Bhagat Singh Thind
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Bhagat Singh Thind, PhD, (October 3, 1892 – September 15, 1967) was an Indian American Sikh writer and lecturer on "spiritual science" who was involved in an important legal battle over the rights of Indians to obtain U.S. citizenship.
Thind had fought for the U.S. in World War I. After the war he sought the right to become a naturalised citizen, following a legal ruling that "Caucasians" had access to such rights. At this time many Indians were categorised as Caucasian by anthropologists. In 1923, a crucial Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind was decided in favor of the United States, retroactively denying all Indian Americans citizenship for not being Caucasian in "the common man's understanding of the term."
What is less well-known is that Bhagat Singh Thind remained in the U.S., completed his PhD., and delivered lectures in metaphysics all across the nation. Basing his lessons on Sikh religious philosophy, he enriched his teaching with references to the scriptures of several religions and the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau. He campaigned actively for the independence of India from the British Empire and helped Indian students in any way he could. Ironically, Dr. Thind applied for and received U.S. citizenship through the state of New York within a few years of being turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1931, he married Vivian Davies and they had a son, David, to whom several of his 15 books are dedicated.
[edit] Books by Bhagat Singh Thind
- Radiant Road to Reality
- Science of Union with God
- The Pearl of Greatest Price
- House of Happiness
- Jesus, The Christ: In the Light of Spiritual Science (Vol. I, II, III)
- The Enlightened Life
- Tested Universal Science of Individual Meditation in Sikh Religion
- Divine Wisdom (Vol. I, II, III)
[edit] Posthumously released
- Troubled Mind in a Torturing World and their Conquest
- Winners and Whiners in this Whirling World
