This Indian woman fled British colonial rule, only to fight another kind of oppression in the U.S.

In early 20th century California, Kala Bagai faced a language barrier and discrimination, but that didn’t stop her from becoming an agent of change

Photograph of Kala Bagai Chandra, and her three sons Madan, Brij, and Ram Bagai (left to right), taken in Chicago in 1933. (South Asian American Digital Archive)

In 1915, when Kala Bagai stepped off a boat in San Francisco, she was one of only a handful of South Asian women in the United States. She was such a rare sight that the San Francisco Call-Post reported her as being the “first Hindu woman to enter the city in ten years,” emphasizing her nose ring and exotic appearance. Not that she could have read the paper, since she spoke no English.

Newspaper article from September 1915 issue of San Francisco Call & Post reporting on the “nose diamond fad” from India and describing Kala Bagai’s arrival in the United States with her family. (South Asian American Digital Archive)

Just 22 years old, Bagai, and her husband, Vaishno, had immigrated to the United States to escape British colonial rule. Safe in San Francisco, the couple became active in the revolutionary Ghadar Party, which sought India’s independence from Britain. They developed roots in California, opening a general store in San Francisco, and tried to assimilate. But they never felt welcomed.

The sense of alienation only worsened. In 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, that South Asians were ineligible for American citizenship. Even though Kala and Vaishno had been previously naturalized, along with many other South Asians living in the U.S., the Bagais had their citizenship revoked. Vaishno, whose activism had gained him some notoriety, was forced to give up his business and eventually took his own life. In a suicide note to the San Francisco Examiner, Vaishno asks, “Is life worth living in a gilded cage?”

Devastated by her husband’s death, Kala was left to raise their children in the U.S. without citizenship or her husband’s income. Because the couple had been forced to give up their British Indian passports upon arrival in the U.S., Kala couldn’t return home to India. But Bagai persevered and became a leader in California’s fledgling community of South Asian immigrants. Thanks in part to her efforts, Congress in 1946 passed the Luce-Celler Act, which permitted Indian nationals living in the U.S. to become citizens. By 2015, there were nearly four million Indian Americans living in the U.S.

This video is part of a series produced in partnership with the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA).