Diljit Dosanjh on Jimmy Fallon: A History Lesson in Canada’s Mistreatment of Immigrants

Punjabi music icon Diljit Dosanjh—who has achieved global stardom through a new album, sold-out stadiums, and an inimitable bhangra style—appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night The Tonight Show for a second time last week. Dosanjh was there to promote his latest album, Aura, and his North American tour, which opened with a show in Vancouver on April 23. Midway through the interview, though, he turned to something quite different: the story of the Komagata Maru, whose mostly Punjabi passengers were denied entry to Canada in 1914.

For descendants and scholars, the exchange with Fallon was about more than just celebrity. It placed a painful chapter of Canadian immigration history—a story of rejection and the search for belonging that’s all too familiar to the larger Indian and South Asian diaspora—before a mainstream global audience.

Dosanjh was referring to the voyage of the Komagata Maru, a Japanese steamship also remembered in the Punjabi community as the Guru Nanak Jahaz. The ship arrived in Vancouver in May 1914, carrying 376 passengers from British India, most of them Punjabi Sikhs seeking entry to Canada at a time when immigration rules were designed to keep Asians out. After nearly two months in Burrard Inlet, most passengers were forced to turn around.

For Raj Singh Toor, vice president and spokesperson for the Descendants of the Komagata Maru Society, Dosanjh’s mention was an act of recognition. “When he says something, thousands, millions, of people listen,” Toor says. “I want to thank him for recognizing Komagata Maru passengers in his show.”

Toor has spent years pushing governments and cities to formally acknowledge the incident, including apologies, commemorative signs, and renamed public spaces. Canada formally apologized in the House of Commons in 2016, more than a century after the incident. But Toor says the larger goal is education, especially for younger Canadians who may not know how hard earlier generations fought to open doors.

“We can’t undo the past,” Toor says, “but we can move forward”—by teaching people what happened.

That history is personal for Toor. His grandfather, Baba Puran Singh Janetpura, was one of the ship’s passengers—on his way to Canada in search of a better life, only to be held offshore and denied entry. Toor says the passengers depended on the local South Asian community for food, water, and medicine while they waited. For him, the episode is not only about Canada’s refusal but about what earlier migrants made possible for later generations. Toor’s grandfather refused to return to Canada because of the painful memories but believed those passengers helped open a path.

“Because of their sacrifice, today the South Asian community is living very peacefully, very happily here in Canada,” Toor says.

Charlie Wall-Andrews, a Toronto Metropolitan University professor who has developed a course on Dosanjh’s cultural impact, says the moment on Fallon’s show stood out because it was historic: a Punjabi artist being celebrated on a major American stage while honouring ancestors who were once rejected by the West.

Wall-Andrews says that by using the name Guru Nanak Jahaz, Dosanjh “didn’t just mention a tragedy; he reclaimed a piece of Sikh history and turned a late-night entertainment segment into a powerful statement on diaspora resilience.”

The exchange also gave Wall-Andrews’s work an unexpected spotlight. Fallon noted that a Toronto university is teaching a course on Dosanjh. The singer laughed it off, saying he didn’t know what the course would teach as he hadn’t gone to college or university himself, describing himself as “tenth pass”—someone who has studied only up to grade ten.

• Canada Held the Door Open for International Students. Then Slammed It in Their Face
• Quebec Promised Francophone Immigrants a Fast Track to Permanent Residency—Then Changed Its Mind
• Canada Is Ramping Up Deportations, with 400 a Week

Dosanjh’s second appearance on The Tonight Show in two years also suggests Punjabi music is no longer being treated as a one-off, Wall-Andrews says, but as a sustained global force with a growing audience. (Dosanjh’s first appearance was in June 2024, when he was introduced as one of the biggest Punjabi artists in the world, and he performed “G.O.A.T.” and “Born to Shine.”)

And the interview wasn’t just a history lesson. Moments later, Dosanjh taught Fallon a bhangra move—the clip going viral on social media, with millions of views.

Over the years, the Indian and South Asian diaspora has become a major part of Canada’s social and cultural fabric. According to Global Affairs Canada, more than 1.8 million Canadians are of Indian origin, while Statistics Canada classified South Asians as the country’s largest racialized group in the 2021 census, at nearly 2.6 million and making up 7.1 percent of Canada’s population.

The timing of Dosanjh’s comments was also significant. Vancouver marks May 23 as Guru Nanak Jahaz (Komagata Maru) Remembrance Day, after the city council formally apologized in 2021 for the discrimination. The city says it is refurbishing its memorial with more durable materials and updated, translated historical content.

Toor wants governments, schools, and universities to do more to teach Canadians about the episode for the benefit of future generations.

“If they know the history, the history will not repeat again,” he says.

Originally published as “Diljit Dosanjh rekindles a century of uneven Punjabi Canadian history” by New Canadian Media. Reprinted here with permission.