Talk Time
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Anti-Immigrant Sentiments 100 Years Ago and Now
August 2017 -
America, land of immigrants, has often turned against immigrants: e.g. Japanese internment and Trump whipping up anti-Mexican sentiments. For Indians, it was the Immigration Act of 1917.
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How Yoga Intrigued America in the 1920s
December 2016 -
In the early 1900s, with few South Asians in the USA, America had fantastic ideas about yoga’s power and the itinerant men from India who taught it. Yoga even played a part in an impeachment!
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Legacies of the 1965 Immigration Act
October 2016 -
Inspired by the Civil Rights revolution, the 1965 Immigration Act abolished the discriminatory national origins quotas. Indian-Americans particularly have felt the effects.
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Madame Pandit Lecture on Trade Opportunities
July 2016 -
7/27/49: Madame Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1900-1990), “India’s First Ambassador to the U.S.,” spoke on “Opportunities for Trade with India” in San Francisco. She was related to three Prime Ministers.
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Deportation by Arrhythmia
July 2016 -
7/29/13: Arjan Singh arrived in San Francisco by ship, but was deported on the grounds that his arrhythmia would affect his ability to earn a living and would make him "a public charge."
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American Sympathy for India’s Untouchables
July 2016 -
7/31/46: In a letter to B.R. Ambedkar, W.E.B. Du Bois enclosed a statement by the National Negro Congress to the UN Council, and wrote of his sympathy with the Untouchables of India.”
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India’s Watumull family looms large as a retailer in Hawaii
June 2016 -
June 3, 1937—A four-page advertisement marks the opening of the Watumull Building in Honolulu. There are articles about G.J. and J. Watumull, and ads for the stores in the building.
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“Color Me Queer on the Pier”
June 2016 -
June 23, 2001—"Color Me Queer On the Pier” was the 6th Annual Queer People of Color Pride Dance in New York City. An organizer was the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association.
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Indian students in Chicago protest Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule
June 2016 -
June 26, 1975—the day the Gandhi-led government declared the state of emergency, a meeting to “Protest Indira Gandhi’s Subversion of Democracy” was organized by Indian students in Chicago.
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Sitar Player Shanta Nurullah Part of an All-Women Band
May 2016 -
May 6, 1983—A concert by the all-women band “Sojourner” in Chicago. Shanta Nurullah was an African-American college student who went to India to study the Dalits and discovered the sitar.
