Bhagat Singh Thind

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Bhagat Singh Thind (October 3, 1892 – September 15, 1967), also known as Doctorji, was an Indian American Sikh writer and lecturer on spirituality who served in the United States Army during World War I and was involved in a Supreme Court case over the right of Indian people to obtain United States citizenship. He was among a group of people of Indian ancestry who attempted to claim they were white and therefore eligible for naturalization under US federal naturalization law. Thind had enlisted in the United States Army a few months before the end of World War I. After the war he sought to become a naturalized citizen, following a legal ruling that Caucasians had access to such rights. Identifying himself as an Aryan, in 1923, the Supreme Court ruled against him in the case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, which retroactively denied all Indian (Asian) Americans the right to obtain United States citizenship for failing to meet the definition of a "white person", "person of African descent...

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