The United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind is Ruled
*On this date in 1923, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind ruled that Indians from India were not white in America.
He argued using "a number of anthropological texts" that people in Punjab and other Northwestern Indian states belonged to the "Aryan race" and he cited scientific authorities such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach as classifying Aryans as belonging to the Caucasian race. Thind argued that, although some racial mixing did indeed occur between the Indian castes, the caste system had largely succeeded in India at preventing race mixing. He argued that by being a "high-caste Hindu, of full Indian blood" he was a "Caucasian" according to the anthropological definitions of his day.
Thind's lawyers argued that he had a revulsion to marrying an Indian woman of the "lower races" when they said, "The high-caste Hindu regards the aboriginal Indian Mongoloid in the same manner as the American regards the Negro, speaking from a matrimonial standpoint." His lawyers argued that Thind had revulsion to marrying a woman of the Mongoloid race, because they felt that expressing "disdain for inferiors" would characterize Thind as being white. Also, this would characterize Thind as being someone who would be sympathetic to the existing anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.
