A VINTAGE SEPIA SILVER PRINT SIGNED PHOTO OF INDIAN AMERICAN PILOT YOGI HARI RAMA MEASURING APPROXIMATELY 7 3/8 X 9 1/8 INCHES. SIGNED IN BLACK INK.
A singular early South Asian immigrant to the US, Singh repeatedly reinvented himself, becoming a butler, aviator, chauffeur, investor and dubious guru.
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in April 1912, papers around the country were abuzz with the news that “a full-blooded East Indian” named Mohan Singh was enrolled at the Glenn Curtiss flying school in San Diego. With students from as far away as Poland and Japan, the school was described as “the most cosmopolitan gathering of flyers and pupils ever assembled.” The tall and gaunt Singh, smartly dressed in a turban, only added to the reputation.
Fred Hartsook (26 October 1876 – 30 September 1930) was an American photographer and owner of a California studio chain described as "the largest photographic business in the world" at the time, who counted Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, Mary Pickford, and sitting President Woodrow Wilson among his celebrity clients. He later became the owner of the Hartsook Inn, a resort in Humboldt County, and two ranches in Southern California on which he reared prized Holstein cattle. Hartsook was married to Bess Hesby, queen of the San Francisco Pan-Pacific Exposition of 1915.
The many lives of Mohan Singh, a pioneering aviator who conned America as a yoga guru
A singular early South Asian immigrant to the US, Singh repeatedly reinvented himself, becoming a butler, aviator, chauffeur, investor and dubious guru.
The many lives of Mohan Singh, a pioneering aviator who conned America as a yoga guru
Mohan Singh behind the controls of a Curtiss aircraft, undated.
In February 1927, newspapers around the United States published reports of a Hindu yogi who had taken up residence in Chicago. Soon after his arrival, Yogi Hari Rama – tall, wispy-thin and with a faint sing-song voice – had quickly amassed hundreds of followers with teachings on how to cure all diseases, and “awaken the great forces within”.
Reporters mocked Yogi Hari Rama and painted him as a conman taking advantage of a gullible public. The yogi’s students insisted he possessed superhuman powers, which included levitation. In a sense, both sides had claims to the truth. Fifteen years earlier, Yogi Hari Rama was known as Mohan Singh, and he flew above Chicago as a daredevil airplane pilot.
Singh was one of the most remarkable and singular early South Asian immigrants to the US, and his is a story filled with an extraordinary series of ups and downs in less than a quarter of a century.
Flying high
Singh was born in the village of Himmatpura in Punjab around 1885, and was just out of his teenage years when he went to the United States. He settled in Chicago and worked as a butler for about six years before moving to San Diego to study aviation at the school of Glenn Curtiss in early 1912.
Curtiss was one of the most important and influential figures in aviation history, a pioneer who developed aircraft, built engines and promoted flight, in addition to being an accomplished pilot. The Curtiss camp was an international hub for aviation, and his magazine Aero and Hydro described it as “the most cosmopolitan gathering of flyers and pupils ever assembled in this or any other country”.
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Singh was among students from nine countries, including Russia, Greece and Japan, but even in this motley crowd, he stood out. He avoided meat and liquids other than water, and he rarely smiled or spoke. He was so much taller than the shortest student at the camp that there were issues with setting the controls for the practice machine to fit everyone.
Mohan Singh (back row, second from right) with fellow aviators at Glenn Curtiss’ camp in San Diego, 1912.
Foreshadowing his future career as a yogi, Singh took liberties with his past on the rare occasions when he did speak to the press. He described himself alternately as a Hindu prince, both a captain and a major in the Indian army, and as hailing from Bombay and Delhi.
After seven weeks of training, Singh took his flying trials in a Curtiss biplane on an early dewy Wednesday morning on May 1, 1912, and became the first person from India to become a licensed pilot in the world.
Singh then left for Curtiss’ other camp in upstate New York, where he quickly became proficient on the Curtiss hydroplane, which could take off and land on water. Not only was Singh one of the few pilots of his day who could operate several kinds of aircrafts, but he was also a stunt pilot, who performed death-defying feats at flying demonstrations known as aerial circuses.
Curtiss held Singh in high regard. After the daredevil pilot Lincoln Beachy came out of his self-imposed retirement and wanted to try out the new hydroplane, Curtiss insisted that he take Singh along as his passenger. When Curtiss travelled to Europe in the beginning of 1914 to demonstrate his flying boat for commercial and military uses, Singh was the only one within his small circle who was not a close relative.
The pilot’s license of Mohan Singh, 1912.
Although Singh continued to fly and perform in demonstrations, there seemed to be a ceiling on his future in aviation, and he moved out west. On July 4, 1916, Singh arrived in Los Angeles and began working once again as a butler and chauffeur for the family of a wealthy manufacturer. After a year in the city, Singh declared his intention to naturalise, and formally began the process of becoming an American citizen.
Naturalisation struggles
Citizenship at this time was dependent on being classified as a “free white person”, but there was little agreement on whether immigrants from India qualified. Citing everything from theories of early Aryan migration and skin tone, to geography and their own prejudices, Indians were alternately considered Caucasian, Black, Asian or simply non-White. In legal cases of racial eligibility for citizenship, Indians were compared to Syrians, Jews and even hypothetical aliens from Mars.
In less than two weeks, Singh’s initial petition to naturalise was rejected on the grounds that he was “not a white man”. Singh appealed and was assisted by Sakharam Ganesh Pandit, a Bombay-born lawyer who arrived in America under the auspices of the Theosophical Society in 1906.
Certificate denying Mohan Singh American citizenship, 1917.
When Singh’s appeal was heard in federal court two years later, it was seen as an important case and was covered by several newspapers. The judge was convinced that Singh qualified as Caucasian and granted his application for citizenship. Not long after, Singh attempted to change his name to Harry Mohan to formally adopt the Americanised name his friends used to address him.
Although it was a hard-won victory, Singh’s status as an American did not last long. While Singh struggled for citizenship in the courts of California, another Punjabi immigrant named Bhagat Singh Thind fought similar battles in Oregon and Washington State. Thind took his appeals to the United States Supreme Court in the beginning of 1923 and lost.
The judges unanimously denied citizenship to Thind, and ruled that immigrants from Asia were ineligible for citizenship. Soon after, the Immigration and Naturalisation Service moved to revoke the citizenship of dozens of South Asian Americans, including Singh. Four years after he became an American, Singh was effectively left without any citizenship at all.
In a set of cruel ironies, the decree that took away Mohan Singh’s citizenship was signed by the same judge who had ruled on his behalf five years earlier (who declared that denying Singh citizenship would be “a travesty”), and that decree was pasted directly on top of Singh’s earlier oath of allegiance to the US. Compounding his misfortune, he lost a considerable amount of money in a fraudulent investment scheme based on buying plots in a Los Angeles cemetery.
Stripped of citizenship, swindled out of his money, and unable to either build a future for himself in America or fall back on what he had earned, Singh launched himself into a daring third act. He became a godman.
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Holy journey
Becoming a guru was a surprisingly common career change at the time. Dozens of South Asians in the US remade themselves into swamis and yogis during the interwar decades of the 1920s and 1930s. They made their living by travelling from one city to another and teaching eager American spiritual seekers who saw India as the source of mystic wisdom. With little agreement at the time on what yoga actually was – diet reform, visualisation, breathing exercises or philosophy – nerve, rather than skill or pedigree, was often the biggest obstacle to becoming a godman.
Portrait of Mohan Singh as Yogi Hari Rama, 1926.
To remake himself into a guru, Singh liberally borrowed from his peers and predecessors. From Swami Ram Tirtha, a Punjabi expounder of Advaita Vedanta who had toured the US two decades earlier, he claimed a lineage (without any connection), and attached his own name to a reprinted collection of Ram Tirtha’s quotes. From his contemporary Yogi Wassan, Singh took visual materials like diagrams and logos, literally tracing them in some cases.
Most brazenly, Singh took a series of lessons in Kriya Yoga from Paramahansa Yogananda and then promptly used them as the core of his own lessons, “word for word, without permission”, as one of Yogananda’s infuriated students recalled. To this combination, he added affirmations from the proto-positive thinking New Thought movement, stagecraft from spiritualism, and numerous cues from the health reformers of the time.
After a few months in different cities, where he added and subtracted various titles – doctor, “psychologist and metaphysician”, “seer of India” – Singh settled on a name for himself and his teachings. He became Yogi Hari Rama and took his newly-minted Super Yoga Science on the road to American audiences in earnest.
Smooth operator
Like his contemporaries, at each stop on his tour, Yogi Hari Rama would offer a series of free lectures to draw in interested and curious members of the public in the hope that many of them would then sign up for a series of private classes for a fee. In smaller cities, he would stay for a few weeks and spend just enough time for a single set of public lectures and private classes, while in larger cities like Chicago and Detroit, he would run longer campaigns, which could last for several months.
Display advertisements for Yogi Hari Rama’s appearances in Sacramento, California and Des Moines, Iowa, 1925 and 1926.
Howsoever haphazard Singh was in creating his yogic persona, he was extraordinarily savvy in selling it to the public. Advertising campaigns would start before his arrival in a given city, and one medical journal noted that Yogi Hari Rama had “assistants galore who drum up business for him”. Once in a city, students of Super Yoga Science would appear on stage and give testimonials as to why they called Yoga Hari Rama “miracle man”. One woman gave a sworn affidavit, and testified that she had been cured from cancer and “been made new” by his teachings.
In bright orange robes and a matching turban, Yogi Hari Rama cut an impressive figure, and according to reporters, he was given an amazing amount of adoration from his audiences. He gave dietary advice, counselled on love and marriage, offered instructions on business and prosperity, claimed to hold the secret techniques of acquiring occult power, and offered remedies for a host of ailments, including bad breath, kidney troubles, poor eyesight and rheumatism.
Unlike his peers, who would return to the same cities in a regular pattern, Yogi Hari Rama made a single sweep through the country and visited over 30 cities in one extended three-and-a-half-year tour. After travelling up the West Coast in 1925, he spent 18 months in the Midwest, before going to the Northeast for the better part of a year, and then hopped across the country to make a final appearance in Los Angeles.
Location of Mohan Singh’s stops on his three-year tour as Yogi Hari Rama.
From the outset, Yogi Hari Rama consistently told the public that once he taught in a city, he would never return. This could have been astute marketing to enhance his mysterious persona, or as a more cynical observer noted, a way to avoid running into dissatisfied former students and the police.
Perhaps the most important reason Yogi Hari Rama never retraced his steps was that there was no reason to. Like many South Asians in America who returned to India in the wake of the Thind decision and denaturalisation, Singh may have felt that he had no future in the US and his best option was to make whatever money he could and go home.
Set for life
Selling the techniques of God-consciousness and unlimited occult power was an incredibly lucrative venture. A student could acquire five keys or lessons in Yogi Hari Rama’s Super Yogic Science over a week of evening classes for the equivalent of $350 today. For what would be another $150, they could receive an additional four keys in a series of afternoon courses, complete with secret mantras given directly by Yogi Hari Rama.
One reporter in New York tallied the audience at a Super Yoga Science lecture there and calculated that Yogi Hari Rama earned the contemporary equivalent of about a quarter of a million dollars after only a few months in the city. With an estimated total of 10,000 students during his three-year tour, Yogi Hari Rama left the US in August 1928 with enough money for the rest of his life.
Diagram of the Chakras from manual of Super Yoga Science, 1926.
Yogi Hari Rama established local chapters of what he called The Benares League of America in cities he visited on his tour. These chapters would meet regularly and continue to practise Super Yoga Science after he left. On the final stop of his tour in Los Angeles, just before he left the country, Yogi Hari Rama claimed to enter into a deep state of samadhi and then appointed six men and seven women to serve as authorised teachers known as Disciples of the Absolute to “carry on the Master’s work” and run the Benares League in his absence.
While at first glance, this might seem to have been a matter of serious institution-building, it might be more evidence for the theory that Singh was looking to maximise the money he made on his tour. Yogi Hari Rama sold lifetime memberships in the Benares League for $25 (or about $350 today) that allowed a card holder to attend any Super Yoga Science classes for the rest of their life, effectively doubling his yogic largesse from each student who also became a member.
A headquarters in Los Angeles kept the Benares League organised. Several of the teachers in the Benares League adopted a kind of clerical uniform, consisting of a white Nehru jacket, trousers and a large red sash across the chest emblazoned with the title “Disciple of the Absolute”. Their biggest help was the network of cities that Yogi Hari Rama had previously visited, and the local chapters of the Benares League from which these teachers could find a ready and waiting pool of students.
For a few years after the departure of Yogi Hari Rama, the Benares League of America was the most widespread organisation of its kind in the United States, larger than the organisations of Swami Vivekananda’s heirs in the Vedanta Society and Yogananda’s Self-Realisation Fellowship put together. It was common for multiple classes in Super Yoga Science to take place simultaneously across the country: Boston and Dallas, Seattle and Cleveland, New York and Los Angeles.
Portrait of A William Goetz, one of the 13 ‘Disciples of the Absolute’ who made up the Benares League, 1929.
Disappearing act
But the Benares League declined as quickly as it emerged. The original territorial structure dissolved and soon most of the appointed teachers were overlapping with each other in the same cities. The most crucial weakness was the absence of Yogi Hari Rama himself. He was no longer there to act as an authority, generate new lessons, or serve as a living representative of an imagined mystic East for American audiences.
This charismatic void played into the hands of rival yogis and swamis who tried to win over the former students of Yogi Hari Rama. Fittingly, many of these yogis were the ones that he had stolen from earlier. One tried to appeal to chapters of the Benares League in Ohio, a stronghold of Super Yoga Science, by offering himself in advertisements as “Guru Brother of the Hari Rama, your former teacher”. Another started referring to his lessons as keys and offered a special discounted rate to any members of the Benares League who took his classes.
After the Second World War, only one of the original 13 teachers, a chiropractor named JH Clark, still taught Super Yoga Science. He believed that he had briefly levitated like Yogi Hari Rama, became obsessed with recreating the experience, and moved into a mobile home in the California desert to focus on the task. Scattered local chapters of the Benares League survived for about another decade in Ohio, and by the 1960s hardly any trace of Yogi Hari Rama remained.
Singh’s ability to obscure his past and disappear from the public stage worked all too well. Despite his pioneering accomplishments and skill as a pilot, he was, when not forgotten, confused with and overshadowed by the similarly named pilot Manmohan Singh, who competed for a prize offered by Aga Khan to fly solo between England and India in 1930. Today, JRD Tata, the founder of Tata Motors, is most often remembered as the first Indian to receive a pilot’s licence, although Singh did so 18 years earlier in the US.
Similarly, while Singh and his attorney Pandit were willing to take their case for citizenship to the Supreme Court, it was Thind who ended up at the highest court in America, and the efforts of Singh were relegated to minor footnotes, known only to legal scholars and historians.
And although the Benares League of America was the largest organisation of its kind for several years, without a lasting institution or followers to prop up his memory, it also faded into obscurity along with its founder, leaving figures like Swami Vivekananda and Yogananda to be the few reference points in yoga’s early history in America.
It is difficult to encapsulate a person who went by so many names – Mohan Singh, Harry Mohan, Yogi Hari Rama, and lived so many lives – butler and domestic servant, aviator, chauffeur, aspiring American citizen, failed investor and dubious guru.
Perhaps an appropriate legacy is not in any one of these aspects, but rather all of them taken together, as an individual who was both heroic and conniving. Singh was bold and audacious enough to repeatedly reinvent himself despite the limitations of his time.
n April 1912, papers around the country were abuzz with the news that “a full-blooded East Indian” named Mohan Singh was enrolled at the Glenn Curtiss flying school in San Diego. With students from as far away as Poland and Japan, the school was described as “the most cosmopolitan gathering of flyers and pupils ever assembled.” The tall and gaunt Singh, smartly dressed in a turban, only added to the reputation.
No question, Singh had an air of foreign mystery about him. He seldom talked or smiled, and was known to avoid meat and drink only water. To reporters, he claimed to be studying aviation while on furlough from the British Indian Army, who wanted him to serve its airplane corps in tropical climates. He was alternately credited with the rank of captain and major, was described as an “Indian prince” in one article, and at different points was said to be from Delhi and Bombay.
Mohan Singh 2.jpg
While Singh is barely a footnote in aviation history, his life after his time as a pilot was just as colorful. (Curtiss-Wright Corporation Records. Courtesy NASM)
His true origins were more humble. Originally from the village of Himmatpura from the Punjab region of present-day northwest India, Singh arrived in the United States in 1906. He worked as a domestic servant in Chicago for several years before becoming enraptured with aviation and enrolling in the Curtiss school. Two years later he earned brevet #123, becoming the first licensed pilot from India.
After securing his license, Singh performed for the Curtiss-Wright Aviators aerial circus, and was billed as the “Only Hindu Flyer in the World.” He then travelled to Hammondsport, New York to learn how to fly the Curtiss hydroplane. Singh became so proficient on the craft that when Lincoln J. Beachey, one of the greatest barnstormers, came out of retirement and wanted to try out one of the hydroplanes, the Curtiss camp insisted that rather than fly alone, he take Singh along with him. In 1913, Singh was one of the few people not related to Glenn Curtiss to join him as he promoted his wares across Europe in the lead-up to World War I.
Mohan Singh 3.jpg
Singh, along with fellow barnstormers Farnum Fish and Julia Clark, traveled with the Curtiss-Wright aerial circus. (Aerial Age magazine, 1912/Courtesy Philip Deslippe)
Despite his skills as a pilot and numerous connections, a career as an aviator never materialized for Singh. In 1914, he settled in Los Angeles and worked as a butler and chauffeur for an affluent family, and soon began the process of becoming a naturalized American citizen. Citizenship at that time was only open to immigrants who were classified as Caucasian, and immigrants from India often confounded accepted racial categories. After years of well-publicized legal battles, Singh gained American citizenship only to have it stripped away in 1924 after the Supreme Court ruled that South Asians could not be considered White, and did not qualify for citizenship.
After a year of living uncertainly as “a man without a country,” Singh embarked on a bold plan. Donning bright orange robes, he became “Yogi Hari Rama” and began to teach a combination of plagiarized writings and exercises he repackaged as the secret techniques of “Super Yoga Science.” For several years Singh—as Yogi Hari Rama—travelled throughout the United States, staying in over two dozen cities for a few weeks to a few months at a time, and amassing a small fortune in the process. At the end of his tour in the late summer of 1928, Singh vanished without a trace, leaving behind 13 Americans he had appointed as teachers of Super Yoga Science, and a national organization called The Benares League of America, the largest yoga organization in the country.
Mohan Singh 4.jpg
Singh, reinvented as Yogi Hari Rama, was one of the most popular yoga teachers of the 1920s. (Courtesy Philip Deslippe)
Singh’s history as a trailblazing pilot has survived as little more than an obscure footnote in aviation history. There have been brief mentions of his legal fight for citizenship within scholarship on immigration, and the name of Yogi Hari Rama occasionally appears as an aside in histories of yoga in America. Until now, no one has known that the figures behind these three lives were the same man.
Even during his time as Yogi Hari Rama, a bit of the old pilot remained. He claimed to his many students of Super Yoga Science that he possessed the yogic power of levitation, which given his past as The Flying Hindu and all of his hours in the air, was not totally false.
In 1928, I, along with eleven others, was appointed by an East Indian known as Yogi Hari Rama, [one of the] Disciples of the Absolute and we were assigned to the task of continuing a work which he had started [namely, Super Yoga Science], which consisted primarily in the teaching of certain techniques which he called keys . . . This was [an] adaptation of an Indian way of thinking to the American psyche.[1]
The Benares League of America was the largest yoga organization in the United Sates during the 1920s, and it was comprised of students of Yogi Hari Rama—whose story is fascinating. The “Yogi” had emigrated as Mohan Singh from the village of Himmalpura in the Punjub region of what is now northwestern India.[2] Singh first settled in Chicago, where he found employment as a domestic servant for several years, but he soon became enamored with a recent invention—the flying machine. Singh enrolled in the Glen Curtiss flying school in San Diego, and after two years he earned brevet #123 and became the first licensed pilot from India.
Singh also became a media sensation, and in a story that attracted national attention, it was reported that he was “a full-blooded East Indian captain in the British army in India,” who was “on furlough,” and that unbeknownst to his superiors, was studying aviation.[3] Sometimes he was given the rank of major; in one article he was described as an “Indian prince”; and, he was sometimes reported to be from Delhi or Bombay.
In point of fact, Singh was a first-rate aviator, and performed with the Curtis-Wright Aviators aerial circus, which billed him as “Major Mohan Singh (Licensed) of the Indian Army—Only Hindu Flyer in the World.” He later traveled to Hammondsport, New York to learn how to fly the Curtiss hydroplane. When the famous barnstormer Lincoln Beachey came out of retirement, he showed up at the Curtiss factory and was given permission to take up one of the “flying boats,” but was also advised to take Singh with him.[4] In 1913, Singh joined Glen Curtiss in marketing airplanes across Europe in the buildup to World War I. In 1916, Singh was reported as “on a list” of individuals that the War Department wanted as fliers for the United States.[5]
Singh found it difficult to sustain a career in aviation, however, and in 1914 he was working as a butler and chauffeur for a prominent family in Los Angeles. In 1919, he became a naturalized United States citizen, which at the time was only open to immigrants who were classified as Caucasian.[6] In 1922, Singh petitioned the court to change his name to Harry Mohan, given that his friends called him “Harry” and he did not want his last name confused with the common Chinese name ‘Sing’.[7] In 1923, the Federal government sought the cancellation of Singh’s citizenship, based on the grounds that at the time of his naturalization he was not qualified by race to be an American citizen. Early the next year, his appeal to have the motion dismissed was denied, and Singh was soon a man without a country.[8]
By 1925, Singh embraced his Indian (and more specifically, Punjabi) heritage and began his transformation to Yogi Hari Rama. He dressed in bright orange robes and lectured in various cities across California as “Dr. Hari Mohan” on topics about “Hindu philosophy” and “Yoga philosophy,” billing himself as a “Seer of India, Psychologist and Metaphysician.”[9] Late that year he introduced ‘Rama’ into his name, and by May 1926, Singh was lecturing in the Midwest as “Yogi Hari Rama,” making stops in Des Moines, Minneapolis, Detroit and Chicago.[10] He was by then teaching a system of yoga philosophy branded “Super Yoga Science” and which he promoted with the book,Yoga System of Study: Philosophy, Breathing, Foods and Exercises (H. Mohan, 1926).
This volume, a copy of which is in the Wolff Archive, had a brief outline of his system of Super Yoga Science, including a diagram of the nadi system; some health advice that identified the twoYogi Hari Rama causes of human disease (psychological nerve symptoms and pyscho-physiological nerve symptoms); advice on marriage; a note that explains that there are three mental states or principles of consciousness: sub-consciousness, consciousness and super-consciousness (the latter said to be equivalent to “Christ-consciousness”); a note on the proper yoga breakfast; some breathing exercises, chants, rules on wearing colors and using decorations; some extracts from Rama Tirtha followed by uncredited poems and sayings; diagrams of a number exercises; about half of the book, however, consists of short cooking recipes. At the end of the book is the “illustration” of Yogi Hari Rama shown here. In 1927, this work was retitled Super Yoga Science and Yoga System of Study: Occult Chemistry combined with the Chemical Composition of Life Elements (H. Mohan, 1927). The Wolff Archive contains another book by “Yogi Hari Rama of India, Psychologist and Metaphysician,” titled Human Life and Destiny (H. Mohan, 1927), which contains additional anatomical drawings and metaphysical information from the system of Super Yoga Science.
In 1927, Yogi Hari Rama lectured in Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Rochester, N.Y., and New York City; advertisements can be found for 1928 lectures in newspapers published in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles. He would often stay in a city for weeks at a time, lecturing on Super Yoga Science and other topics, and his publicity touted that he was “the first teacher from the Orient to bring the Western World concrete knowledge of a scientific method of applying mind to matter”; in addition to his lectures on “Hindu Philosophy” he taught “nine secret keys . . . passed from master to pupil since time began.”[11]
There were a number of other Punjabi yoga teachers in the United States about this time, and two acknowledged knowing Hari Rama: Yogi Wassan referred to him as his “Guru Brother” in a 1941 display advertisement and Rishi Singh Gherwal referred to “many years of friendship” between himself and Yogi Hari Rama in a 1930 pamphlet. In an article that focuses on the Punjabi Sikh presence in early American yoga, Phillip Deslippe notes it is likely that these individuals were familiar with one another and that once they each began to teach yoga, that they comprised a well-connected network:
If they could be thought of as merchants, they could also be thought of as a type of guild that exchanged information and offered mutual assistance. There have been several studies that have explored the effects social networks have among immigrant communities into bringing members into a shared occupation and fostering success within it, and the Punjabi Sikh presence in early American yoga can be seen as an example of this. While still viewing them as distinct individuals, their tightly-knit circle and similarities (along with their emergence as teachers mostly over a short period of a few years in the 1920s) are strong reasons for also thinking of . . . Punjabi Sikh yoga teachers as a single cluster.[12]
It would seem likely, then, that the transformation of Mohan Singh from pilot to yoga teacher was the result of his membership in a craft guild and that he was not—as his students often touted—a yoga master who had come to America specifically to teach the wisdom handed down by the holy men of India.
It should be noted that this period was just after World War I, which was a time when many in America were reassessing their values and searching for a “higher knowledge.” For instance, a disciple of Hari Rama proclaimed that the “monstrosity of the recent war” has revealed “that we stand at a critical point in the history of our culture” and that the “fruit of Yoga” is needed “because our present culture has failed to meet our deepest needs.”[13] It was, quite obviously, a lucrative period in America for the peddling of metaphysical thought. Moreover, given that increasingly restrictive immigration laws made Indian emigrants few and far between, the “sages” of this Punjabi guild represented a source of knowledge that was a rare commodity. Deslippe explains the situation as follows:
[At the time], the pull towards India was most acute within America’s metaphysical seekers. The ground laid by Transcendentalists, Theosophists, and New Thought in the nineteenth century helped to establish . . . an imagined East that held timeless and powerful spiritual truths in the minds of American seekers. Having little contact with Indian immigrants but endless exposure to fantastic tales of magical fakirs and supernatural yogis through written accounts and stage magicians, the default assumption of most Americans was that the average Indian was capable of working wonders . . .[14]
In the case of Yogi Hari Rama, a 1927 newspaper article reported that he was “proclaimed by more than 700 followers as a miracle man, among whom it is claimed he is able to walk on water in an emergency.”[15] It was in fact often enough to simply advertise oneself as an Indian master of Hindu Philosophy, or as “Dr. Hari Mohan” first did, as an “Indian seer,” to attract large gatherings.
Singh made a small fortune as Yogi Hari Rama, and at the end of his tour in late summer 1928, he vanished without a trace.[16] His departure from public life was evidently planned, as an advertisement in that year’s August 27 issue of The Los Angeles Times states that “Tonight [is] absolutely your last chance to hear the Hindu Master Yogi Hari Rama.”[17] A September 14, 1928 letter to “Local Chapters of Benares League” explains that “at the end of Yogi Hari Rama’s class work in this country and before leaving us, he entered Samadhi and then appointed twelve disciples . . . to carry on the Master’s work in this country.”[18] One of the disciples on this list is “Dr. Franklin F. Wolff” of San Fernando, California, who it is noted, will “start shortly” at the Chicago chapter of the League.
Although the letterhead for the stationary of the Benares League of America states that it was founded by Yogi Hari Rama, there is no mention of the organization in the advertisements for his lectures. A. William Goetz, another of Hari Rama’s twelve official disciples, is quoted in a 1933 newspaper article as stating that “Yogi Hari Rama came to America seven years ago and spent 3½ years teaching this [Super Yoga Science] here. He had more than 10,000 pupils in that time and they have banded together to form the Benares League.”[19] This would lead one to think that the Benares League was formed in anticipation of Hari Rama’s departure; it is also clear that local chapters were franchises with fifty-percent of their revenue payable to the national headquarters.[20] The Benares League was still was meeting in 1938, when it held a quarterly convention at the Henry Hotel in Pittsburgh; the program included a talk by Stanley Reland, also one of Hari Rama’s original twelve disciples.[21]
Wolff does not explicitly state when he and his wife first made contact with Hari Rama or the Benares League of America. Since Yogi Hari Rama frequently lectured in the Los Angeles area, the couple could have heard him speak as early as 1925. As indicated by the letter above, Wolff became formally involved in 1928, and his work began in earnest in early 1929. Following in Mohan Singh’s footsteps, Wolff took on the suggestive pseudonym, “Yogagñani,” of whom there are several pictures in the Wolff Archive, including one of him garbed in a white robe with a sash labeled “Disciple of the Absolute” and wearing a turban. These trappings were clearly meant to parlay a connection between the Benares League and the mysteries of the Orient, and the turban was an especially strong artifact of the League’s connection to the Punjabi teacher’s guild. Indeed, Deslippe explains (quoting Herman Scheffauer) that for the Punjabi teachers of yoga in America the turban was a “badge and symbol of their native land”; Deslippe then notes that “the salience and visibility of the turban also made it a marker for the other side of America’s Orientalist imagining of Indians as mystical sages and mental wonder-workers.”[22]
As head of the Benares League’s Chicago chapter, Wolff’s work was centered in the Midwest as well as near his home in the Los Angeles area. A March 2, 1929 announcement for “Free Lectures [by] Yogagnani” in Indianapolis notes that he is a “Grad of Stanford and Harvard Universities” and that “Classes in Mantra Yoga are forming.”[23] Another advertisement for lectures by Mr. Franklin Merrell-Wolff states that “He is the only American who has won the powers of his Sanscript [sic] name—Yogagnani,” and that “Thousands have applauded this great Thinker and Speaker. His students have power and understanding. They say he has taught them how to change failure into success and how to be dominant centers of power.”[24]
At the very least, it is clear that Wolff had learned the art of self-promotion from Hari Rama. There is anecdotal evidence, however, that Wolff did not care to dress up in the “costume” pictured here, which was apparently his wife’s idea.[25] More importantly, Wolff found something unsettling about Hari Rama’s commercialization of yoga; in particular, he explains that he was uneasy about the Benares League’s monetization of the information found in yoga:
When in 1928 I played a part as an appointed Disciple of the Absolute to continue the work initiated by one called Yogi Hari Rama, there was a policy prescribed by him on the economic side. Those who came to receive the instruction in the use of certain devices called “keys” that were supposed to serve in producing health and certain other effects, the policy was laid down by Yogi Hari Rama himself: it was a formal charge for these. I continued this policy because it was prescribed by him, but never felt comfortable about it. When we ceased to be associated with that work, I reverted to the basis of free contribution.[26]
The crux of the matter here lies in the approach that these two took to their work. For Yogi Hari Rama, the teaching of yoga was a learned craft and as such, a means of living. Wolff, on the other hand, was in sympathy with the policy of the United Lodge of Theosophists, according to which one’s means of living was to be separated from one’s public or “spiritual” work, and that no income should be derived from the latter.[27] The practical result was that although Wolff and his family never knew “privation or an economic deficiency that cost any hardship . . . we never have been flush.”[28] Mohan Singh, on the other hand, was apparently able to retire as a wealthy man.
As Wolff would learn, there was an important reason for not treating yogic knowledge simply as a commodity. He explains:
In 1928, I, along with eleven others, was appointed by an East Indian known as Yogi Hari Rama, “Disciples of the Absolute,” and we were assigned to the task of continuing a work which he had started which consisted primarily in the teaching of certain techniques which he called “keys.” . . . In general, a warning was given not to use these to any great extent, but only with great restraint. I have given these keys in my experience in the past and have given this warning, but one of the students ignored the warning completely, used excessively one of the keys, and called down upon himself a fire which he was totally unable to control. In the end, he had to be entered into a psychiatric institution. This awakened in me a realization that this was dangerous stuff and that a mere verbal warning is no adequate protection of the sadhaka at all. He must be first trained in the seriousness of violating instructions, and that does not exist naturally in our rather superficial and casual Western consciousness in these matters.[29]
Wolff’s point seems to be that there is a responsibility carried by the transmission of this knowledge, and this component makes it more than a simple economic transaction.
Accordingly, Wolff sought to correct some of these deficiencies on his own. For example, his class notes during this period include a number of statements on the “No Charging Principle,” such as “Spiritual service which includes the teaching of metaphysics can never be evaluated in terms of material coin and is at once lowered when a price is placed upon it” and “It is not right that any earnest student should be denied such spiritual service because of his economic condition.”[30]
Wolff also complained that the teachings of the Benares League underestimated the abilities of the “Western” thinker:
[For example, there] was a certain identification or adjustment to Western thinking in one of the principle keys which ran this way: twenty parts of the body, attention with the will, low/medium/high—vibrate. It was explained that this low, medium, high was an adaptation to our practice in driving automobiles. First, you put the lever into low, then into intermediate, and finally into high. This was adaptation of an Indian way of thinking to the American psyche. But, I think we in the West are more sophisticated than that in our depth psychology and in our metaphysical philosophy, and I have always felt that this was something of an undervaluation of our intelligence.[31]
Wolff sought to remedy this situation by augmenting his lectures and classwork with material not taught by Yogi Hari Rama. Indeed, his notes reveal that his coursework during this period evolved from classes as advertised—that is, on “Mantra Yoga”—to “Mantra-Jnana Yoga Classes.”[32] The former followed Hari Rama’s emphasis on the “keys” as well as diet, breathing and exercises;[33] the latter begin to introduce the “importance of being well-grounded in philosophy.” Wolff’s Benares League lectures, outlines of which can be found in the Wolff Archive under the Lectures, Notes & Outlines tab, also make use of material that Wolff gleaned from Theosophical, scientific and literary sources.
Wolff’s most explicit ideological statement at this time was in the form of three books.[34] The first two were self-published by The Merrell-Wolff Publishing Co. in 1930 and penned by Yogagñani: Yoga: Its Problems, Its Purpose, Its Technique is advertised with the note that “this volume brings to the reader a statement of the problem of Life which Yoga solves, the principles upon which that solution is based, and a concise statement of the seven principle technical forms by which those principles are applied practically”; the Introduction to Re-Embodiment, or Human Incarnations states that it “is designed to serve two purposes. In the first place, the rational ground for belief in the reality of reincarnation together with evidences supporting the validity of the teaching will be elaborated. After that there will be a discussion of what might be called the technique of Reincarnation.” The third book written by Wolff around this time was titled “Death and After”; it was never published and the Wolff Archive contains several drafts. In this work, Wolff first introduces the “problem of death” and then considers the philosophical meaning of death, life and consciousness, birth and death in relation to life, and the constitution of man according to the arcane schools. The next four chapters respectively address the planes of consciousness and Being; the constitution of man in relation to the planes of consciousness, Kama Loka; and Devachan. In the final chapter Wolff discusses mediumship and spiritualism.
“Death and After” draws on much of the material found in Wolff’s lecture outlines, and references diverse sources such as Count Hermann Keyserling, various forms of Buddhism, J. J. Jeans and other scientific authorities, Western philosophy, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and especially the theosophical thought found in the Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky and in the Arcane School. The first two books offer “an outline of the rationale of Yoga as a basic philosophy and as a science of life practice” by “casting into a western rational form the metaphysical material which comes out of the East—that is, by blending the oriental focus on Being with the occidental focus on Form in order to adapt an Indian way of thinking to the American mind.[35] Wolff describes Yoga as “a science based on a philosophy . . . that man is in reality God”[36] and that as such it “is a technique by which new cognitive powers may be awakened . . . [It] is the life practice designed to produce a favorable condition for the Realization . . . of that which is formulated in [the] philosophy of Wisdom Religion”—that is, “the destruction of the false ego and the Realization of the One Self.”[37]
By December 1930, other disciples in the Benares League have learned that Wolff’s work has gone beyond the teachings associated with Hari Rama. In the December 1930 issue of The Disciple, a newsletter published by the League, it is noted that “Mr. Franklin Wolff is now teaching work of another nature not connected with Super Yoga Science Teachings by Yogi Hari Rama.” In the same issue, the editor states that
The Eastern Lodges of the Benares League are requiring a written statement from Disciples that they and their staff are not actively engaged in teaching any other work than that taught by Yogi Hari Rama. That they are not connected with any Inner Circle Teachings while teaching as a Disciple . . . They have taken the stand that a House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand and that all Disciples should be whole hearted for the nine keys and place their entire efforts in that direction.[38]
At this time, Wolff also received three letters (dated December 15, 1930) from some attendees of a Super Yoga Science class in Des Moines.[39] Each writer relays what they perceived as a disturbing occurrence at the class, which in the letter of Charles Wilson is as follows:
The last night of the open lecture I am there with my wife and quite a number of students. The assistant of the lecture is out in the hall and is making remarks about you being a crook and passing Government bonds and doing time. I spoke to him and invited him to come see me at the Temple the next morning, which he did. I told him this is a malicious story and you should take it to a lawyer.
Mr. Wilson goes on to speculate whether the rumors started within the Benares League.
Wolff and his wife do not appear to have responded to these letters or to the charges in the December 1930 newsletter; the latter, of course, are quite true. In fact, before Wolff had even begun his work for the Benares League, he and his wife had formed their own religious association—a group that they would eventually come to call “The Assembly of Man.”
The story begins back in April 1912, when papers around the US were buzzing with the news that ‘a full-blooded East Indian’ named Mohan Singh had enrolled at the Glenn Curtiss flying school in San Diego. With students from as far away as Poland and Japan, the campus was described as ‘the most cosmopolitan gathering of flyers and pupils ever assembled’ at a time when the glamour and danger of man’s latest conquest of nature was holding the world in thrall.
The tall and gaunt Singh, smartly dressed in a turban, certainly had the required air of foreign mystery about him. He seldom talked or smiled and was known to avoid meat and drink only water. To reporters, he claimed to be studying aviation while on secondment from the British Indian Army who wanted him to serve in its air corps in the East; they described him variously as ‘a captain’ ‘a major’ or ‘an Indian prince’ some saying he came from Delhi, others from Bombay.
In fact, he was originally from a small village in the middle of Punjab, and arrived in the States in 1906. He worked as a domestic servant in Chicago for several years before falling in love with flying and somehow managing to enrol in the Glenn Curtiss Flying School, an outfit originally set up in competition to the famous Wright Brothers Academy. Singh was a natural and within two years became the first licensed pilot from the sub-continent. He was soon performing for the Curtiss-Wright Aviators aerial circus - a three hour display -billed as the ‘Only Hindu Flyer in the World’ alongside such turns as Julia Clark ‘the Daring Bird-Girl’, Lansing Callan ‘The French Aerial Trickster’ and Kearney ‘Peck’s Bad Boy of the Air’. Singh then graduated to Curtiss’s latest invention, the hydroplane and in 1913, was one of the very few people not part of the Curtiss family to join the inventor on his sales promotion tour across Europe in the lead-up to World War I.
Surprisingly, despite his skills as a pilot and glowing reputation, Singh never settled on the career of aviator. Instead he moved to Los Angeles in 1914 to take up more domestic work, this time as butler and chauffeur for an affluent family. At this time the self-styled ‘Land of the Free’ operated a stringent Whites-only immigration policy and it took Singh years of well-publicized legal battles to gain American citizenship. However, he fell foul of the 1923 Supreme Court ruling that not only would South Asians no longer qualify for citizenship, but as they were now ‘aliens’ they could be retroactively stripped of it. In a foretaste of the xenophobic Trump era, the animosity against ‘The Turban Tide’ or ‘The Hindoo Invasion’ was widespread and bitter, adding to the existing paranoia about the ‘The Yellow Peril’. (Amazingly, no legal case ever managed to overturn the 1923 classification, which was only finally annulled in 1965).
Singh’s statelessness gave him the impetus to assume a new identity. Donning bright orange robes he became Yogi Hari Rama and began travelling around the US teaching a combination of exercises and philosophy he marketed as the secret techniques of ‘The Super Yoga Science.’ They went down a treat and he became one of the most popular and wealthiest yoga teachers in the country. His last tour was in 1928, after which he vanished from sight, perhaps demonstrating his mastery of another classic yogic siddhi, invisibility. But he did leave behind thirteen teachers of his method and a national organization called The Benares League of America, the largest yoga organization in the country at that time.
Simultaneously to support three personalities – trail-blazing pilot, immigration campaigner and esoteric yogi – might be considered something of a siddhi itself, especially as until recently no one knew that the figure behind these three lives was one and the same. Singh also persuaded his many students that he possessed another supernormal power - levitation. Given his many hours suspended up in the air as The Flying Hindu, in a way it cannot be denied that he did.
Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are Americans with ancestry from India. The United States Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Native Americans.
Contents
1 Terminology
2 History
2.1 Pre 1800
2.2 19th century
2.3 20th century
2.4 21st century
3 Demographics
3.1 U.S. metropolitan areas with large Asian Indian populations
3.2 List of U.S. states by the population of Asian Indians
4 Statistics
5 Socioeconomic status
5.1 Education
5.2 Household income
6 Culture
6.1 Media
7 Religion
7.1 Hindus
7.2 Sikhs
7.3 Jains
7.4 Muslims
7.5 Christians
7.6 Others
8 Ethnicity
9 Linguistic affiliation
10 Progress
10.1 Timeline
10.2 Classification
10.3 Citizenship
11 Current issues
11.1 Discrimination
11.2 Illegal immigration
11.3 Immigration
11.4 Media
12 Politics
13 Notable people
14 See also
15 References
16 Further reading
17 External links
Terminology
In the Americas, the term "Indian" has historically been used for indigenous people since European colonization in the 15th century. Qualifying terms such as "American Indian" and "East Indian" were and still are commonly used in order to avoid ambiguity. The U.S. government has since coined the term "Native American" in reference to the indigenous peoples of the United States, but terms such as "American Indian" remain popular among indigenous as well as non-indigenous populations. Since the 1980s, Indian Americans have been categorized as "Asian Indian" (within the broader subgroup of Asian American) by the United States Census Bureau.[7]
While "East Indian" remains in use, the term "South Asian" is often chosen instead for academic and governmental purposes.[8] Indian Americans are included in the census grouping of "South Asian Americans", which includes Bangladeshi Americans, Bhutanese Americans, Burmese Americans, Nepalese Americans, Pakistani Americans, and Sri Lankan Americans.[9][10]
History
See also: Asian immigration to the United States
Pre 1800
Beginning in the 17th century, the East India Company began bringing indentured Indian servants to the American colonies.[11]
The Naturalization Act of 1790 made Asians ineligible for citizenship.[12]
19th century
The first significant wave of Indian immigrants entered the United States in the 19th century. By 1900, there were more than two thousand Indian Sikhs living in the United States, primarily in California.[13] (At least one scholar has set the level lower, finding a total of 716 Indian immigrants to the U.S. between 1820 and 1900.[14]) Emigration from India was driven by difficulties facing Indian farmers, including the challenges posed by the British land tenure system for small landowners, and by drought and food shortages, which worsened in the 1890s. At the same time, Canadian steamship companies, acting on behalf of Pacific coast employers, recruited Sikh farmers with economic opportunities in British Columbia. Racist attacks in British Columbia, however, prompted Sikhs and new Sikh immigrants to move down the Pacific Coast to Washington and Oregon, where they worked in lumber mills and in the railroad industry.[14] Many Punjabi Sikhs who settled in California, around the Yuba City area, formed close ties with Mexican Americans.[11] The presence of Indian Americans also helped develop interest in Eastern religions in the US and would result in its influence on American philosophies such as Transcendentalism. Swami Vivekananda arriving in Chicago at the World's Fair led to the establishment of the Vedanta Society.
20th century
Between 1907 and 1908, Sikhs moved further south to warmer climates in California, where they were employed by various railroad companies. Some white Americans, resentful of economic competition and the arrival of people from different cultures, responded to Sikh immigration with racism and violent attacks.[14] The Bellingham riots in Bellingham, Washington on September 5, 1907 epitomized the low tolerance in the U.S. for Indians and Sikhs, who were called "hindoos" by locals. While anti-Asian racism was embedded in U.S. politics and culture in the early 20th century, Indians were also racialized for their anticolonialism, with U.S. officials pushing for Western imperial expansion abroad casting them as a "Hindu" menace. Although labeled Hindu, the majority of Indians were Sikh.[15] In the early 20th century, a range of state and federal laws restricted Indian immigration and the rights of Indian immigrants in the U.S. In the 1910s, American nativist organizations campaigned to end immigration from India, culminating in the passage of the Barred Zone Act in 1917. In 1913, the Alien Land Act of California prevented Sikhs (in addition to Japanese and Chinese immigrants) from owning land. However, Asian immigrants got around the system by having Anglo friends or their own U.S. born children legally own the land that they worked on. In some states, anti-miscegenation laws made it illegal for Indian men to marry white women. However, it was legal for "brown" races to mix. Many Indian men, especially Punjabi men, married Hispanic women and Punjabi-Mexican marriages became a norm in the West.[14][16]
Mohini Bhardwaj, 2004 Summer Olympics medalist in gymnastics
Bhicaji Balsara became the first known Indian to gain naturalized U.S. citizenship. As a Parsi, he was considered a "pure member of the Persian sect" and therefore a "free white person". The judge Emile Henry Lacombe, of the Southern District of New York, only gave Balsara citizenship on the hope that the United States attorney would indeed challenge his decision and appeal it to create "an authoritative interpretation" of the law. The U.S. attorney adhered to Lacombe's wishes and took the matter to the Circuit Court of Appeals in 1910. The Circuit Court of Appeal agreed that Parsis are classified as white.[17]
A. K. Mozumdar was also considered "Caucasian" and therefore eligible for citizenship. Between 1913 and 1923, about 100 Indians were naturalized.
In 1923, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind that Indians were ineligible for citizenship because they were not "free white persons".[14] The Court argued that the "great body of our people" would reject Indians.[18] Over fifty Indians had their citizen