Snippets of South Asian American history
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Kartar Singh Sarabha, the young revolutionary who would become a martyr in the Ghadar Party and India’s independence struggle, is often described as a student at the University of California, Berkeley. But when I tried to verify the story, I couldn’t seem to find any hard evidence that he ever actually took classes at the […]
What does it feel like to be free? To win self-rule after centuries of colonial rule? I came across this striking article about UC Berkeley students from India and Pakistan celebrating the birth of their new countries together on August 15, 1947. The smiles on their faces are infectious. It’s easy to dismiss Indian and […]
In the early 1900s, San Francisco was a bustling hub of cultural exchange, teeming with immigrants and performers from around the globe. In the middle of that churn arrived a newborn Punjabi boy named Francisco. The youngest Hindoo baby in the United States is at 604 Minna street. It was born there ten days ago, […]
M.P.T. Acharya (1887–1954) was a Tamil revolutionary and anti-colonial activist, deeply connected to global anarchist movements. He spent his life fighting imperialism and later advocating for a stateless, cooperative society. While Acharya’s work is more connected to India, Europe, and New York, we have some evidence that he passed through San Francisco, as part of […]
In 1880s Berkeley, a turbaned figure known only as “Old James” wandered alone through the hills, his turban and trance-like manner catching the attention of locals. Described in a newspaper as “a sort of mystic,” the “Hindu” (South Asian) immigrant worked as a milker for Pat Curran’s dairy farm, which encompassed hundreds of acres of […]
An 1851 San Francisco paper described a city of immigrants… I found a lovely line in an 1851 San Francisco newspaper that celebrates the diversity of Gold Rush San Francisco—a boom town whose residents included “Hindoos” (South Asians), “Mussulmans” (Muslims), and people “from the fairy lands of Persia and Arabia”: “In our streets, the fair […]
In 1916, a new establishment opened its doors at 2139 Center Street in downtown Berkeley, California. Named Bagai’s India Arts and Curios, it was founded by Vaishno Das Bagai, an early South Asian immigrant to the United States. This store stood half a block away from what is today known as Kala Bagai Way, named […]
The story of Samuel Variapa, the “Hindoo centenarian of North Beach” If South Asians are included in California history textbooks, their stories typically begin in 1965, or sometimes with Punjabi immigrants of the 1900s. While older stories exist, it’s rare to find actual names and details. That’s why I was so thrilled to discover a two-part […]
A Sikh American Christmas story from 1911 In 1911, the San Francisco Call published a Christmas short story about a Sikh immigrant taking in a group of cold and tired railroad workers trudging through the Sierra Nevada mountains. This was a time of significant anti-Indian sentiment, just a few years after the Bellingham Riots, when hundreds […]
A new history dataset shows the impact of immigration restrictions I’ve been analyzing U.S. Census data to understand the history of Sikh and other South Asian Americans, and I’m excited to release a public dataset of almost a thousand people with the last name “Singh” living in the United States in 1940. (The source data […]
