Desi talk

www.desitalkchicago.com – that’s all you need to know 10 COVER STORY : AMERICA’S 250TH July 3, 2026 Our Community’s History Short Teaching Module: Indian Immigrants And U.S. Citizenship In An Imperial Context I n 1905, twenty-three-year-old Muhammad Abdul Rashid deboarded the Empress of Japan at the port of Vancouver before making his way to Portland, Oregon. Rashid had enrolled at Oregon Agricultur- al College (now Oregon State University) and was part of a growing cohort of students from colonial India at leading agricultural colleges in the United States. Thanks to newspapers, we know about the experiences of these students, or how US and other officials re- sponded to their presence in the US. These young adults hoped to gain knowledge in the US before returning to colonial India to develop its economy. They believed the future of India lay in the hands of foreign-educated stu- dents whose expertise could help build India’s economy and educational institutions in the wake of British colonialism. Rashid, born the same year that the United States barred most Chinese immigrants (1882), entered the country at a historical conjuncture when white nativists insisted Asian laborers presented an immigration and health crisis for the nation. Federal and state authori- ties and local white residents policed Asian laborers but granted greater agency to more elite immigrants like Rashid. Asian students, diplomats, businessmen, and religious figures benefited from federal immigration law, which targeted Asian laborers but carved out exemp- tions for more well-to-do Asian immigrants. When the deportation of Indian immigrants peaked in 1908, Rashed marked a milestone of his own. He submitted a seventeen-page thesis entitled “Composition and Food Value of Some Cattle Foods” to the Department of Chemistry and graduated alongside the largest class to date at Oregon Agricultural College with a bachelor’s in science in June 1908. The local press heralded Indian graduates, noting their “excellent progress.” The same month that Rashid graduated, he applied to the Benton County Circuit Court in Oregon to natu- ralize as a US citizen. At the time, federal immigration law required all immigrants to be a “free white person . . . of good character” to successfully naturalize. Con- gress had enacted this racial prerequisite in the nation’s first federal naturalization law in 1790, underscoring the founding legislators’ efforts to make whiteness a matter of law and maintain white supremacy through the law. How Rashid proved he was white is unknown, but the Benton County Circuit Court naturalized him as a U.S. citizen, despite insistence from the head of the Bureau of Naturalization, Richard K. Campbell, and the Attorney General of the US, Charles J. Bonaparte, that Indian immigrants were not white. At the time, federal judges held discretion over the naturalization cases of applicants such as Rashid. They relied on the academic writing of prominent anthropologists, philologists, and ethnologists to adjudicate race and held varying interpretations of whether Asian immigrants like Rashid constituted white persons or not. Rashid was among the first Indian immigrants natu- ralized in the United States. By 1908, Bellal Houssein and Abdul Hamid, Bengali peddlers with strong connec- tions to New Orleans’ Creole community, naturalized on the other side of the country in the District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Federal judges across courts in San Francisco, New Orleans, Galveston, Detroit, Portland, Boxelder County (UT), Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles naturalized approximately seventy well-to-do Sikh, Hindu, Parsee, and Hindu immigrants from colonial India under existing racial and residency requirements in the early twentieth century. Most In- dian laborers were denied naturalization. And yet Rashid’s case reflected major concerns about the naturalization of Indian immigrants in the United States. Shortly after Rashid naturalized as a US citizen, he returned to India where he advocated for the over- throw of the British government. In December 1908, The Corvallis Gazette reported that British authorities had convinced the Bureau of Naturalization and the United States District Attorney at Seattle to annul Rashid’s sta- tus as a U.S. citizen because he was actively encouraging Indian sepoys to revolt against the British colonial gov- ernment. British officials were frustrated that they could not punish Rashid as harshly as other Indians or restrict his ability to migrate more freely due to his status as a U.S. citizen. Efforts by the Government of India and the Colonial Office to foil a range of antiimperialist movements led by immigrant activists emboldened the security appara- tuses of both the British and American states, and Amer- ican processes of naturalization and denaturalization. In the late nineteenth century, British concerns over Irish American freedom fighters called Fenians sparked an international conflict over the rights of Irish immigrants By Hardeep Dhillon Scholars often study citizenship and de- naturalization in national frameworks. The history of legal status and its attendant politics and bureaucratic processes in the United States has long been tied to impe- rial constellations however. This teaching module begins with a single newspaper article about Muhammad Abdul Rashid, a colonial subject from India, and employs a microhistorical approach to excavate the role anticolonial resistance and American and British imperialisms played in shap- ing the contours of US citizenship in the early twentieth century. It foregrounds how Indian immigrants navigated the racial prerequisites required for them to natural- ize as US citizens as they increasingly en- gaged with anticolonial resistance. It then explores US and British imperial anxieties that arose over the naturalization of Indian immigrants. In situating the history of US naturalization and denaturalization in rela- tion to empire and the agency of everyday people, this essay invites its readers to ask how the stories of oppressed and marginal- ized persons, particularly colonial subjects who became immigrants, offer a lens to reconstitute who or what can serve as a vehicle to narrate world history . PHOTO:WORLDHISTORYCOMMONS.ORG OVERVIEW O n the occasion of the 250th an- niversary (1776-2026) Parikh Worldwide Media thought it befit- ting to trace the history of Indians who landed on the shores from the time of British rule. From a sprinkling of names that researchers have found on ships’ manifests, or the few who came as part of the entourage of British officers, through to the agricultural workers, and the birth of the Ghadar movement, US and Indian history have close ties. Even if it was wrought with conflict and racism, it shows the resilience and strength of this small community that has risen to occupy the halls of the very Congress that vilified it, and the benches of courts that denied them citizenship. While the story is complex, we have chosen two articles to begin with, that cover much of this history in brief – 1. An unusual teaching module by Professor Hardeep Dhillon of the University of Pennsylvania, that would be handy for parents of school going children, and of Indian Americans interested in their beginnings; 2. A piece that ran on migrationpolicy.org which traces the more recent history of this community. Both have been run with ex- press permission of the sources. We hope to find equally interesting pieces through the rest of this momentous year. Ela Dutt, Editor Editor’s Note Rashid graduates from Oregon Agricultural college, 1908 - Continued On Page 12