{"id":26555,"date":"2020-09-23T12:21:43","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T17:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indianeagle.com\/travelbeats\/?p=26555"},"modified":"2020-09-23T18:21:27","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T23:21:27","slug":"kala-bagai-way-berkeley-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indianeagle.com\/travelbeats\/kala-bagai-way-berkeley-california\/","title":{"rendered":"After Kalpana Chawla, Kala Bagai is 2nd Indian American Woman to Get a Street Named after Her in USA"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Indian American community history turned over a new leaf with the renaming of a California street after the late Kala Bagai, one of the first and oldest Indian immigrants in the United States.<\/strong> California, home to the second largest Indian population in the US today, witnessed the worst of racial discrimination against South Asian immigrants from British colonies early in the 20th<\/sup> century. The Berkeley City Council in Alameda County, California, renamed a two-block stretch of Shattuck Avenue in honor of Kala Bagai, who was once ousted of the city and stripped of the US citizenship for her race and color.<\/p>\n
The renaming of a Berkeley City street as \u201cKala Bagai Way\u201d is like a homecoming for my late grandmother, her family and descendants. We were touched to see unanimous support pouring in from hundreds of Berkeley City residents for the \u201cKala Bagai\u201d street proposal in the city which my grandmother called home away from home a century ago,\u201d said Rani Bagai.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Picture Credit: South Asian American Digital Archive | Saada.org<\/p><\/div>\n
What had happened to Kala Bagai and her family from the undivided India in the 1910s was grimmer than racism in the present-day America. In 1915, Kala Bagai with her husband Vaishno Das Bagai, three children, luggage and some dreams, had embarked on a steamship and reached the Bay Area \u2013 which seemed a few light years away from India then.<\/strong> Vaishno Das Bagai was a member of the Ghadar Movement that overseas Indians had initiated to drive the British out of India. Rash Behari Bose<\/a><\/strong> was also a member of the Ghadar Movement.<\/p>\n