Dhan Gopal Mukerji was the first successful Indian man of letters in the United States and won a Newbery Medal in 1928. He studied at Duff School, and at Duff College, both within the University of Calcutta in India, at the University of Tokyo in Japan and at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University in the US.

Katherine Mayo was an American historian and nativist. Mayo entered the public sphere as a political writer advocating American nativism, opposition to non-white and Catholic immigration to the United States, along with promoting racist stereotypes of African Americans. She became known for denouncing the Philippine Declaration of Independence on racialist and religious grounds, and then went on to publish and promote her best-known work, Mother India (1927), a deeply critical book on Indian society, religion, and culture. Written in opposition to the Indian independence movement, the book received a sharply divided reception upon its publication and was accused by several authors of being Indophobic, including Mahatma Gandhi.