Sikhs were misclassified as Hindus in the US Census

Evidence

Mounting anti-Chinese prejudice on the West Coast prompted California to pass the 1913 Alien Land Law Act, preventing immigrants from owning land. When Sikhs became successful farmers in the early 1900s, anti-Asian xenophobia expanded to include people from the Indian subcontinent, collectively categorized as Hindus in the US Census. Congress then passed the 1917 Immigration Act, barring Indian, Chinese, and other Asians from immigrating to the United States. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 340

Categorization

• QUESTION: The census lumping diverse South and East Asians under ‘Hindu’ — worth chasing how this category error shaped later data on Asian American groups.
• XREF: Directly relevant to this book’s thesis that religious identity gets misread and racialized — the Sikh-as-Hindu census error is the same mechanism Aziz traces with Muslims.