The Telling Case of Doctor Bhagat Singh Thind: Indian Nationalist, Citizen, and Spiritual Teacher.

This article focuses on the life and legacy of Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian nationalist, U.S. Army veteran, and spiritual teacher whose 1923 U.S. Supreme Court case, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, denied him and future Indian immigrants citizenship on the grounds that they were not “white” as legally defined. Thind’s early years in Oregon involved laboring in lumber mills and supporting the Ghadar Party’s anti-colonial efforts against British rule in India, but after his citizenship was revoked, he reinvented himself as a spiritual teacher within the American New Thought movement, blending Sikh, Hindu, and Christian ideas to navigate racialized exclusion and build a following. The article situates Thind’s legal battle and spiritual career within broader contexts of U.S. and British colonial racial policies, anti-immigrant repression, and the construction of “whiteness” as a prerequisite for citizenship, highlighting the complex interplay of race, nationalism, religion, and individual agency in early 20th-century America. Thind’s life exemplifies both resistance to and accommodation within racialized structures, reflecting the challenges faced by Indian immigrants amid imperialism and American racial hierarchies.