How Indian immigrants used religion and caste to naturalize as White in the US.
I appreciate today's America; we are not a perfect union, but edging toward it. I am glad to have been born in India and chose America as my homeland. We must express our gratitude to all those early Indians who have relentlessly fought to be Americans. They made our lives easy, and I appreciate them all.
Hardeep Dhillon digs into the history of Indian immigrants. He has done justice to his work.
Throughout reading the article, I was smiling. I was thinking about the mindset of White Americans in the late '1800s and early 1900s. They are the same people now with different attitudes; thank God for that. In 100 years, a lot of change has taken place. Some of us who came in the '60s and '70s can relate.
It is also a difficult reading - how our fellow Indians were determined to get US citizenship, but it was not easy for them. They have chosen less than truthful means, and many of us have done so. We need to appreciate them, and their fights made our immigration easy. Everyone was for himself.
I am deeply concerned about the bias against Hinduism and Hindus. It's been there for a long time, and together, we must work to eradicate this bias. Swami Vivekanand took the right step in the Parliament of the World's religion in Chicago. A sustainable change will come through education. However, a few Hindutva** men are increasing Hinduphobia through their actions. I hope someone drills common sense in them - if they can spend that money and energy on education, it will be far more effective for mutual acceptance of each other.
The Muslim community has done a great job of mitigating Islamophobia through education and interactions with different communities. A lot more needs to be done. The Jews provide us the model of how to integrate seamlessly, but that has not wiped out the Anti-semitism coming from the Christian communities either. I hope we can imagine a perfect union in the next hundred years where we learn to respect and accept each other's uniqueness.
In 1992 I bought an Apartment complex in Dallas; the deed requirements prevented selling the properties to non-whites. What a change in attitudes and laws in 100 years! Of course, the current laws overrode the previous ones.
The Center for Pluralism is committed to building cohesive societies where we can feel secure about our faith, ethnicity, nationality, race, or other uniqueness. Please visit the home page of www.CenterforPluralism.com
Now, here is the long article, but worth reading