By all popular accounts, Indian-Americans
have “made it” in the United States.
Accounting for only less than a third of the 10.2 million Asian-Americans
States according to the 2000 U.S. Census and only the third most populous group after
Chinese and Filipinos, Indian-Americans have achieved considerable gains in American
society within the last 40 years.
Among Asian-Americans, Indians have the highest
income, levels of education, professional job status and English fluency (Bhardwaj 2005).
As Hawley (2004, 3) wrote, “Goodbye Emma Lazarus! These are hardly ‘your tired, your
poor.’”
Indian-Americans have also made inroads into many spheres where their access had
been limited before. In the last election cycle, residents of Louisiana’s First District
overwhelmingly voted for a first-generation Indian-American, Piyush “Bobby” Jindal, to
represent them in Congress (he won 78.3%). And at the state level, Swati Dandekar and
Nikki Randhawa-Haley, were elected to the legislatures from Iowa and South Carolina
respectively. Lastly, Indian-Americans have made huge inroads into American popular
culture. From the rise of attentive policy elites like Dinesh D’Souza to the release of
MTV Desi, an MTV channel just for South Asian immigrants in the U.S., Indian-
Americans have truly made their impact and needs felt on the American economy.
Unfortunately, all this attention by Americans and the American media on the success
of Indian-Americans or on India-related issues like outsourcing or Kashmir, have glossed
2
Although the U.S. Census Bureau describes Americans of East Indian origin as ‘Asian-Indians,’ I will be
using the phrase ‘Indian-American’ to describe this demographic throughout the paper. A further
distinction could be made demarcating South Asian-American from Asian-American on the basis of
geography, but such a split is unnecessary for this research because the group of study is strictly Indian-
Americans and not natives of the other South Asian countries (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives,
Nepal and Sri Lanka). For a detailed study of the politics of naming “South Asian Studies” so, please refer
to Shankar and Srikanth (2002).
3
This terminology is also a matter of discretion. Though many scholars refer to this demographic as ‘Asian
Pacific American,’ the phrase used in this paper is ‘Asian-American’ for the simple reason that the subject
material of this research focused on South Asian Americans and therefore, ‘Pacific’ seemed redundant and
distracting. A similar distinction was used by Esperitu (1992).
4
The Immigration Reform Act was passed in 1965 and resulted in the removal of all national quotas for
emigration to the United States.
2
Convention