He became first the attorney general and then a minister. A strong believer in nationalism, Dosanjh always emphasised that the Indian community in Canada would prosper only if it made whole-hearted contribution to the society. "If an immigrant from a dusty village in Punjab could become the premier," he says, "anyone with determination and courage can succeed."

This courage nearly cost him his life in 1985 when a fundamentalist Sikh attacked him with a crowbar after Dosanjh had spoken out against Khalistan and violence. He required at least 80 stitches on his head. But the attack reinforced his convictions. "What I said then was most unpopular, but I felt we were going in the wrong direction and I had to speak out," he says. "I did not want to be silenced by fear." Today, he is the hero of moderate Sikhs. There were at least 300 Sikhs out of 1,318 delegates at the convention; Dosanjh won 769 votes while agriculture minister Corky Evans polled 549.

The success is yet another first for the Indian community in British Columbia, which already has to its credit the first MLA, Moe Sihota, and the first woman in the legislature, Judy Tyabji. Herb Dhaliwal has gone one step further and is the first Canadian Indian minister in the federal cabinet.

Dosanjh says his victory is the result of three decades of involvement in progressive politics. The passion for social justice and politics was inculcated in him by his father and grandfather. Soon after he migrated to England in 1964 at the age of 17, Dosanjh began to take an interest in workers' rights. Something he followed up in Canada. He worked in a timber mill to finance higher studies and then enrolled in a law school because he felt "law was an important tool for social change".

When he heard about farmers being exploited in British Columbia, Dosanjh got first-hand information by working on the farm disguised as a berry-picker. His involvement in trade-union activity began when he started the Farm Workers Legal Information Service which eventually became the Canadian Farm Workers Union, one of the more influential workers groups in the country. He maintained close links with the Indian community during this time, often playing the role of a peace maker in family disputes.

It was during his college days that Dosanjh met Raminder, a social activist whom he married in 1973. The two have three children. He confesses the couple learnt a lot from each other. "She did not know much about politics involving workers," he says. "And I didn't know about women's issues."

Dosanjh sees his success in politics as not only a milestone for the Indian community but Canadians in general. "It tells you how far our society in Canada has come," he says. The real test, of course, lies ahead when his NDP goes to the general election. But if the "boy from a dusty village in Punjab" can come this far, what's to stop him going further?

VILLAGE VOICE
Rising Son

When Ujjal Dosanjh took oath as the 34th premier of Canada's British Columbia province on a sunny February 23, cheers went up thousand of miles away -- in Dosanjh Kalan, a sleepy village in Punjab. Euphoric over its new-found glory after the media broke the news, the village erupted into collective celebration.

Not just in Dosanjh Kalan but the entire state, Dosanjh is the new symbol of Punjabi enterprise. The vernacular press is replete with statements felicitating Ujjal and the villagers have been queuing up at STD booths to make overseas calls to apna munda (our boy). "He has lived up to his name," says Daljit Singh, his school friend and a farmer. Ujjal means bright.

Bright Ujjal indeed was, as a student of the local Guru Har Rai Senior Secondary School in the '60s. "Ujjal was a shy but diligent and studious lad," reminisces Kartar Singh, a family friend. Dosanjh grew up in the typical rural settings dominated by the leftist movement, though his father was a staunch Congressman. His moorings as a liberal were so strong that even in the '80s when radical Sikh ideology swept the diaspora, Dosanjh was one of the few expatriates who remained steadfast against pro-Khalistani lobby.

Opportunity came Ujjal's way when one of his aunts sponsored his immigration first to England in 1964 and then to Canada. That was the beginning of an NRI success story -- not a rags-to-riches tale, but of a youth, barely in his teens, working in saw mills to support higher studies.

Residents of Dosanjh remember the NRI as a soft-spoken, amiable man who always kept his date with his birthplace. Though his entire extended family is now settled in Canada, an ancestral house and 20 acres of agricultural land have been retained in Dosanjh so that they keep in touch with their roots.

Even when he came to the village three years ago as a minister, Dosanjh "sat down among students like an ordinary man and interacted with them", recalls the school manager. The villagers are now making a beeline for a look at a moth-eaten, yellowing, black-and-white photograph of 1962, showing a gawky teenaged Dosanjh posing with members of his school hockey team.

Dosanjh's ascent as premier of British Columbia has inspired pride as well hope. Unlike other NRI-dominated villages of Doaba where the expatriates have contributed liberally to development projects, Dosanjh is yet to benefit from the clout and money of its rich expatriate sons. The locals hope Dosanjh's rise to power will usher in development for the village where potholed roads stand in stark contrast to the NRI-funded palatial houses and dish antennas. But that's for the future. As of now, the mood is to savour the heady limelight the village has been thrown into.

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