Sudhindra Bose

Indian-born educator, journalist, and scholar

• Pronunciation: SOOD-heend-rah BOHZ
• Born: 1883
• Birthplace: Keotkhali, British India (now Bangladesh)
• Died: May 26, 1946
• Place of death: Iowa City, Iowa

One of the first Asian American university teachers in the United States, Sudhindra Bose saw himself as mediator between India and the United States. In the 1920s, he successfully fought US government attempts to strip him of his citizenship on race-based grounds. Critical of British colonial rule of India, he advocated for an independent India that would emulate American democracy.

Areas of achievement: Education, journalism, scholarship

Early Life

In 1883, Sudhindra Bose was born to upper-class Hindu parents in the town of Keotkhali in East Bengal, then part of British India. Even though his family was not Muslim, the Bose women observed the Islamic practice of purdah, which limits women’s excursions from home. Purdah was observed by the majority Muslim population in East Bengal, which is today located in Bangladesh. Although Bose attended Victoria College of Calcutta University from 1901 to 1903, he disliked the British-influenced system of higher education, which emphasized European culture and classic Greek and Latin.

Against the will of his parents, he decided to go to the United States, dreaming of more freedom there. In late 1903, he took the job of an assistant steward at a Standard Oil boat departing from India. Arriving in 1904, Bose became enrolled at Park College in Missouri. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Illinois, where he earned a bachelor of arts in English in 1907 and a master of arts in 1909. During this time, Bose was one of about one hundred Indian students in the United States, called Hindus at that time. Bose earned his PhD in political science from the University of Iowa in 1913. That year, he was appointed lecturer in Oriental Studies at the State University of Iowa, a position he held until his death.

Bose enjoyed his life in the United States, where he believed more democratic freedoms were available to him than in British India. In 1914, Bose became a naturalized US citizen. He did so by persuading an immigration officer that Indians were Aryans and thus Caucasians, not Asians, who were barred from naturalization at this time. Following his naturalization, Bose lost his Indian nationality, which meant he could not visit India without a visa from Britain.

Life’s Work

In 1916, Bose’s colonial critique, Some Aspects of British Rule in India, was published in the United States. The work describes Bose’s belief that British administrators in India hypocritically masked their desire for economic and political domination with shows of benevolence and equanimity. An astute observer of American society, Bose also wrote articles and essays about the United States for Calcutta’s nationalist monthly magazine, The Modern Review. While in Calcutta in 1920, Bose published a collection of his essays observing life and democracy in the United States entitled Fifteen Years in America. His book, which had a primarily Indian audience, provided insight into American public institutions, including universities, and related Bose’s personal experiences. These included an account of an incident where Bose, while attending a lecture as a student, had to exchange his turban for an American-style hat following a coatroom mishap. He also discussed some of his experiences as a university lecturer. While not blind to the evils of American society of the time, such as the lynching of African Americans in the South, Bose expressed admiration for the democratic spirit and strength of his adopted nation.

Writing as a freelancer for the Des Moines Reporter during a world tour in 1922, Bose took delight in aggressively interviewing officials in England who continued to deny him a visa to visit India. During the summer in Iowa, when he was not teaching, he appeared as a speaker on the chautauqua lecture circuit. Chautauqua was popular in rural 1920s America, offering small-town audiences educational entertainment in an age before radio and television.

In 1923, the Supreme Court ruled that, in the common understanding of the term, Indians were not considered Caucasians. The US government decided to go as far as trying to strip previously naturalized Indians of their US citizenship. Bose’s opposition to this united him with radical Indian Americans such as Taraknath Das. Das was a fellow contributor to the Modern Review, whose anti-British opposition was more aggressive than that of Bose. During the fight to keep his citizenship, Bose’s third book appeared in India, Glimpses of America (1925). Not surprisingly, his vision of the United States darkened in comparison to previous works, yet he still valued the American ideals of democracy and free civic institutions. In October 1927, Bose and his Indian colleagues won their legal battle to keep their previously granted US citizenship.

By this time, Bose had married Anne Zimmermann of St. Gallen, Switzerland, whom he had known since his student days in Iowa. In 1928, Bose finally returned to India and found it a changed country. Bose wrote about these changes in the article “India Revisited,” published in the American magazine The Nation in its June 19, 1929 issue.

Much angered by the one-sided, pejorative view of India outlined in Katherine Mayo’s book Mother India (1927), Bose set to work on a reply. His Mother America (1934) highlighted the social progress made in Indian society, particularly regarding the status of women. Bose also cultivated a friendship with Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. During World War II, Bose expressed his hopes for eventual full independence of India. However, he died on May 26, 1946, over a year before India achieved this goal in 1947.

Significance

Sudhindra Bose’s fight to keep his US citizenship inspired generations of Asian Americans. His status as one of the first Asian American university teachers and scholars blazed a trail for Asian American academic achievement in the United States. Notwithstanding his own troubles with the US government and his keen awareness of racial violence against African Americans, Bose still valued the American ideal of a democratic, egalitarian, and free society. For Bose, American democracy provided India a far better alternative than British colonialism.

Bose’s two books about the United States have been compared to the work of French writer Alexis de Tocqueville. Like de Tocqueville in his famous 1835 critique De la démocratie en Amérique (Democracy in America), Bose proved himself a perceptive observer of the essential elements of American culture and civic society. Bose’s writing became the legacy of a man who saw himself as a messenger between colonial India and democratic America. Bose helped bridge the gap between both nations and helped develop a mutual understanding through his writings, lectures, and teaching.

Bibliography

Bose, Sudhindra. Fifteen Years in America. 1920. New York: Arno, 1974. Print. An illustrated collection of twenty-five essays providing an excellent view of the nature of American society, culture, and politics in the early twentieth century.

---. “Some Aspects of British Rule in India.” 1916. Charleston: Nabu, 2010. Print. A reprint of Bose’s doctoral dissertation containing a critical view of British colonial administration of India.

Jensen, Joan. Passage from India: Asian Indian Immigrants in North America. New Haven: Yale UP, 1988. Print. Places Bose’s life in the context of the struggle against the discrimination Indian immigrants faced in his times.

Sabin, Margery. “The Sounds of America to Sudhindra Bose.” Raritan 24.4 (Spring 2005): 98–123. Print. A perceptive study of the change in Bose’s attitudes towards American society in light of the US government attempts to denaturalize him as a citizen after 1923.