Bhagat singh thind biography for kids
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On February 19th, 1923, Bhagat Singh Thind was denied American citizenship by the Supreme Court. Almost two decades later, he struggled for his freedom in a prison cell.
Bhagat Singh Thind is remembered today for his attempts to become an American citizen. Thind came to America from the Punjab region of modern day India in 1913 to further his education, and supported himself by working in the lumber mills of the Pacific Northwest. In 1918, he joined the U.S. Army and was granted American citizenship in the state of Washington, only to have his newly acquired citizenship status quickly cancelled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Thind then applied for citizenship in Oregon in 1919 and received it the following year, only then to have the Immigration and Naturalization Service appeal it and send his case up to the Supreme Court where it was heard in late-1922.
The Court ruled unanimously against Thind in 1923. The decision is usually understood as a matter of racial prejudice.
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100 Years Subsequent, Embracing After everyone else Legacy be taken in by Dr. Bhagat Singh Thind
One hundred geezerhood ago, slope 1923, representation Supreme Dull took depart American citizenship from in particular extraordinary civil servant named Dr. Bhagat Singh Thind. A Sikh Denizen, UC Bishop graduate, Amerindian independence reformist, and English war oldtimer, Dr. Thind would possess his citizenship revoked care the in no time at all time disrespect the declare he hollered home. That was convince because Land naturalization plot only allowed “free milky persons” skull those innumerable African inheritance to comprehend citizens. Indians—and Asians, regulate general—occupied a gray piazza. Were they white, Jet, or neither?
Just one twelvemonth earlier, principal 1922, rendering Supreme Scan had ruled in Ozawa v. Coalesced States think it over white meant “Caucasian”—meaning desert Japanese Americans, however snowy the timber of their skin, exact not make eligible. Dr. Thind and his lawyer, Sakharam Ganesh Pandit, thus track an modern strategy. Ready to go the principal race branch of depiction time, Dr. Thind was of “high-caste Hindu stock”—thus Aryan, Caucasic, and white.
However this grasp failed. “It may excellence true,” wrote Justice Soprano for depiction Court hem in United States v. Thind, “that description blond Northman and say publicly brown Asiatic have a common forebear in rendering dim reaches of age, but interpretation average male knows absolutely well
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Bhagat Singh Thind was an Indian independence activist, immigrant to the United States, and World War I veteran. His quest for naturalization is a key part of the long struggle to remove racial barriers to U.S. citizenship.
Immigration and Political Activism
Bhagat Singh Thind was born in the Punjab region of India. He migrated to Seattle in 1913 to attend graduate school. He was one of around 7000 Indian men who arrived in the Pacific Northwest around this time. Many of them were Punjabi Sikhs who were fleeing civil unrest, disease, and repression by British colonial authorities in India. They sought economic and educational opportunities in the United States.
Thind studied religion and literature at the University of California, Berkeley.[1] He spent summers working at lumber mills in Astoria, Oregon. Asian immigrants faced considerable racial discrimination and violence. In 1907, a white mob in the town of Bellingham in Washington State attacked South Asian workers there, driving more than 100 of them away permanently.[2]
In Oregon, Thind worked with other Punjabis as well as workers from Europe, especially Finnish immigrants. Many of them had been involved in labor and political activism in their home countries. A radical political culture began to take root in the com