India Day Parade

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 711,174 uniracial individuals by the 2013–2017 U.S. Census American Community Survey estimates. 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, most of whose 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, with a Census-estimated 4.1% of New Jersey's population being an individual of Indian origin in 2017.

History

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, 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. 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.

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 becoming popular among Indian and other South Asian immigrants in the 1960s becoming 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, it was eroding due to increased competition from other Indian districts in Queens which were closer to where the Indian population lived. Hicksville in Nassau County would become the center of the Indian community on Long Island, with Indian stores concentrating on South Broadway around Route 103 by the 2000s. As the 20th century came to a close, this started to change however, with growing concentrations of Indians in areas such as Middlesex County, New Jersey, where 55,000 Indians lived by 2000 and in Jersey City