A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo, page 12
14
Indians in America—The Pioneers
RACISM AGAINST MIGRANTS in the United States goes back a long way, in fact, to the founding days of the country itself. The United States Naturalization Law of 26 March 1790 (commonly called the Naturalization Act of 1790) allowed the granting of citizenship only to immigrants who were “free white person(s)…of good character”. The act was modified through the Naturalization Act of 1870 to extend the citizenship to “aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent.” Strangely enough, Native Americans, the original inhabitants of the continent, got their citizenship rights only in 1924 through the Indian Citizenship Act.
The California gold rush of 1848–1855 as well as the building of the first transcontinental railroad from the Midwest to the Pacific Coast in the 1860s brought in a large number of migrant Chinese workers to the country, with one estimate being that 322,000 Chinese entered the United States between 1850 and 1882, and with three-quarters of them settling in California.1 The subsequent decline in the supply of gold and the concomitant weakening of the economy gave the White population an excuse to blame the Chinese for depressed wage levels and heighten antipathy towards them. Violence against the Chinese were reported from many places, and openly racist newspapers such as the San Francisco Chronicle added to the vitriol with one of its reports titled, “The Chinese Invasion! They are coming, 900,000 Strong. Nations of the earth take warning.”2 Bowing to the general anti-Chinese feeling and the relentless demand of the California state government, the United States federal government enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that banned all immigration from China for the next ten years, the first time that an act had targeted a specific ethnic group. Amendments made to the act in the following years prevented wives from joining their husbands who were already in the United States, extended the act to all ethnic Chinese irrespective of country of origin, and prohibited their re-entry into the U.S.A. after leaving the country. The Act was extended by another ten years in 1892 and again in 1902. During this time China, ruled by the Qing dynasty and enfeebled with successive wars, was barely able to protect itself, let alone come to the aid of its overseas citizens.
This unforeseen shortage of Chinese labour due to the Chinese Exclusion Act forced the employers to look elsewhere, and they found the Japanese fitting their requirement admirably well. Japanese workers had first come to the island of Hawaii in 1885 to work on the sugar plantations there. They soon came to California, and the state began to see a burgeoning Japanese population. The same antagonism that had characterised the whites’ relationship with the Chinese migrants now began to manifest itself against the Japanese, although the latter were better able to assimilate into American society. Characteristically, the San Francisco Chronicle fuelled the anti-Japanese rhetoric too, and in 1906 a Japanese and Korean Exclusion League was formed in San Francisco with its main demand being to extend the Chinese Exclusion Act to include the Japanese and the Koreans. This League renamed itself as the Asiatic Exclusion League in 1907 to include Chinese and Indians within its ambit and went about setting up branches across the Pacific Coast of North America.3 There was however a significant difference between the Chinese and the Japanese; Japan had defeated Russia, a leading European power, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, and now saw itself as a world power. While the Californian whites may have wanted to exclude the Japanese, the government of the United States vacillated, not wanting to alienate the new Asian power. And so, a compromise was reached with the involvement of President Theodore Roosevelt himself. It was called the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907. This was an informal agreement between the United States and Japan whereby the United States would not impose restrictions on Japanese immigration and Japan would not allow further emigration to the United States. This face-saving formula underlined Japan’s newly acquired strength that gave it a transpacific influence unavailable to the Chinese.
Immigration policies of Canada followed a roughly similar pattern. Though there was initially no law barring immigration to Canada or obtaining Canadian citizenship, growing Chinese immigration to the country forced a rethink. The Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration appointed in 1885 recommended imposing a $10 fee on each Chinese potential immigrant. The Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, with amendments in 1887, 1892, 1900 and 1903 enhanced the fee for Chinese immigrants that ultimately went up to $500 in 1903. The subsequent Immigration Act of 1906 imposed greater restrictions on immigration, not necessarily based on ethnicity. This was followed by the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1908 with the Japanese government on lines similar to what the United States had agreed to a year earlier.
With the supply of both Chinese and Japanese workers having dried up, the recruiters for the railway construction companies began to cast their net towards the Indians in the Far East as well as in the Punjab. The first Sikh immigrants sent home encouraging tales of the availability of remunerative employment, and thus, what began as a trickle soon swelled into a regular channel of influx from India. It however never assumed even a fraction of the Chinese numbers. The table below tells the tale:4
Fiscal Year Indian Immigration into Canada Indian Immigration into the United States
1904 - 258
1905 45 145
1906 387 271
1907 2124 1072
1908 2623 1710
1909 6 337
1910 10 1782
1911 5 517
1912 3 165
Almost ninety per cent of the Indian immigrants were Sikhs, and the rest Hindus and Muslims, and among them ninety per cent settled either in British Columbia in Canada, or California in the United States. Irrespective of religious affiliation, all Asian Indians were lumped under the generic term ‘Hindoos’ or ‘Hindus’ to distinguish them from American Indians (Native Americans), a terminology that carried itself well into the forties.* At this time, neither Canada nor the United States had any laws in force that specifically prevented the entry of Indians into these countries, and Canada too did not have any laws explicitly banning Asian immigration except for the high ‘head tax’ of $500 imposed on Chinese immigrants. The reason for the sudden decline in Indian immigration into Canada from 1909 is explained later.
Between 1904 and 1909, the Asian Indians worked mostly in the lumber mills of British Columbia, Washington or Oregon. They were also employed in the Western Pacific Railway in northern California, or in the farms of the California areas of Sacramento, San Joaquin or Imperial Valleys. Agriculture became the preferred vocation for Indians, especially for the Sikhs, as jobs in this sector boomed. Given their traditional expertise in agriculture, honed in the fields of the Punjab, and their propensity for hard work coupled with community support, the Indians began to flourish, and with the accrued wealth they were soon buying large tracts of agricultural land or taking them on long lease from white owners.5 By 1919, Indians occupied more than 80,000 acres of land in California, with over half of this in Sacramento Valley.6
Even though the number of ‘Hindoos’ was miniscule in comparison to the Chinese, racist behaviour began to make itself felt against the Sikhs. Their appearance—the turban, the uncut hair and the beard—marked them out prominently, and earned them the epithet “rag-heads”. They were targeted, too, for their willingness to work longer hours thus depressing wages for white workers, and also because of their inability or indifference to integrate themselves more fully into local society, either due to a lack of social or language skills, or because their own insular micro-society satisfied their communal needs. Moreover, their newly acquired affluence (especially in California) as a consequence of frugal spending and canny investing aroused a natural envy amongst the Whites. The unhindered movement of Indians between Canada and the United States facilitated an exchange of labour and ideas, (especially American ideas of liberty and equality), and formed a bond between the Indian communities in the two countries. The number of the Sikhs in and around Vancouver had reached about 1,500 by the autumn of 1906 augmenting the twenty-five thousand Chinese and eight thousand Japanese already there.7 The situation was now fertile enough for renewed racist attacks on Asians of all hues, especially in British Columbia.
Amongst the first incidents of an overt resistance to Indian immigrants took place in October 1906 when the steamship Empress of Japan docked at Vancouver port, bringing on it about a hundred ‘Hindus’. The City of Vancouver, arrogating to itself the rightful jurisdiction of the Federal Immigration authority, confined the Indians to the immigration detention centre on the waterfront, and prevented them from leaving the centre into the city by the deployment of a heavy police contingent, thus precipitating a conflict between the City Council of Vancouver and the Dominion Government of Canada at Ottawa. The City Council was determined to stop the ‘Hindu Invasion’ and sent a letter to the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) instructing them that “…your company will detain all East Indians now en route to this part until such time as the Council shall receive assurances that they will not become a charge upon the community. Pending the receipt of such assurances the city police has been instructed to prevent any East Indians leaving the detention sheds”.8
A local newspaper quoted Dr Underhill, the medical health officer who was examining the immigrants, as saying that the ‘Hindoos’ were not really fit for this country and also they were crafty and unreliable. “The houses they occupy are destitute of furniture and the odor [sic] of them is usually unbearable. They are always making trouble over caste regulations and are susceptible to pneumonia. Their crankiness over food preparation is often apt to lead to serious troubles. Their ideas about cremation are also a trouble-breeding matter.”9 A telegram sent by the City Council to the Prime Minister of Canada declared that, “The City of Vancouver will not stand for any further dumping of East Indians.” At a public meeting on 18 October many city leaders railed against allowing the Indians to land with one of them going so far as to say that the best way to solve the problem was to “let Indians wander the streets till they died of hunger and cold”.10 Three days later the Indians were released by the dominion officials. However, white public opinion against Indian immigration had by now achieved a criticality that could no more be placated through tokenisms.
The palpable hostility and prejudice encountered by new disembarking immigrants at Vancouver made them apply for admission to the United States. However, the situation across the border in the Pacific North-West was equally unfriendly to Asians and Indians, and culminated in a series of race riots in the September of 1907, beginning with the one at Bellingham in Washington State. In late August 1907, the union of white workers of the lumber mills, working closely with the Asiatic Exclusion League, warned the mill owners that no Indian should be employed after Labor Day on 2 September, and reinforced the threat by having a thousand workers march down the main streets of Bellingham on Labor Day. On the evening of the 4th, the mill hands circulated a notice to ‘drive out the Hindus’. The attack initially began with the beating up of two Indians but inaction by the police (a staff of nine for a population of over thirty thousand) emboldened the rioters. As historian Joan Jensen describes, “The mob, now five hundred strong, swept down to the waterfront barracks where many of the Indians lived. Battering down the doors, the mob threw belongings into the street, pocketed money and jewelry, and dragged Indians from their beds. The Indians fled, some injuring themselves by jumping from buildings in an attempt to escape. Those who did not move fast enough were beaten. One landlord turned out four Indians to protect his boarding house from damage. Rioters attacked a tenement on Forest Street, roused the occupants, and forced them into the street. Fifty men stormed the surrounding mills, pulled Indians from their bunks, and began to burn bunkhouses. To avoid further, physical violence, the police chief turned over the red-roofed city hall to the rioters to hold Indians. By morning over two hundred Indians were jammed into the city hall.”11
The Seattle Star reported on 5 September on the events at Bellingham with the headline, ‘Race Riots Raging—Bloodshed Feared’ and warned that the “the rioters are in no pleasant mood and the ring leaders announced that they will not only drive the Hindus out of Bellingham but also the Japanese and Filipinos. They all remember how the Chinese were driven from the city and none have dared to show their heads within the city limits since”.12 While there was an initial murmur of sympathy for the Indians, the sentiment soon changed into one that favoured exclusion and to retain intact the white character of the west coast. All the Indians in Bellingham decided to leave by the weekend, and very soon the Japanese too moved out of there. While some of the Indians moved south to Seattle, most moved north to Vancouver hoping that the British Empire, of which they were citizens and Canada was a dominion, would wrap its protective Union Jack over them. It turned out to be a chimerical wish; two days later, on 7 September 1907, the largest ever race riot in the history of Canada engulfed Vancouver. A few months later, some of the Indians who took up jobs at Everett, a town close to Seattle, were also targets of assault by five hundred armed men on 5 November.
The riots in Vancouver were partly instigated by reports that a large contingent of Asians was due to arrive in Vancouver by the steamer Monteagle on 11 September 1907. It was assumed that the immigrants were mostly Chinese and Japanese. There was already a considerable amount of nervousness tinged with fear in the city to the news that Indians were trooping in from Bellingham to escape the riots there. The Asiatic Exclusion League called for a parade in Vancouver on the evening of the 7th as a show of strength of its influence, and to declare its avowed anti-Asiatic stance. Over thirty thousand people, the majority in solidarity with the League, gathered near the city hall to watch the parade. Among the crowd was a fair sprinkling of Japanese, Chinese, and Indians who too had come to watch the spectacle. A few speeches attacking the Asians were made, and soon after, the rioters went berserk destroying buildings and property in Chinatown and Japtown. Order was restored only by dawn.13
Barely hiding its bias, The Daily Province reported on Monday that, “Law and Order were lost in the vortex of mob rule which swirled through the oriental section of Vancouver on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Thousands of dollars’ worth of damage was done by the mob to the property of the Orientals, but no violence was offered to their persons. It was the white rioters who suffered bodily injury at the hands of the frenzied alien population, who armed with knives, broken bottles, stones and in some cases revolvers, sought to protect their houses and chattels.” The report also mentioned that the “Chinese of Vancouver armed themselves this morning as soon as the gun stores opened. Hundreds of revolvers and thousands of rounds of ammunition were passed over the counters to the Celestials before the police stepped in and requested that no further sale be made to the Orientals.”14
On 11 September the Monteagle docked in Vancouver harbour. With no hint of subtlety, a headline proclaimed, ‘The Coolies will be debarked at the C.P.R. Wharf this afternoon’. The news had spread that the ship’s passengers were not all Chinese or Japanese, but instead comprised nine hundred Indians, a hundred and fifty Chinese, and fifty Japanese.15 The citizens of Vancouver were inflamed, and protested at the prospect of the largest ever contingent of Indians, almost all of them Sikhs, landing in their city. In a replay of what had happened with the Empress of Japan almost a year earlier, there ensued an argument between the federal dominion immigration officials who wanted the immigrants to land and the mayor of the city who did not. At Victoria, the dock was roped off for two blocks and heavily guarded by the police. Though an attempt was made to land the Indians, a large crowd had gathered and the officials were afraid to let them face the crowd. They were then returned to the ship.16 A few Vancouver businessmen, with the support of the mayor, started a collection to charter a train and send at least eight hundred of the ‘Hindus’ who had arrived by the Monteagle to Ottawa, the seat of the federal government. Eventually, the Ottawa plan did not succeed due to insufficient collection of funds to buy the railroad tickets for the Indians, and they were then allowed to make their way into the city.17
The virulent opposition to Asiatic immigration that had been provoked with the landing of the Empress of Japan in 1906 had culminated in the race riots of Vancouver, and the situation had been further exacerbated by the sudden influx of a great many more Indians arriving by the Monteagle a year later. This put intense pressure on the Canadian government to stop the inflow of immigrants, especially Indians. The Government of British Columbia at Vancouver, the Federal Government of Canada at Ottawa, the Government of the United Kingdom at London, and the Government of India at Calcutta, formulated an insidious policy that would effectively prevent Indians from entering Canada without being seen to openly discriminate against citizens of a fellow member of the British Empire. The Indian government was keen that nothing should be so obvious as to fan feelings of discontent in the Punjab, which was home to the Sikh forces, the most loyal fighting units of the British-Indian army. Punjab was also a major recruiting ground for the armed forces and police, not just for India but also for many other colonies of the Empire, from Hong Kong to Sudan. The British were justifiably paranoid of even a scent of sedition in, or an attempt to incite, its native armed forces; the savagery of the 1857 mutiny was far from being erased from their collective memories.
