INDIANS IN USA

AMERICA has been called the land of democracy par excellence where freedom and equality are the recognised basic principles of the Constitution, but signs are not wanting which go to show that the virus of racial supremacy is fast spreading even to that land. The SC of the US has decreed that Hindus are not entitled to American citizenship because they do not belong to the Caucasian race. In order to understand what exactly one’s connection with the Caucasian race has to do with the acquiring of rights of American citizenship, it is necessary to point out that under the provisions of the American Naturalisation Act only those persons can acquire citizenship rights who being ‘aliens’ are either ‘free white persons’ or ‘of African descent.’ In the case of Asiatics, therefore, the question of the eligibility or otherwise of a person resolves itself into another: “Who is a white person?” The reply according to the US SC appears to be that “a white person is one who belongs to the Caucasian race.” In November last in the case of a Japanese, the same court declared that Japanese aliens were ineligible under the Naturalisation Act, since they did not belong to the Caucasian race. Indians whose eligibility so long had not been questioned have now been placed in the same category. The point arose in this way. A Punjabee named Sardar Bhagat Singh Thind who is a graduate of the Punjab University and has also studied at the University of California, Berkley, landed in America in 1913. During the great War he entered the US Army and after rendering six months’ active service was honourably discharged. When he applied for naturalisation papers, the local judge in the State of Oregan gave a decision in his favour. 

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