Fear and loathing towards Asians, towards people of Indian origin, towards Hindus -- this is a substratum of Indian American or Asian American history that has yet to find its way into American classrooms.

I am, of course, referring to a period in American history when a Hindu, or any person of Asian origin in America, was condemned as an undesirable alien, as a lesser breed, or a benighted heathen.

The Americans viewed the Japanese as only the scouts, the vanguard of a vast Asiatic army. “There are Koreans, Chinese, and Hindoos numbering over one billion. Allow them to secure a foothold in the United States, and they will, within a few generations, sweep like an avalanche of death from the Himalayas around the globe” wrote the secretary of the Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) in San Francisco in 1908.

Eugene Schmitz, the mayor of San Francisco, wrote urging congressional or diplomatic action. “This is no narrow sectional feeling or narrow prejudice against Hindus as a people any more than it is against other Asiatic,” he argued, adding that the Indians were “‘servile, enervated members of a degenerated race.”

Documents from the archives of the AEL indicate that the Euro-Americans were clearly alarmed at the prospect of Indians producing native-born Indian Americans.

The media as well as politicians had no hesitation in claiming that the people of India were undesirables of the worst kind – “the filth of Asia.” In early 20th century, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Boston was moved to state: “our people are determined not to admit Asiatic labor to this country, whether it is Chinese, Japanese, or Hindoo”.

A group of residents of Glen Park and Mission districts of San Francisco wrote: “The Pacific coast is fast becoming the dumping ground of the most undesirable people whose morals and customs make an assimilation with our citizens an impossibility.” They termed the Indians “the new pest from Asia”.

It was racism fuelled by fear and loathing towards people of a different color, a different religion, and a different culture. And though it happened nearly a hundred years ago, faint echoes of this Hinduphobia or Indiaphobia still resonate in the American psyche.

There was fear that the browns would eventually swamp the Euro-Americans with their sheer numbers. There was fear of future political domination by an aggressive Asiatic minority. There was the widespread assumption that Indians were a “horde of fanatics,” and carriers of dreaded diseases.

As author Harold Isaacs reminds us, "The image of the very benighted heathen Hindu is perhaps the strongest of all that come to us out of India from the past and it retains its full sharpness up to the present day."

Perhaps these notions were the dregs of missionary propaganda carried over from Sunday sermons.

Missionary Views

The statements made by American missionaries in India in their letter, books, sermons, and lectures was in a large part dominated by a powerful sense of revulsion at Hindu practices. A mild example would be the complaint, in 1852, about "the deplorable ignorance and stubborn prejudices of the Hindus, together with the caste system, their entire absence of all correct principles, and finally their moral degradation."

The Hindus, one might more commonly have heard, were "lifetime liars and worshippers of a stupendous system of carnal idolatry." Their temples would be "ornamented with all the orders of infernal architecture, displaying all the sins in the human figure and exhibiting evil spirits under the significant emblems of serpents, toads, etc." Letters prepared for Sunday school children stressed "mountains of superstitions," "the heathens in darkness," and "the Hindu mind."

The whole literature was filled, author Bernard Stern remarks, "with a positively morbid preoccupation with temple prostitutes and lingamites," with lurid illustrations, and in general with material more titillating than inspirational.

Indian religions, said a writer in the Christian Century in 1905, were "debauched with deeds of lust and blood...Many of the Indian deities, given to lustful amours, are especially worshipped by the people....It is not surprising that religion in India is not only divorced from morality but married to vice...much indecency exists in India under the guise of religion, many of the temple dancing girls are merely consecrated prostitutes, and in many cases respectable women are led to lives of shame."

Bishop Hebber had written back in 1819, and numberless churchgoing generations still sing the famous lines about the call that had come "from Greenland’s icy mountains, from India's coral strand" to "deliver their land from error's chain."

Hindus Swarming Into California

Politicians and the media resorted to brandishing their hinduphobia whenever they felt threatened.

“Hindu women next to swarm to California” ran one prominent newspaper in its headline in 1909. And an American Consul in India wired his counterpart in Canada: ‘We have enough race problems of our own without permitting the Hindus to invade our shores.’

One prominent American politician dutifully observed: “The Hindu problem is the Chinese and the Japanese problem over again.” Another stated: “The Hindu is in several ways more objectionable than either of the other Oriental races; he keeps his person as dirty as his quarters, and at the base of the danger from the Hindu is the danger faced in other Oriental immigration – the danger of lowering our civilization.” A third noted: “The Hindu can do what other Asiatics can. He can live and work on wages that will starve the white man. There are upward of 300 million of his kind in India, and the growing population presses for an outlet. They could pour a million a year into our land and never miss them. Plainly we shall have to shut our doors on them and keep them shut.”

Charles F Curry, Secretary Of State, declared at a meeting of the Asiatic Exclusion League in 1908: “The bonds of the habitation of the Hindus did not, do not, and I pray to God never will, include America as a whole, or the paradise of America, our own California…If the surplus millions of the teeming hordes of India, China, and Japan were permitted to immigrate to the United States, they would soon outnumber and dominate our present population, subvert our form of government, degrade our standard of living and substitute the semi-barbarous heathen civilization of Shintoism and Brahma, Buddha and Confucius, for our Christian civilization…..the Hindu Asiatic ought to be excluded from American soil.”

He went on: “It is essential that the blood of the American-Europeans of this country, who together with their ancestors developed civilization to its present state, should be kept pure and free from the taint of the decadent Orientalism of China, Japan and India. We have no quarrel with those people. We wish them well in their own countries, but we do not want them in ours.”

He further explained: “As a matter of fact, we, the people of the United States, are cousins, far removed, of the Hindus, but our forefathers pressed to the west, in the everlasting march of conquest, progress and civilization. The forefathers of the Hindus went east and became enslaved, effeminate, cast-ridden and degraded, until today we have a spectacle of the Western Aryan, the ‘Lords of Creation,’ if we may use the simile, while on the other hand the Eastern Aryans have become the ‘Slaves of Creation.’ And now we, the people of the United States, are asked to receive these members of a degraded race on terms of equality. Or if they come under the law they may become citizens, and what would be the condition in California if this horde of fanatics should be received in our midst.” This was the picture that was presented to the general public when just a trickle of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent began to join the larger numbers of Chinese and Japanese already in the U.S.

The idea was to generate fear and loathing towards people of Indian origin.

Consider the following scenario: “When the Pacific Coast becomes the battleground of industrial armies of Chinese, Japanese and Hindus, the fate of the white man can be readily conjectured. The American citizen workingmen and their children must become houseless and homeless wanderers, the army of tramps will increase enormously; the youth of the State will become hoodlums and criminals; the jails, penitentiaries, and almshouses will be overflowing; the whole purposes for which this Republic was founded will be lost sight of. We will have a landed aristocracy, supported by serfs and upheld by force. The recruiting stations of the US army would do a thriving business. The white man would find there a last refuge. Soldiers would be required to keep the hordes of coolies in subjection; civilization would swing backward to the Dark Ages of feudalism, peonage and slavery.”

It does not surprise if one discovers parallels between certain statements made then and now, such as: “It is a conflict between an inferior and superior civilization. We represent all that is grand in past achievement; we have a civilization in which labor is dignified and beautified by liberty and we must maintain it; it is a patriotic duty, and while other countries may desire this cheap and undesirable labor, we do not desire it, and we will put forth our best efforts to keep back a tide that would destroy our superior civilization.”

Congressman John E. Raker was blunt when he told an interviewer: “I concede that the root of the objection to the Asiatic immigration is confined to the fact that the Asiatic is the cheaper man.” And one of the candidates for political office, W. Englebright, declared: “I am in entire harmony with every act to exclude Asiatics from America. I have children, may have grandchildren, and want them to be protected.”

Such was the climate of fear and loathing that greeted those first immigrants from India who merely sought a foothold in the land of the free and the brave – just like millions of other immigrants who were being drawn towards America.

In addition, people from the subcontinent were suspected of harboring communicable diseases. So they were thrown into prison. “Them nigger kind of fellers won’t eat” the San Francisco Call quoted a prison official who had put Indians behind bars as soon as they landed in California. Confronted with food that they found inedible, the Indians had reciprocated in a manner that would have raised the conscience of any other human being -- a hunger strike.

On 10 august 1910 an alarming cable reached the Secretary of State in California: “five hundred sailed this week Calcutta to San Francisco. Undesirable. Refuse admission.” That was when the American consul in India was turning down almost all who applied and even warned steamship companies to refuse to sell them tickets. These undesirables would overrun California, predicted the Consul. And in August that year, a shipload of 150 Sikhs returned to India after having been turned away in California. That same month, when 110 Indians arrived on the Mongolia, an American newspaper wrote: ‘Their habits are objectionable and their customs a constant source of trouble.’

The American love of hats is legendary. And it’s not just the cowboys. It was a sign of gentlemanly distinction. For women it determined a certain class. But somehow the Indian turban seemed particularly offensive. The outside is usually rather clean the San Francisco Call admitted, but “it would take a bacteriologist to write the story of the inside.”

The American consul general in Calcutta, William Michael refused to grant visas to Indians who requested them and suggested that they migrate to Australia rather than to the US. He even proposed that western Australia be set aside especially for Punjabi farmers who, he thought, might be induced to settle there. America, Michael said, had too many immigrants: “America should be given a rest.”

In September1910 Michael could report to the State Department, with satisfaction, that the attempt to emigrate seemed to be over. ‘There is plenty of room in India for all Indians and they are better off here than they would be in the United States, so that, as a matter of fact, their exclusion from the United States is really a kindness and benefit to them,’ he wrote.

The San Francisco Chronicle took up the exclusionists’ banner, saying that over three hundred Indians were arriving each month and listed three ships that arrived with almost 250 migrants. Indians were beginning to send for their wives, and fifteen hundred more were on the way, warned the newspaper. A doctor had discovered that Indians were infected with “dread hookworm,” the article continued, and warned that all Indians would have to be excluded on that basis.

Restrictions in Place

By November-December 1910, only two Indians entered San Francisco whereas 289 were turned back at Angel Island. Exclusion had clearly become a policy.

When a shipload of 150 Sikhs was deported from California to Calcutta, the tired, ragged and broke Indians straggled through Calcutta, looking for transportation to Punjab. The number returning from California had reached almost one thousand. Each had spent a fortune on his trip and it provided the best possible discouragement to future immigrants. “We have been ruined by our greed,” one said to a reporter in Calcutta, “and we must suffer for our sin.” Others were not so philosophical. They spoke of their hatred for America and demanded that all Americans be excluded from India. Many would be emigrants waiting in Calcutta for ships gave up and went home.

Governor Gage of California in a message written in 1900 warned Californians against the incoming avalanche of brown men. Governor Chamberlain of Oregon publicly said “I would rather let my children go uneducated than allow them to sit with Asians in the schoolroom ”

California Congressman John E Raker was among those in the forefront of the anti-Asian surge. “Is it not a fact that the social, industrial and moral characteristic of the Hindus is a sufficient reason to discriminate against them? Why does Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, all white man’s country, bar these aliens if there is no reason for it? What would California be for a white man if it were populated by two or three million Hindus of the class we are now becoming too familiar with,” asked Congressman Raker.

Media Campaign

When the Asian population reaches a critical mass, organized labor warned: it will soon be good-bye to liberty, Christian civilization and the Caucasian race.

A letter from Daniel Keefe, Commissioner General of Immigration, Washington DC, explained “It is not the purpose of my letter to ask for the exclusion of Hindus on the ground that they are Hindus but rather that they are a very low grade of alien labor and are likely to become a menace.”

The San Francisco Chronicle declared pompously on September 12, 1910: The objections to Asiatic immigration are no more strenuously urged by workingmen than they are by all others who care for the maintenance of the civilization of the white race. It is favored only by the few employing transportation interests who do not care what comes of our Civilization so long as they can make immediate personal gain

The Vacaville Reporter opined: We do not believe it essential to the development of the best agricultural industries that the fairest portion of our great State should be handed over to the hordes of cheap Japanese, Chinese and Hindus.

The Santa Rosa Republican noted: The Asiatic labor problem has many sides to be considered. It must be remembered that practically all of the Asiatics living in this country are constantly sending to their relatives in the home countries across the way a large percentage of their earnings. The Hindus are assumed to send 80 percent of their income home…the amalgamation of the Asiatic with the European races, which now form the personality of our people, is certainly undesirable

The San Diego Union editorialized: ‘Employment of Asiatics in California industries, no matter what might be the immediate profits, would be ruinous to the people of the State as a whole’. The San Francisco Chronicle sounded a more ominous note. ‘With unrestricted Asiatic immigration within two generations all the Pacific Coast states would be Orientalized, and if that were accomplished economic conditions would almost certainly involve, not the secession but the driving out of the Western States from the Union’.

The San Francisco Call stated: ‘We do not want to see the largest territory of the United States converted into an Asiatic colony, hostile in spirit to our institutions, and wholly unassimilable to our form of government. The Japanese, the Chinese and the Hindu cannot be made a part of the American civilization except in the capacity of servile labor. It would be better that the vineyards and orchards in California go untilled and unharvested, than that we should turn them over to a class of helots.

Meanwhile, at a closed door meeting of the Asiatic Exclusion League in San Francisco, on May 12 1912, a labor leader, himself an immigrant, rose up to speak:

“Nor in any true sense will they ever become Americanized. For profit or convenience a few do, and in course of time more of them may, adopt our style of dress, and outwardly affect other of our manners, but the essential characteristics which distinguish their mode of life, their ideals, religion, morals and aspirations individually and as a race they adhere to most tenaciously. Their case would be much more hopeful if they came mere savages, for then, like the Negroes, they would adopt our civilization and our religion, and aspire to work out their destiny in harmony with ours.

“But their ways are not as our ways and their gods are not as our god and never will be. They bring with them a degraded civilization and a debased religion of their own ages older, and to their minds far superior to ours. We look to the future with hope for improvement and strive to uplift our people; they look to the past, believing that perfection was attained by their ancestors centuries before our civilization began and before Jesus brought us the divine message from the Father. They profane this Christian land by erecting here among us their pagan shrines, set up their idols and practice their shocking heathen religious ceremonies.

“The Asiatic race and the Caucasian race never could and never can exist in the same territory. Their morals, their philosophy, their religion, their education, their standard of living are reversed, and as far apart as the two poles. They can never blend, harmonize, commingle or live together in peace. The welfare of both races will be best served and their happiness effectively advanced if they confine their operations and efforts to that portion of the earth given them as a home by God.”