US law from 1798 restricted naturalized citizenship to “free white persons” [1]. The eugenicists of the day had attempted to lend some unearned credibility to race pseudoscience by using the words “Caucasian” or “Aryan” to mean “white” because of their purported racial origin in the Caucasus mountains and Eastern Iran (Arya). In 1913, A. K. Mozumdar, a US immigrant from India, argued that based on historical documents (and, to be honest, an ugly dose of casteism) that his high-caste Indian ancestors also originated from the same areas, thus he was Aryan. He argued in federal district court in Spokane, Washington that logically he qualified as “white” for US citizenship. The judge was essentially cornered by the Caucasity [2] of race “science” and had to grant him citizenship.
Mozumdar’s win in court allowed hundreds of Indian immigrants to apply for and receive citizenship in the following 10 years. Bhagat Thind had served in the US Army in World War I, and applied for (and received in 1921) citizenship after returning from the war. However, the Bureau of Naturalization was looking for a case to challenge naturalized citizenship for Indian Americans, and Thind became their cause – they appealed his naturalization to the US Supreme Court.
George Sutherland wrote the Supreme Court decision. He had just months prior denied naturalization to Japanese American Takao Ozawa because Ozawa was not a member of the “Caucasian race”. For Thind, though, Sutherland couldn’t argue that he wasn’t Caucasian. For Thind, Sutherland’s argument was:
“It is a matter of familiar observation and knowledge that the physical group characteristics of the Hindus render them readily distinguishable from the various groups of persons in this country commonly recognized as white.”
In other words, he’s not white because white people don’t think he’s white. [3]
The decision ordered Thind, and every other Indian American naturalized US citizen to be denaturalized, stripped of their citizenship. Moreover, because of the xenophobic “Alien Land Law”, which limited land ownership to citizens, the government immediately seized from Thind, Mozumder, and everyone like them their homes and property. They became homeless, broke, and stateless – citizens of nowhere. 2600 Americans had their lives cornered “into a stateless purgatory”.
And the media loved it. The newspapers of Feb 20, 1923 had nothing but praise for George Sutherland.
It has been 102 years today, but it is all too familiar.
-- Neal Patwari
[1] Asian Americans weren't allowed to naturalize in the US from 1798 to 1946, ie, 148 years!
