Indian American

An Indian American (also called '''Asian Indian''' to contrast with the " American Indian s" so named by historical accident) is commonly a resident or citizen of the United States who has ancestry originating in India . Indian Americans either were born in India and immigrated to the United States or were born in the United States and have Indian ancestry. Most Indian Americans are Hindus by religion, but there are also many Muslims , Christians , Sikhs , Jains , Buddhists , Parsi s and Jews among them.

The US Census Of 2000 counted 1.679 million people in the category "Asian Indian," accounting for 0.60% of the total population of the United States, up sharply from 0.33% as per 1990 Census . In 2000, Indian Americans were the third largest subgroup of Asian American s, after Chinese American s and Filipino American s, however they had the highest compound average growth rate of all Asian subgroups at 7.49% per year from 1990 to 2000. Assuming continuation of the decennial growth rate the subgroup's population in the US would be 2.4 million or 0.80% of population by the beginning of the year 2006. Unlike the Chinese and other East Asian subgroups with significant concentration in the West Coast, Indian population is more evenly spread across the US mainly in the urban areas in general and the large metropolitan areas in particular.

The and Technology , consider Indian Americans to be the epitome of the Model Minority . Indeed, according to the U.S. Census Indian Americans have the highest median income of any ethnic group in the U.S. ($60,093). They are considered a very affluent community. In addition, Merrill Lynch recently revealed that there are nearly 200,000 Indian American Millionaires . According to the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, there are close to 41,000 Indian American Doctors . Indeed according to US Census 2000,about 64% of Asian Indians in The United States have attained a Bachelor's degree or more. {Link without Title}

DEMOGRAPHIC AND CULTURAL PROFILE

Like the terms "Asian American" or "South Asian American", the term "Indian American" is also an umbrella label applying to a huge mosaic of cultures, and people of widely varying socioeconomic status, education, places of residence, generations, views, values, lifestyles, and appearances. While statistics below describe general trends, no attempts can fully portray the diversity of the community. They are known to assimilate into American culture easily because they have no language barriers and come from a similar society.

Indian Americans tend to be extremely well educated; many are doctors, engineers, and IT experts. Indian Americans are also very well represented as Small Business owners, (i.e., Hotel owners, Motel owners) and restauranteurs. {Link without Title}

Settlement

The states with the largest Indian American populations are .

In contrast to immigrants from East Asia, who tend to be concentrated in California and other areas near the Pacific Coast , Indian Americans are more evenly distributed throughout the country.

Languages

Indian Americans often keep hold of their native Indian tongues, whether it be Hindi , Gujarati , Punjabi , Tamil , Telugu , Sindhi , Bengali , Oriya , Marathi , Malayalam , Kannada , Rajasthani , Kashmiri , or any of the other plethora of Indian Languages . This is one of their defining traits, unlike many other Eastern minorities that immigrate to the US attempt to completely merge with the American people, taking on Western names and often abandoning their native tongue. English is usually natural to Indians as it is fluently spoken in India itself. .

Community-oriented businesses

There are many Indian markets and stores in United States . Some of biggest Indian markets are in Chicago , New York City , the Philadelphia Metro, Edison, New Jersey , and Houston .

Cultural establishments

There are many Hindu temples across the United States. ISKCON , Chinmaya Mission , and Swadhyay Pariwar are well established in the U.S. Buddhists , Zoroastrians , Sikhs , Jains , Muslims , and Christians from South Asia have also established their religions in the country.

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.

A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada initiated a popular ISKCON also known as Hare Krishna movement while preaching Bhakti-yoga.

They have brought Indian cuisine to the United States, and Indian cuisine has been established as one of the most popular cuisines in the country, with hundreds of Indian restaurants in each major city and several similar eateries in smaller cities and towns.

See also

Hinduism In The United States

Entertainment

There are Hindi radio stations in areas with a high Indian populations. Several Indian movies have been in the top 20 at the U.S. Box Office during their opening weeks, despite playing in only a fraction of the theaters that Hollywood movies premiere in. The '' Asian Variety Show '' usually airs on public television and caters to the Indian American audience.

Several cable and satellite providers offer Indian channels: Sun TV, Star TV, Zee TV, Sony TV, NDTV and Gemini. Others have offered Indian content for subscription, such as when India played Australia for the Cricket World Cup in 2003.

MTV premiered a network called MTV Desi in July 2005 which targets Indian Americans in the U.S.

HISTORY AND IMMIGRATION

Timeline

1790 The first known Indian immigrant entered the United States as a maritime worker.

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.

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 . {Link without Title}

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 Mullikan 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 the right to Indian Americans to immigrate and naturalize.

1956 Dalip Singh Saund elected to the US House Of Representatives from California . He will be 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.

2004 Bobby Jindal elected to the US House Of Representatives , from the 1st District of Louisiana taking 78% of the vote.

2005 US Congress passes House Resolution 227 honoring Indian-Americans.

Classification

In the late 19th and early 20th century, due to the originally negligible population of Asian-Indian Americans, the U.S. government did not officially classify Indians as being of any particular race. From 1910 to 1920, anthropologists deemed Indians as Caucasian in accordance with the racial classification system developed by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) and several courts deemed Indians as white and a few as not white. However, starting from 1923, the official judicial stance has been to classify Indians as Asian. To the right is a table of the case history of judicial racial classification of Indians.

The crucial 1923 Supreme Court case United States V. Bhagat Singh Thind created the official stance to classify Indians as non-white, which at the time retroactively stripped Indians of citizenship and land rights. While the decision was placating racist AEL (Asiatic Exclusion League) demand, spurned by growing outrage at the Turban Tide / Hindoo Invasion (sic) alongside the pre-existing outrage at the Yellow Peril , and while more recent legislation influenced by the civil-rights movement has removed much of the statutory discrimination against Asians, no case has overturned this 1923 classification. Hence, this classification remains and is still relevant today because many laws and quotas are race-based. Thus, Asian Indians are counted as Asian when tallying the Asian quota of University Of California schools, as well as when tallying minorities to ensure large corporations are diverse. Some Indians prefer to select a choice other than Asian on forms which ask for a "self-described" racial identity with limited selection. Increasingly, many of these forms explicitly mention "Asian (including the South Asia)" to reduce doubts.

Interestingly, amid a sea of zealous prosecutors working to denaturalize Indian Americans, some clerks either in protest or in naivete continued to process citizenship requests made by Indian Americans in the period when Indians were deemed unassimilable. Bhagat Singh Thind himself, after being stripped of citizenship in 1923 by the Supreme Court, was awarded citizenship by a clerk in New York a few years later. Further marking a certain lack of unity between the governmental organizations, the U.S. Census Bureau has changed over the years its own classification of Indians. In 1930 and 1940, Indian Americans were a separate category, ''Hindu'', and in 1950 and 1960, they were classified as ''Other Race'', and in 1970, they were classified as ''White''. Since 1980, Indian Americans have been called Asian Indian , a subcategory under the Asian category. ( {Link without Title} - see footnote 6) The official stance became to classify Indians as Asian despite acknowledging that many anthropologists classify Indians as Caucasian and not as Mongoloid.

While judicial racial categorization of Indians has stayed the same since 1923, anthropology has advanced. There have been many different racial classifications for people from India, because many people have had different opinions. In the past, it was determined merely visually that Subcontinental Asians were of a different race than Far Easterners. In the books ''Human Species''(2003) and ''Physical Anthropology'' genetic clustering of Cavalli-Sforza (2000) were published to show the genetic relationship of all human populations. Under contemporary anthropology, populations of the world have been mapped genetically in clines which are like gradations of genetic distance. These new genetic distance maps place the Indian Subcontinent and the Far East as closer genetic relatives than the Far East and Southeast Asia, contrary to some peoples' perception. This is due to the fact that Southeast Asians are part of the Oceanic branch of humanity and Far East Asians and Subcontinental Asians are part of the Eurasian branch. More interestingly, Asians have very local genetic clusters inside these regions, implying different Asian ethnic groups have not historically intermarried with each other. Examples of localized genetic clusters include Japan, Korea, Mongolia and China which form separate genetic clusters from each other. Genetically there are no distinct races, so categorization may seem moot. However, the legacy of racial categorization continues to pervade many institutions.John Relethford, The Human Species: An introduction to Biological Anthropology, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003). Philip L. Stein and Bruce M. Rowe, Physical Anthropology, 8th ed. (McGraw-HIll, 1996)

See also

Asian American Immigration History

CURRENT SOCIAL ISSUES

Disunity

Indian Americans have not had a unified voice in the American political system as the population is widely dispersed among various regional community groups like Punjabis, Gujaratis, Bengalis, Telugus, Tamils, Marathis and others, all of whom have their own languages, cultures, and traditions.

Also, while a majority of Indian Americans vote Democratic, a substantial number vote Republican decreasing the effectiveness of lobbying for Indian-American causes.

Discrimination

Since September 11, there were scattered incidents of Indian Americans having been mistaken targets for hate crimes. In one example, a Sikh at an Arizona gas station was murdered by a White Supremacist for being mistaken for an Arab because he wore a Turban . In Massachusetts in 2003, a pizza delivery person was robbed, but then beaten for "being Muslim" though he pleaded he was in fact Hindu ( {Link without Title} ).

Immigration

Indians are among the largest ethnic groups migrating to the USA legally. Immigration of Indian Americans has taken place in many waves since the first Indian-American came to the United States in the 1700s. A major wave of immigration to California from the soon-to-be Indian state of Punjab and vicinity took place in the first decade of the 20th century, from around 1900-1910. Immigration from India has taken place in several waves throughout American history with one major wave taking place in the 1950s.

Media Portrayal

Fictional and non-fictional Indian Americans have appeared in the media.

Apu Nahasapeemapetilon , PhD, is a character that appears on '' The Simpsons ''. He debuted on April 29 , 1990 , in the episode Krusty Gets Busted , which was the 12th episode of the first season.

Asok the intern debuted on September 15, 2003 in the cartoon strip '' Dilbert '' by Scott Adams . Asok is a graduate from one of the Indian Institutes Of Technology .

Ben Jabituya was a robotics expert (played by Fisher Stevens ) in the 1986 movie '' Short Circuit ''.

The real-life Mujibur Rahman and Sirajul Islam were actual shopkeepers of a souvenir shop (K & L's Rock America) next to the Ed Sullivan Theater when David Letterman formed an impromptu friendship with them on camera on '' The Late Show With David Letterman '' in the show's first season in the autumn of 1994. The two friends from Bangladesh became celebrities from their frequent appearances on the show and acted as "Dave's ambassadors" when he sent them on a tour of the United States. {Link without Title}

Kumar Patel (played by Kal Penn ) is a recent college graduate trying to avoid going to medical school in the 2004 movie '' Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle ''.

Assimilation

Assimilation has traditionally been less of a problem than for many other immigrant groups, including those from fellow South Asian countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. Indian immigrants tend to have good English skills due to their typically coming from more prosperous, educated backgrounds in India.

The image of Indians in the United States is generally of highly educated, respectable professionals with generally smart children. Indian Americans as a community have the lowest crime rate and the highest earnings, causing them to be dubbed the country's "model minority" in a national survey.

Marriage

Indian Americans are generally more conservative than many groups, but they are known to sometimes marry outside their community as well. The rate of marrying members of other ethnicites is generally lower than that of other ethnic groups because many Indian Americans are more recent immigrants. Indian Americans have held tightly to their native culture, and generally try to marry within their regional community (e.g. Telugu with Telugu, Punjabi with Punjabi, etc), although it is not generally considered necessary to marry within caste. However, second generation and third generation Indian Americans are increasingly breaking out of this cycle.

AMERICAN BORN CONFUSED DESI

American Born Confused Desi (ABCD) is a term that refers to people of Desi origin (of South Asia n, especially Indian, descent), living in the United States . "Confused" refers to their confusion regarding their identity, having been born in America or lived there since childhood and been closer to American culture than to their native culture. It is sometimes regarded as an Ethnic Slur , the flip side of the use of FOB ( Fresh Off The Boat ) for recent immigrants. It is a close relative of the term Jook-sing for American-born Chinese.
The growing Indian community in North America may be rendering the term obsolete. While living in insulated communities on the continent, Indian nationals are arguably less exposed to Westernizing influences than they would in the rapidly changing socioeconomic
environment of India itself. In many cases, it often seems that Indian Americans who have lived all their lives in the United States are more traditional and conservative than their counterparts in India.

This idea of the confused identity is not unique to Indian Americans alone - British Asian s (the term used for Indians raised and living in Britain) also have similar experiences and struggles.

POLITICS

The following is a non-comprehensive list of notable Indian American politicians: