Indian Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The terms Asian Indian and East Indian are used to avoid confusion with Native Americans in the United States, who are also referred to as "Indians" or "American Indians." With a population of more than 4.9 million, Indian Americans make up approximately 1.35% of the U.S. population and are the largest group of South Asian Americans, the largest Asian-alone group,[10] and the largest group of Asian Americans after Chinese Americans. Indian Americans are the highest-earning ethnic group in the United States.[11]
In the Americas, the term "Indian" had historically been used to describe indigenous people since European colonization in the 15th century. Qualifying terms such as "American Indian" and "East Indian" were and still are commonly used in order to avoid ambiguity. The U.S. government has since coined the term "Native American" in reference to the indigenous people of the United States, but terms such as "American Indian" remain among indigenous as well as non-indigenous populations. Since the 1980s, Indian Americans have been categorized as "Asian Indian" (within the broader subgroup of Asian American) by the U.S. Census Bureau.[12]
1635: An "East Indian" is documented present in .[143][17]
Jamestown, Virginia
1680: Due to , a mixed-race girl born to an Indian father and an Irish mother is classified as mulatto and sold into slavery.[16]
anti-miscegenation laws
1790: The first officially confirmed Indian immigrant arrives in the United States from , South India, on a British ship.[144][145]
Madras
1899–1914: The first significant wave of Indian immigrants arrives in the United States, mostly consisting of Sikh farmers and businessmen from the of British India. They arrive in Angel Island, California via Hong Kong. They start businesses including farms and lumber mills in California, Oregon, and Washington.
Punjab region
1909: becomes the first known Indian-born person to gain naturalised U.S. citizenship. As a Parsi, he was considered a "pure member of the Persian sect" and therefore a free White person. The judge Emile Henry Lacombe, of the Southern District of New York, only gave Balsara citizenship on the hope that the United States attorney would indeed challenge his decision and appeal it to create "an authoritative interpretation" of the law. The U.S. attorney adhered to Lacombe's wishes and took the matter to the Circuit Court of Appeals in 1910. The Circuit Court of Appeal agrees that Parsis are classified as white.[34]
1913: becomes the second 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 United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, his citizenship was revoked.
A. K. Mozumdar
1914: obtains a graduate degree from Stanford University, studying also at University of California, Berkeley and later goes on to win the Newbery Medal in 1928, and thus becomes the first successful India-born man of letters in the United States, as well as the first popular Indian writer in English.
Dhan Gopal Mukerji
1917: The passes in Congress through two-thirds majority, overriding President Woodrow Wilson's earlier veto. Asians, including Indians, are barred from entering the United States.
Barred Zone Act
1918: Due to , 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.[146]
anti-miscegenation laws
1918: Private Raghunath N. Banawalkar is the first Indian American recruited into the U.S. Army on February 25, 1918, and serves in the Sanitary Detachment of the 305th Infantry Regiment, 77th Division, American Expeditionary Forces in . Gassed while on active service in October 1918 and subsequently awarded Purple Heart medal.[147]
1922: , a Telugu from the state of Andhra Pradesh in Southern India arrived in Boston on October 26, 1922. He discovered the role of phosphocreatine and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in muscular activity, which earned him an entry into biochemistry textbooks in the 1930s. He obtained his Ph.D. the same year, and went on to make other major discoveries; including the synthesis of aminopterin (later developed into methotrexate), the first cancer chemotherapy.
Yellapragada Subbarao
1923: In , the Supreme Court unanimously rules that Indian people are aliens ineligible for United States citizenship. Bhagat Singh Thind regained his citizenship years later in New York.[149]
United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind
1943: Republican and Democrat Emanuel Celler introduce a bill to open naturalization to Indian immigrants to the United States. Prominent Americans Pearl Buck, Louis Fischer, Albert Einstein and Robert Millikan give their endorsement to the bill. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, also endorses the bill, calling for an end to the "statutory discrimination against the Indians."
Clare Boothe Luce
1946: President signs into law the Luce–Celler Act of 1946, returning the right to Indian Americans to immigrate to the United States and become naturalized citizens.
Harry S. Truman
1956: elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from California. He was re-elected to a second and third term, winning over 60% of the vote. He is also the first Asian immigrant from any country to be elected to Congress.
Dalip Singh Saund
1962: appointed music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, becoming the first person of Indian origin to become the principal conductor of a major American orchestra. Subsequently, he was appointed principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic.
1965: President signs the INS Act of 1965 into law, eliminating per-country immigration quotas and introducing immigration on the basis of professional experience and education. Satinder Mullick is one of the first to immigrate under the new law in November 1965—sponsored by Corning Glass Works.
Lyndon Johnson
1968: shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for discovering the mechanisms by which RNA codes for the synthesis of proteins. He was then on faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, but later moved to MIT.
Hargobind Khorana
1974: Mafat and Tulsi Patel open the first location of on Devon Avenue in Chicago, one of the first Indian grocery chains in America
Patel Brothers
1975: Launch of India-West, a leading newspaper covering issues of relevance to the Indian American community.
1981: founded Cirrus Logic, one of the first fabless semiconductor companies.
1983: won the Nobel Prize for Physics; Asian Indian Women in America[150] attended the first White House Briefing for Asian American Women. (AAIWA, formed in 1980, is the 1st Indian women's organization in North America.)
Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar
1985: Balu Natarajan becomes the first Indian American to win the
Scripps National Spelling Bee
1987: President appoints Joy Cherian, the first Indian Commissioner of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
1989: Launch of , the first South Asian-Indian radio station in the United States.[151]
RBC Radio
1990: Shiva Subramanya (an India-born Nuclear Physicist and Space Scientist working at TRW, Inc) became the first South Asian and first Indian American to win the Medal of Merit, the 's highest award for a civilian and one of the America's top defense award, in recognition of his exceptional service to AFCEA and the fields of Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I).[152]
1994: Guitarist , of Indian origin, wins Grammy award for his Indian inspired guitarwork on the album Superunknown by his band Soundgarden.
Kim Thayil
1994: received the ACM Turing Award (with Edward Feigenbaum) "For pioneering the design and construction of large scale artificial intelligence systems, demonstrating the practical importance and potential commercial impact of artificial intelligence technology."
1997: , one of the six-member crew of STS-87 mission, becomes the first Indian American astronaut.
Kalpana Chawla
1999: NASA names the third of its four "Great Observatories" after Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar the Indian-born American astrophysicist and a Nobel laureate.
Chandra X-ray Observatory
1999: Filmmaker enters film history with his film The Sixth Sense becoming one of the all-time highest-grossing films worldwide.
Dalip Singh Saund was in 1956 the first Asian American, Indian American, and member of a non-Abrahamic faith (Sikhism) to be elected to the United States Congress.
In the 2000s, a majority of Indian Americans have tended to identify as moderates, and have often leaned Democratic in several recent elections. In the 2012 presidential election, a poll from the National Asian American Survey reported that 68% of Indian Americans planned to vote for Barack Obama.[208] Polls before the 2004 presidential election showed Indian Americans favoring Democratic candidate John Kerry over RepublicanGeorge W. Bush by a 53% to 14% margin, with 30% undecided at the time.[209]
Indian Americans have played a significant role in promoting better India–United States relations, turning the cold attitude of American legislators to a positive perception of India in the post-Cold War era.[221]
Indians in the New York City metropolitan area
Indo-Caribbean Americans
Punjabi Mexican Americans
South Asian Americans
India–United States relations
Indian Canadians
Indian diaspora
Racial classification of Indian Americans
Romani Americans
The American Institute of India Studies (AIIS)
Madhusudan and Kiran C. Dhar India Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington
by Seema Sohi
From 1917 to 2017: Immigration, Exclusion, and "National Security"
