Thread by @vsirnate

This thread is for Non-resident Indians in America that support the #CAA

Today I want to tell you 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.

This is Bhagat Singh Thind. Photo taken from saada.org.

Bhagat Singh 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. I am sure they 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.

He killed himself by gas poisoning in 1928. He left behind a suicide letter saying he was killing himself in protest. He wrote, " I came to America thinking, dreaming and hoping to make this land my home... and tried to give my children the best American education...

But now they come and say to me that I am no longer an American citizen. Now what am I? What have I made of myself and my children? We cannot exercise our rights. Humility and insults, who is responsible for this?"

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.

Since then you already know the plot. Many of you Indian-Americans moved to the US after that.

Now I wrote this thread to remind you of a history that you possibly do not know about. But you are there today because someone else raised the issue of your membership in America

102 years ago. And it took half a century for 100 of you per year to be allowed in as legal immigrants per year.

Do you see how you have benefited from that century of struggle?

Today you are not only American citizens or visa holders, but you also have overseas membership of India. You can work and live in two countries on two continents because someone took the metaphorical bullets for you 100 years ago.

Do you see the irony of your kind supporting the #CAA?

You support of the #CitizenshipAmmendmentAct but remember that not that long ago (what is 100 years in homogenous empty time), someone basically used a similar premise like the one the act is based on, i.e., something ascriptive that you can't scrub away overnight in the shower,

to tell you that YOU could not be a citizen of America.

Please share this thread widely on why NRIs should not be supporting the #CAA_NRC_NPR. Its a question of history. What goes around, comes around and they should know that there are no guarantees.

I will add one more crucial point. It is important to remember that what the #CAA_NRC_Protest are fighting for is to reclaim those very ideas that were the dream in 1946, the year the Luce-Cellar act was passed. The words of Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Phule, Tilak, Periyar

had resonated across the world. 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.

So when you support the #CAA you basically tell every single Indian that is fighting for a secular and progressive India, that none of what happened back then mattered. But it did. Specifically, it mattered for YOU the NRI who is now marching about with his placard in San Fran.

You would never have got the global respect you have now if it had not been for those chaps back then standing up to the Raj. So don't turn your back on it because something new and shiny came along. This new thing isn't as well made as that old thing.

I should also add that personally I think Thind made an absolutely casteist argument in the US Supreme Court and obviously also reflects the current contradictions with the NRI community where they hold on to manuvaad while voting for democrats in the US.

Update: Holy Gau mata! there’s a movie on this man. I didn’t even know that until someone just told me. Does it address the issue of his casteism? Has anyone watched it?

indianexpress.com/article/india/…

Clarification : Thind never killed himself. The protest-suicide in the middle of the story is by Vaishno Baiga who lost his citizenship retrospectively after the Thind judgment. He didn’t want to become a British subject and couldn’t get a US passport to travel.

Update: Someone has just sent me this news clipping which says "Hindus Too Brunette to Vote"