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Indian Community Burgeoning in America |
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From Yahoo! News: Top Stories: Local travel agents promise the best airfares from New York to Mumbai. Shagun Fashions is selling dazzling Indian saris. Roughly every third person who lives Edison, a New York suburb, is of Asian Indian ancestry. Many are new immigrants who have come to work as physicians, engineers and high-tech experts and are drawn to "Little India" by convenience --- it's near the commuter train --- and familiarity. Here they can "get their groceries and goods from home," says Aruna Rao, a mental health counselor who lives in town. Not only is the Indian community burgeoning, it's maturing. Increasingly, after decades of quietly establishing themselves, Indians are becoming more vocal in the American conversation --- about politics, ethnicity and many other topics. "I've been studying the community for 20 years and in the last four or five years something different has been happening," said Madhulika Khandelwal, president of the Asian American Center at Queens College in New York. "Indian-Americans are finally out there speaking for themselves." They have big communities in New Jersey, New York, California and Texas, and their average yearly household income is more than $60,000 --- 35 percent higher than the nation overall. Few knew their rights because few had been engaged politically, said Amardeep Singh, executive director of The Sikh Coalition in New York. The group now has two bills pending in the New York city council --- one would allow city employees to wear turbans and the other would make city officials craft plans to prevent hate crimes if another terrorist attack happened.
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