The Reasons Behind the Success of Indian Americans

Rohan Rajesh

There’s no denying that Indian Americans have become incredibly influential in American society, politics, and the economy. Indian Americans are the wealthiest ethnic group in the United States. As of 2015, of Indian Americans aged 25 and older, 72% had obtained a bachelor’s degree, and 40% had obtained a postgraduate degree, whereas of all Americans, 19% had obtained a bachelor’s degree and 11% had obtained a postgraduate degree. In 2019, households headed by an Indian immigrant had a median income of $132,000, compared to $64,000 and $66,000 for all immigrant and U.S.-born households, respectively. One of the more obvious testaments to the economic achievements of Indian Americans is the prevalence of Indian-origin CEOs in Fortune 500 companies, including Adobe, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Microsoft, Mastercard, and (until recently) PepsiCo.

Indian Americans have become politically influential as well. There have been two Indian-origin state governors – Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina. Despite numbering at only 4 million (around 1.2% of the US population), both Democrats and Republicans have taken painstaking (if not embarrassing) efforts at appealing to the demographic, and this Congress has a record number of Indian Americans. 

One reason is that the population of Indian Americans exceeded the 2020 margin of victory in several swing states (including North Carolina), and that population is growing rapidly. Another is that the wealth of the community allows for significant campaign contributions. In the 2020 primaries, Indian American groups contributed more than $3 million, which is more than all of Hollywood’s contributions. It’s believed that the Indian American population contributed around $16 million to the campaigns of Democratic candidates in 2020. The most obvious testament to the growing influence of Indian Americans is that in electing Senator Kamala Harris (the first-ever Indian American Senator) as Vice-President, America has also chosen its first Indian American Vice-President. 

But why has this small group, a relatively recent addition to the American melting pot, been so successful almost everywhere? The truth is that the journey was not easy, and many Indian Americans had key advantages coming here.

Indian Americans first began immigrating to the United States towards the end of the 19th century. Most were Sikhs from the Punjab (though they were frequently classified as “Hindoos”), who came to California to escape poor conditions in British India. In 1907, 400 to 500 white men attacked Indian Americans to drive them out of California. At the same time, anti-miscegenation laws prevented Indian American men from intermarrying with white women. But it was legal for “brown” races to mix, so many Indians married Hispanics. Finally, Congress passed the Barred Zone Act in 1917, ending immigration from India. The first Indian to become a naturalized US citizen was Bhicaji Balsara, a Parsi (i.e., a Persian-origin Indian) who was determined to be “suitably white” by the courts in 1909. But other Indians were barred from naturalization in 1923 by the Supreme Court in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, in which the majority ruled that Indians failed to meet the definition of “white.”

However, this situation began to change with the end of the Second World War. As the Cold War began ramping up, the United States needed to counter the Soviet messaging that the ideal of America was sheer hypocrisy as American society and institutions were anti-Asian and anti-Black. In 1946, the Luce-Celler Act allowed an annual quota of 100 Indians and 100 Filipinos to immigrate to the US. In 1956, Dalip Singh Saund (a Democrat) became the first Asian American, the first Indian American, the first Sikh American, and the first member of a non-Abrahamic faith to be elected to Congress. He narrowly defeated Jacquelin Cochrane (a Republican aviator who served in World War II) to become the representative for California’s 29th district. He was re-elected twice.

In 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act was signed, leading to record immigration from Asia, including India. At the same time, people from other parts of India (i.e., not Punjab) and the Indian diaspora (particularly from other former British colonies) came. Many came as engineers, physicians, and business owners to escape the lackluster pre-1991 Indian economy. In the 1990s, many Indian Americans (including my parents) immigrated to the US with the IT boom. This trend particularly sharpened when Y2K necessitated the immigration of many programmers from India to fix computer systems before the new millennium threatened to break them. 

Because of our prevalence in highly skilled labor, many have labeled us (and other Asian American groups) as “model minorities” in order to contrast us with supposedly problematic minorities. The truth is that we had it easier compared to other minority Americans. Indian Americans who came to the United States were already the cream of the crop. They were also raised to speak English and go to university. African Americans, on the other hand, came as slaves. When slavery ended, they were held down by Jim Crow, sharecropping, redlining, and white flight. Indian and Asian Americans also began moving en masse to the suburbs, deepening the divide.

Now, this is not to imply that Indian Americans do not face problems in the US. Anti-immigrant sentiment has had ugly effects on the group. In 2017, a Kansas man shot and killed an Indian-born engineer, Srinivas Kuchibhotla. Before firing the shots, he yelled, “Get out of my country!” As with other Asian groups, the identity, loyalty, and belonging of Indian Americans have been and will continue to be doubted. A case in point came when President Trump instituted policies that disrupted the legal immigration system, particularly harming immigrants from India. While President Biden has reversed these policies, the pendulum of populism will certainly rear its ugly head in the form of anti-immigrant sentiment post-Biden.

With the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, many of those policies will likely be reversed, but anti-immigration sentiment is almost as old as the republic and will rear its ugly head sooner or later. That said, it has been a long journey from the Sikh farmers who were targeted by racist laws and men to the election of an Indian American Vice-President. As our political position becomes more permanent and powerful, we should begin to advocate more for disadvantaged communities. After all, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act that allowed most of us to be here rode a wave of Civil Rights legislation advocated by African Americans and other groups who continue to bear the crushing weight of America’s racial inequities.