Historiography is routinely employed to support contemporary accounts
of racial inequality. Subjecting Khan's (1991) exploration of the hist
ory of East Indians' in Canada (1903-47) to critical analysis this art
icle argues that 'empire' is used as a narrative and symbolic device.
But the symbolic empire is a constrained analytic tool which can only
produce a circumscribed account of race and a limited form of race pol
itics. By substituting the symbolic empire with an empire invoked as a
n administrative device, registered in political discourses, the symbo
lic empire becomes two nationhoods-in-process. These two very differen
t nation-building processes, one Indian the other Canadian, are connec
ted. The Canadian nation was constructed as a white enterprise in a de
fensive action against the immigration of East Indians who were concur
rently awarded a second-class citizenship by Britain. This article sho
ws how the Canadian discourse on alien immigrants was a device used to
affirm its own (white) identity. It shows how the historical themes o
f exclusion and marginalization may be mobilized to develop a form of
race politics in the present.