Indians in the New York City metropolitan area constitute one of the largest and fastest-growing ethnicities in the New York City metropolitan area of the United States. The New York City region is home to the largest and most prominent Indian American population among metropolitan areas by a significant margin, enumerating 792,367 uniracial individuals at the 2020 U.S. census. The Asian Indian population also represents the second-largest metropolitan Asian national diaspora both outside of Asia and within the New York City metropolitan area, following the also rapidly growing and hemisphere-leading population of the estimated 893,697 uniracial Chinese in the New York City metropolitan area in 2017.
The U.S. state of New Jersey, where most of the population is situated within the New York City metropolitan region, has by a significant margin the highest proportional Indian population concentration of any U.S. state. According to Census estimates in 2023, 4.6% of New Jersey's population consists of individuals of Indian origin. New Jersey is the state with the highest percentage of individuals with Indian ancestry in the United States, at approximately 5%.
History
An Asian Indian presence in the New York area dates back to the 19th century, with Swami Vivekananda establishing the first Hindu institution in New York City in 1894 after the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago and Bengali Muslim peddlers passing through immigration facilities in New York to head to Jersey Shore beach towns such as Asbury Park, Atlantic Park and Long Beach. These peddlers sold "Oriental" items like silks, small trinkets and other curios to tourists. Though most of these peddlers were transient seasonal workers at resorts, a small number of men stayed in New Jersey year-round to renew stocks of goods and shepherd younger traders from India to the US. Bengali and other South Asian Muslims would also settle in New York City and marry into African American and Puerto Rican communities that they lived close to, initially living on the Lower East Side but moving uptown into Harlem, opening some of the first Indian restaurants in New York. After India became independent and partitioned, many of these men formed the Pakistan League of America in 1947.
The first Indian to become a naturalized U.S. citizen was Bhicaji Balsara, a resident of New York. However, this was after the Luce–Celler Act of 1946 that restored naturalization rights to Indian Americans in the United States. A number of Indian Americans came to the U.S. via Indian communities from other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, Mauritius, Malaysia, Singapore, Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Fiji, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Jamaica. The quota on Indian immigration was removed in the 1960s, leading to exponential growth in the number of Indian immigrants to the United States. While Indians prior to this time were primarily involved in agricultural endeavors or constructing railroads in the western United States, by the 1960s, there was a small Manhattan-based Indian community consisting of graduate students in Columbia University and New York University, diplomatic attachés at the United Nations and Indian corporate workers. However, the largest number hereafter came to New York City and its affluent suburban environs, consisting largely of professionals, including physicians, engineers, financiers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and lawyers, as well as businesspeople, though there was also small population concentrated along 116th Street and Broadway in Manhattan that was poorer. By 1974, there was a notable Indian population in the greater New York area, with particular concentrations in Hoboken, New Jersey and Flushing, Queens, though neither was strongly identified as a Little India at this point and there was already a push to move out to the suburbs, especially to Nassau County on Long Island. with houses of worship for Indian religions starting to be built around the larger Indian suburban communities throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
During 1960s and 1970s, Indians also set up several cultural and religious institutions based in New York City, though they drew people from the entire metropolitan area. The 1970s would also see the construction of the first houses of worship for Indian religions in New York City, such as the Hindu Temple Society of North America in Flushing and the Sikh Cultural Society building a gurdwara at a former Baptist church in Richmond Hill. Other religious groups reappropriated other spaces in the city, such as Keralite Christians hosting Malayalam services in a Bronx church and Jains renting Manhattan office space. Indian would also form several associations based around linguistics groups. Indians in the New York-New Jersey area also started to create mass media organizations in the 1970s, including newspapers such as India Abroad, the first television show targeted towards Indian Americans, and by 1975, 13 half-hour radio shows for New York Indians. Movie theaters in Manhattan and Queens showing Indian movies also started to open.
A small Little India did already exist in Manhattan on Lexington Avenue, between 27th and 30th streets around the former Little Armenia spice shop of Kalustyan's, which had become popular among Indian and other South Asian immigrants in the 1960s and had become notable enough to be featured in the New York Daily News as a prime spot for Indian food and groceries by 1976. However, by the 1980s, the Lexington Avenue Little India was eroding due to increased competition from other Indian districts in Queens which were closer to where the Indian population lived.
The most famous enclave in the New York City area – Jackson Heights – emerged during the 1970s, with electronics store Sam and Raj, being opened by merchants Subhash Kapadia and Nitin Vora in 1976 and then being quickly followed by a number of Indian stores opening on 74th Street. Though many Indians actually lived in the adjacent, cheaper neighborhood of Elmhurst, Jackson Heights quickly became popular among the regional Indian and South Asian community due to its location near a major subway transfer station and the overall large Indian population in Queens. By 1990, there were already 74 Indian businesses in Jackson Heights and businessowners had formed the Jackson Heights Merchants Association in response to conflict between Indian immigrants and white residents over perceived quality-of-life issues.
Other neighborhoods in Queens also became notable South Asian enclaves during the 1980s and 1990s. Flushing, one of the first destinations for immigrants and home to the borough's first Hindu temple, would have its first Indian grocery store in 1970 and be followed by a small strip of Indian stores. Though now mainly known as one of New York's largest Chinatowns and Koreatowns, Flushing had a similar population of Indians compared to Koreans and Chinese in 1980. Richmond Hill in southeastern Queens would become a major hub for Indo-Caribbean immigrants from Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago and Sikhs from Punjab, with the Sikh Cultural Society becoming a major gathering point for the latter group. A large concentration of Malayalees would also pop up in eastern Queens neighborhoods near the Nassau County border.
Starting in the 1990s, following the path of past generations of New Yorkers, many Indian immigrants starting moving eastward from Queens to more suburban areas of Long Island in the 1990s, including Nassau County towns such as Hicksville, Elmont, East Meadow, and North New Hyde Park seeking bigger homes, better schools, and more space. During the 1990s, Indians were the fastest growing ethnic group on Long Island. This coincided with a change in the businesses and clientele in the older enclaves like Jackson Heights, with establishments being targeted more towards working-class immigrants than the English-speaking professionals who were the main shoppers in Queens, as seen by more signage in Jackson Heights being in vernacular languages. Hicksville would become the center of the Indian community on Long Island, with Indian stores concentrating on South Broadway around Route 107 by the 2000s.
Indians also sprawled further into New Jersey, with growing concentrations of Indians in areas such as Middlesex County, New Jersey, where 55,000 Indians lived by 2000 and in Jersey City. During the 1990s, these two areas would see their main centers of Indian commerce – Oak Tree Road in Edison, New Jersey, and Newark Avenue in the Journal Square neighborhood in Jersey City become primarily Indian, compared to the 1970s and 1980s, where there was a more of a mixture of businesses. By 1994, there were already over 100 Indian businesses on Oak Tree Road.
As more Indians started to move into the New Jersey enclaves and they grew increasingly more affluent, tensions started to increase between them and prior residents. In the late 1980s, a hate group called the Dotbusters – named after the bindi that many Hindu women wear – beat up several Indians in Jersey City, including killing a Parsi man, Narvoze Mody. That same month, a letter threatening to attack Indians in the city was also published in its main newspaper, The Jersey Journal, and there were several racist messages written on the stores and homes of Indian immigrants. Community leaders accused Jersey City's government of responding slowly to the attacks and at one point invited the Guardian Angels to patrol the city's streets. Following a series of protests and increased attention from the city government, racist attacks started to decrease by the end of the decade.
However, the increased racism was a reason for some Indians to move southwards to Edison and Middlesex County, though they also faced some resistance there as they started to set up businesses in Edison, with stores on Oak Tree Road being vandalized and proprietors saying that city government did not take them seriously. Indians in Edison and Iselin would also get into other conflicts with the city governments, with the Indian Business Association of the area protesting high amounts of traffic tickets and curfews on its Navratri celebration. The Indian American population would also surge in the further reaches of Central New Jersey in the 2000s in towns such as West Windsor, Plainsboro, and Montgomery. The Indian influence in this area manifested itself with the creation of an annual Indian-American fair in Mercer County Park and the creation of cricket fields and leagues in the area. By the 2010s, there were pushes to teach Hindi and have Diwali off at school districts in Central New Jersey. Around this time, there were also a series of home invasions apparently targeting Indians and South Asians in New Jersey, which started to prompt questions about a lack of Indian and more broadly Asian representation in New Jersey's local police forces. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had already been to New York on multiple visits, was welcomed on June 20, 2023, by the Indian diaspora at JFK International Airport on his first State visit to the U.S., which also entailed a trip to Washington, D.C.
Geographical distribution