Struggle of Indians
for US Citizenship
Los Angeles, June, 2006
Inder Singh
A brief history of immigration to the United States reveals prejudice,
hostility and blatant discrimination against the people of Indian
origin. The Luce-Celler Bill signed by President Truman on July
3, 1946, gave citizenship rights to the Indian immigrants in the
US. President Roosevelt also had supported the bill and wanted
an end to “statutory discrimination against Indians”
but he died before the bill could be enacted into law.
From the declaration of independence in 1776 to 1882, the US
Government had open borders policy towards immigration or emigration.
The U.S. constitution, adopted in 1789, did not have any provision
nor were any laws enacted for almost 80 years, regulating immigration
to the United States. The US nationals were of European ancestry,
so there probably was no need for laws to regulate immigration
from Europe. However, when the Asians started arriving, the US
passed Naturalization Act of 1870 that denied Asians the right
to become naturalized citizens. That new law was the first piece
of discriminatory legislation against the people of Asia passed
in the US Congress.
The Europeans came to America through Ellis Island, while Asians
landed on the west coast where there was no Statue of Liberty
to welcome them. The employers, however, welcomed cheap Asian
labor for their lumber mills, railroad construction and farms.
The Chinese were the first among the Asians to come in search
of economic opportunities. The unskilled white labor and their
unions vehemently opposed the import of cheap Asian labor, and
in 1882 America passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first law
in US history to restrict immigration. The labor unions and conservative
politicians were not completely satisfied, so they continued to
agitate against employment of “cheap” Asian workers.
During the next few years, many laws were passed to restrict employment
opportunities for Asians or to bar their immigration to the United
States.
An Indian national was first seen in the United States in 1790
in Salem, Massachusetts (Chandrasekhar, “From India to America”).
He most likely had accompanied a British sea captain who plied
a merchant ship. Sixty-one years later, in 1851, six Indians participated
in the July 4th Independence Day parade in Salem. A Punjabi Parsi
prince Conjee Rustumjee Cohoujee Bey participated in the American
Civil War (1861-65) and then worked for 44 years in the US Navy
in San Francisco (India West July 1, 2005). Some traders and religious
leaders also came to America during the nineteenth century. Swami
Vivekanand attended the World Congress of Religions in 1893 and
made a lasting impact. The founding of Vedanta Societies in America
is attributed to the influence of Vivekananda. Indian poet Rabindranath
Tagore visited the US four times. It was during his visit that
he received the news about his winning the 1913 Noble Prize in
literature. He even met President Hoover in the White House in
1930 (Pradhan: India in the United States). Tagore, however, experienced
racial prejudice during his visit to Los Angeles.
The first trickle of Indians in search of economic opportunities
came to California at the end of the nineteenth century. On April
5, 1899, four Punjabis who had worked in the British Royal Artillery
in Hong Kong, landed in San Francisco and were allowed to stay
in the US by the Immigration Service (UC Berkley website). The
grant of permission gave the signal to others to follow those
four pioneers.
In 1897, Queen Victoria of England, the then Empress of India,
included a Sikh regiment from the Indian Army for her diamond
jubilee celebration in London. On their return journey to India,
the Sikh soldiers traveled via Canada. They were fascinated with
the potential for farming opportunities in this far-away land
and dreamt of returning after retirement from the army. The famine
of 1899-1900 devastated the state of Punjab. Drought conditions
of 1905-07 made living a virtual hell forcing people to think
of leaving their homeland. Canada and the United States of America,
though half a world apart, were strong and attractive magnets
for Punjabis to emigrate.
India and Canada were both British dominions, so there was no
need for visa to travel to Canada. Thus Canada became the destination
of Punjabi immigrants who quickly found jobs in lumber mills.
The new immigrants were hard working and accepted lower wages,
so some Canadian companies publicized the economic and job opportunities
to entice more cheap labor from India. During the first few years,
about 2000 immigrants, mostly Punjabi farmers and laborers, were
permitted to come annually. As the number of immigrants increased,
the locals felt threatened by labor competition from the hardy,
low paid and adventurous Punjabis. Fear of labor competition led
to racial antagonism and demands for exclusionary laws from Asian
workers. In 1909, severe immigration restrictions virtually ended
legal Indian immigration to Canada.
By 1907, Indian immigrants saw the doors closing on them in Canada
while America had abundance of jobs in the lumber industry and
building of railroads. There was plenty of land to farm throughout
the Sacramento, San Joaquin and Imperial valleys of California.
Also, there were no restrictions in crossing the border between
Canada and the United States, so Indians started coming to the
US. Those Indians, who had planned to come to Canada, also decided
to emigrate to the US.
Indians admitted legally to the US during the first six years
of the 20th century numbered about 850, and from 1907 to 1911,
5400 more immigrants were allowed. However, the total number of
Indians in the country was much larger as many had come directly
from Canada. Most of these early immigrants were Punjabi veterans
or peasants who had come either directly from India or from other
countries, such as Hong Kong.
The United States had also welcomed qualified Indian students
seeking admission to American universities. However, upon graduation,
they were not able to get jobs commensurate with their qualifications.
The discriminatory practices were against the very ideals of liberty
and freedom they had experienced during their university days.
The Indian students attributed the racial prejudice and discrimination
to their being nationals of a subjugated country.
Indians in the United States and Canada were called “East
Indians” to avoid confusion with native Americans, who were
known as “American Indians”. But they were more commonly
called “Hindoos”, (“Hindus”) irrespective
of their faith. The majority of the arrivals from India were Sikhs
who preserved their religious beliefs and practices by keeping
beard, long hair on their head and wore turban. They were easily
distinguishable from the rest of the immigrants, but unfortunately,
they were called “Rag heads”, a derogatory term used
for the Indians at that time. Their very presence in America provoked
hostility from the Asiatic Exclusion League which carried propaganda
against the “Hindu invasion of America” and persuaded
the media to write against “The Tide of Turbans.”
Indians had come here chasing their dream in a land of opportunities
but they found the chase very challenging. They were needy workers,
accepted low wages, poor working conditions and many times traveled
from place to place in search of work. They did not want to turn
away from opportunities despite the many harsh difficulties they
had experienced. The employers preferred the Indians to the whites
but the unions despised them. As the number of Indian workers
increased within a span of few years, they started encountering
rampant prejudice and widespread hostility. In 1907, they became
the victims of racial riots perpetrated against them. A mob of
about 500 men assaulted boarding houses and mills, forcefully
expelling Hindus from Bellingham, then a milling town in the state
of Washington. The chief objective of the racial attack was to
“scare them so badly that they will not crowd white labor
out of the mills.” The town had a small police force which
was overpowered by the white mob. The Indians had come in search
of a chance for a better life for themselves and their families
but the nightmarish incident forced about 300 Indians employed
in various mills to leave the town in fear.
The Bellingham race riots had devastating impact on the Indian
community in the Pacific Coast. The Asiatic Exclusion League and
other similar groups, however, became emboldened and wanted to
prevent further immigration from India and force those already
in the country to go back. Anti-Indian immigration groups also
succeeded in getting the Alien Land Law passed in 1913, a new
law that prevented “aliens ineligible for citizenship"
to own property in California. The Indians responded by transferring,
buying or leasing land or property in the name of American friends
who sometimes deprived them of their harvest. A few Indians married
Mexican women who were US citizens, and leased property in the
wife’s name. But some landowners hesitated to lease land
to an Indian’s wife for fear of violating the Alien Land
Act. In response to pressure, the US passed the Cable Act of 1922
that stipulated that if an American woman married an alien ineligible
for citizenship, she would lose her own citizenship. Right of
citizenship would nullify the effect of the California Alien Land
Law but it was an elusive dream for Indians.
The continuing pressure of exclusionary forces and various American
labor organizations against the importation of labor from Asian
countries resulted in the imposition of further restrictions.
In 1917, a very restrictive and discriminatory Immigration Act
was passed over the veto of President Woodrow Wilson. The new
law virtually barred all Asians from entering the US legally.
It created “Pacific Barred Zone”, which included many
Asian countries, natives of which were declared inadmissible to
the United States. It also imposed English literacy restrictions,
allowing only those to immigrate who could read and write English.
After the passage of the law, some Indians left the US in disgust
while the number of new arrivals from India dwindled drastically.
The U.S. citizenship conferred many rights and privileges but
only Caucasian immigrants were eligible to apply. Among the Asians,
Indian nationals were considered to be Caucasian, so sixty-seven
Indians acquired U.S. citizenship from 1908 to 1923 in different
states.
For Bhagat Singh Thind, a veteran of US army, grant of citizenship
in 1920 by an Oregon District Court, was a joyous occasion but
that was short lived. The Immigration and Naturalization Service
challenged the court decision granting citizenship to Thind. In
1910, in the US vs. Balsara case, the lower federal court had
held that Indians were Caucasians. In 1922, in the US vs. Ozawa
case, the U.S. Supreme Court had officially equated “white
person” with “a person of the Caucasian race”.
Thus in view of the decisions in the two cases, grant of citizenship
to Thind should not have warranted any challenge. Shockingly,
however, Justice Sutherland of the US Supreme Court, the same
judge who had declared Whites as Caucasians in Ozawa vs. US, pronounced
on February 19, 1923, that Thind and other Indians though Caucasians,
were not “White” and thus were ineligible for US citizenship.
The judge obviously decided the first case on the basis of race,
the second, on the basis of color; but neither on the basis of
law of the land.
The Supreme Court decision had a demoralizing effect on many
Indian nationals. All the sixty-seven Indians who had given up
their Indian citizenship to become American citizens became persona
non grata, nationals of no country as their American citizenship
status was revoked. The economic impact for land and property
owning Indians was devastating as they had to liquidate their
land holdings at dramatically lower prices. Many U.S. citizens,
who were formerly Indian citizens, were forced to surrender their
American citizenship.
For years to come, Indian nationals continued to suffer humiliation
and hardships because they could not obtain citizenship of the
United States. There were about 2,000 or possibly 2,500 Indians,
who could benefit by becoming citizens of the US. A legal challenge
to the Supreme Court interpretation of the law was ruled out as
a possibility. An amendment to immigration laws by Congress appeared
an alternative worth pursuing. But the majority of the Indians
were very skeptical if Congress could pass a major bill aimed
at upsetting a historic decision of the Supreme Court. “It
was not that they did not want citizenship rights, but they had
suffered so many hardships and been knocked about so much that
it was very difficult for them to believe that there was a chance
of their winning.” (Saund: Congressman from India)
Nevertheless, Indians continued to seek ways to regain citizenship
rights, particularly when Chinese had been granted such rights
through legislation. It was a major undertaking to convince the
elected representatives of the American people to introduce a
bill in Congress for the grant of U.S. citizenship to a handful
of Indian nationals. Dalip Singh Saund, who later became the first
Indian to be elected to the US Congress, traveled all over California
to mobilize the Indian community, mailed out thousands of letters
hand written in Punjabi and raised funds for the Indian group
in New York to lobby on Capitol Hill. The mobilization took quite
some effort but soon it gained momentum and Indians in the US
were ready for an all-out effort to re-gain their citizenship
rights.
J. J. Singh of India League of America, Mubarak Ali Khan of the
Indian Welfare League, Anup Singh, Haridas Muzumdar, Taraknath
Das, and from California, Dalip Singh Saund of the India Association
of America led the lobbying effort. They were able to successfully
convince Connecticut Republican Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce
and New York Democrat Congressman Emanuel Cellar, chairman of
the House Judiciary Committee, to jointly introduce a bill in
Congress for the grant of US citizenship to Indian immigrants.
However, selling this concept to the majority of the members in
the US Congress was an uphill task, more so as the passage of
the bill could open the door for other Asians who were similarly
deprived of citizenship rights. For four years, the bill languished
in the Congressional Committees and Indians continued running
into obstacles in finding a powerful ally to push it through Congress.
Although, President Roosevelt wrote letters to Congressmen and
Senators but some die-hard members of Congress and the American
Federation of Labor would not relent in their opposition.
Fortunately, in 1946, President Truman took special interest
in its passage and the Luce-Cellar Bill was enacted into the Immigration
Act of 1946, conferring the right of citizenship on the natives
of India. President Truman invited some prominent Indians to the
White House, including Sardar J.J. Singh of Washington DC, President
of the India League and Dr. Anoop Singh of New York and signed
the bill on July 2, 1946, which truly should be celebrated as
the Independence Day by Indian Americans. It was a great triumph
for the Indian community that the effect of their relentless struggle
for 23 years reversed the Supreme Court’s racial interpretation
of the word Caucasian.
The grant of citizenship rights opened new opportunities for
Indian nationals. They could lease or own land, which previously
they could not under the Asiatic Exclusionary laws or take part
in an election or even run for public office. They could go back
for a visit to India or bring their spouses and minor children
to the US. There was no more a bar on love relationship; an Indian
could marry an American citizen. Indians could immigrate legally
up to 100 people and acquire US citizenship.
Since the passage of the Luce-Cellar Bill in 1946, immigration
laws have been modified several times. The Immigration Act of
1965 liberalized immigration, increasing per country quota to
20,000 people irrespective of race, color or creed. The new legislation
while ending the period of selective discriminatory immigration
to the US, encouraged a new wave of Indian immigrants who were
educated and skilled and have profited from their knowledge. The
increased quota has also resulted in the exponential growth in
the number of Indian immigrants and the wave of new arrivals still
goes unabated.
At the turn of 20th century, many Indians packed their few possessions
and headed towards America but their dreamland did not offer a
friendly landscape. The Punjabi pioneers initially found only
menial jobs in factories and lumber mills to ensure their survival.
They lived in abandoned homes, slept under the open sky or in
crumbling structures. The paths they took were varied, but their
dreams were the same and would not have come to fruition without
sacrifice, vision and difficult trade-offs. Many switched to the
profession of their forefathers -- agriculture and some of them
became very successful farmers.
The US proclaims “liberty and justice for all.” But
Indians became victims of violence, experienced bigotry, encountered
discrimination and suffered humiliation, and went through a long
and painful struggle for parity, equality and dignity until they
gained the right of citizenship. Each individual faced unexpected
and utterly harsh challenges, but gradually discovered new possibilities,
and realized his or her own dreams that contributed to a brighter
future for them and their next generations. Today, some of them
are the bar by which many standards are set. They found their
earthly paradise – the United States of America.
Inder Singh is president of Global Organization of People of
Indian Origin (GOPIO International), former president of NFIA
and founder president of FIA of Southern California. He can be
reached by email at indersingh-usa@hotmail.com or by telephone
at 818 708-3885.
Other articles on Indian American heritage from the same author:
Dalip S. Saund, The First Asian in U.S. Congress
Bhagat Singh Thind: Legacy of an Indian Pioneer
Gadar – Overseas Indians Attempt to Free India from British
Serfdom
