South Asian Students at UC Berkeley

  • [1888] At least in 1888-1889, Syed Abul Hassan, from Calcutta, studied at the University of California-affiliated Toland College of Medicine, located in San Francisco, which later became UCSF. While Hassan was not a UC Berkeley student, he was an early Bay Area UC student. He then graduated from Gross Medical College in Denver. in 1889. I'm unclear how that happened; did he switch schools partway through, or do an abbreviated program? He didn't return to India immediately. Per city directories, he was living at 17 Hinckley, San Francisco from 1889-1890 as a med student, lived in the same place as a physician that same year, and as a physician at 303 Montgomery in 1891. Hinckley was a diverse working-class street full of tamale vendors! I wrote a tweet thread about Hassan. [1891 UC Berkeley yearbook, page 25]
  • [1902] Two students from Lahore, Amar Nath and Ramlall Bere, arrived in Berkeley to study engineering. They were graduates of the British University of Punjab, and had spent some time at the Imperial University of Tokyo. They were from Lahore, working in government service, traveled across East Asia, came to Berkeley hoping to enter mechanical engineering department, but finding requirements to stringent, started doing "provisionary work." Later that year, a newspaper in Calcutta wrote an article in praise of the University of California, and mentioning that Amar Nath and Ram Lal had taken good courses on irrigation there. ("Hindoos Enter University," SF Chronicle, Apr 10, 1902, pg, 7) (San Francisco Call, 16 August 1902, page 8, "India Praises the University") (Berkeley Gazette, July 7 1902, p. 8) Not sure if these students actually ever graduated, and still seeking hard evidence that they enrolled. Girindra Mukerji's "The Hindu in America" says the first students in California came in 1904 — not sure how to resolve these.
  • [1904] First South Asian students at UC Berkeley, per an article by Girindra Mukherji
  • [1907] Two UC Berkeley South Asian students left for Stanford, an event that was noted in the papers. K.C. Das and S.C. Bose were two of the nine students who just arrived at Berkeley, sent by the association for the Advancement of Scientific Industry. Those who remained include J.C. Nag, T.C. Mazoomdan, N.K. Banarge, N.C. Chakeovrata, G.N. Mukegi, B.K. Singh, and T.N. Das. "A number of the young Hindoos are registered in special courses in chmistry, while others are enrolled for the full four years' course…of the seven registered at the University here, six are interested in work in the department of agriculture." [SF Chronicle, Jan 17 1907, "Hindoo Students Register at Stanford", page 13]
  • [1907] The first Asian American student club at UC Berkeley is formed by 35 (?) Indian, Japanese, Chinese, and Thai students. The Oriental Students' Association of the University of California was open to all Oriental students on campus. The founding Indian members were Girindra Mukerji, Nisha Kanta Banerjee, Noresh Chandra Chakravarti, T.C. Dass, Tarak Charan Mazoomdar, Jogendra Chandra Nag, and B.K. Singh. [The Berkeley Gazette, 11 Feb 1907, pages 1 and 4, "Oriental Students at U.C. Form Association"]
  • [1907] Five Hindoo students arrive from India to (eventually?) study at UC Berkeley, most to study agriculture. This includes one from Bombay, P. Kankerji (probably Pandurang Khankoje?), one from Lucknow, W.S. Dutta, and three from Calcutta, D.N. Gaha (maybe Dakshinarayan Guha?), S.N. Gaha (Surendranath Guha?), and N.C. Gaha (Nirupam Chandra Guha?). [Oakland Tribune, 19 July 1907, "Hindoos Will Enter State University," page 4, column 7]
  • [1907] Girindra Mukherji attacked British imperialism in a speech to the UC Berkeley's Economics club. Mukherji was the President of the Association of Oriental Students, and his "scathing denunciation of British misrule in India" was covered by the San Francisco Chronicle ("Calcutta Graduate Scores England for Overtaxing of His People," Dec 5, 1907, pg 13)
  • [1908] The first UC Berkeley South Asian student protest/action took place in 1908. South Asian students at Stanford (former UC Berkeley students themselves?) tipped off UC Berkeley South Asian students that evangelist J. Lovell Murray had recently spoken at Stanford and insulted Hinduism — and that he was going to speak on the same topic at UC Berkeley. Sixteen Berkeley students, led by Girindra Mukherjee, confronted Murray outside Stiles Hall, asking him to refrain from insulting their religion. When he refused, they occupied the front of the lecture hall, and after his speech, Mukherjee and six other students challenged Murray, advocating for political rights for Hindustanis and refuting attacks on their faith. The story is captured in a wonderfully vivid article in the San Francisco Call, among others. [SF Examiner, Jan 19, 1908, "Hindoo Students try to Break Up Lecture", page 25]
  • [1907-8] Girindra Mukherjee, President of the Association of Oriental Students, publishes a standalone booklet about American colleges for Indian students, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle ("He Wants More Hindoo Students to Come Here," Nov 28, 1907, pg. 11). He subsequently wrote an article about early South Asian migration called "The Hindu in America" for the Bay Area magazine The Overland Monthly. In it, he describes Indian colonization and emigration patterns, the earliest Indian students (1901 to the West Coast, 1904 at UC Berkeley), racism, non-student immigrants, Vivekananda and the Vedanta Society. The photo of students in this site's header is from page 5 of the article. He gave a scathing anti-colonial lecture entitled "Economic Disasters of British Rule in India" at UC Berkeley's Economics Club on December 4, 1907, as reported on in the San Francisco Chronicle ("Hindoo Arraigns Britons for the Ruin of India," Dec 5, 1907, pg 13). The San Francisco Call ran an article about Girindra Mukerji's graduation and departure from Berkeley
  • [1910] By July 1907, papers were saying there 5 Hindoo students already enrolled, and another 5 expected to enroll by August, bringing it to a total of 10. Article says most take up scientific courses, including agriculture or chemistry, some medicine. [The Bakersfield Californian, "Hindoo Students Enter University of California," July 25 1907, page 8]
  • [1911] Saranghadar Das wrote an article entitled "Why Must We Emigrate to the United States of America?"  in the Modern Review arguing that Indian students should study in the US. Pages 4-6 of the article contain names and bios of 46 of the earliest Indian students in the US (!!!), about half from UC Berkeley.
  • [1912] Gobind Behari Lal arrives in Berkeley. You can read about his time at UC Berkeley, and his involvement with the Ghadar Party in his 1983 oral history interview.
  • [1913] Six students from India came to UC Berkeley on a scholarship funded by Jawala Singh, a farmer known as the "potato king," with assistance from Har Dayal and Arthur Upham Pope. There are bios of the six students a San Francisco Call story titled "Indian Savants to Enroll at UC."
  • [1914] At a time of increasing sentiment opposing Asian immigration, faculty in universities that have students from India pushed back, according to the Christian Science Monitor. The paper reports that 14 University of California professors have filed a protest against proposed regulations because of their injustice to "desirable students." ["Educators Aid Hindu Students," Christian Science Monitor, July 3 1914, p32
  • [1914] Gobind Ram Sahgal represented foreign students from 31 nations in a welcome to new UC President Barrows. ["Welcome From Students," San Francisco Chronicle, 24 Mar 1920, page 13, col 4]
  • [1917] Several Indian students were involved with UC Berkeley's Cosmopolitan Club, which was in the newspaper for having both male and female members in the same club, which was considered highly inappropriate. Hemendra Kishore Rakshit (a grad student in letters and sciences) was the president of the club, and other members include Vangala Siva Ram and Surendra Karr. [Oakland Tribune, "U.C. Club to Reunite Its Sections: Men, Women to Ignore Old Rule", September 5 1917 evening, columns 5-6]
  • [1922-1923] Jayaprakash Narayan (JP Narayan), an Indian freedom fighter best known for his opposition to Emergency in the 1970s, was a student at UC Berkeley in 1923. He arrived in California via cargo boat in October 1922, and was placed inside a segregated hotel, living with Black and other people of color; this was his first experience with American racism. Three days after arriving, he met UC Berkeley students associated with the Nalanda Club, and started sharing a room with K.B. Menon, who would later be involved with Congress and socialist movements in India. With 3 months to go until the start of the next semester in January, he worked at a fruit cannery in Sacramento, working as a grape picker in Marysville with his friend Sitaram Reddy, and intersecting with Sikh and Pathan workers. He saved $80, and started classes at UC Berkeley in January 1923, getting admitted into the second year thanks to credit from his Indian intermediate science degree. He studied science (math, chemical engineering, and biology), and living in a rented room, while working at restaurants. For at least some of that period, he lived at Nalanda at 2026 Center. After a semester, he was unable to pay for further semesters, so he moved to Iowa University, where the fees were about a quarter of those of UC Berkeley. [Sources: "Bihar, California, and the US Midwest" by Pranav Jani, "Jayaprakash Narayan: A Centenary Volume" edited by Sandip Das, "The Life and Times of Jayaprakash Narayan" by Pankaj Kishore, JDS biography, NY Times, "Jayaprakash Narayan: A Political Biography" by Ajit Bhattacharjea]
  • [1948] D. Bap Reddy was a student at UC Berkeley around 1946-1950, living at the International House. He was President of the Hindusthan Students Association.
  • [1949-1950] Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the first democratically-elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, did graduate work at UC Berkeley from January 1949 to fall 1950.
    • Bhutto lived on 1800 Allston Way, with several Indian students, including his close friend Piloo Mody; the housemates split up chores, and it was Bhutto's job to clean the house and make the beds. Students cooked communally, and all pitched in for groceries. A classmate noted that he "dated a lot of girls." (Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan: His Life and Times by Stanley Wolpert, chapter 3; and Zulfi My Friend by Piloo Mody, chapters 5–6) Bhutto was a "non-resident member" of the International House, and part of the dining staff. At I-House, he would sometimes sit at the "Urdu Table." Bhutto loved being able to learn from Professor Hans Kelsen, who he would often quote while involved in Pakistani politics. He also took a graduate course in the history of political philosophy with Piloo, where he got an A. (Wolpert, Piloo) He returned to Pakistan for a family wedding in September 1949.
    • Writes Wolpert, "Upon his return to Berkeley Zulfi launched his political career, running for the representative-at-large seat on the Student Council—the only foreign candidate in a field of seven. His populist platform called for more complete "integration of foreign students in student affairs"; opposition to the California loyalty oath, a product of the Cold War witch-hunt mentality then sweeping the United States; and a "Fair-Bear" (a bear is Berkeley's symbol, as it is California's) minimum student wage of a dollar an hour. Zulfi was in his element, badgering all his friends to work "very hard," in Piloo's words. Zulfi Bhutto became the first Asian member of the council."
    • Writes Salmaan Taseer in Bhutto: A Political Biography (chapter 2), "At Berkeley, Bhutto fought his first-ever election for one of the twelve seats of the Student Council body which governed the association of students of the University of Southern California. He listed as his qualifications: membership in Honour Student Society and the Tau Kappa Alpha National Varsity Debate Fraternity. Campaign platforms included — with due allowance for American student jargon — ‘plans for closer integration of foreign students in campus affairs, support for the one-dollar-fair-bear-wage and of the academic stand on the loyalty oath’.15 In a pre-election interview with the Daily Californian, Bhutto supported raising the salary of the university employees, instituting a purchase card system on campus and a limited action against discriminatory living groups."
    • Writes Piloo: "As a test of things to come Zulfi even fought an election at the university, contesting one of the 12 seats for the Students’ Union Council, which governed the Association of Students of the University of California. All of us worked very hard to see that Zulfi won, which indeed he did, although Zulfi insists on maintaining that I voted against him. He was the first Asian to contest successfully for a seat in the Council and all of us were very proud that he won."
    • Writes Wolpert: "Zulfi's growing political consciousness and liberal democratic ideals were given expression the following year when he volunteered in the 1950 campaign of Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas for a seat in the U.S. Senate against Republican Richard M. Nixon. It was during that infamous campaign that Nixon was first dubbed 'Tricky Dick.' Unfortunately, Zulfi learned more about the kind of politicking he later employed from Nixon's deplorable tactics that fall than he did from his contact with the more principled losing candidate for whom he worked."
    • Years later, when discussing his anti-imperial views, Bhutto would say "I continued the fight at Berkeley by spear-heading every anti-colonial cause and by giving militant backing to every colored cause in the United States" but this may be an exaggeration. (Bhutto, "The Pakistan Papers", p.97) He was, however, very much associated with campus progressives. He got his degree in political science in June 1950.
    • Writes Wolpert, "Zulfi called himself a "socialist" during his last year at Berkeley, reading Harold Laski's Grammar of Politics, as well as the works of Marx and Engels, and such Fabians as Jawaharlal Nehru, who was one of his early heroes and long a political role model in several respects. He was always a militant advocate of pan-Islam; nationhood for Palestinian Arabs; freedom from French rule for Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria; and independence for Vietnam. The Student Council was a forum in which he tried to educate fellow students on important contemporary issues. Zulfi was confident of his destiny: a leader of Pakistan, a world statesman. He viewed the UN as yet another, larger forum for his most advanced ideas in international affairs, and was ready, even in his early twenties to take a stand there. He would lead not only his countrymen but all Muslims, indeed, the entire Third World toward a bright socialist future that carried no trace of Western domination. "
  • [1960-1964??] Economist Ajit Singh was at Berkeley. He protested the war, was friends with Shyamala Gopalan, and was aware of Sikh. [from Ajit Singh and Cambridge and Chandigarh: An Intellectual Biography of the Radical Sikh Economist]
  • [1964] Indian literary figure Nabaneeta Dev Sen participated in the Free Speech Movement and occupation of Sproul Hall while a grad student at UC Berkeley. She writes about it in a Bengali article in Parabaas. (Contact us for our private translation.)
  • [1969-1970?] Ayesha Gill participated in the Third World Liberation Front, leading to the establishment of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley
  • [~1969] A newspaper called Spark was established to discuss South Asian people's movements [India Forum, April 1977, page 15]
  • [1969-1974?] South Asia Students Association (SASA) established at UC Berkeley to expand educational programming. Establishment date unknown, sometime between 1969-1974. I'd guess it was active by the Bangladesh Independence movement.  [India Forum, April 1977, page 15]
  • [1974] On November 23, the Indian Students Association (ISA) "turned toward political organizing and education. Traditionally an apolitical cultural entity…the ISA at Berkeley has remained virtually unique in its explicit commitment to socio-political education." On November 26, ISA organizers and others asked a series of pointed questions to Indian Ambassador Triloka Nath Kaul at an International House event at UC Berkeley, focusing on political prisoners, Indian claims that no starvation exists, and India-Bangladeshi relations — embarrassing the Ambassador. [India Forum, April 1977, page 15]
  • [June 1975-March 1977] Indian Student Association' anti-emergency protests, documented in Sharat G. Lin Archives.
  • [Early 1975] In January, Indian Consul general left an ISA-sponsored public event on "the changing role of India the Southern Asian Region" because of the presence of a Pakistani panelist, and potentially anticipating "embarrassing questions from the audience."
  • [May 1975] A new student organization called India Forum launches to foster radical discussion and analysis of India and South Asia. Back issues of their publication, India Forum, is archived on SAADA.  [India Forum, April 1977, page 16]
  • [August 1975] Student activists run 3 teach-ins/events on the Emergency in Berkeley, and an Independence Day picket in front of the Indian consulate general on Aug 15. Indian consulate officials demanded that the ambassador meet students, but warned them not to ask inconvenient questions, insisting that Indian nationals in the U.S. were subject to Indian censorship laws; the ambassador's visit was cancelled. [India Forum, April 1977, page 16]
  • [1976-1977] Committee of Concerned Indian Students group exists at UC Berkeley, promotes "India: Democracy or Dictatorship?" film, criticizes Indira Gandhi [documents via SAADA]
  • [1991] Asha for Education founded by UC Berkeley students [Asha for Education on Wikipedia]
  • [1991] South Asian students at UC Berkeley express grievances with the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies [document via SAADA]
  • [1992] South Asia Discussion Group on UC Berkeley campus [SAADA search]