United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind

Last updated

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 11–12, 1923
Decided February 19, 1923
Full case nameUnited States v. Bhagat Singh Thind
Citations261 U.S. 204 ( more )
43 S. Ct. 338; 67 L. Ed. 616; 1923 U.S. LEXIS 2544
Case history
PriorIn re Bhagat Singh Thind, 268 F. 683 (D. Or. 1920)
Holding
People of Indian descent are not white, and hence are not eligible for naturalization.
Court membership
Chief Justice
William H. Taft
Associate Justices
Joseph McKenna  · Oliver W. Holmes Jr.
Willis Van Devanter  · James C. McReynolds
Louis Brandeis  · George Sutherland
Pierce Butler  · Edward T. Sanford
Case opinion
MajoritySutherland, joined by unanimous
Superseded by
Luce-Celler Act

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States decided that Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian Sikh man who identified himself as an Aryan, was ineligible for naturalized citizenship in the United States. [1] In 1919, 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.

Contents

After his petition was granted, government attorneys initiated a proceeding to cancel Thind's naturalization and a trial followed in which the government presented evidence of Thind's political activities as a founding member of the Ghadar Party, an Indian independence movement headquartered in San Francisco. [2] Thind did not challenge the constitutionality of the racial restrictions. Instead, he attempted to be classified as a "free white person" within the meaning of the Naturalization Act based on the fact that Indians and Europeans share common descent from Proto-Indo-Europeans.

Thind was represented by a fellow Indian American, Sakharam Ganesh Pandit, a California attorney.

The Court unanimously rejected Thind's argument, adding that Thind did not meet a "common sense" definition of white, ruling that Thind could not become a naturalized citizen. The Court concluded that "the term 'Aryan' has to do with linguistic, and not at all with physical characteristics, and it would seem reasonably clear that mere resemblance in language, indicating a common linguistic root buried in remotely ancient soil, is altogether inadequate to prove common racial origin." [3]

Background

Bhagat Singh Thind had come to the United States in 1913 for higher studies after obtaining a bachelor's degree in India. He enlisted in the United States Army, became a Sergeant and served in the World War I. He was discharged honorably with his character designated as "excellent". Thind was granted citizenship in the state of Washington in July 1918 but his citizenship was rescinded in just four days. He 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 Sakharam Ganesh Pandit, a California attorney and fellow immigrant, represented Thind. [4]

Argument

Thind argued that Indo-Aryan languages are indigenous to the Aryan part of India in the same way that Aryan languages are indigenous to Europe, highlighting the linguistic ties between Indo-Aryan speakers and Europeans, as most European languages including English are similar to Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi. [5]

Three months earlier, the Ozawa v. United States court case had decided that the meaning of white people for the purposes of the Court were people who were members of the Caucasian race. With this in mind, Thind argued that he was a white person by arguing that he was a member of the Caucasian race. [6] Thind argued using "a number of anthropological texts" that people in Punjab and other Northwestern Indian states belonged to the "Aryan race", [5] and Thind cited scientific authorities such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach as classifying Aryans as belonging to the Caucasian race. [6] Thind argued that, although some racial mixing did indeed occur between the Indian castes, the caste system had largely succeeded in India at preventing race-mixing. [5] Thind argued that by being a "high-caste, of full Indian blood" he was a "Caucasian" according to the anthropological definitions of his day. [7]

Thind's lawyers argued that Thind had a revulsion to marrying an Indian woman of the "lower races" when they said, "The high-caste Hindu regards the aboriginal Indian Mongoloid in the same manner as the American regards the Negro, speaking from a matrimonial standpoint." [8] Thind's lawyers argued that Thind had a revulsion to marrying a woman of the Mongoloid race. [5] This would characterize Thind as being both white and someone who would be sympathetic to the existing anti-miscegenation laws in the United States. [7]

Verdict

Associate Justice George Sutherland said that authorities on the subject of race were in disagreement over which people were included in the scientific definition of the Caucasian race, so Sutherland instead chose to rely on the common understanding of race rather than the scientific understanding of race. [7] Sutherland found that, while Thind may claim to have "purity of Aryan blood" due to being "born in Village Taragarh Talawa near Jandiala Guru, Amritsar, Punjab", he was not Caucasian in the "common understanding", so he could not be included in the "statutory category as white persons". [9]

The Court reiterated its holding in Ozawa v. United States ,[ citation needed ] explaining that the words "free white person" in the naturalization act were "synonymous with the word 'Caucasian' only as that word is popularly understood," pointing out that the statutory language was to be interpreted as "words of common speech and not of scientific origin, ... written in the common speech, for common understanding, by unscientific men." [7] Justice Sutherland wrote in his summary: [9]

The eligibility of this applicant for citizenship is based on the sole fact that he is of high caste Hindu stock, born in village Taragarh Talawa, Amritsar district, Punjab, one of the extreme north western districts of India, and classified by certain scientific authorities as of the Caucasian or Aryan race ... In the Punjab and Rajputana, while the invaders seem to have met with more success in the effort to preserve their racial purity, intermarriages did occur producing an intermingling of the two and destroying to a greater or less degree the purity of the "Aryan" blood. The rules of caste, while calculated to prevent this intermixture, seem not to have been entirely successful ... the given group cannot be properly assigned to any of the enumerated grand racial divisions. The type may have been so changed by intermixture of blood as to justify an intermediate classification. Something very like this has actually taken place in India. Thus, in Hindustan and Berar there was such an intermixture of the "Aryan" invader with the dark-skinned Dravidian. [9]

The 1910 Encyclopædia Britannica entry on "Hinduism" that Justice Sutherland cites as his sole source for this history contradicts his conclusion about the Aryans of Thind's birthplace in the Punjab and explicitly refers to the Aryans of India as part of "the white race." [2]

The Court nonetheless also concluded that "the term 'Aryan' has to do with linguistic, and not at all with physical, characteristics, and it would seem reasonably clear that mere resemblance in language, indicating a common linguistic root buried in remotely ancient soil, is altogether inadequate to prove common racial origin." [3]

The Court argued that the exclusion of non-whites was based on the idea of racial difference rather than the idea that one race is superior or inferior to another race. The Court argued that the racial difference between Indians and whites was so great that the "great body of our people" would reject assimilation with Indians. [7]

In conclusion, the Court also noted that "Congress, by the Act of February 5, 1917, 39 Stat. 874, c. 29, § 3, has now excluded from admission into this country all natives of Asia within designated limits of latitude and longitude, including the whole of India," suggesting its intention that natives of India also be excluded from eligibility for naturalized citizenship.

Aftermath

As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court decision finding that no person of Indian origin could become a naturalized American, the first person from the Indian subcontinent to become an American citizen, A. K. Mozumdar, had his citizenship revoked. A decision on his appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that revocation.

Not only were new applicants from India denied the privilege of naturalization, but the new racial classification suggested that the retroactive revocation of United States citizenship granted to Asian Indian Americans, of which there were many, might be supported by the Court's decision, a point that some courts upheld when United States attorneys petitioned to cancel the citizenship previously granted to many Asian Indian Americans. Up to fifty Indian Americans had their citizenship revoked between 1923 and 1927 as a consequence of the Thind ruling. [10] As they had given up citizenship elsewhere to become naturalized United States citizens, when their United States citizenship was revoked, these Indian Americans became stateless. [11] Even Thind's own lawyer, Sakharam Ganesh Pandit, was targeted for denaturalization. However, Pandit successfully argued before the Ninth Circuit that revoking his citizenship would do him and his wife unfair harm under the equitable estoppel doctrine. [12] His citizenship was upheld, and the Bureau of Naturalization subsequently cancelled its pending denaturalization cases against Indian American citizens. [13]

Some of the consequences of revoked naturalized status are illustrated by the example of some Indian American naturalized citizen landowners living in California who found themselves under the jurisdiction of the California Alien Land Law of 1913. Specifically, Attorney General Ulysses S. Webb was very active in revoking their land purchases; in a bid to strengthen the Asiatic Exclusion League, he promised to prevent Indian Americans from buying or leasing land. Under intense pressure, and with Immigration Act of 1917 preventing fresh immigration to strengthen the fledgling Indian American community, many Indian Americans left the United States, leaving only half their original American population, 2,405, by 1940.

Thind petitioned for naturalization a third time in 1935 after the Congress passed the Nye-Lea Act, which made World War I veterans eligible for naturalization regardless of race. Based on his status as a veteran of the United States military during World War I, he was finally granted United States citizenship nearly two decades after he first petitioned for naturalization. [2]

As public support for Asian Indians grew throughout World War II,[ citation needed ] and as India's independence came closer to reality, Indians argued for an end to their legislative discrimination. The repeal of Chinese exclusion laws in 1943 and the granting of naturalization privileges to Chinese encouraged Asian Indians to hope for similar gains. Hurdling over many members of Congress and the American Federation of Labor, which vehemently opposed removing legislative measures barricading Indian immigration and naturalization, the Asian Indian community finally succeeded in gaining support among several prominent congressmen, as well as President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The support culminated in the signing into law by President Harry S. Truman on July 2, 1946, of the Luce–Celler Act. This Act reversed the Thind decision by explicitly extending racial eligibility for naturalization to natives of India, and set a token quota for their immigration at 100 per year.

See also

Related Research Articles

The Caucasian race is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The Caucasian race was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, depending on which of the historical race classifications was being used, usually included ancient and modern populations from all or parts of Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa.

Takao Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922), was a US legal proceeding. The United States Supreme Court found Takao Ozawa, a Japanese American who was born in Japan but had lived in the United States for 20 years, ineligible for naturalization. In 1914, Ozawa filed for United States citizenship under the Naturalization Act of 1906. This act allowed only "free white persons" and "persons of African nativity or persons of African descent" to naturalize. Ozawa did not challenge the constitutionality of the racial restrictions. Instead, he claimed that Japanese people should be properly classified as "free white persons".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bhagat Singh Thind</span> Indian American writer and civil rights activist

Bhagat Singh Thind was an Indian American writer and lecturer on spirituality who served in the United States Army during World War I and was involved in a Supreme Court case over the right of Indian people to obtain United States citizenship.

Asian immigration to the United States refers to immigration to the United States from part of the continent of Asia, which includes East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Asian-origin populations have historically been in the territory that would eventually become the United States since the 16th century. The first major wave of Asian immigration occurred in the late 19th century, primarily in Hawaii and the West Coast. Asian Americans experienced exclusion, and limitations to immigration, by the United States law between 1875 and 1965, and were largely prohibited from naturalization until the 1940s. Since the elimination of Asian exclusion laws and the reform of the immigration system in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, there has been a large increase in the number of immigrants to the United States from Asia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naturalization Act of 1790</span> United States federal law

The Naturalization Act of 1790 was a law of the United States Congress that set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free White person(s) ... of good character", thus excluding Native Americans, indentured servants, enslaved people, free Africans, Pacific Islanders, and non-White Asians. This eliminated ambiguity on how to treat newcomers, given that free black people had been allowed citizenship at the state level in many states. In reading the Naturalization Act, the courts also associated whiteness with Christianity and thus excluded Muslim immigrants from citizenship until the decision Ex Parte Mohriez recognized citizenship for a Saudi Muslim man in 1944.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denaturalization</span> Revoking a persons citizenship

Denaturalization is the loss of citizenship against the will of the person concerned. Denaturalization is often applied to ethnic minorities and political dissidents. Denaturalization can be a penalty for actions considered criminal by the state, often only for errors in the naturalization process such as fraud. Since the 9/11 attacks, the denaturalization of people accused of terrorism has increased. Because of the right to nationality, recognized by multiple international treaties including Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, denaturalization is often considered a human rights violation.

The racial classification of Indian Americans has varied over the years and across institutions. Originally, neither the courts nor the census bureau classified Indian Americans as a race because there were only negligible numbers of Indian immigrants in the United States. Early Indian Americans were often denied their civil rights, leading to close affiliations with African Americans. For most of America's early history, the government only recognized two racial classifications, white or colored. Due to immigration laws of the time, those deemed colored were often stripped of their American citizenship or denied the ability to become citizens. For these reasons, various South Asians in America took the government to court to try to be considered white instead of colored. After advocacy from the Indian American community, the racial category of Asian Indian was finally introduced in the 1980 U.S. census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A. K. Mozumdar</span> Indian American spiritual writer and teacher

Akhay Kumar Mozumdar was an Indian American spiritual writer and teacher associated with the New Thought Movement in the United States. He became a naturalized American in 1913 and in 1923, following United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, Mozumdar was the first Indian after Bhagat Singh Thind to have his United States citizenship taken away.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judicial aspects of race in the United States</span>

Legislation seeking to direct relations between racial or ethnic groups in the United States has had several historical phases, developing from the European colonization of the Americas, the triangular slave trade, and the American Indian Wars. The 1776 Declaration of Independence included the statement that "all men are created equal", which has ultimately inspired actions and legislation against slavery and racial discrimination. Such actions have led to passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

The legal and social strictures that define White Americans, and distinguish them from persons who are not considered White by the government and society, have varied throughout the history of the United States.

Various attempts have been made, under the British Raj and since, to classify the population of India according to a racial typology. After independence, in pursuance of the government's policy to discourage distinctions between communities based on race, the 1951 Census of India did away with racial classifications. Today, the national Census of independent India does not recognise any racial groups in India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indian Americans</span> Americans of Indian birth or descent

Indian Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The terms Asian Indian and East Indian are used to avoid confusion with Native Americans in the United States, who are also referred to as "Indians" or "American Indians." With a population of more than 4.4 million, Indian Americans make up approximately 1.35% of the U.S. population and are the largest group of South Asian Americans, the largest Asian-alone group, and the largest group of Asian Americans after Chinese Americans. Indian Americans are the highest-earning ethnic group in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luce–Celler Act</span>

The Luce–Celler Act of 1946, Pub. L. No. 79-483, 60 Stat. 416, is an Act of the United States Congress which provided a quota of 100 Filipinos and 100 Indians from Asia to immigrate to the United States per year, which for the first time allowed these people to naturalize as American citizens. Upon becoming citizens, these new Americans could own property under their names and even petition for their immediate family members from abroad.

Taragarh Talawa is a village which now officially called Taragarh located at two kilometers from Jandiala Guru, Amritsar district, Punjab, India on the Grand Trunk Road, located at 31° 33' 41N 75° 1'36E at an altitude of 229 m (754 ft).

<i>Dow v. United States</i>

Dow v. United States, 226 F. 145, is a United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, case in which a Syrian immigrant, George Dow, appealed two lower court decisions denying his application for naturalization as a United States citizen. Following the lower court decisions in Ex Parte Dow (1914) and In re Dow (1914), Dow v. United States resulted in the Circuit Court's affirmation of the petitioner's right to naturalize based, in the words of Circuit Judge Charles Albert Woods, on "the generally received opinion. .. that the inhabitants of a portion of Asia, including Syria, [are] to be classed as white persons".

Bhicaji Framji Balsara was an Indian immigrant to the United States, notable for being amongst the first Indians to become a naturalized U.S. citizen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sakharam Ganesh Pandit</span> Indian American civil rights lawyer

Sakharam Ganesh Pandit (1875–1959), also known as S. G. Pandit, was an Indian American lawyer and civil rights activist. Pandit immigrated to the United States in 1906 and became a citizen in 1914. In 1923, he represented Bhagat Singh Thind in the Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, which found that Indians were ineligible for United States citizenship. However, Pandit successfully fought against a subsequent attempt to remove his own citizenship, and the federal government thereafter gave up its efforts to denaturalize Indian Americans. Pandit died in Los Angeles in 1959.

The Indid race was a supposed sub-race in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism. In 19th and early 20th century anthropological literature, the Indid type was classified as belonging to the Mediterranean type of the greater Caucasoid race.

United States v. Balsara (1910) was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided that Bhicaji Balsara, a Parsee Immigrant, was eligible for citizenship in the United States. This case served as an early racial prerequisite case that defined the definition of whiteness, where the court determined that people who were caucasian, under the racial thinking of the time, were white. In 1923, in the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the court dismissed the prior definition of "Caucasian" and, instead, adopted the standard of common understanding. The court determined that "White" referred to immigrants from Northern or Western Europe.

References

  1. ↑ United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923). PD-icon.svg This article incorporates public domain material from this U.S government document.
  2. 1 2 3 Coulson, Doug (2015). "British Imperialism, the Indian Independence Movement, and the Racial Eligibility Provisions of the Naturalization Act: United States v. Thind Revisited". Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives. 7: 1–42. SSRN   2610266.
  3. 1 2 Chi, S. & Robinson, E.M. (2012). Voices of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Experience (vol. 1). pp. 341. USA: Greenwood. ISBN   978-1-59884-354-5
  4. ↑ Chakravorty, Sanjoy; Kapur, Devesh; Singh, Nirvikar (2017). The other one percent : Indians in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 15. ISBN   978-0-19-064874-9. OCLC   965470087.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Haney López, I.F. (1996). White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York and London: New York University Press. p. 149.
  6. 1 2 Warnke, G. (2007). After Identity: Rethinking Race, Sex, and Gender. Cambridge University Press: New York. ISBN   978-0-521-88281-1
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Zhao, X.; Park, E.J.W., eds. (2013). Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History. Greenwood. p. 1142. ISBN   978-1598842395.
  8. ↑ Bigsby, C. (2006). The Cambridge companion to modern American culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0-521-84132-0
  9. 1 2 3 United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, Certificate From The Circuit Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit., No. 202. Argued January 11, 12, 1923.—Decided February 19, 1923, United States Reports, v. 261, The Supreme Court, October Term, 1922, 204–215.
  10. ↑ Asian American history and culture. Volume One-Two : an encyclopedia. Ling, Huping, 1956-, Austin, Allan W.,, Adachi, Nobuko. London [England]. ISBN   978-1-315-70630-6. OCLC   908047319.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  11. ↑ Rudra, Geetika (2022). Here to stay: uncovering South Asian American history. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. ISBN   9780813584034.
  12. ↑ Coulson, Doug, 1969- (October 2017). Race, nation, and refuge : the rhetoric of race in Asian American citizenship cases. Albany. ISBN   978-1-4384-6662-0. OCLC   962141092.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  13. ↑ Rangaswamy, Padma, 1945- (2007). Indian Americans. Johnston, Robert D. New York: Chelsea House. ISBN   978-1-4381-0712-7. OCLC   228654847.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.