Dalip Singh Saund Collection - Part 2

What became of Dalip Singh Saund? Those who know of him celebrate how he became the first Asian American U.S. Congressman in the 1950s. And many still refer to him as “Judge” - the nickname he earned during his 4 years serving that role in Westmoreland, CA. But only some sources today mention that he left office after just 3 terms, having suffered a stroke while serving as U.S. Representative of California’s 29^th District. I wondered: did he die in 1962 when he had the stroke? Perhaps knowing more beyond his initial attainment of office would offer new understanding into his life. Good thing the Dalip Singh Saund collection contained so many documents from the years after Saund’s first election in 1956. Newspapers articles also narrate larger timelines and demonstrate public reaction. This post will sketch the events surrounding Saund’s stroke and the years afterwards.

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Saund’s wife, Marian, remembered the days before Judge’s stroke as a flurry of work and travel.[1] The U.S Congress had halted legislative work in D.C. for Easter recess, on those last two weeks of April 1962. But “recess’ didn’t mean “vacation,” especially not for the service-minded D.S. Saund. His congressional district covered a vast expanse of countryside, including both urban and rural populations of Imperial and Riverside Counties. Marian remembered: “My husband had an average of four hours sleep a night, during the two weeks,” and “[t]here were many meetings on our last day.” After a visit to Yuma, AZ - just across the eastern border of Saund’s California district - Mr. and Mrs. Saund drove almost 300 miles west into Los Angeles to catch a flight back to Washington, D.C. on April 30. Unfortunately, the fog around LA’s International Airport was too thick to allow departures. Marian drove them thirty miles north to the Lockheed Air Terminal (now Hollywood Burbank Airport) before they finally made it into the air at 2:45am Tuesday, May 1.

All of the activity seemed to have taken a toll on D. S. Saund. According to Marian Saund, the ten-day Easter recess “was just too much for him. Before we got to Washington, he was stretched out on the seats, a doctor on the plane with him. An ambulance met us in Washington and took us to the hospital.” Ill health had necessitated a hospital stay during Saund's 1958 election campaign as well, likely a first stroke that everyone had termed "exhaustion." Now in 1962, statements by his wife and staff cast this hospitalization in a similar light. Nevertheless, as the House of Representatives commenced their legislative work at the Capitol Building, Judge Saund lay a few miles away on the 16^th floor of the National Naval Medical Center, in Bethesda, Maryland.[2] Papers publicized that he had experienced “an occlusion of a blood vessel of the head,” but few knew what that would mean for Saund or his representative work.

How long would it last? It seemed hard to tell. Friends referred to it hopefully as a “brief period of illness.”[3] A mass-mailed letter comforted constituents with Saund’s descriptions of an active hospital life: “I take rigorous therapy every morning and my staff visits me every afternoon to discuss important letters and projects and the present election campaign”, even keeping “abreast of national and international developments” through tv news and “public affairs” programs.[4] Throughout the summer, the Associated Press repeated the statement given by Saund’s office, that “the Representative is showing steady improvement.”[5] Nevertheless, as month followed month, Saund never left the hospital. Shrouded in mystery, Saund’s illness significantly affected his District’s political representation as well. When the General Administration Employee Information Office in San Francisco published its summary of the 2^nd Session of the 87^th Congress, it revealed that out of 11 bills passed, Saund had missed voting on seven.[6] 

Compounding these problems, D. S. Saund’s stroke hit just as he needed to ramp up his campaign for reelection. Saund’s previous campaign success had depended on rigorous, grassroots activity, and he needed to touch base with constituents once again in order to win their votes for a fourth term. Unfortunately, uncertainty over Saund’s recovery put his campaign team in an awkward position. Campaigns required media visibility, visits to constituents, public addresses, and glad-handing. But over the summer of 1962, Saund remained in Virginia while his family and friends attempted to keep up the campaign in California.

For a constituency used to Saund’s frequent presence and notifications of his activity, his absence began to grow noticeable. In June, the Independent Star reported that Saund’s aides “keep denying rumors that he is near death.”[7] His office tried to calm public anxiety with the report that Saund was recovering “satisfactorily” or making “steady improvement” but released no details on the severity of his condition. This seemed a successful strategy for the June primary. Saund won the Democratic nomination with 85% of the Democratic vote.[8] 

As the summer months progressed, however, the public began to fret about the absence of information. In August, a columnist at San Bernardino’s County Sun reported, “Over in Riverside County, Democrats and Republicans alike are demanding a report as to the state of health of the district’s congressman”.[9] The Palm Springs Desert Sun groused, “[T]o ask for a definitive answer to the question whether he (Saund) is able to serve…is apparently to wish for the moon.”[10] Moreover, headlines across California began to reflect the confusion: “Secrecy Cloaks Ill Congressman,” “Seclusion of Congressman Raises Doubts,” “Congressman Saund Puzzle, Mystery Ailment.” The fact that only Marian Saund and Saund’s staff saw him in the hospital - sources who practiced strict silence on the specifics of Saund’s health - meant that public suspicion grew unimpeded.

“Judge” Saund’s campaign team - composed of his family and friends - attempted to combat this public uncertainty with an “unusual campaign.” His wife, grown children, and their spouses, along with friends of the family, loaded into their sound truck to drive to the various corners of Saund’s district. Marian spoke of traipsing “from house to house, back and forth on both sides of the streets in order to deliver literature & see all the people.” In this way, they continued the campaign strategies that had proved so successful previously. They also worked to take attention off of Saund’s health by focusing on his solid history of service to the District. He had, after all, become quite popular with his constituents due to the federal help he had managed to direct towards them. But without Saund at the helm, the campaign lacked the single-focused drive characterizing the his previous election cycles. For instance, once the school year began, Marian began teaching elementary school once again, perhaps foreseeing the need for a new breadwinner in the near future. Although she still campaigned and spoke at rallies in Saund’s place, her efforts mostly became confined to weekends.

Saund’s colleagues used other methods as well, trying to bolster Saund’s popularity despite his campaign absence. President John F. Kennedy, Speaker of the House John McCormack, Majority Leader Carl Albert, and a handful of other U.S. Representatives stepped in front of a video camera to affirm how much they valued his Congressional work and how well he advocated for the interests of his constituents.[11] When Saund’s office publicly confirmed in September that Saund would continue to seek reelection, a fellow Democratic congressman from California - Representative Harry R. Shepherd - affirmed that doing so was Saund’s “prerogative” as winner of the primary.[12] No one from the Democratic Party visited Saund’s hospital room; still they all seemed to accept and support his continued campaign. D.S. Saund had given such valuable support to the Democratic Party as a U.S. Representative, that party members seemed willing to wait for his improvement. Perhaps Saund’s past deeds and high public approval would win the seat for Democrats once again, after which he could be replaced by special election if discovered incapable of continued service.[13]

Unlike Saund’s first congressional campaign in 1956, Democrats dominated in 1962. President Kennedy had been elected only 2 years earlier, initiating a turn from Eisenhower’s more conservative policies.[14] Democrats also had dominated the California State Legislature since 1959. This timing worked well for the party, because they held the state’s political power just when California’s exploding population size required adding new federal congressional seats and redistricting old ones. Redistricting in favor of Democratic voters in the previous session, meant that the 1962 elections would consolidate Democratic power even further. California Democrats hoped to transform their small majority (16-14) in the U.S. Congress into the much larger 24-14.[15] While still considered a valuable colleague in the Legislature, D. S. Saund’s election campaign carried less partisan significance than previous years, leading Democratic Party leadership to bide their time and watch how the regularly popular Saund recovered his health. 

Congressman Saund’s opponent, Minor C. (“Pat”) Martin of Riverside, had campaigned aggressively over the summer and early fall, garnering many positive news headlines. Martin had refrained from making Saund’s health a campaign issue, saying graciously, “I hope he recovers and is able to campaign.”[16] But Saund’s campaign silence seemed to allow Martin an open field. 

In the month before the election, Saund’s campaign staff became more active. His office published “Congressman D. S. Saund Reports from Washington,” his formerly regular newsletter to constituents, providing extensive details on Saund’s continuing political work instead of specifics about his recovery.[17] Using Saund’s authorial voice, the newsletters advertised the political work he still did from his hospital bed. Veterans, widows, and the injured received the money due them by federal agencies. Businessmen were connected to loans and federal agency information they needed. And the Library of Congress gathered information and assisted students and study groups at Saund’s request. Although he could not participate in the legislative work of the Capital, he reassured voters, “I am continuing to render practical assistance to hundreds of my constituents in their problems with Federal agencies and programs.”[18] 

Despite such assurances, in mid October hints of Saund’s medical condition began to leak out. On October 14, the Riverside Desert Sun reported the impressions of another hospital patient at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, who believed Saund to be completely paralyzed and unable to speak, after seeing him with "tubes in his nostrils and stomach".[19] Other newspapers took up the story, reporting the impressions of Rev. Bernard Braskamp, the Chaplain of the House; although he had not heard Saund speak, he said Saund communicated clearly “with gestures and moving his lips” and could shake hands “with a very firm grip.”[20] A few days later, Speaker of the House John McCormick confirmed that Saund “[t]alked some with his lips” during a visit and “clearly understood what I said.”[21] Even Saund’s legislative assistant, Robert Farrow, admitted that “He has speech involvement…but he can communicate,” adding that “[t]he doctors indicate he will respond to therapy.”[22] It seemed that initial reports of complete paralysis were inaccurate, but Saund’s actual condition still seemed worrisome to constituents who had come to expect a vigorous and active U.S. Representative.

Why had it taken so long for the public to learn about Congressman Saund’s condition? For many, it seemed that Saund’s campaign was trying to manipulate them. Such impressions seemed confirmed in the days before the election. In late October, newspapers had carried Saund’s assurance to constituents that “if my daily improvement and progress should not be sufficient…[to]carry on my duties - I would then request an examination by a panel of specialists….and abide by their verdict,” even if it meant resignation to allow for a special election.[23] The night before the election, however, an El Centro radio station received breaking news. Gaylord B. Parkinson, vice chairman of the California GOP committee, sent the station a telegram, calling Saund’s statement a “hoax on the voters.”[24] Parkinson declared that Saund had been unable to communicate in any way when Republican nominees had visited him in recent weeks, saying “In this condition, it is obviously impossible for him to have agreed to an examination…just as he was unable to apply for an absentee ballot….Whoever is perpetrating this fraud on the voters should be prosecuted.”[25] 

Democratic Party desires to hold on to the Congressional seat no doubt played a part in Saund’s continuation on the ballot, but partisan politics tells only part of the story. The uncertainty around stroke recovery coupled with the culture created by Saund’s lifelong optimism help to flesh out out what happened. 

Previously a font of verve and energy, “Judge” Saund fell hard to the stroke. Although the public was not alerted of it, his entire right side became paralyzed for a while, and he lost the ability to speak. Even worse, the left side of his brain struggled with the analytical thought needed to write words and sentences, which made communication on paper or with magnetized letters difficult too.[26] Nevertheless, in general a blocked blood vessel to a brain could be overcome more easily than the trauma of a brain hemorrhage or heart attack, both maladies Saund’s team was quick to rule out in the days right after the stroke. If Saund had received immediate care, doctors may have been able to thin his blood enough to bypass whatever blood clot or plaque obstructed his blood flow, rescuing his brain tissue. However, Saund had been flying across the North American continent when his stroke hit him, and doctors had not been able to help him until he landed in Washington, D.C., many hours later. Doctors seemed to hold out hope to the family, suggesting that therapy might return some of his functioning, as Richard Farrow informed the press. Perhaps such hope was not unwarranted either; brains can at times demonstrate amazing healing. Still, it seemed hard for doctors to prognosticate timelines even for Saund’s hospital release, and everything around Saund ground to a halt as they waited to see how his brain would heal. 

Optimism and endless effort had also remained a hallmark of D. S. Saund during his Congressional career and long before. Saund’s diligence and hard work for the interests of his constituents were frequently lauded by Congressional colleagues, and for good reason. Because he particularly cared about the interests of the workers and farmers of his District - groups often disenfranchised from federal power due to class, economic wealth, and race - Saund spent considerable time trying to connect his constituents with their government in Washington, D.C.  His frequent newsletter “Reports from Washington,” his mass distribution of federal documents, his drives to bring federal agency officials and congressional research teams to Riverside and Imperial Counties - these efforts speak to his constant push to forward the ambitions of his community. On top of this, he cultivated strong relational networks, attempting to work out his goals through friendship politics. Clarence Cannon, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, acknowledge this quality when he praised Saund as “one of the most popular members of the House” and noted, “of course, that means one of the most influential.”[27] In just 6 years in office, Saund proposed x# of bills and successfully passed x, acquiring significant appropriations for his District as well.[28] His obituaries would later recall his “reputation for boundless energy, dedication, integrity and an unwavering determination to translate to modern government the ideals on which America was founded.”[29]

These qualities, which served Saund so well in his political fights to represent his constituents, seem to have had the effect after his stroke of blinding family and friends to the permanence of the damage Saund had received during his stroke. Years later, Marian recalled how she “refused at first to believe that her husband would be incapacitated…‘We just didn’t know. We hoped. I felt a responsibility to the people of our district and to my husband.’”[30] This feeling of responsibility combined with her hope in her husband’s recovery led her and others to keep moving forward with the campaign, despite Saund’s immediate condition. When Saund had fallen ill from an earlier stroke in the summer of his 1958 campaign, John F. Kennedy campaigned on his behalf, and Saund had successfully gained reelection.[31] By the time Congress reajourned, Sound was back in the saddle of political service. If his family and friends could help him hold on to his political seat once again, they likely hoped he would be able to recover similarly. Then, he would be able to continue serving the people of Riverside and Imperial Counties with his inimitable care and fervor. As long as the “perhaps” of healing seemed a reasonable possibility, this would have seemed like a helpful and virtuous path to take. Unfortunately for Saund’s family and supporters, the strategy backfired when the public came to understand how hard the stroke had hit “Judge.”

Whether due to Saund’s long absence from his campaign, growing concern about his health, or suspicions of fraud launched by Republicans on the eve of the election, D. S. Saund lost the 1962 election to his opponent Minor C. Martin, 52,355 to 68,105.[32] For Saund’s family and friends, this would have particularly hurt, having invested themselves for months in trying to maintain for him the position of public service he so dearly loved. As Marian Saund left the campaign headquarters in Riverside on Tuesday nights, she had to fight back tears. With “Judge” making slow recovery progress on the East Coast, the election signaled an end of an era of sorts.

The new era D. S. Saund entered into was one of continued dealing with the effects of his stroke. At the end of November, Saund was finally able to move from Bethesda Navy Medical Center in Maryland to California’s San Diego Naval Hospital.[33] Less than a week later, Saund was released from that hospital as well.[34] Initially, he visited his family at his daughter Ellie Fisher’s house, but he soon moved into the house in Hollywood hills that his wife had owned for almost 20 years.[35] A flight of 80-some steps led up to it from the road, making it hard to leave very often even when he regained some of his mobility.[36] Still, Marian could more easily care for him there, as she did for the next decade. Although he could no longer participate in the Nation’s developments, he did watch them unfurl through the ‘60s into the early ‘70s through the portal of his television. On April 22, 1973, Saund passed away from another stroke, having seen Civil Rights legislation become law along with much of the rest of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society.” Although the quagmire of war in Vietnam must have saddened him greatly, Saund could only have enjoyed seeing the man he’d supported back in 1960 for president able to achieve the objectives Saund had supported as a Congressman. 

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1] Evaline Morrison, “Marian Saund: Looking Back,” Daily Enterprise, Thursday Edition, June, 14, 1973. Dalip Singh Saund Collection.

2] “Seclusion of Congressman Raises Doubts,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, August 10, 1962, p.11.

3] Charles U. Daly, Letter to Marian Saund, May 12, 1962. Dalip Singh Saund Collection.

4] No specific information as this is more of an archival document. I’ve called it “Letter to Constituents” but it has no date. It is signed “D.S. Saund, Member of Congress”, but there’s no way Saund could have written it, given his condition.

5] This was sent to Marian as a newspaper clipping from a friend in Virginia. Perhaps Washington Post? “Rep. Saund, Ill, Seeks Re-election”. Published a little previous to 1962-09-06, I believe. Dalip Singh Saund Collection.

6] “Review of Significant Fact and Opinion for Pacific Telephone People,” Pacific Telephone Headquarters (San Francisco: General Administration Employee Information Office in San Francisco, November 12, 1962). Dalip Singh Saund Collection.

7] “More or Less Personal,” Independent Star News, June 3, 1962, p.8.

8] “Tenney Runs Last in Try at Comeback,” The Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1962, p.20.

9] “Buie — They Tell Me,” The San Bernardino County Sun, August 3, 1962, p. B-8.

10] Ibid.

11] Film reels from Dalip Singh Saund Collection

12] "To campaign from hospital, Rep. Shepherd defends Rep. Saund's decision,” Redlands Daily Facts, September 10, 1962, p.4.

13] In fact, this strategy did work for one California seat in 1962. Clem Miller of the 1st Congressional District died in a plane crash a month before the November 6 election but still beat out his Republican opponent! The Press Democrat reported that “Democrats hoped that election of Miller…would pave the way for a special election.” They likely counted on similar results for the 38th District. “3 GOP Conservatives Ousted From Congress,” The Press Democrat, November 7, 1962.

14] California had, in fairness, given its Electoral College votes to Nixon. However, it would swing towards LBJ in 1964.

15] “Congressional Preview: State GOP in Trouble,” The Los Angeles Times, September 2, 1962, F2. “3 GOP Conservatives Ousted From Congress,” The Press Democrat, November 7, 1962.

16]“Political mystery, opinions on health of Rep. Saund conflict", The Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1962, p.20.

17] D. S. Saund, “Your Congressman D. S. Saund Reports from Washington,” Report No. 5, 1962. Dalip Singh Saund Collection.

18] D. S. Saund, Draft of Letter, October 1962. Dalip Singh Saund Collection.

19] “Report on Saund meets silence, Democratic party spokesman just are not to be found.” Redlands Daily Facts, p.1. 

20] "Different versions, Saund reports conflict", Redlands Daily Facts, October 15, 1962, p.7. 

21] “Speaker Says Saund Able To Communicate,” Desert Sun, Vol. 36, No. 63, October 17, 1962, front page

22] “Saund may not be able to talk,” The San Bernardino County Sun, October 18, 1962,

 City Section. 

23] John H. Averill, “Saund vows to resign if his doctors advise it,” Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1962.

24] “Rep. Saund’s statement declared hoax,” Redlands Daily Facts, November 6, 1962, 10.

25] “Hit by GOP Official, Statement Made in Name of Saund Called ‘Hoax’,” The San Bernardino County Sun, November 6, 1962, B4 

26] Conversation with Eric Saund, June 06, 2018. 

27] Campaign advertisement, The Desert Sun, No. 83, Friday, November 4, 1960, 8A.

28] Cheng, E. Samantha, Dalip Singh Saund: His Life, His Legacy. (Washington, DC: Heritage Series, 2014), DVD.

29] San Diego Union Staff Dispatch, “D.S. Saund Dies; Rites Tomorrow,” The San Diego Union, April 12, 1973.

30] Evaline Morrison, “Marian Saund: Looking Back,” Daily Enterprise, Thursday edition, June 14, 1973.

31] Cheng, E. Samantha, Dalip Singh Saund: His Life, His Legacy. (Washington, DC: Heritage Series, 2014), DVD.

32] "Martin defeats Saund in Congressional race," The Los Angeles Times, November 8, 1962, p. 2 

33] “Saund Moved to San Diego,” The Daily Sun, San Bernadino County, November 30, 1962, A7.

34] “Saund leaves Hospital,” Pasadena Independent, December 4, 1962, 10.

35] “Letters to the Editor,” Desert Sun, no. 230, Thursday, May 12, 1960, 4.

36] Conversation with Eric Saund, June 06, 2018. 

Dalip Singh Saund Collection - Part 1

This month I had the honor and excitement of perusing one of the key archival collections of my dissertation - the Dalip Singh Saund Collection. As readers may know from my previous biographical sketch, D.S. Saund was the fist Asian American U.S. Congressman, serving from 1957-62. His archival collection is privately held by D.S. Saund’s grandson, Eric Saund, so it wasn’t as easy to access as the ones I’ve viewed at libraries in the past. In fact, initially I didn’t even know that it existed! After not finding any of Saund’s documents in the Library of Congress archives, a librarian put me on to the Dalip Singh Saund website, created by Eric Saund to commemorate and provide sources about his grandfather’s story. While the primary sources hosted there helped me think through my biographical sketch, I wrote Eric an email asking about any other documents. I was quite pleased when Eric told me he had a collection of other things in his basement and invited me to come see them.

The collection itself has been well curated by the family. Kept in 5 large WWII-era crates and a collection of plastic bins, various sorts of documents are ordered together in folders or plastic bags. I could easily find materials about D.S. Saund’s business, his years as judge, his correspondence, etc. Because Eric hadn’t yet divided out “Family” from “Archival” items, the collection also helped me to get a more wholistic understanding of Saund as a person. For instance, one bag of papers related just to his wife’s activities while in D.C. Some hundred Christmas cards might not be much desired by library collectors, but they helped me to find a friendship connection between the Saund family and Bhagat Singh Thind’s family. (He was the plaintiff in the Supreme Court’s famous United States vs. Bhagat Singh Third naturalization case.) The two were close enough to be on one another’s top-30 Christmas card lists! Or consider that Eric shared with me the contents of an old suitcase belonging to his father, revealing a bit about Saund’s “son who went to Korea.” 

Still, definitely one of the most helpful aspects of visiting a privately-held collection was my ability to converse with Saund’s family member as I pursued my research. During lunch breaks and at the end of the day, Eric would tell me stories about his grandfather and the family. About his dad and aunts helping out on the campaign trail. About what happened during Saund’s 12 years of life after suffering a stroke while in office. 

Furthermore, I could check some of the analysis I was forming in realtime. For instance, I was amazed at not finding more connections from Saund to local South Asians. He seemed to sell fertilizer to mostly white American farmers. He was one of the few Indians in his beloved Toastmaster’s club. And his campaign staff seemed to be mostly white Americans, beyond his immediate family. I had assumed that working in agriculture in a district with a larger minority population of agriculture-working Punjabis would mean that Saund socialized with many other South Asians, but his collection points, rather, to being well integrated into his local white American community. This made me reconsider my initial skepticism of comments by Saund, where he stated that he hadn’t experienced racism from white Americans. Earlier, I had assumed this was said just to curry favor with a white public. Perhaps he actually hadn’t experienced any?!

Eric Saund helped me put this into better context. He explained that his grandfather seemed to hold on to the good he experienced from people and allow negative experiences to fade from his memory. This gave him an eternal optimism and enthusiasm for pushing forward, despite coming to a country that excluded him from citizenship and careers that fit his level of education and training. I now think that this worked in tandem with having such a large number of good relations with white Americans. Likely, perceiving his experiences of racism as the work of an individual allowed him to see each white American he came upon as a potential friend and ally, which in turn gave him a larger base to overcome the racist bent of many social systems and public opinion at the time. His marriage to a European immigrant undoubtedly aided his perceptions on that as well. What good fortune for Saund to have been pushing at the door of change for South Asian immigration, naturalization, and societal participation at a time when the larger political and economic landscape was beginning to open for such changes as well. His attitude, his era, and his social network all contributed to his successful bid as America’s first Asian American U.S. Congressman.

I'll be eternally thankful for Eric Saund's generosity in letting me view his grandfather's collection. And I'm excited to see what insights I develop as I study my scans of the materials in greater detail.

An Immigration Shaped by Universities

In doing my dissertation research, I continually notice that the population of South Asians who migrated to the U.S. during the 1950s-'60s was really shaped by how the American university system worked and who universities prioritized. This was because so many of the South Asians who came to the U.S. in those years came as students at American universities. The logic of this seems a bit obvious when one compares the South Asian experience to experiences of other groups migrating to the U.S. for economic reasons. For instance, when American industries looked to hire a lot of factory workers in the late 1800s, more working class Europeans immigrated to work those jobs. Similarly, when large-scale agriculture developed in the southern U.S. during the early 1900s, it was once again more of the working class who came from Mexico and the Philippines to fill those jobs.[1] It thus makes sense that the demands of universities shaped which kinds of South Asians came to the U.S. when higher education was one of the main pathways for their immigration. 

American universities usually prioritized prospective international students considered the smartest or highest achieving. For example, prospective students whose thinking or work impressed a graduate professor or department received greater encouragement and support for their applications. University applicants also needed to supply their previous academic scores or to take new regimes of exams, competing to demonstrate the highest intellectual aptitude for university acceptance or funding. Because the U.S. had become known as one of the foremost university locations in the world, this kind of competition meant that those who came for graduate education in the U.S. were some of the top thinkers and learners in their countries. In this way, just as a supply of working class jobs led to working class immigration during some U.S. eras, the logics of higher education shaped South Asian migration in the 1950s-‘60s around a highly intelligent and high-achieving population.

Two South Asian students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offer examples of how this trend played out in individual situations: Govindjee and Fazlur Rahman Khan.

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Govindjee’s journey from Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, to Urbana, Illinois, offers one example of the traditional pathway into graduate school. His father, a sales representative for Oxford University Press and a former college teacher, gave up their family name in an attempt to help break the caste system’s hold on Indian society but passed on to his sons and daughter a love for learning and an expectation of high education. Govindjee grew up in a home surrounded by books in English, which gave him a quick facility with one of the key languages of the Academy at the time. Then, when Govindjee entered Allahabad University, a childhood fascination with nature flowered into a Master’s degree in Botany. Lecturing on plant physiology and working in the university’s botany lab deepened his interest. In the end, he graduated “first class” from Allahabad University, a term that publicized his exceptional grades while attending there. His upbringing, family class, and educational opportunities helped shape him into the intelligent and academic student favored by the U.S. university system.

One semester, while conducting a review of the latest discoveries regarding chlorophyll, Govindjee came upon an old journal article that confounded him. Its author, Dr. Robert Emerson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), presented a conundrum to the world of botany regarding chlorophyl’s role in photosynthesis.[2] Govindjee proceeded to write Dr. Emerson a letter requesting an update on Emerson’s research. His letter turned out to be timely. Even though the paper had been published ten years earlier, Dr. Emerson replied, “Dear Mr. Govindjee. It is exactly the problem I’m working on right now, and if you are interested in it, I encourage you to apply to the University of Illinois Admission and Fellowship Program.”[3] Govindjee went on to do just that. Not only did he receive university scholarship money to fund his studies, he also applied for and won a grant from the U.S. government’s Fulbright Foundation to pay for his travel expenses. In 1956, he entered the U.S. as a graduate student. His academic curiosity had allowed him the favor of an American biologist, and his academic abilities won him the means to work towards a PhD in the United States. 

Govindjee’s experience also highlights a few of the funding sources that expanded in the mid-20th century for foreign students in the United States. The United States as well as students’ home countries began to invest money in providing higher education at U.S. institutions. The grant awarded to Govindjee came out of the Fulbright Act, originally passed in 1946 to fund educational exchange opportunities through monies owned to the U.S. by other countries. Just two years before Govindjee sought an American degree, Fulbright scholarship offerings for South Asians had expanded. In 1954, the passage of Public Law(PL)-480 authorized the shipment of surplus agricultural goods to “friendly” nations and made available rupees gained from such sales to bring Indian and Pakistani students to U.S. universities.[4] Developing nations like India and Pakistan also began to invest resources to form for themselves more college-educated workforces. 

These new sources of educational funding demonstrated increased government investment in human capital, but they provided funds for only a small portion of those students coming from South Asia. As IIE published in its annual survey reports, less than 10% of Indian students between 1955-1965 actually came to the U.S. on government money (except in the years 1961 and 1962, where the numbers reached 13% and 11% respectively).[5] Instead, far more students paid travel and education fees with private rather than public money. Not only did private organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation offer scholarships for students, universities themselves provided funding for graduate students, through fellowships and occupational positions as research and teaching assistants.[6] In Govindjee’s case, the UIUC paid for his research at the university and for his living expenses as well. In fact, according to IIE annual surveys, 35-40% of Indian students received private funding for their studies in the United States.[7] Moreover, although survey categories obscured the trend, students often found ways to draw from multiple funding sources during their years of study in the United States. Government funding may have signaled new directions in public interest, but private monies played a much larger role in the actual expansion of the South Asian student population in the U.S. before 1965.

Securing funding could require considerable competition and ability to overcome. In 1953, when Fazlur Rahman Khan, a prospective student from East Pakistan, applied for funding for his studies in the U.S., he chose to take extra precautions to stand out from the crowd. Pakistan’s government had announced a one year scholarship - the Central Government Scholarship - to study in the UK or US, and all interested parties would be judged by their scores on a proficiency exam. After hearing that even an average score on a language exam improved an applicant’s overall score, Khan took French language classes just to earn the added distinction.[8] Not surprisingly, by exam time he had not achieved French proficiency; still, Khan impressed the interview committee with his willingness to go above and beyond. Rather than the year of funding for which he had applied, he won the Pakistan Overseas Scholarship, funding two school years of study in the United States. 

At the same time, Khan applied for a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship after seeing it advertised in a newspaper. According to Khan’s diary, 1400 Pakistani students applied for the program that year, all competitors for the scholarship money.[9] Upon arriving at the oral examination, Khan discovered another hurdle: the interviewer spoke with a Southern American accent. Khan had never heard such an accent before, and it proved difficult for the Indian English-speaking Khan to understand. Still, he performed well enough to win the Fulbright scholarship as well. With the two scholarships in hand, Khan could travel to the U.S. and study graduate-level structural engineering for 3 years with full-funding throughout. These opportunities proved an enormous boon to Khan, and his attainment of them came through demonstrating his ability beyond that of his competitors.

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[1] Asians also became involved in such jobs, but they didn’t necessarily come from working class backgrounds. Because Asian groups - other than Filipinos - were excluded from most middle class jobs and land ownership during the early 1900s, they found employment as agricultural workers by default no matter their class background before immigration.

[2] Namely, when chlorophyl was the only pigment absorbing light in a plant cell, Emerson found that not much photosynthesis actually occurred. Govindjee’s letter to Dr. Emerson stated, “I do not understand it, and wonder if you now have an understanding of what you discovered…”⁠ Govindjee, Oral History with Govindjee, interview by Joy Block, (October 15, 2016) paragraph 45.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Donald B. Cook

[5] Calculations based on statistics in the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors published from 1956-1965.

[6] Until 1963, IIE annual reports lumped university funding together with private organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, despite the fact that international students attended many state-run institutions. “Public” only meant “federal.”

[7] Calculations based on statistics in the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors published from 1956-1965.

[8] Fazlur Rahman Khan, Interview with Fazlur R. Khan, 1978, Fazlur Khan Collection, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago, 27.

[9] Yasmin Sabina Khan, Engineering Architecture: The Vision of Fazlur R. Khan (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), 31.

Focusing on India's Development Needs: The Illinois-IIT Contract Program

A few years ago, I came upon archives of a 1950s-‘60s educational Contract Program between the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur. (Thanks, University of Illinois Archives!) This collection provided much of the fodder for Chapter 3 of my dissertation. Examining it also caused me a fair bit of surprise, because I had not expected to see so much collaboration in a program where the U.S. gave aid to a developing country. These days, scholars usually write critiques of aid programs, highlighting how the U.S. often steamrolled over the needs and desires of other countries, despite its seeming benevolence in offering aid. Undoubtedly, Americans wanted certain outcomes from offering financial aid in this project too, but I was quite surprised at how administrators in the Illinois/IIT Contract Program really collaborated with Indian university administrators, government officials, and program participants/trainees. 

In the section of Chapter 3 where I develop this idea, I start by pointing to the importance Indian university administrators placed on participants receiving “practical education.” What participants ended up receiving was considerably less than Indian administrators dreamed of, since they imagined their professors would be most able to train the next generation of Indian technical students if they had some experience working in actual U.S. manufacturing companies. However, I argue that this discontinuity between desired and achieved ends had more to do with the more privatized shape of American industry than with American administrators or Professors not prioritizing Indian interests. Rather, when I look at the memos, discussions, and decisions related to the Contract Program, I see remarkable evidence of American administrators and professors buying into the goals of providing for India and Indians the training they needed for their own situations (rather than just what the U.S. thought they should have.) As a consequence, the training that Indian participants received in the U.S. ended up often being valued and built upon in the future. 

I wrote the section below to tease out two specific examples that build on the “practical education” element to show this larger trend I saw in the archival collection.

*******

As the emphasis on “practical education” opportunities highlights, even when Indian and American program officials did not see eye to eye on the best approaches for training program participants, both groups agreed on prioritizing India’s development in program training. For administrators, this prioritization often meant accommodating logistical problems associated with academic arrhythmia between American and Indian teaching schedules as well as the time that transit between India and the U.S. required. 

In addition to the dilemma of asynchronous term schedules, participants frequently needed extensions on their approved residence in the United States. Learning often did not occur within the timeline the program laid out for participants. Academic advisors sometimes expected participants to do additional research before approving diplomas. Learning opportunities considered crucial often fell beyond the precise end of a university semester. Academic exams also did not always occur within a semester’s specific dates. On top of all these, students did not always progress in research and studies as quickly as they should have, putting them in the situation of needing more time to meet training expectations. For a myriad of reasons, requests for extension of stay in the U.S. thus frequently landed on the desks of Contract Program administrators, who regularly used the needs of Indian development to justify longer student stays. 

Prodyot Banerjee’s extension request is a good example of this reasoning in action. Banerjee submitted his request in September 1963, which meant that administrators had spent the past six years working through the logistics of participant extensions. Still, Banerjee’s request engendered a long string of memos so that all decision-making parties could be included in the final decision. From September to November 1963, AID coordinators in the U.S and India, the university contract administrator in Illinois, the group leader in India, and Banerjee’s academic advisor in Madison sent memos back and forth to get approval for Banerjee to stay in the U.S. two extra months in order to finish his Master’s of Science degree at UW-Madison. AID coordinator Melton Barry explained that because the fall semester at University of Wisconsin lasted “until the very end of January this year…Prof. Banerjee will probably require some time in February to have his thesis examination after the final exams in the course work.”[1] When participants requested extensions due to an inability to finish research on time, administrators could respond quite skeptically, but Banerjee’s request related to institutional structures and timelines outside his control. Furthermore, administrators believed that fully completing the program of study - including the preparations for his thesis defense - would better prepare Banerjee for meeting the needs of his home institution. Group leader, Gilbert H. Fett, explained: “The updating which he is receiving at Madison in the area of Metallurgy will put new life into our department here in Kharagpur.”[2] When program administrators could justify accommodations according to the goals of U.S. development programs in India, they worked with participants to accommodate their individual needs.

Such priorities infused the work of academic advisors as well. For instance, several weeks into the Fall 1955 semester at Illinois, a certain A. K. Chaudhuri learned that one of his courses no longer served any purpose in improving the education offered at IIT-Kharagpur.[3] Chaudhuri had enrolled in a “Logical Design of the Digital Computer” class to prepare to train Indian students for the new digital computer IIT planned to purchase. Unfortunately, after investing several weeks in the coursework, he received word that his university’s administrators had decided not to purchase a digital computer, due to budget restrictions. Instead, students would work only with an analog computer. The Illinois digital computer course may have offered him the latest research in the field, but without having one on IIT premises, such a course was now impractical for Chaudhuri’s training! Furthermore, it was far too late in the semester to enroll in a more pertinent course. Chaudhuri’s academic advisor came to the rescue, however. He offered to conduct an individualize reading course with him over the following summer so that Chaudhuri could learn the general theories behind the “Analog Differential Analyser” and the “Application of Analog Computers to Engineering Problems.”[4] His professor understood that Chaudhuri’s education had a specific purpose - effectively training him to improve IIT’s education services - and achieving that goal seemed worth the additional work of offering an extra independent study in the summertime, the time when professors usually focus on their own research and writing projects. 

As the Bannerjee and Chaudhuri cases show, American administrators and professors often were willing to go to considerable extra work and negotiate for more fiscal or chronological leeway in program administration so that participants received the most helpful education possible for meeting Indian educational development needs. In fact, because India’s developmental needs remained the central motivation for Contract Programs, decisions related to Indian participants’ time and experiences in the U.S. were made based on what administrators thought would best support those goals.

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[1] Melton R. Barry, Letter to James Leach [Asst. Coordinator for Engineering], September 20, 1963.
[2] Gilbert H. Fett, Letter to R.W. Jugenheimer [Illinois Campus Coordinator], September 25, 1963.
[3] A. K. Chaudhuri, Report, September, 23, 1955.
[4] Ibid.

Maintaining Ties with Home & Family - S. Chandrasekhar

Before 1965, federal laws limited the reasons that a person could immigrate to the U.S. from a South Asian country. The Immigration Act of 1924 had fully outlawed Asian immigration, and the passage of the Luce-Celler Act in 1946 only allowed 100 Indians from anywhere in the world to immigrate to the United States.[1] This meant that from 1924 till 1965, most migration from the Indian subcontinent to the U.S. were considered temporary, either “non-immigrants” (like diplomats, merchants, and visitors) or “non-quota immigrants” (like scholars). Despite their temporary status such people could and did take up residence in the United States. They had to regularly meet restrictions for temporary residence, such as returning to their homeland or renewing their visas, but they found ways to participate in local forms of U.S. society.

The tides of post-WWII U.S. began to strengthen migration between the U.S. and South Asia, even though immigration itself did not pick up drastically. The lives of academics during the 1950s and '60s show a bit about the migratory paths South Asians followed and forged in the world of university scholarship, both to enter and remain in the United States. This is one of the topics I am studying for my PhD dissertation. From what I’ve found so far, most who came for scholarly purposes did not intend initially to immigrate. In fact, most of those who came to the U.S. as students returned to their homeland, choosing to maintain their national identity and life-long investment in South Asian countries of origin. But economic, social, and political vagaries eventually led some to settle in the United States. While abroad, they tried to maintain ties with their families back home, even as the distance could modify and strain those ties. The South Asian population that developed in the U.S. after WWII, then, can be understood as a transnational community - existing in networks that crossed and often superseded national boundaries and identities.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar demonstrates these strong but strained familial ties well. Chandrasekhar, who received the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics for his mathematical theories of stellar evolution, lived his life intently focused on his research interests. In 1930, Chandra (as his friends called him) left Madras, India, to study physics in Cambridge, England. He desired to study physics at the highest level. Although Indian universities taught and were expanding teaching of sciences such as physics, even the best ones often prioritized applied sciences over theoretical sciences, seeing them as the answer to India’s industrial and agricultural development post-independence. Nevertheless, Chandra’s mind turned to theoretical analysis and calculations, so he turned his gaze on Cambridge where some of the era’s stars of Physics resided. Chandra had earlier immersed himself in their theories through reading their publications and those of the Royal Astronomical Society. Now, he would work with the likes of R. H. Fowler, A. S. Eddington, and Paul Dirac.

Unlike many Indian students studying abroad, at Cambridge Chandrasekhar kept mostly to himself, working on research rather than seeking out social gatherings of peers. Research in isolation was not a new experience for Chandra. In his undergraduate studies in India, no classmates had ever shared his interests in Fermi statistics or “the theory of polytopes”.[2] His single-minded focus on research in England, however, came from a different place. Although his knowledge of physics made him an expert at Presidency College in Madras and even earned him a prize for an essay on quantum theory, his time in England put his genius into context, surrounded as he was with so many other top minds. Years later, Chandrasekhar would remember, “[W]hen I went to England, I had a shattering experience; to suddenly find myself in an environment where there were people like Dirac and Eddington and Rutherford and Hardy…is a very very strong sobering experience. I was extremely optimistic in India, before I left India; but once I came to England I became very sobered if not humiliated. I didn't really know whether there was any possibility for me to accomplish in the world I found myself.”[3] In the presence of the academic elite whose works shaped the fields of physics and astrophysics, Chandrasekhar clung to discipline as his path forward.[4] Thus, he did not seek out opportunities for social activities or political causes to join; he focused on doing “the best I can,” making advances in research to quell the imposter syndrome so common to graduate students in general. After completing a PhD at Cambridge and a post-doctoral Prize Fellowship at Trinity College, Chandrasekhar embarked on a career at the University of Chicago. This involved decades of small-town living in Williams Bay, WI, while Chandrasekhar researched at Yerkes Observatory and taught graduate classes. The academic work that one day would earn him such renown and go on to influence later astrophysics models stemmed from this kind of single-minded investment.

However, Chandrasekhar’s focused academic work can hide the family ties that he maintained over his years abroad. He was a family man as well as a man of science, which meant that traveling overseas undid neither the ties that bound him to his family nor the responsibilities they entailed. Although Chandra would later remember his family as being “very much behind” his career choice and education in England, they still expected certain things of him, particularly marriage. As one family friend put it, “It is high time that he gets married and settled in life before he goes on such enterprises [as accepting a job] even if he is not staying in India.”[5] Happily, Chandra had kept in touch with his girlfriend from Presidency College in Madras - a fellow physics student, Lalithambika (Lalitha) Doraiswamy. While they had not become officially engaged before he left for Cambridge, Chandra noted “we knew more or less that we wanted to get married, and we sort of kept up a correspondence most of the time I was in England.”[6] After receiving a job offer from the University of Chicago, he returned to India for the summer of 1936, where they rekindled their relationship and married. 

 The Cambridge-to-Madras correspondence between Lalitha and Chandra represented an important tie among diasporic South Asian families that continued throughout the mid-20th century. To keep in touch with much of his family, Chandrasekhar used the medium of correspondence to negotiate the time and space between countries half a world away. Chandrasekhar came from a particularly large family. As the third of ten children, it would have been easy for him to lose track of some of his siblings, especially after settling in the United States. However, Chandra's father, Chandrasekhar Subrahmanya Ayyar, served as a conduit of family news between his children. In letters signed "Babuji," he would relate how a younger sister was studying for her end-of-term exams, how an older sister's pregnancy was progressing, or how a brother was doing in his studies in England or medical work in Canada. Although the siblings might lag in correspondence with one another, spread across the globe as they were, their father kept them up-to-date. 
As oldest son, Chandra also held a certain responsibility towards his family. When Chandra’s father C. S. Ayyar sought to publish and market his book 108 Kritis of Sri Tyagaraja in the 1950s, a collection of transcribed Tamil music pieces for violin, Chandra received a series of letters detailing each step of the process. His father was producing this two-volume series following retirement from a career in the Indian Audits and Accounts Services, so Chandra was asked and expected to send money back to India to support the endeavor.[7] This he seems to have done. 

Nevertheless, years of living away from family created tensions in the fulfillment of Chandra’s oldest-son responsibilities. When the discovery of an affair between the widowed Babuji and his maid caused a verbal conflagration at the family homestead in Madras, Chandra found himself hamstrung in addressing the situation. Initially, Chandra sided with his younger sisters, who had been so shocked and horrified by their father’s actions that they had forced the maid to leave the house permanently. But Chandra’s response in turn prompted a lengthy missive from his father. With the tone of a legal defense, Babuji made his case to his son, not only explaining his own rational for the affair but also laying bare the family dynamics and disrespect he felt as an elderly patriarch surrounded by ungrateful children.[8] As a result, Chandra seems to have changed his attitude to be more conciliatory towards his father; in a letter a month and a half after the first, Babuji expressed his appreciation for it. Still, Babuji chastised Chandra, 

• “I expected that with your larger experience of life – in man to woman relationship – you would have advised your younger sisters to have a more charitable view of things. No doubt, I do recognize the hard fact, that you have lived away from them for a quarter century - but during your last visit, you had ample opportunities to know their mental make-up in relation to the background of Chandra Vilas life.”[9] 

Despite over two decades of life lived in the United States and England, C. S. Ayyar still expected Chandrasekhar to know his younger siblings well enough to both give advice and change their behavior with that advice. Chandrasekhar, together with Lalitha, had visited India in 1951, but a visit of six weeks was hardly enough to claim familial authority in such a delicate and explosive drama. Chandrasekhar remained tied closely enough to his family for them to hold certain expectations of him, but living abroad considerably weakened his familial authority as the oldest son.


[1] This immigration amount derived from the 1924 Act’s quota calculations. For nationalities in general, quotas were set at 2% of that nationality’s legally resident population in the U.S. as of 1890. Theoretically, new nationalities still could immigrate because the law directed that “the minimum quota of any nationality shall be 100.” (Treaty, Laws, and Rules Governing the Admission of Chinese: Rules of October 1, 1926, Washington, D.C., G.P.O.) Since the Indian population in the U.S. was minuscule in the late 1800s, the 1946 Act’s stipulation that “all persons of races indigenous to India” who immigrated to the U.S. would be allocated under “the provisions of section 11 of the Immigration Act of 1924” meant that Indians were stuck with the minimum quota for nationalities/races. ("Public Law 79-483, Chapter 534, 79 Congress, Session 2," U.S. Statutes at Large 60, Main Section: 416-417)
[2] Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, “Interview by Spencer Weart,” May 17, 1977, p.10. 
[3] Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, “Interview by Spencer Weart,” May 17, 1977, p.9.
[4] Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, “Interview by Spencer Weart,” May 17, 1977, p.11.
[5] B. Rajaswami Aiyer, Letter to Chandrasekhar Subrahmanya Ayyar, March 24, 1936.
[6] Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, “Interview by Spencer Weart,” May 17, 1977, p.55.
[7] Chandrasekhar Subrahmanya Ayyar, Letter to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, October 11, 1958.
[8] Chandrasekhar Subrahmanya Ayyar, Letter to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, June 8, 1957.
[9] Chandrasekhar Subrahmanya Ayyar, Letter to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, July 23, 1957.

All letters and interviews found at: Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan. Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Accessed July 2016.

Untangling Biographical Details - Dalip Singh Saund

Sometimes finding new sources creates new problems in writing history. 

You might think that such a discovery is a boon, learning new details that other sources did not include. But what happens when the new source contradicts an old source? You could go with the source with more intimate knowledge of the topic. Or you could analyze which source provides the more specific explanations/details. In the end, you probably just need more and better sources to hone in on the exact details.

In my case, I'm trying to write a biographical sketch of Dalip Singh Saund, pulling all the details I know about him into a narrative. My sources include a recent documentary, which included photos as well as a video of Saund in an interview from the 1950s. I have drawn on Saund's autobiography, "Congressman From India" and his congressional campaign pamphlet, "What America Means to Me." Also, I was given a biographical essay, researched and written by an elder of the Sikh community in Washington, D.C. who had been on good terms with Saund's brother and extended family. Unfortunately, these documents sometimes contradict one another on details, such as what Saund hoped to do in India with his education or on family relationships back in India. Neither is it easy enough to just take the explanation given by Saund over other explanations, because in these areas, Saund's explanation remains sketchy or able to be interpreted differently. 

One day, I hope to get more definitive knowledge on those details. Right now, I have to just make my best guess and "show my work" in the footnotes. Enjoy this first section of the immigration & settlement story of the first Asian American in the U.S. Congress. (In another post, I'll continue with how he married and built a family, helped win U.S. citizenship for Indians, served as Judge in southern California, and eventually ran for and served as a U.S. Representative.)

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In 1920, a 21-year-old Sikh man arrived in Berkeley, California, having traveled by boat from Bombay, to London, to New York City and then by train to the West Coast. Only three years previously the United States Congress had prohibited Indians (and others from the Asiatic Barred Zone) from immigrating or naturalizing, but Dalip Singh Saund arrived with one of the few legal statuses available for Asians. He came as a student. His mission: to learn horticulture and fruit canning in order to return home and modernize the production of his family’s large-scale fruit gardens with a mango cannery.(1) Yet Dalip Singh Saund’s education in the United States would shape his life’s direction in more ways than he imagined. In fact, he would remain in the United States, completing graduate school and moving on to a farming career, political activism, and eventually service in both state and federal government positions.

Saund’s graduate school years bore many similarities to those of other international students pursuing degrees in the United States. On one hand, he enjoyed participating in the freedoms and community available to those at American colleges. Whether learning in the classroom or playing field hockey on the green, Saund engaged with his American classmates as an equal and came to appreciate the freedoms (such as the freedom of speech) that they expected. Graduate school also provided Saund opportunities to build community with other Asian Indians in the area. For instance, Saund “lived in a group house maintained by the Sikh gurdwara in nearby Stockton.”(2) He also joined the Hindustan Association of America and became its president for a time. In fact, as an emerging leader of the Indian American community, he even received requests to speak to community groups about India and its independence movement. In this way, he grew in familiarity with and appreciation of the United States even as he also grew in his identification with his homeland. 

 Despite his identification with India’s political developments, graduate school also was the time when Saund began orienting himself towards staying in the United States. Upon the death of his uncle(3), the familial expectations behind Saund’s agricultural studies passed away. Saund had the freedom to pursue other career paths. As he reminisced, “I decided to go into my favorite and beloved subject of mathematics.”(4) In 1924, Saund received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of California in Berkely. Having come to love the United States, Saund sought an occupation there commensurate with his education. 

Unfortunately for Saund, the 1920s were not a time when intelligence and higher education opened the same occupational doors for an Indian as it did for his white classmates. Although he could remain in the United States as a resident alien, Saund was not allowed to naturalize as a citizen. The United States government classified all Asians as “aliens ineligible for citizenship.”(5) Furthermore, in 1923 the U.S. Supreme Court had decisively denied citizenship to all immigrants from British India, rescinding Bhagat Singh Thind’s American citizenship on the grounds that he was not racially white “in accordance with the understanding of the common man.”(6) Without American citizenship, Saund could not secure even a teaching position.(7) Instead, in 1926 he migrated to southern California to join fellow Punjabi Sikhs who worked as farmers there. Rather than running a mango canning factory in the Indian province of Jammu, Saund became a foreman on his friend’s cotton farm in the Imperial Valley, putting his agricultural training to a different use than originally intended.(8)

The liberal ideals articulated by American icons such as Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson had initially inspired Saund to study abroad in the United States.(9) Yet Saund lived in the tension of seeing those ideals denied on many sides. In his homeland, British colonizers governed the Indian subcontinent and proved unwilling to extend independence to India, jailing independence activists and disregarding the proposals and demands of the Indian National Congress. In his new land of residence, state and federal laws limited how Saund could live in the United States because of his non-white racial status. Not only did federal laws exclude him from naturalization as an Asian, California’s Alien Land Acts also kept him from leasing or purchasing land in his own name.(10) On top of this political and economic exclusion, when Saund married a white American woman, she lost her American citizenship as a result of the Cable Act, a federal law that mandated loss of American citizenship for any woman who married an Asian. Sound’s graduate school experiences did not accurately reflect the his access to rights and freedoms in the rest of U.S. society.

...

(1) In his July 12, 1959, interview on WCKT-TV (E. Samantha Cheng, Dalip Singh Saund: His Life, His Legacy documentary), Saund explained “I came here to study fruit canning with the desire to go back to India and start a canning factory to can mangoes.” Shamsher Singh Babra's biographical essay, "Personal Recollections and Reflections: Essay # I, Judge Dalip Singh Saund (1899-1973)," explained further that his uncle, Mia Singh, sent him to the U.S. to learn fruit cultivation technology so that he could return and manage/modernize the family gardens.

(2) E. Samantha Cheng, Dalip Singh Saund: His Life, His Legacy, documentary. https://www.heritageseries.us/dalip-singh-saund/

(3) Saund’s 1956 campaign pamphlet “What America Means to Me” describes the death of a brother. Shamsher Singh’s biography denotes “uncle,” explaining that Saund's term for this person is the name Sikhs use for their father's younger brother ("chacha").

(4) Dalip Singh Saund, Congressman from India (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1960)

(5) Following a series of federal laws and Supreme Court decisions, beginning with the Naturalization Law of 1870, which excluded from naturalization of all but “whites” and “Africans.”

(6) "United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923)". Justia.

(7) Shamsher Singh Babra, "Personal Recollections and Reflections: Essay # I, Judge Dalip Singh Saund (1899-1973)."

(8) Babra's essay describes him as a "rancher" in these years.

(9) Dalip Singh Saund, Congressman from India (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1960)

(10) California’s white farmers originally developed/pushed for these laws to avoid competition from Japanese immigrants.

Sikhs Migrating to Michigan, 1920s

In December 1923, Henry Ford's General Secretary, Ernest G. Liebold, wrote to "Dr. H B Harper" in Santa Monica, California. Liebold was looking for advice. (1) 

In the beginning of October, Liebold had received a letter from the legal advisor for the Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society, asking whether Sikhs who wore beards and a turban would be allowed to study at Henry Ford's "university." (2) The advisor explained, "A number of students from India have made application to come and are coming to the United States to enter the various universities...These people have and represent large taxi companies in the big cities in India" and wished to study at U.S. universities "to fit themselves for high and better positions in their native land."

Now, Henry Ford did not have a "university" as such. In 1916 he had founded a private high school, called the "Henry Ford Trade School," to give "local" boys both academic and mechanical training. (3) A 1926 advertisement for the school listed a wide range of subjects: from English, geometry, and civics to general chemistry, qualitative analysis, and metallurgy. For each one week in the classroom, boys spent two weeks in the shop, fabricating items for use at the Ford Motor Company. Thus the education students of the Trade School received, trained them to get jobs in auto or manufacturing companies. 

Due to the legal advisor’s references to "taxi companies" in India, jobs in auto manufacturing and repair seem to have been the goals of the prospective students from California too. But the Sikh students were full-grown adults, not school-aged boys, and their training seems to have been a part of a different program. (4) Ford also offered a “Ford Service Course” for owners and mechanics. According to the lesson plans of a “Model T Ford Service Course” lesson plan, the course had “been designed for the purpose of establishing with Ford owners a more intimate understanding of their cars with the view of reducing the cost of operation and up-keep.” While it advertised itself as a school geared towards Ford owners and drivers, creators of the course also planned it for interested mechanics. The initial parts of the lesson plan explained, “While this course has not been established primarily to make mechanics, we will, during the classes, demonstrate as many repair ‘short cuts’ as possible…It is our idea that a garageman will in the very near future, become either a Ford specialist or a general garage repair man and it is with this idea in mind that we will furnish as many ideas along shop repairing lines as our time will permit.” This opportunity to develop as grace repair men likely explains why Sikhs from California hoped to study in Michigan. The last line also gives a clue to what lay behind the Ford executives decision to enroll as many Indians and East Asians in this course as they did. Training foreign students to be “Ford specialists” could help Ford sell its wares in international markets. Allowing Sikhs to enroll in the course could be a win-win situation for all parties.

Initially, Liebold showed willingness to take 20 of the purportedly 50 Sikh students "now available" around Stockton, CA. (5) From his office in Dearborn, MI, he set about to conduct the student application process in what he considered an orderly manner. First, he asked for the names and addresses of the people who would take up the course. Then he asked to interview a representative of their group. 

The responses to these two requests probably did not conform to his expectations. The student list Liebold received was filled entirely of men with the last name "Singh," for whom the address of the Khalsa Diwan Society was their only contact information. (6) A shared address was hardly abnormal for immigrant communities, whose members often boarded together in short-term, rental properties and used ethnic organizations as central hubs for social life. Likewise, had Liebold been familiar with Sikh naming practices, he would have understood that since the establishment of the Khalsa tradition in 1699, all Sikh men - whether after birth or conversion - take “Singh” as one of their names, usually their surname. Still, the similarity in the prospective students’ names and address made it almost impossible for Liebold to make decisions about them at an individual level. Responses about the Khalsa Diwan Society seemed confusing as well. A letter dated December 7th gave "D. S. Sodhi and Anup Singh" as the Society's representatives, while a telegram on the 8th said that Bachint Singh "and he alone" would be the "authorized representative." The leadership behind the student request for admission thus would have seemed to lack cohesion to someone in Liebold’s situation. 

If the haphazardness of the exchanges was not concerning enough, Liebold received a harsh email from a "P. N. Mathur" at the Ford Motor Company Dearborn Laboratory on December 6. Not having the "chance to consider the individual fitness of these twenty members of the Khalsa Diwan Society," Mathur advised against allowing them to come. He raised the specter of the Khalsa Diwan Society's "strongly anti-British" and "revolutionary" politics towards India. He asserted that "their fanatic adherence to caste distinctions" would keep them from "adapt[ing] themselves to working with others in the plant or [finding] suitable boarding places." And he gave his final analysis that because of the caste restrictions followed by orthodox Sikhs, “members of the Khalsa Diwan Society [had] not given satisfaction wherever employed industrially in California." Even if Liebold considered Mathur's letter extreme, the letter seemed to give him pause in bringing so many of the Society’s members to study at their Michigan auto plant. The next day, Liebold fired off a confusing but obviously concerned telegram to the Society's legal advisor, sparing him only 10 words: "Please give more definite information than contained your telegram date."

On December 13th, Liebold turned to Dr. H. B. Harper. In a letter, he explained the situation with the 20 Sikh students. Liebold’s concern lay with the conflicts he imagined developing between the new Sikh students and the Indians already attending the school (which he claimed amounted to about 100): "It seems there is a difference in their religion and ideas on political matters which might conflict with those we already have in our school, about one hundred in number." Rather than explaining the situation in terms of Sikh revolutionary connections or incompetence in industry, as Mathur had implied, Liebold limited himself to concern about “conflict” between those from the Khalsa Diwan Society and other Indians. This gives the impression that Liebold mostly cared about harmony among the student workers. As industrialists of all stripes understood in the early 20^th century, happy workers were more likely to funnel their energies into productivity, and it was only worth bringing in contentious new workers if one was attempting to break a worker’s strike, or something of that sort. 

Who was this Dr. H. B. Harper to whom Liebold looked for advice on Indians and Sikhs? A distinguished scholar of oriental studies? A politician with connections to British India? A friend who had visited India?

The collections of letters that I found in the Henry Ford Museum don’t offer any clues to solve those questions. I’ll need to go digging in a different source base to find those answers.

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(1) All the letters referenced in this post can be found at the Benson Ford Research Center (Box 246, Acc 285, Henry Ford Office Papers, Benson Ford Research Center, The Henry Ford)

(2) M. P. Shaughnessy, Letter to "Henry Ford, Esq.", October 5, 1923.

(3) "Henry Ford Trade School" advertisement, June 24, 1926. From the Collections of The Henry Ford. ID#P.833.46992.

(4) This is a point I am having considerable trouble figuring out: were these Sikhs actually coming to work at the Henry Ford Trade School or just in the Service Course? I currently think the latter, since Liebold's letters make a point of wanting to weave the Sikh students in gradually - "at rate of two per week after January 1st." (E. G. Liebold, Telegram to M. P. Shaughnessy, 12/17/23, 4:35PM.) This points more to the 10-week curriculum used by the Service Course, where students could join in rolling admission over the course. Still, pictures found in the Benson Ford Research Center archives (Acc. 833, Box 76, Folders 205a) clearly label groups of "Hindu" male adults under the heading "Henry Ford Trade School." I have yet to find any evidence that clearly points one way or another for this group, but I would not be surprised if there were some sort of other system in play. 

(5) M. P. Shaughnessy, Letter to "Hon. Henry Ford," October 30, 1923; E. G. Liebold, Letter to Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society, November 7, 1923.

(6) M. P. Shaughnessy, Letter to E. G. Liebold, November 27, 1923.