Modern figure
Bhagat Singh Thind
ਭਗਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਥਿੰਦبھگت ِسنگھ ِتھند
Sikh veteran of the US Army whose citizenship case of 1923 led the Supreme Court to rule that Indians could not become Americans.
Bhagat Singh Thind came from Taragarh Talawa near Amritsar to the United States in 1913, worked in the lumber mills of Oregon and served in the US Army in the First World War, turban and all.
He was granted citizenship, then had it challenged. In 1923 the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind that Indians were not 'white persons' under the law, and other Indians lost their citizenship and their land. Thind fought on, became a citizen in 1936 and spent his life lecturing on Sikh and Indian spirituality.