“Gilded Cages”

Abstract

In 1923, the landmark Supreme Court case, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind determined that Bhagat Singh Thind and all other “Hindus” were ineligible for citizenship because they did not meet the “common understanding” of white. This article explores the debates surrounding the question “who is the ‘Hindu?’” in the United States in the early 1900s. The article depicts how the racialized category of “Hindu” was fabricated and constantly curated throughout the early twentieth century to protect the Anglo-American claim to whiteness. This challenges the idea that the category of “Hindu” was labeled as “non-white” following the United States v. Thind decision in 1923 and instead, highlights how the “Hindu” was always made to be “non-white.” Here, the article showcases the leading discourses in written media, labor, and immigration policies surrounding the racial classification of South Asian men in the United States, also known as “Hindu/Hindoos,” from 1906 to 1923. The question posed by these three American sources of discourse was not an ontological one set to explore the essence or being of “Hindu,” but rather a brutal effort to place the “Hindu” in a position to fail in American racial politics. This article examines the development of the racial category of “Hindu” in labor and immigration discourse and how it became embedded within the American “common sense.”