Good Immigrants or Pesky Invaders?

As Donald Trump returns amid raging controversies over H1B visas, a new book documents the rise of Indians in the US

- Salil Tripathi

When Christopher Columbus set sail from Europe and turned up on the American continent, he was in fact trying to reach India. Native Americans came to be called Indians, and the continent got populated by people from Europe. Triumphalist Americans, who would later characterize their land seizure as "manifest destiny," were the original "undocumented aliens," to use the term with which the United States describes people who enter the country without proper papers.

They saw nothing wrong in treating the land as theirs to take, and displaced and killed many Native Americans. To meet their needs of agriculture, commerce and industry, they brought people forcibly to the US. The hierarchy was clear; the enslaved had no rights, the immigrant white population began to see itself as native. So where did Indians from India belong in all this historical shift?

In Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America, Meenakshi Ahamed, a US-based journalist and writer who has worked at the World Bank, offers a fascinating account of the early history of Indians who came to the US. The earliest to arrive in significant numbers were in the 19th century, when Punjabi farmers came to work on farms and build railroads.

Some of them claimed citizenship as "Aryans," but the US judiciary frustrated their attempts. Ahamed recalls the story of Bhagat Singh Thind, who came as a student in 1913 to California, fought for the US Army in World War I, was granted citizenship, but it was revoked within days, because he was not white.