Secret Desi History

Kartar Singh Sarabha, the young revolutionary who would become a martyr in the Ghadar Party and India’s independence struggle, is often described as a student at the University of California, Berkeley.

What does it feel like to be free?

Detail from an illustration in a newspaper article about a Punjabi baby born in 1903 San Francisco In the early 1900s, San Francisco was a bustling hub of cultural exchange, teeming with immigrants and performers from around the globe.

Illustrative imagined scene of M.P.T.

In 1880s Berkeley, a turbaned figure known only as “Old James” wandered alone through the hills, his turban and trance-like manner catching the attention of locals.

An 1851 San Francisco paper described a city of immigrants… I found a lovely line in an 1851 San Francisco newspaper that celebrates the diversity of Gold Rush San Francisco—a boom town whose residents included “Hindoos” (South Asians), “Mussulmans” (Musl…

In 1916, a new establishment opened its doors at 2139 Center Street in downtown Berkeley, California.

The story of Samuel Variapa, the “Hindoo centenarian of North Beach” If South Asians are included in California history textbooks, their stories typically begin in 1965, or sometimes with Punjabi immigrants of the 1900s.

A Sikh American Christmas story from 1911 In 1911, the San Francisco Call published a Christmas short story about a Sikh immigrant taking in a group of cold and tired railroad workers trudging through the Sierra Nevada mountains.

A new history dataset shows the impact of immigration restrictions I’ve been analyzing U.S.