Indian Americans increasingly occupy liminal space between self-identities

A new survey finds multiple forms of connectivity with India and Indian-origin identity; interestingly, acknowledgement and appreciation of Indian-ness seems to be rising rather than falling

Numbering more than 5.2 million, Indian Americans now comprise the second-largest immigrant group in the United States (US) by country of origin, second only to Mexican Americans. Between 2010 and 2020, it grew by nearly 55 per cent. The community is also growing at a rapid clip - 70 per cent of all Indian immigrants residing in the US arrived in the last quarter-century. And as the Indian-American community throws up leaders beyond the usual healthcare and technology sectors into more public and political roles, it has drawn more attention to its achievements and achievers.

 

A recent study attempts to go beyond the headlines to “understand the full complexity of Indian American life” and “into the everyday experiences of this diverse, rapidly growing community”.

 

The third and final instalment of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s survey, ‘How Indian Americans Live’, released last week, looks at how this diverse group engages with civic and political institutions in the US, maintains connections with their Indian roots, and in what ways are they excluded from social life in the US due to discrimination or rising nationalism. It also explores the role of how identity markers, such as religion and caste, shape their daily lives and themselves become markers of discrimination and exclusion.

A more visible minority

Public attention in any diaspora community tends to gravitate towards prominent members of the community, and Indian Americans are no exception. In the 2024 race for the White House, there were at least three presidential candidates in the fray with Indian roots: then vice president Kamala Harris, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy. US President Donald Trump's administration has its share of Indian Americans: Kash Patel, who was confirmed as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Stanford University physician Jay Bhattacharya was named the director of the prestigious National Institutes of Health, and entrepreneur and venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan was named a senior White House adviser on artificial intelligence (AI). Then there is Second Lady Usha Vance, the Indian-origin spouse of Vice President JD Vance. Journalist Fareed Zakaria, medical commentator Sanjay Gupta, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and World Bank President Ajay Banga, to name a few, are some other prominent Indian Americans.

 

The study - by Sumitra Badrinathan, who teaches at American University, Devesh Kapur, the Starr Foundation professor of South Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Annabel Richter and Milan Vaishnav of the Carnegie Endowment - is based on a representative online survey of 1,206 Indian American residents in the US titled the '2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS)'. It was conducted between September 18 and October 15, 2024, in partnership with the research and analytics firm YouGov.

 

The study seeks to address seven questions concerning Indian Americans’ social realities: How do Indian Americans engage in civic and political life in the United States, how connected are diaspora members to their ancestral homeland of India, how do Indian Americans balance and navigate multiple identities linked to their host and home countries, what role do religion and caste play in the diaspora members’ lives, to what extent is rising majoritarianism, both in India and the US, a concern for the Indian diaspora, how do they experience and perceive discrimination in the US, and how informed they are about politics in India and the US?

 

According to the study, the share of US-born respondents reporting that the Indian component of their identity was important grew substantially since 2020. The proportion of respondents identifying as 'Indian American' dropped, while the proportion identifying as 'Asian Indian' rose. Similarly, compared to four years ago, a greater share of US-born citizens reported feeling equally Indian and American (as opposed to more American than Indian).

 

The study found that Indian Americans were in favour of measures prohibiting caste discrimination. Thirty-two per cent of survey respondents reported that they did not identify with any caste. Forty-six per cent identified as general or upper caste. The overwhelming majority of Indian American respondents supported measures to formally outlaw caste discrimination, the study states.

 

It also found that Indian Americans routinely experienced discrimination themselves. One in two respondents reported experiencing discrimination in the past one year, the most common form of which was biased treatment based on skin colour. Indian Americans perceived discrimination against Muslims to be especially common.

 

On the issue of civic engagement, according to the survey results, respondents self-reported that the most popular form of civic engagement was performing voluntary community service, an activity undertaken by 17 per cent of respondents. Working with community members to solve a problem followed closely behind (14 per cent). Attending a public meeting (8 per cent) or participating in a protest or demonstration (6 per cent) were less-common forms of civic engagement.

 

Four years ago, 20 per cent of Indian Americans reported performing community service and 15 per cent said they worked with others to solve a problem in the community, roughly tracking with what Indian Americans reported in 2024 (17 and 14 per cent, respectively). This is also broadly in line with the 17 per cent of the American public at large who attended a political rally or campaign event and 13 per cent who attended a protest. However, in 2020, Indian Americans were more likely to report attending a public meeting (13 versus 8 per cent) or a protest (11 versus 6 per cent), though these differences are not large.

 

The survey found non-citizens were marginally more likely to attend a protest (6 versus 4 per cent) and perform community service (15 versus 12 per cent) than foreign-born citizens, but they were less likely to engage in community problem-solving (8 versus 10 per cent). Both groups were equally likely to attend a public meetings (7 per cent apiece).

 

According to the survey, two-thirds of all respondents (67 per cent) reported discussing politics with friends and family — nearly 20 percentage points higher than 2020 levels (45 per cent). This sharp rise suggests a notable uptick in political interest and engagement, likely reflecting the heightened interest in and political salience of the 2024 election compared to the 2020 election, which took place during the pandemic, the survey found.

 

Indian Americans were much less likely to engage politically in other ways. Twenty-four per cent reported posting comments on political issues online, 14 per cent contributed money during the campaign, and 10 per cent contacted a government official or volunteered on a campaign. The latter four averages were in line with 2020 levels. By comparison, one-third of Americans said they posted political messages online while 23 per cent reported contributing money during the campaign. Here, too, there were differences based on citizenship and place of birth, though these differences were not uniform across engagement categories.

 

The authors of the survey state that the widespread discussion of politics across all groups underscores the broad salience of political issues in 2024, even among those formally excluded from the electoral process.

Indian Americans’ connections to India

Forty-one per cent of the survey’s respondents were naturalised US citizens. Thirty per cent belonged to the second generation; that is, they were born in the US to immigrant parents. Just 5 per cent were born in the US to parents who were also born in the US, making them members of the third generation. An even smaller fraction, 3 per cent, belonged to the fourth generation (they, their parents, and their grandparents were all born in the US). Overall, 79 per cent of the survey’s sample were US citizens. The remaining 21 per cent of the sample consisted of non–U citizens.

 

Indian law prohibits dual citizenship, and but people of Indian origin can apply for Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) status, which offers foreign nationals of Indian descent visa-free travel to India and privileges such as the ability to live and work in the country. Overall, 38 per cent of respondents without Indian citizenship reported having an OCI card.

 

Forty eight per cent of respondents reported that they had immediate family members (such as a spouse, parent, sibling, or child) residing in India. Fifty-five per cent of respondents reported communicating with friends and family in India at least once per month. Thirty-nine per cent reported traveling to India in the past year, the second-most-common activity. Seventeen per cent supported religious organisations in India in the past year while 14 per cent supported non-profit organizations in India. Overall, 27 per cent of the sample reported engaging in none of these activities.

 

The survey found interesting variation based on respondents’ backgrounds. Seventy-one per cent of noncitizens reported communicating with friends and family in India regularly, compared to 56 per cent of foreign-born citizens and 46 per cent of US-born citizens.

 

Eight in ten Indian Americans (81 per cent) reported eating Indian food in the past month. Sixty-five per cent watched Indian television or movies in the past month, while 38 per cent engaged with Indian dance, music, or art in some form or fashion in the past six months. Only 7 per cent of respondents reported engaging in none of these cultural practices. There were no significant differences in responses based on citizenship and country of birth, with one exception. Non-citizens were roughly 20 percentage points more likely to have watched Indian television/movies (77 per cent) than US-born citizens (58 per cent), with foreign-born citizens situated in between (64 per cent).

Importance of Being Indian First

The survey asked respondents how important being Indian was to their identity. Forty seven per cent of respondents rated it as very important, and another 39 per cent rated it as somewhat important. Overall, roughly 87 per cent of Indian Americans placed a high value on what one might call their “Indian-ness.” Around 13 per cent stated that their Indian identity is either somewhat or very unimportant.

 

According to the study, it found it “noteworthy” that among those born in the US, the importance of being Indian seems to have grown between 2020 and 2024. In 2020, 70 per cent of US-born respondents stated that being Indian was very or somewhat important, a share that grew to 86 per cent in 2024. Conversely, as one might expect, the percentage reporting that their Indian-ness was unimportant was cut in half, from 30 to 15 per cent, over the four years.

 

Curiously, the study found, the share of respondents identifying as Indian American dropped significantly between 2020 and 2024. In 2020, 43 per cent of respondents identified as Indian American, but that share dropped to 26 per cent in 2024. Identification as Asian Indian and Asian American have both sharply risen in the intervening period, by 15 and 8 percentage points, respectively. The share of respondents identifying as solely Indian also dropped, from 25 per cent in 2020 to 20 per cent in 2024. There was a sharp rise in US-born respondents identifying as Asian Indian; this share nearly doubled from 12 per cent in 2020 to 23 per cent in 2024. Among foreign-born respondents, the proportion identifying as Asian Indian soared from 2 to 23 per cent (while the share identifying simply as Indian declined from 33 to 27 per cent). The popularity of the Asian American label has also grown since 2020; 16 per cent of US-born respondents and 12 per cent of foreign-born respondents embraced this label (up from 6 and 7 per cent, respectively).

Religion

Overall, 55 per cent of respondents identified as Hindu, and 14 per cent as Muslim, which is about equal to the Muslim proportion of the population in India. Eight per cent identified as belonging to the Christian faith (4 per cent Roman Catholic and 4 per cent Protestant). Collectively, respondents who identified as atheist, agnostic, or no religion in particular accounted for 14 per cent of the sample.

 

When asked how important religion was in their life, 74 per cent responded that it was very or somewhat important. Seventy-one per cent of Muslims reported that religion was very important in their life, with another 20 per cent stating it was somewhat important. Fifty-seven per cent of Christians said that religion was very important, and 32 per cent stated it was somewhat important. Among Hindus, 38 per cent stated it was very important, while 41 per cent reported it was somewhat important.

 

Christians and Muslims both reported very high levels of religious attendance — 54 and 51 per cent, respectively, attended once or several times a week. Hindus’ reported religious attendance was significantly lower, with only 22 per cent attending services regularly and another 17 per cent attending once or twice a month.

Caste

The study states that caste has acquired a newfound resonance in American society in recent years because of several high-profile cases of alleged caste discrimination in Silicon Valley, where there is a high concentration of Indian-origin workers employed in the information technology sector. Universities, localities, and even some states have proposed new regulations prohibiting discrimination based on caste.

 

Of the survey’s 1,206 respondents, 32 per cent reported that they did not identify with any caste. Forty-six per cent identified as General or Upper caste, 5 per cent of respondents identified as members of the Other Backward Classes (OBC), 2 per cent identified as Scheduled Caste (or Dalit), and 1 per cent identified as Scheduled Tribe. Fourteen per cent of respondents did not know what their caste identity was.

 

About their views on new laws or regulations prohibiting discrimination based on an individual’s caste identity, 77 per cent supported such measures. Only 11 per cent of respondents opposed caste-based anti-discrimination laws or regulations, while 12 per cent expressed no opinion.

Nationalism

Seventy per cent of respondents either strongly or somewhat agreed that the statements made by political leaders during the 2024 Lok Sabha election campaign, including some that insinuated Muslims were “infiltrators” exemplified the growing threat to minorities in India. Thirty one per cent of respondents disagreed with the notion. Overall, 69 per cent of Indian Americans were concerned about the threat of Hindu majoritarianism in India, compared to 81 per cent who recognized the prospect of rising white nationalism in the US.

Discrimination

The survey asked respondents whether they personally experienced discrimination in the past twelve months on one of five grounds—their skin colour, country of origin, religion, gender, or caste. One in two respondents (49 per cent) reported experiencing discrimination in the past one year. The most common form of discrimination was biased treatment based on one’s skin colour, something 31 per cent of respondents experienced. Twenty per cent of the sample reported being discriminated against due to their country of origin, 19 per cent experienced discrimination due to their religion, and 15 per cent encountered gender-based discrimination. The least-common form of discrimination that respondents reported was caste-based discrimination, experienced by 7 per cent of all respondents. As the 2020 survey found, US-born citizens were much more likely to report discrimination than others.

Conclusion

The authors of the study state that while much has been made of the growing influence of Indian Americans as political actors, there is significant variation in the degree of that engagement. There is also a common belief that diaspora members born in the United States are disconnected from India, they said. But the evidence in the survey has suggested that there are multiple forms of connectivity, many of which are actively practiced even by those born in the US. Notably, the survey found that respondents’ acknowledgement and appreciation of their Indian-ness seems to be rising, rather than falling.

 

The authors have stated that there are real gaps in the knowledge the diaspora has both about India and the United States, despite the community’s elevated educational attainment. “To the extent the diaspora is a force multiplier for US-India relations, these knowledge gaps could lead to misunderstandings or even confusion,” they have said.