CALIFORNIA, March 9, 2006: HPI note: At “source” is a series of articles on the “Mexican Hindus” (Sikhs actually) who migrated to California around 1907 and settled around Yuba City, producing the area’s first rice crop in 1911. The immigrants faced fierce racism, including laws preventing them from owning land. Immigration laws were then changed to prevent further immigration, with the result that many of the Sikh men married Mexican women, hence “Mexican-Hindus.”
A part of one article reads, “Although Sikhs are a majority of Punjabi-speaking people living in Yuba City, Marysville and the surrounding region, they are to this day wrongly referred to as ‘Hindus’ by most of the non-Punjabi population. While Hindus make up more than 80 percent of the population of India. Sikhs make up more than 60 percent of the population of the Punjab, the rich agricultural region of northwest India and southeast Pakistan. American newspapers promulgated the use of the term ‘Hindu’ in referring to all people from India. Early newspaper accounts of ‘Hindus’ in Yuba-Sutter contain some specific information about the early prejudice faced by the ‘turbaned protege of King George’ (a prejudiced reference to the fact that India was a British colony).”