SikhiWiki:Today's featured article/September 28, 2009

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Bhagat Singh Thind, PhD, (3 October 1892 - 15 September 1967) was an Indian American Sikh writer and lecturer on "spiritual science" who was involved in an important legal battle over the rights of Indians to obtain U.S. citizenship.

Thind had fought for the U.S. in World War I. After the war he sought the right to become a naturalised citizen, following a legal ruling that "Caucasians" had access to such rights. At this time Indians were categorised as Caucasian by anthropologists.

In 1923, a crucial Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind was decided in favor of the United States, retroactively denying all Indian Americans citizenship for not being Caucasian in "the common man's understanding of the term."

In the annals of Asians’ struggle for US citizenship, Bhagat Singh Thind’s fight for citizenship occupies a prominent historical place. .....More