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Indian American
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Indian Americans are Americans who are of Indian ancestry. The U.S. Census Bureau popularized the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with "American Indian".
In North America the term Indian has an ambiguous meaning. Historically, Indian was commonly used to indicate Native American. If a more specific term was needed, American Indian and East Indian were commonly used. American Indian has fallen out of favor and Native American is more commonly used to refer to the Indigenous peoples of North America.
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Encyclopedia
Indian Americans are Americans who are of Indian ancestry. The U.S. Census Bureau popularized the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with "American Indian".
In North America the term Indian has an ambiguous meaning. Historically, Indian was commonly used to indicate Native American. If a more specific term was needed, American Indian and East Indian were commonly used. American Indian has fallen out of favor and Native American is more commonly used to refer to the Indigenous peoples of North America. East Indian is still in common use. Currently South Asian is often used instead of East Indian. While some consider it derogatory, people of Indian origin use the term Desi to refer to the diasporic subculture of overseas Indians. The word "desi" means "countryman" in Hindi.
A number of Indian Americans came to the U.S. via Indian communities in other countries such as Fiji, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the United Kingdom (where over 2.7% of the population is Indian), Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, Canada, Guyana, Mauritius and nations of Southeast Asia such as Malaysia and Singapore. Indian Americans are mostly Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian and Jain and are among the most highly educated in American demographics.
Population
Numbers
According to the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau, the Asian Indian population in the United States grew from almost 1,679,000 in 2000 to 2,570,000 in 2007: a growth rate of 53%, the highest for any Asian American community, and among the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States. Indian Americans are the third largest Asian American ethnic group, after Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans.
Settlement
The U.S. states with the largest Indian American populations, in order, are California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Illinois. There are also large Indian American populations in Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and Ohio as well.
The metropolitan areas with the largest Indian American populations are New York City, San Francisco/San Jose/Oakland, San Diego, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington/Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Houston, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Charlotte, North Carolina and Atlanta. The town of Edison, New Jersey (total population 100,499) is 17.5% Indian American – the highest percentage of any municipality in the United States. But the mostly agrarian Imperial Valley, California near the Mexican border has a long history of Indian Americans (an estimated 21,000 live in Imperial County, California alone) since the first arrivals to the California desert in the early 1900s. The first American Sikh temples were in the Sacramento (Marysville and Yuba City) and San Joaquin Valleys (Lodi and Stockton) to serve the early wave of Sikh Indian workers arrived there. In contrast with East Asian Americans, who tend to be concentrated in California and other areas near the Pacific coast, Indian Americans are more evenly distributed throughout the United States.
Statistics on Indians in the US
In the year 2006, of the entire total 1,266,264 legal immigrants to USA from all the countries, 58,072 were from India. Immigration from India is currently at its highest level in history. Between 2000 and 2006 421,006 Indian immigrants were admitted to the United States, up from 352,278 during the 1990-1999 period. According to the US census, the overall growth rate for Indians from 1990 to 2000 was 105.87 per cent. The average growth rate for the whole of USA was only 7.6 per cent.
Indians comprise 16.4 percent of the Asian-American community. They are the third largest in the Asian American population. In 2000, of all the foreign born population in USA, Indians were 1.007 million. From 2000 onwards the growth rate and the per cent rate of Indians amongst all the immigrants has increased by over 100 percent.
Between 1990 and 2000, the Indian population in the US grew 130% - 10 times the national average of 13%.
Source: US Census Bureau
Today, Indian Americans are the third largest Asian American ethnic group following Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans.
A University of California, Berkeley, study reported that one-third of the engineers in Silicon Valley are of Indian descent, while 7% of valley hi-tech firms are led by Indian CEOs.
Source: Silicon India Readership Survey
Indians along with other Asians, have one of the highest educational qualifications of all ethnic groups in the US. Almost 67% of all Indians have a bachelor’s or high degree (compared to 28% nationally and 44% average for all Asian American groups). Almost 40% of all Indians in the United States have a master’s, doctorate or other professional degree, which is five times the national average. Source: The Indian American Centre for Political Awareness. Thomas Friedman, in his recent book, The World is Flat, explains this trend in terms of brain drain, whereby the best and brightest elements in India emigrate to the US in order to seek better financial opportunities.
Socioeconomic
Education
Indian Americans have the highest educational qualifications of all national origin groups in the United States. According to the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, there are close to 35,000 Indian American doctors . According to the 2000 census, about 64% of Indian Americans have attained a Bachelor's degree or more.(compared to 28% nationally, and 44% average for all Asian American groups). Almost 40% of all Indians have a master’s, doctorate or other professional degree, which is five times the national average. (Source: The Indian American Centre for Political Awareness.) These high levels of education have enabled Indian Americans to become a productive segment of the American population, with 72.3% participating in the U.S. work force, of which 57.7% are employed in managerial and professional specialties.
Economics
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, Indian American men had "the highest year-round, full-time median earnings ($51,094)", while Indian American women had a medium income of $35,173. This phenomenon has been linked to the "brain drain" of the Indian intelligentsia from India (source: Journal of Political Economy - University of Chicago Press). Recently, however, there has been a drop in immigration of Indians from India to the United States. This is generally attributed to the improving economy of India. A large group of Indian Americans are presently second or third generation.
Indian Americans own 50% of all economy lodges and 35% of all hotels in the United States, which have a combined market value of almost $40 billion. (Source: Little India Magazine). In 2002, there were over 223,000 Asian Indian-owned firms in the U.S., employing more than 610,000 workers, and generating more than $88 billion in revenue.
Culture
Food
Indian Americans have brought Indian cuisine to the United States, and it has become established as a popular cuisine in the country, with hundreds of Indian restaurants and eateries nationwide. There are many Indian markets and stores in the United States. Some of the biggest Indian markets are in Silicon Valley, Chicago, New York City, the Philadelphia metropolitan area, and Edison, New Jersey. Areas with a significant Indian market presence also include Devon Avenue neighborhood/market in Chicago and Pioneer Blvd. in the Los Angeles region (University Ave in Berkeley, California). Other predominantly Indian neighborhoods are Journal Square in Jersey City, New Jersey, Jackson Heights in Queens, New York, Hillcroft Avenue in Houston, Texas and Richardson near Dallas, Texas.
Entertainment
Hindi radio stations are available in areas with high Indian populations, for example, RBC Radio in the Tri-state Area of New York city, parts of New Jersey, Connecticut and New York state, Radio Humsafar, Desi Junction in Chicago, Radio Salaam Namaste in North Texas, FunAsia Radio, and Sangeet Radio in Houston. There are also some radio stations broadcasting in Tamil and Telugu within these communities.
Several cable and satellite providers offer Indian channels: Sony TV, Zee TV, Star Plus, Colors, Regional and Others have offered Indian content for subscription, such as the Cricket World Cup.
Many metropolitan areas with high Indian-American populations now have movie theatres specialized for showing Indian movies specializing Bollywood. Silicon Valley, for example has two such multiplexes: one in Fremont and one in San Jose).
The Dallas - Ft. Worth Metroplex has a "Desi" Multiplex in the Richardson township. The area also has a movie theatre that plays Indian movies, FunAsia. In 2006, the first 24 x 7 Desi F.M. station in North America was launched, Radio Salaam Namaste 104.9 FM, in the Dallas area. A similar multiplex, featuring Indian film exclusively on two screens (and other international films on four additional screens) opened in 2002 in Cary, N.C.. FunAsia owns all Desi multiplexes in the state of Texas including two(six and five screens) in Houston. (www.funasia.net)
In July 2005, MTV premiered a spin-off network called MTV Desi which targets Indian Americans. It has been discontinued by MTV.
Religions
Communities of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Christians, and Jews from India have established their religions in the country. The first religious centre of an Indian religion to be established in the US was a Sikh Temple in Stockton, California in 1912. Today there are thousands of Hindu, Sikh and Jain temples as well as Indian churches in all 50 states. As of 2000, the American Hindu population was around a million, and Hindus are the majority of Indian Americans There are many Hindu temples across the United States. ISKCON, Swaminarayan Sampraday, BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, Chinmaya Mission, and Swadhyay Pariwar are well-established in the U.S.
Indian Muslims generally congregate with other American Muslims, including those from Pakistan, but there are prominent organizations such as the Indian Muslim Council - USA. A large percentage of American Muslims are of Indian origin. The large Parsi community is represented by the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America. Indian Jews are perhaps the smallest organized religious group among Indian Americans, consisting of approximately 350 members in the United States. They form the Indian Jewish Congregation of USA with headquarters in New York.
Swami Vivekananda brought Hinduism to the West at the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions. The Vedanta Society has been important in subsequent Parliaments. Today, many Hindu temples, most of them built by Indian Americans have emerged in different cities and towns of America. Hindu philosophy and spirituality has greatly influenced American life. More than 18 million Americans are now practicing some form of Yoga. In particular, Kriya Yoga was introduced to America by Paramahansa Yogananda. In addition, A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada initiated a popular ISKCON also known as Hare Krishna movement while preaching Bhakti yoga. Rajan Zed, Hindu chaplain, delivered the first Hindu prayer in United States Senate in 2007.
There are some Indian Christian churches across the US; Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, Knanaya, Indian Orthodox Church, Mar Thoma Church (reformed orthodox), Malankara Syriac Orthodox Church, Church of South India, The Pentecostal Mission, and the India Pentecostal Church of God; there are also a number of Indian Christians in mainstream American churches .
Ethnicity
Like the terms "Asian American" or "South Asian American", the term "Indian American" is also an umbrella label applying to a variety of views, values, lifestyles, and appearances. Although Asian-Indian Americans retain a high ethnic identity, they are known to assimilate into American culture while at the same time keeping the culture of their ancestors. They may assimilate more easily than many other immigrant groups because they have fewer language barriers (English is widely spoken in India among professional classes), more educational credentials (Indian immigrants are disproportionately well-educated), and come from a democratic society. Additionally, Indian culture, like many other Asian cultures, puts tremendous stress upon achievement of the individual as a reflection upon the family and community.
The United States is also home to associations of Indians united by ethno-linguistic affiliation. The big organizations include Cultural Association of Bengal and their annually sponsored event the North American Bengali Conference,
AKKA (Association of Kannada Kootas of America) ,
, Orissa Society of the Americas, (BMM), Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America, Gujarati Samaj, Prabashi Federation of Kerala, Associations of North America(FOKANA), Punjabi American Heritage Society and Punjabi-American Cultural Association. These associations generally put on cultural programs, plays, and concerts during the major Hindu festivals (Diwali, Ganesh Chaturthi, Padva, Pongal, Sankranti, Ugadi, Baisakh, Onam, Vishu ) and other religious (e.g., Christian) and cultural events such as Christmas and New Years.
History and immigration
- For main article see Indian American history
Timeline
- 1600s: The East India Company brought over Indian indentured servants to the British American colonies.
- 1680: Due to anti-miscegenation laws, a Eurasian daughter born to an Indian father and Irish mother in Maryland was classified as a "mulatto" and sold into slavery.
- 1790: Following American independence from the British, Indian immigrants began entering the independent United States as maritime workers.
- 1838: (May 5) - First two ships arrive in the Caribbean with Indian indentured workers (landing in British Guiana).
- 1899-1914: First significant wave of Indian immigrants, mostly Sikh farmers and laborers form Punjab region of British India, start arriving in California (Angel Island) on ships via Hong Kong. They find employment on farms and in lumber mills in California, Oregon and Washington states.
- 1912: The first Sikh temple opens its doors in Stockton California.
- 1913: A.K. Mozumdar became the first Indian-born person to earn U.S. citizenship, having convinced the Spokane district judge that he was “Caucasian” and met the requirements of naturalization law that restricted citizenship to free white persons. In 1923, as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that no person of East Indian origin could become a naturalized American citizen, his citizenship was revoked.
- 1917: The Barred Zone Act passes in Congress through two-thirds majority, overriding President Woodrow Wilson's earlier veto. Asians, including Indians, are barred from immigrating to the U.S.
- 1918: Due to anti-miscegenation laws, there was significant controversy in Arizona when an Indian farmer B. K. Singh married the sixteen year-old daughter of one of his white American tenants.
- 1918: Bhagat Singh Thind becomes the first person of East-Indian descent recruited by US Army on July 22, 1918. He goes on to fight in World War I. A few months later, on November 8, 1918, Bhagat Singh was promoted to the rank of an Acting Sergeant.
- 1923: The US Supreme Court rules that people from India (at the time, British India, e.g. South Asians) are aliens ineligible for citizenship in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind. Bhagat Singh Thind becomes a citizen a few years later in New York – he had earlier applied and been rejected in Oregon.
- 1928: Dhan Gopal Mukerji wins the Newbery Medal, and thus becomes the first successful India-born man of letters in the United States.
- 1943: Republican Clara Booth Luce and Democrat Emanuel Celler introduce a bill to open naturalization to Indian immigrants to the US. Prominent Americans Pearl Buck, Louis Fischer, Albert Einstein and Robert Millikan give their endorsement to the bill. President Franklin Roosevelt also endorses the bill, calling for an end to the "statutory discrimination against the Indians".
- 1946: President Harry Truman signs into law the Luce-Celler Act of 1946, returning to Indian Americans the right to immigrate and naturalize.
- 1956: Dalip Singh Saund elected to the US House of Representatives from California. He was re-elected to a 2nd and 3rd term, winning over 60% of the votes. He is also the first Asian immigrant to be elected to Congress.
- 1965: President Lyndon Johnson signs the INS Act of 1965 into law, eliminating per-country immigration quotas and introducing immigration on the basis of professional experience and education.Dr.Satinder Mullick,Ph.d.Johns Hopkins Univ., of Corning Glass Works is one of the first to receive the immigration in Nov.1965-sponsored by Corning Glass WorksCorning Inc. under the INS Act of 1965.
- 1983: Asian Indian Women in America attended the 1st White House Briefing for Asian American Women (AAIWA formed in 1980 is the 1st Indian women's organization in North America)
- 1987: President Ronald Reagan appoints Dr. Joy Cherian, the 1st Indian Commissioner of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
- 1999: NASA names the third of its four "Great Observatories" Chandra X-ray Observatory after Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar the Indian born American astrophysicist and a Nobel laureate.
- 1999: Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan enters film history with his film "The Sixth Sense" becoming one of the all-time highest-grossing films, worldwide.
- 2002: Prof. Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, world renowned statistitian, is awarded National Medal of Science by President G. W. Bush
- 2007: Rajan Zed, Hindu chaplain, recites the first Hindu opening prayer in United States Senate in Washington, D.C. Zed was interrupted by three protesters who were removed from the Senate chamber.
- 2007: Bobby Jindal is elected governor of Louisiana and is the first person of Indian descent to be elected governor of an American state; he is inaugurated on January 14, 2008. He is presently and historically the highest ranking Indian American in a United States government.
- 2008: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson appoints Neel Kashkari as the interim head of the new Office of Financial Stability.
Classification
According to the current parameters defining the official U.S. racial categories employed by the United States Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget and other U.S. government agencies, American citizens or resident aliens who marked "Asian-Indian" as their ancestry or wrote in a term that automatically gets classified as an "Asian-Indian" gets classified as part of the Asian race on the 2000 US Census. As with other modern official U.S. government racial categories, the term "Asian" is in itself a broad and heterogeneous classification, encompassing all peoples with origins in the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. For further discussion on the term Asian American, please see that article.
In previous decades, Indian Americans were also variously classified as White American, the "Hindu race", and Other. Even today, where individual Indian Americans do not racially self-identify, and instead report Muslim (or a sect of Islam such as Shi'ite or Sunni), Jewish, and Zoroastrian as their "race" in the "Some other race" section without noting their country of origin, they are automatically tallied as white. This may result in the counting of persons such as Indian Muslims, Indian Jews, and Indian Zoroastrians as white, if they solely report their religious heritage without their national origin.
Current social issues
Discrimination
Explicit discrimination is not widespread, but has been known to happen in certain instances. In the 1980s, a faction group known as the Dotbusters tried to intimidate Indian Americans in Jersey City, New Jersey. Studies of racial discrimination, as well as stereotyping and scapegoating of Indian Americans have been conducted in recent years. In particular, racial discrimination of Indian Americans in the workplace has been correlated with Indophobia due to the rise in outsourcing/offshoring paranoia, whereby Indian Americans are blamed for US companies offshoring white-collar labor to India. According to the offices of the Congressional Caucus on India, many Indian Americans are severely concerned of a backlash, though nothing serious has taken place yet.Due to various socio-cultural reasons, implicit racial discrimination against Indian Americans largely go unreported by the Indian American community.
Numerous cases of religious stereotyping of American Hindus (mainly of Indian origin) have also been documented. Muslims among Indian Americans face the same religious prejudices that Muslims in the US face in general.
Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, there have been scattered incidents of Indian Americans becoming mistaken targets for hate crimes. In one example, a Sikh, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was murdered at a Phoenix gas station by a white supremacist. This happened after September 11, and the murderer claimed that his turban made him think that the victim was a Middle Eastern American. In another example, a pizza deliverer was mugged and beaten in Massachusetts for "being Muslim" though the victim pleaded with the assailants that he was in fact Hindu.
On April 5, 2006, the Hindu Mandir of Minnesota was vandalized on the basis of religious discrimination. The vandals damaged much of the temple property, including many statues that were specially transported from India. This caused $200,000 worth of damage.
On August 11, 2006, Senator George Allen singled out an American born political staffer of Indian ancestry, in a crowd by calling him "macaca" and sarcastically saying, "welcome to America." Some members of the Indian American community saw Allen's insult, and the massive backlash that led to Allen losing his re-election bid, as "a cultural turning point" demonstrating the power of YouTube in the 21st century.
The number of racially-motivated murders of Indian American students has also increased. Of significance is the December 14, 2007 killing of two Indian Ph.D. students at Louisiana State University. The motive behind the killings is unknown; nothing was stolen however, and the murders occurred near the officers of then Governor-elect Bobby Jindal, an Indian American himself, raising concerns of a racially-motivated killing, later investigated by the Embassy of India in Washington. In another incident that took place on January 18, 2008, second-year student Abhijit Mahato was murdered at Duke University. The motives were again unknown.
Immigration
Indians are among the largest ethnic groups legally immigrating to the United States. The immigration of Indian Americans has taken place in several waves since the first Indian American came to the United States in the 1700s. A major wave of immigration to California from the region of Punjab took place in the first decade of the 20th century. Another significant wave followed in the 1950s which mainly included students and professionals. The elimination of immigration quotas in 1965 spurred successively larger waves of immigrants in the late 1970s and early 1980s. With the technology boom of the 1990s, the largest influx of Indians arrived between 1995 and 2000. This latter group has also caused surge in the application for various immigration benefits including applications for green card. This has resulted in long waiting periods for people born in India from receiving these benefits.
Media
Politics
Several groups have tried to create a unified or dominant voice for the Indian American community in political affairs, including US India PAC. Additionally, there are also industry-wide Indian American groupings including the Asian American Hotel Owners Association and the Association of American Physicians of Indian Origin. Despite being heavily religious and having the highest average household income among all ancestry groups in the United States (two traits that usually favor conservatism), Indian Americans tend to be more liberal and tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Polls before the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election showed Indian Americans favoring Democratic candidate John Kerry favored over Republican George W. Bush by a 53% to 14% margin (nearly a 4 to 1 ratio), with 30% undecided at the time. The Republican party has tried to target this community, and several prominent conservative activists are of Indian origin.
In 2007, Republican Congressman Bobby Jindal became the first United States Governor of Indian descent when he was overwhelmingly elected Governor of Louisiana
Indian American voters have shown support for both the Democratic and Republican parties and have had political candidates of both parties. A list of notable Indian American politicians and commentators can be found here.
See also
Footnotes
Further reading
1970s America - An Indian Student's Journey http://www.nariphaltan.org/usexp.pdf
External links
Associations
Articles
News
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- - September 1, 2006, Rediff.com
- , June 18, 2006 (summary of TIME Magazine cover story)
- (reprint of March 3, 2004 Financial Times article by Amy Yee)
- (University of California at Berkeley's South/Southeast Asia Library's online exhibit, last updated October 3, 2001)
- ('The Pulitzer-winning writer felt intense pressure to be at once 'loyal to the old world and fluent in the new.')
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