Asian Indian

Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are Americans whose ancestry belongs to any of the many ethnic groups of the Republic of India. The U.S. Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with the indigenous peoples of the Americas commonly referred to as American Indians (or Native Americans or Amerindians). In the Americas, historically, the term 'Indian' has been most commonly used to refer to the indigenous people of the continents after European colonization in the 15th century. Qualifying terms such as 'American Indian' and 'East Indian' were and are commonly used to avoid ambiguity. The U.S. government has since coined the term 'Native American' to refer to the indigenous peoples of the United States, but terms such as 'American Indian' remain popular among both indigenous and non-indigenous populations. Since the 1980s, Indian Americans have been categorized as 'Asian Indian' (within the broader subgroup of Asian American) by the United States Census Bureau. While 'East Indian' remains in use, the term 'South Asian' is often chosen instead for academic and governmental purposes. Indian Americans are a subgroup of South Asian Americans, a census group that also includes Bangladeshi Americans, Bhutanese Americans, Nepalese Americans, Pakistani Americans, Burmese Americans, Sri Lankan Americans, etc. Beginning in the 1600s the East India Company begins bringing indentured Indian servants to American colonies. In 1680, due to anti-miscegenation laws, a mixed-race girl born to an Indian father and an Irish mother is classified as 'mulatto' and sold into slavery. The Naturalization Act of 1790 made Asians ineligible for citizenship, with citizenship limited to whites only. The first significant wave of Indian immigrants entered the United States in the 19th Century. By 1900, there were more than two thousand Indian Sikhs living in the United States, primarily in California. (At least one scholar has set the level lower, finding a total of 716 Indian immigrants to the U.S. between 1820 and 1900.) Emigration from India was driven by difficulties facing Indian farmers, including the challenges posed by the British land tenure system for small landowners, and by drought and food shortages, which worsened in the 1890s. At the same time, Canadian steamship companies, acting on behalf of Pacific coast employers, recruited Sikh farmers with economic opportunities in British Columbia. Racist attacks in British Columbia, however, prompted Sikhs and new Sikh immigrants to move down the Pacific Coast to Washington and Oregon, where they worked in lumber mills and in the railroad industry. Many Punjabi Sikhs who settled in California, around the Yuba City area, formed close ties with Mexican Americans. The presence of Indian-Americans also helped develop interest in Eastern religions in the US and would result in its influence on American philosophies such as Transcendentalism. Swami Vivekananda arriving in Chicago at the World's Fair led to the establishment of the Vedanta Society. Between 1907 and 1908, Sikhs moved further south to warmer climates in California, where they were employed by various railroad companies. Some white Americans, resentful of economic competition and the arrival of people from different cultures, responded to Sikh immigration with racism and violent attacks. The Bellingham riots in Bellingham, Washington on September 5, 1907 epitomized the low tolerance in the U.S. for Indians and Sikhs, who were called “hindoos” by locals. While anti-Asian racism was embedded in U.S. politics and culture in the early 20th century, Indians were also racialized for their anticolonialism, with U.S. officials pushing for Western imperial expansion abroad casting them as a 'Hindu' menace. Although labeled Hindu, the majority of Indians were Sikh. In the early 20th century, a range of state and federal laws restricted Indian immigration and the rights of Indian immigrants in the U.S. In the 1910s, American nativist organizations campaigned to end immigration from India, culminating in the passage of the Barred Zone Act in 1917. In 1913, the Alien Land Act of California prevented Sikhs (in addition to Japanese and Chinese immigrants) from owning land. However, Asian immigrants got around the system by having Anglo friends or their own U.S. born children legally own the land that they worked on. In some states, anti-miscegenation laws made it illegal for Indian men to marry white women. However, it was acceptable for “brown” races to mix. Many Indian men, especially Punjabi men, married Hispanic women and Punjabi-Mexican marriages became a norm in the West. Bhicaji Balsara became the first known Indian-born person to gain naturalized U.S. citizenship. As a Parsi, he was considered a 'pure member of the Persian sect' and therefore a free white person. The judge Emile Henry Lacombe, of the Southern District of New York, only gave Balsara citizenship on the hope that the United States attorney would indeed challenge his decision and appeal it to create “an authoritative interpretation” of the law. The U.S. attorney adhered to Lacombe's wishes and took the matter to the Circuit Court of Appeals in 1910. The Circuit Court of Appeal agreed that Parsees belong to the white race and were 'as distinct from Hindus as are the English who dwell in India”. Kumar Mazundarwas also considered “Caucasian” and was eligible for citizenship. Between 1913 and 1923, about 100 Indians were naturalized. Naturalization of Indian immigrants ended in 1923, when the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind that Indians were ineligible for citizenship because they were not “free white persons” and their status as “Caucasian” was not enough to be considered “white”. The Court also argued that the racial difference between Indians and whites was so great that the 'great body of our people' would reject assimilation with Indians. About 50 Indians’ citizenship was revoked after this ruling, but Dr. Sakharam Ganesh Pandit fought the ruling of denaturalization. He was a lawyer and married to a white American, and he regained his citizenship in 1927. However, no other naturalization was permitted after the ruling, which led to about 3,000 Indians leaving the United States. Many other Indians had no means of returning to India. One such immigrant, Vaisho Das Bagai, committed suicide in despair. “The return migration was large enough to render questionable the idea of immigration as a one-way system.”