United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 11–12, 1923 Decided February 19, 1923
Full case name	United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind
Citations	261 U.S. 204 (more) 43 S. Ct. 338; 67 L. Ed. 616; 1923 U.S. LEXIS 2544
Prior history	Certificate from the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Holding
People of Indian descent are not white, and hence are not eligible for naturalization.
Court membership
Case opinions
Majority	Sutherland, joined by unanimous

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously decided that Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian Sikh man who identified himself as a "high caste Hindu, of full Indian blood," was racially ineligible for naturalized citizenship in the United States. In 1919, Thind filed a petition for naturalization under the Naturalization Act of 1906 which allowed only "free white persons" and "aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent" to become United States citizens by naturalization.

After his petition was granted, Government attorneys initiated a proceeding to cancel Thind’s naturalization and a trial followed in which the Government presented evidence of Thind’s political activities as a founding member of the Ghadr Party, a violent Indian independence movement headquartered in San Francisco. Thind did not challenge the constitutionality of the racial restrictions. Instead, he attempted to have "high-caste Hindus" classified as "free white persons" within the meaning of the naturalization act based on the fact that both northern Indians and most Europeans are Indo-European peoples.

The court rejected this argument, holding that while Hindi-speaking high-caste Indians were indeed akin to white European peoples, they had intermarried too freely with the non-white pre-Indo-European populace of India, hence their present skin color. Because of the uncertainty this caused for scientific classification, the court decided to use a "common sense" definition of Caucasian that did not allow for the scientific arguments Thind made and did not classify Indians as white.