1923 Supreme Court Case: Scotus ruled Bhagat Singh Thind too Brown to be White

Takeaways

In the landmark 1923 United States Supreme Court case “United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind,” the justices ruled that Thind, an Indian immigrant and World War I veteran, was ineligible for naturalization as an American citizen.
Thind argued that he was Caucasian, but the Supreme Court established a precedent that “Whiteness” as a criterion for citizenship based on the “common understanding” of the average person.
This Supreme Court decision effectively barred South Asians from obtaining American citizenship and led to the denaturalization of many individuals who had already become citizens, including Vaishno Das Bagai.

Details

In the Sikh community, Bhagat Singh Thind was born on October 3, 1892, in Amritsar, Punjab, British India.

Thinh was educated in philosophy and metaphysics at Khalsa College, a Sikh religious university, in Amritsar. Inspired by the American works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau, he desired to expand his spiritual education in U.S.

On July 4, 1913, Thind arrived at Port of Seattle aboard SS Minnesota, an ocean liner, from Port of Manila, Philippines territory. He worked, as a mill worker, in the lumber mills across Oregon in the Pacific Northwest. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley.

Sikhs faced systematic discrimination in the U.S., especially in the American West, where they suffered anti-Asian sentiment. White workers perceived them as labor competition. They attacked and expelled Sikhs from towns. In 1913, the California Alien Land Law prohibited “aliens ineligible for citizenship” from owning or leasing agricultural land. In 1917, the federal Immigration Act (“Barred Zone Act”) banned immigration from a large portion of Asia, ended the immigration of Sikhs.

Thind was active with the Ghadar Party, revolutionary movement (1913), among Indian immigrants in the United States and Canada. They sought to liberate India from British rule through armed rebellion. Between 1916 and 1917, Dr. Thind delivered speeches all over Oregon advocating India’s independence. He was elevated to General Secretary for the Gadar party in Oregon. The British government spied on Thind.

Thind enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War I, on July 22, 1918. He was the first turbaned Sikh to serve at Camp Lewis in Washington. He was promoted to the rank of Acting Sergeant. He was honorably discharged on December 16, 1918.

American Citizenship Pursuit

Thind applied for citizenship in Washington while serving the U.S Army. The United States District of Washington granted American citizenship December 9, 1918.

The Bureau of Naturalization objected because he was not considered a “free white person” under the Naturalization Act of 1790. On December 13, 1919, the District Court reversed its decision. The Bureau of Naturalization revoked Thind’s citizenship.

On May 6, 1919, Thind petitioned for citizenship at the United District Court of Oregon, in Portland. November of 1920, the District Court of Oregon granted U.S. citizenship to Thind.

The Bureau of Naturalization appealed the decision which resulted in sending the case to the Supreme Court.

In “United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind,” on February 19, 1923, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against him. Thind contended that he was scientifically “Caucasian,” as a high-caste Indian. His lawyers argued “Caucasian” as “Aryan” descent, anthropological theories, and racial assimilation. In Justice George Sutherland wrote that Thind was not “White” in the understanding of the “common man.” With this subjective racial definition, the Supreme Court denied Thind’s citizenship.

The Supreme Court ruling classified Indian immigrants as “aliens ineligible for citizenship.” It led to the denaturalization of other South Asian Americans.

The United States Congress enacted the 1935 Nye-Lea Act, (Alien Veteran Naturalization Act), The federal law granted U.S. citizenship World War I veterans who had been previously deemed ineligible for American citizenship due to discriminatory racial restrictions. Thind filed his petition in New York on September 27, 1935. He was finally granted citizenship by the U.S. District Court in New York on March 2, 1936.

you must never be limited by external authority, whether it be vested in a church, man, or book. It is your right to question, challenge, and investigate. – Dr. Bhagat singh thind

Career

Thind lectured on philosophy, spirituality, and Sikhism, across the U.S. He promoted the “Inner Life” and universal teachings rather than dogmatic religion. As author, he published 15 books and 3 books, posthumously. “The Radiant Road to Reality: Tested Science of Religion” is widely considered the most notable book

Thind earned a doctorate from University of California, Berkeley as a Doctor of Divinity and Metaphysics.

Thind continued to advocate the civil rights for Indian Americans, after his American citizenship struggles.

In March 16, 1940, in Toledo, Ohio, he married Vivian Van Davies. They had two children: a son, David Bhagat Thind, and a daughter, Rosalind Thind Stubenberg.

Dr. Bhagat Singh Thind died on September 15, 1967, at the age of 75, in Los Angeles.

The Dr. Bhagat Singh Thind Spiritual Science Foundation, based in Los Angeles, preserves and promotes his spiritual teachings and philosophy. His philosophy of spiritual science blended Sikh principles, transcendentalist ideas, and metaphysical concepts with an emphasis on inner exploration.

No scientific law can ever compare with the discovery of the Living Word of Power, which unifies man’s whole being and makes him one in nature and character with his indwelling God. – DR. BHAGAT SINGH THIND

Contextual Interview

Johanna Ogden’s book, “Punjabi Rebels of the Columbia River,” explores the often-overlooked history of Indian immigrants in early 1900s Oregon and their contributions to the global struggle for Indian independence. The book focuses on two main narratives: the founding of the Ghadar Party by Punjabi laborers in Astoria, Oregon, and the U.S. Supreme Court case “United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind,” which denied American citizenship to Thind.

Ogden earned a master’s degree in history from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 2010. She is an independent historian and author, based in Portland, Oregon. She spoke to AsAmNews

Why did Thind live and work in the Pacific Northwest?

Like many Punjabis – primarily Sikh men, but also Muslims and Hindus including from other regions of India – who lived in the Pacific Northwest West (PNW), Bhagat Singh Thind migrated to escape British colonial deprivations and to secure work to help his family. To help defuse tensions in India after a major revolt, British Queen Victoria, aka the Empress of India, pledged that Indians were free to work and travel across the empire.

Around 1900, the first migrants landed in British Columbia (B.C.), then a British Crown colony. For various reasons – better employment and repression in B.C. – men moved south into the United States, while others sailed directly from India into U.S. ports like San Francisco. In 1913, Thind landed in Seattle and quickly traveled on to Astoria, Oregon.

What kind of racial discrimination did the Punjabi Sikhs endure?

The “Hindu Menace,” or the “Tide of Turbans,” were all-too-common headlines in this era. This so-called “menace” referred to perhaps 8,000 men living and working from B.C. to the California-Mexico border from roughly 1905-1915. (For context, millions from Europe immigrated during these times.) In the PNW, Indians labored primarily in lumber; in California primarily in agriculture. They were not the lowest paid workers, particularly in Oregon, and many were known as supporters of labor struggles and organizations, especially the Industrial Workers for the World (IWW) which, unlike most unions, was open to all ethnicities.

In 1907 a wave of White violence across the west targeted Indian and Asian laborers, with two of the largest outbreaks in Bellingham, Washinton, and Vancouver, B.C. Punjabis and others were beaten, ejected from jobs, or driven from towns.

Oregon had no communal violence, but a small band of tree cutters murdered Harnam Singh in a mill camp in Boring, Oregon. Expressive of western Oregon officials’ opposition to ethnic labor violence, Harnam Singh’s murder was successfully tried, the only anti-Indian hate crime prosecuted in 1907. Discontent and radicalism grew amongst Indians in response to these many attacks, the governments’ action and inaction in their wake, and invigorated by Indian radicals.

Why did the Astoria, Oregon, became the epicenter of Ghadar in America?

Beginning with Chinese immigrants, key western Oregon leaders developed a no-communal-violence policy to ensure the state’s workforce. This was consequential for Indians, including fostering the formation of an Oregon Indian community after 1907.

Two of the largest Indian communities in Oregon – about 100-150 each – were in Astoria and St. Johns. Astoria, a relatively cosmopolitan city with strong radical currents, had no history of communal ethnic violence against the Chinese, Indians or others. By contrast, St. Johns was the site of an “anti-Hindu” riot in 1910. The St. Johns rioters were prosecuted and in the wake of the trials, Indians began to organize for a radical Indian independence party. Organizers fanned out to Indians along the Columbia River calling men to Ghadar’s founding convention in the relatively safer town of Astoria. In 1913, Indians from across the American West gathered in the five-story Astoria Finnish Socialist Hall.

Was Thind an activist for Ghadar?

Bhagat Singh Thind arrived in Astoria shortly after Ghadar’s founding, but supported its work and lived amongst its many activists. After Ghadar’s founding, organizers established an office in San Francisco, launched a newspaper and spread their anti-colonial message to Indians across the globe.
In 1914, England and Germany declared war and Ghadar took this as their opportunity. With England struggling to defeat a rival power, they would need the support of Indian troops and a politically compliant subcontinent. Ghadar called on recruits to return to India and attempt a mutiny – the very meaning of “ghadar” – and thousands heeded the call. Thind was one the few who remained in Oregon, but continued to promote Ghadar, and remained a champion of Indian independence throughout his life.

What were Thind’s highlights and lessons in the Pacific Northwest?

British colonial authorities viciously pursued Ghadar activists in India, meting out imprisonment, banishment and death. With high-level U.S. government cooperation and coordination, the British pursued the tendrils of the insurgency back to North America. In 1918 they largely paid for, and supplied spies, evidence and “experts” for a San Francisco trial of Ghadar activists. In was then the most expensive trial in U.S. history. This British campaign dovetailed with U.S. authorities’ draconian wartime domestic clampdown against immigrants, radicals and their supporters. While India was undoubtedly more dangerous for Indians than the U.S., Thind and others who did not return to India faced a treacherous political landscape.

How was Thind pursuing his American Dream in education and citizenship?

Conducting an unpopular war, the U.S. authorities attempted to entice immigrant military enlistment for World War I (WWI) with the promise of a favored and fast-tracked citizenship pipeline. Men who refused to register for the draft or to enlist were suspect and surveilled. With the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917/18, U.S. officials usurped broad interpretative and punitive powers to criminalize any form of speech criticizing the war, government, or military. Immigrant and alternative newspapers were silenced; thousands were rounded up, jailed, deported, or victimized by vigilantes fueled by a frenzied patriotism and “100% Americanism” with all of its ugly racial implications. In this domestic war, Indian-Americans were one measure of the convergence of anti-Asian racism and antiradicalism.

Thind came from a military family and attempted to join the U.S. Signal Corp shortly after his 1913 arrival. In 1918, with most of the Oregon community gone and British and U.S. suppression in full swing, Thind enlisted, as did perhaps two dozen other Indians. Stationed at Fort Lewis for 6 months, Thind petitioned for citizenship and won. Days later the presiding judge rescinded his order based on a federal immigration officer’s argument that Thind failed to prove his “raciality,” i.e., his Whiteness. With the War’s end, civilian Thind returned to Oregon and filed again. In 1920 Thind prevailed again.

What is your opinion about the 1923 United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind Supreme Court case?

But again the federal government intervened. Oregon U.S. Attorney Lester Humphreys immediately appealed Thind’s Oregon citizenship award and triggered the legal process culminating in SCOTUS denying all Indians citizenship. Until Thind, cases across the country had been split as to whether or not Indians qualified as “White,” America’s explicit legal criteria since 1790. The federal government long opposed Indian citizenship had urged its attorneys to find a case for a definitive, national ruling. Attorney Humphreys delivered.

On February 19, 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Indians could not be American citizens because they were not-White. “Whiteness” employs difference in the service of power and United States v Bhagat Singh Thind was followed by a firehose of exclusionist measures that reigned for decades. Congress revoked the citizenship of dozens of Indian-Americans, jeopardizing marriages, land and business ownership, and transforming them into stateless people.

Federal legislators further weaponized Thind with the Immigration Act of 1924, otherwise known as the Asian Exclusion Act. The Act’s stated purpose was “preserv[ing] the idea of American homogeneity,” and towards that end prevented those barred from naturalization – Indians, Arabs and Asians – from even setting foot on American soil. For decades, millions from across the world had labored to build the infrastructure and industrial capacity of the country. In repayment, the government’s immigration and naturalization double-header sealed the country’s demographic and political borders. It was a reassertion of America’s foundational touchstone as “White” in both composition and civic power, and a haunting parallel to present times.

Narrative Poem

In Pursuit

Bhagat Singh Thind served in the American army, a soldier of the Great War.
But what did his uniform mean for his new homeland?
He used the law, making a scientific plea,
To prove himself “White,” but the Supreme Court disagreed.

The “common man” did not see him that way;
His American citizenship was revoked that day.
Yet with conviction, he fought a third time,
Finally becoming an American citizen.

Close

Dr. Bhagat Singh Thind, a Punjabi Sikh, was the Indian American pioneer who challenged racist citizenship laws, based on Whiteness. His 1923 Supreme Court case “United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind” highlighted the unfair racial barriers by its manipulation of the “White” definition to deny American citizenship to non-White immigrants. Thind’s landmark case was a crucial milestone for understanding race, identity, and citizenship in America. He blazed the American citizenship trail for future South Asian immigrants.