NRI's in America - Immigration and lessons for India

Its a question of history. What goes around, comes around and they should know that there are no guarantees.

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Here is the story of a man called Bhagat Singh Thind. He was born in 1892 in colonial Punjab. In 1913 he went to the US for higher education and enlisted as a soldier for the US Army. In 1918 during the First World War. He may have been the first turbaned soldier in the US Army. His unit was called Washington Company No. 2, Development Battalion No. 1, 166th Depot Brigade. At that time in the US, South Asians faced immense racism and discrimination. You can read of him and see his pictures at saada.org.

Bhagat Singh Thind was a US citizen for precisely four days the first time he got citizenship after applying for it in 1918. Eleven months later he got it for a second time. However, US laws started denaturalizing Indian immigrants who had become citizens because they were "not white".Thind took his case to the US Supreme Court in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923). He argued that he was a high-caste Aryan blooded fellow and so this could be added to the classification under the Naturalization Act of 1906 under which only "free white persons" and "aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent" could become citizens.

The US Supreme Court basically called bullshit on his argument and government lawyers threw up the fact that he was a founding member of the Ghadar party. The court said that while Hindi speakers could be seen to have some European link, the problem was that they had intermarried with non-European races in South Asia and had become brown. Sadly, for Thind his skin color disqualified him from citizenship by a judge whose sole source for all the info on Punjab etc was an encyclopedia. This case enabled other previously granted citizenships to South Asians to be taken away. They might have cursed Thind a bit those days.

In California, those that were stripped of citizenship after getting it became aliens overnight. Once they became "aliens" they were automatically subject to the California Alien Land Law of 1913 under which they could not own agricultural land but only lease it for three years at a time. In 1924 Vaishno Das Bagai was stripped of his citizenship and forced to sell his house in San Francisco. Then when he wanted to go to India in 1928, he was refused a US passport to travel. He was told to apply for a British passport and he refused because he was an Indian nationalist and didn't want to be a colonial subject. Thind finally petitioned again in 1935 after the Nye-Lea Act was passed which allowed war veterans to become citizens. He got it. As India moved closer to independence in 1946, public support for Indians in America grew especially because of their participation in the war effort in Europe. It was also widely seen that the Thind decision was racially motivated. And it took a lot of steam-rolling of Congress. by politicians sticking up for racial equality to pass the Luce-Cellar Act in 1946 to reverse the Thind decision and allow 100 Indians and 100 Filipinos annually to immigrate to the US each year. Many of Indian-Americans moved to the US after that. Today Indian's are not only American citizens or visa holders, but also have overseas membership of India enabling to work and live in two countries on two continents because someone took the metaphorical bullets for you 100 years ago.

It was no longer possible to see Indians as second class humans in any country. The freedom struggle in India had infected the whole world. It was very important in pushing forward the global agenda for decolonization. America has been a land of Immigrants. Slowly, but gradually, they have started accepting all. What is better? Accepting or rejecting? Undoubtedly Abraham Lincoln was the greatest leader in the last 200 years, and with the American civil war killing about 2% of the entire population with other massive losses, the nation rose to super power. People feel that we by accenting partition, lost both territory, gained an enemy and also live the festering wound of secularism. Three things - First unlike a war then, a war today is going to be of a much more destructive magnitude may be entire human race would be wiped out; second - history is for us to learn lessons from no one has ever been able to go back and change the past, but accept things as they are and move forward; India is India and America is America - The timing, situation, and the needs were different. We had people like Gandhi who were deadly against partition, but as far as India was concerned, it was destined to happen. Wondering where were those who have been spreading this hate then? Why could they not have done something then, than dividing

It is easy to break things; strip of the rights - what is tough is building/giving one.

"If we do get to be a $5 Trillion economy, do you really think CAA or NRC is going to matter at that time? We will have so much of wealth as a country that we would be able to take in double the number of immigrants without even batting an eyelid. So what should be the focus?" Ravi Subramanian

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Vasundhara Sirnate
@vsirnate
Jan 8

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A glimpse of Indian History - Migration is an age old phenomenon and will last till there is life on this earth.

There were no restrictions, passports or visa until 20th Century. Are we growing broader or narrower?