Feb 19, 1923, A racist Supreme Court is a great danger to
all Americans, this was proven more than once but never more so than in the
ruling in the United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind.
In 1919, Bhagat Singh Thind filed a petition for
naturalization under the Naturalization Act of 1906, which allowed only
"free white persons" and "aliens of African nativity and persons
of African descent" to become United States citizens by naturalization.
While his petition was initially granted, almost immediately other
U.S. immigration officials began the work to cancel his citizenship. Their
basis for this cancellation was based on Thind’s political activities as a
founding member of the Ghadr Party, a violent Indian independence movement
headquartered in San Francisco. Based on this and stating he was not White;
immigration officials rescinded his citizenship in four days.
Bhagat Singh Thind immigrated to the U.S. in 1913 for
further college studies, he had volunteered and enlisted in the U.S. Army and
fought in World War One, Thind was discharged honorably with his character
designated as "excellent".
Thind received his citizenship for the second time in the
state of Oregon in November 1920 after the Bureau of Naturalization was
unsuccessful in its efforts to stall it in Oregon court. The case then reached
the Supreme Court, where a California attorney and fellow immigrant Sakharam
Ganesh Pandit, represented Thind.
Before the court Pandit argued that while Thind was not light-toned in complexion, Thind was racially Caucasian by the scientific classification
of the time, making him a white person under the precedent of Ozawa v. United
States and therefore eligible for naturalization. Pandit made his arguments quoting
anthropological texts that stated people in Punjab and other Northwestern
Indian states belonged to the "Aryan race." He cited scientific
authorities such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach as classifying Aryans as
belonging to the Caucasian race.
This argument fell on deaf ears even if it met the precedent
set in Ozawa v. United States just a few months before. When the court returned
with their decision on Feb 19 and it was unanimous against Thind.
The court stated, “What we now hold is that the words ‘free
white persons’ are words of common speech, to be interpreted in accordance with
the understanding of the common man, synonymous with the word ‘Caucasian’ only
as that word is popularly understood.”
The repercussions of the case were immediate, Bhagat Singh
Thind’s American citizenship was revoked by the Bureau of Naturalization. Not
only were new citizenships not granted, 65 South-Asian Americans who possessed their
citizenship before the Thind decision had their citizenship revoked between
1923 and 1927.
After the ruling, Ulysses Webb, Attorney General of
California, declared, “the menacing spread of Hindus holding our land will
cease,” and using the California Alien Land Law, officials began taking homes
and property. The Supreme Court upended, and in some cases cut short, the lives
of ordinary people who had long considered the United States a home where they
could safely lead their lives. Vaishno Bagai an immigrant art dealer who had his citizenship
rescinded. He committed suicide in 1928 inhaling gas, he sent his
suicide letter to the San Francisco Examiner.
“I came to America thinking, dreaming, and hoping
to make this land my home. Sold my properties and brought more than twenty-five
thousand dollars (gold_ to this country, established myself and tried my very
best to give my children the best American education. But they now come to me
and say, I am no longer an American citizen. They will not permit me to buy my
home and lo, they even shall not issue me a passport to go back to India. Now
what am I? What have I made of myself and my children? We cannot exercise our
rights, we cannot leave this country. Humility and insults, who is responsible
for all this? Myself and American government.”
After the U.S. v. Thind decision, the South-Asian American
community dwindled in the United States, and the population was reduced to half its previous
number by 1940.
Sources:
https://www.saada.org/item/20130513-2748
https://aaregistry.org/story/united-states-v-bhagat-singh-thind-ruled/
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