Edison, Oct 23: The train station billboards tell it all. Local travel agents promise the best airfares from New York to Mumbai. Shagun Fashions is selling dazzling Indian saris. And DirecTV offers "the six top Indian channels direct to you."
Roughly every third person who lives in Edison, a New York suburb, is of Asian Indian ancestry. Many are new immigrants who have come to work as physicians, engineers and high-tech experts and are drawn to "Little India" by convenience - it`s near the commuter train - and familiarity.
Here they can "get their groceries and goods from home," says Aruna Rao, a mental health counselor who lives in town.
Although a steady stream of Indians have settled in the US since the 1960s, immigrants positively poured into the country between 2000 and 2005 - arriving at a higher rate than any other group.
Not only is the Indian community burgeoning, it`s maturing. Increasingly, after decades of quietly establishing themselves, Indians are becoming more vocal in the American conversation - about politics, ethnicity and many more topics.
"I`ve been studying the community for 20 years and in the last four or five years something different has been happening," said Madhulika Khandelwal, president of the Asian American Center at Queens College in New York.
"Indian-Americans are finally out there speaking for themselves."
Roughly 2.3 million people of Indian ancestry, including immigrants and the American-born, now call the US home, according to 2005 Census data. That`s up from 1.7 million in 2000.
They have big communities in New Jersey, New York, California and Texas, and their average yearly household income is more than USD 60,000 - 35 per cent higher than the nation overall.
Indian Americans, along with Indian expatriates worldwide, sent about USD 23 billion back to India in 2005, World Bank data shows.
And so when Virginia Senator George Allen was caught on video in August calling an Indian American man "macaca" - a type of monkey and an offensive term - the community quickly responded.
Within days after the reports emerged, Sanjay Puri, founder of the US Indian Political Action Committee, and other Indian leaders in the Washington, D.C., area requested and got a lengthy meeting with Allen, Puri said. The senator publicly apologised.
Bureau Report
