How Indian Americans Live: Results From the 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey

Summary

From the nightly news on television to the C-suite offices on Wall Street, and from Hollywood’s studio lots to the laboratories of America’s leading universities, Indian Americans are leaving their mark on America’s economic, scientific, social, cultural, and political life. Numbering more than 5.2 million, Indian Americans now comprise the second-largest immigrant group in the United States by country of origin. But beyond the politicians, celebrities, CEOs, writers, and technology entrepreneurs, the social realities of everyday Indian Americans have received scant attention.

Depicting these realities is no easy task. Indian Americans are an extremely heterogeneous community, embodying much of the diversity that India itself possesses. The diaspora includes representatives of myriad faiths, caste identities, and the full spectrum of India’s geographic regions and subregions. Among others, the community encompasses Indian nationals studying or working in the United States, native-born citizens whose parents and grandparents were both born in the United States, and naturalized citizens who found their way to America and decided to make it their long-term home. The community is also growing at a rapid clip: 70 percent of all Indian immigrants residing in the United States arrived in the last quarter-century.

How does this diverse group engage with civic and political institutions in the United States? How do its members maintain connections with their Indian roots while establishing their identities in America? In what ways are they excluded from social life in the United States due to discrimination or rising nationalism? And to what extent do identity markers like religion and caste shape their daily lives and themselves become markers of discrimination and exclusion?

This study draws on a unique source of empirical data to answer these and other questions. Its findings are based on a nationally representative online survey of 1,206 Indian American residents in the United States—the 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS)—conducted between September 18 and October 15, 2024, in partnership with the research and analytics firm YouGov. The survey, drawing on both citizens and noncitizens in the United States from YouGov’s proprietary panel, has a maximum margin of error of +/- 3 percent.

This study is the third in a three-part series on the social, political, and foreign policy attitudes of Indian Americans drawing on the 2024 IAAS. The 2024 survey builds on a similar survey fielded by the authors in 2020 in advance of that year’s presidential election. Wherever possible, this study compares the 2020 and 2024 data to examine longitudinal trends.

The major findings are summarized below.

• There were clear gaps in the diaspora’s pattern of civic and political engagement. U.S.-born citizens boasted the highest levels of civic and political engagement, sometimes by a large margin. While there was no clear pattern regarding how foreign-born citizens and noncitizens engaged in civic life, foreign-born citizens were more likely to engage politically than noncitizens across multiple measures, which is understandable given that only U.S. citizens have voting rights.
• Connectivity with India came in many forms. Noncitizens had the greatest degree of personal, ongoing connection with India, but both U.S.-born and naturalized citizens did exhibit significant cultural connections with their Indian roots. For instance, in aggregate, eight in ten Indian Americans reported eating Indian food in the month prior to the survey.

• Indian Americans were displaying more, not less, affinity toward their Indian identity. The share of U.S.-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 U.S.-born citizens reported feeling equally Indian and American (as opposed to more American than Indian).

• Indian Americans were in favor of measures prohibiting caste discrimination. Thirty-two percent of survey respondents reported that they did not identify with any caste. Forty-six percent identified as General or Upper caste. The overwhelming majority of Indian American respondents supported measures to formally outlaw caste discrimination.

• 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 color. Indian Americans perceived discrimination against Muslims to be especially common.

Introduction

In the 2024 race for the White House, to the surprise of many observers, several prominent Americans of Indian origin occupied center stage. At one point, there were three presidential candidates in the fray with Indian roots—then vice president Kamala Harris on the Democratic side and Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy on the Republican side. Although none of these candidates emerged victorious, several high-profile Indian Americans were appointed to senior positions in the second, current administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Kash Patel 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. Of course, there is also Usha Vance—the wife of Vice President JD Vance—whose parents immigrated to the United States from India.

In any diaspora community, public attention tends to gravitate toward the most prominent members of the community—those who have reached the upper echelons of politics, business, entertainment, and academia. For Indian Americans, the list of such luminaries is long—and growing. If you turn on CNN, then there’s a decent chance you will spot Fareed Zakaria, the anchor of a popular foreign affairs program, or Sanjay Gupta, the medical commentator. On Netflix, shows created by and starring Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, or Hasan Minhaj are a click away. If you browse the pages of The Economist or The Wall Street Journal, then chances are you will read about decisions taken by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, or World Bank President Ajay Banga.

While these high-profile individuals command the spotlight, they represent only a sliver of the broader Indian American story. According to the U.S. Census, there are more than 5.2 million people of Indian origin residing in the United States. Excluding those of mixed race, the Asian Indian population became the largest Asian ethnic group in 2020.¹ Between 2010 and 2020, it grew by nearly 55 percent. Indians now make up the second-largest foreign-born immigrant group in the United States, after Mexicans. To understand the full complexity of Indian American life, one must look beyond the headlines and into the everyday experiences of this diverse, rapidly growing community. 

To that end, this study aims to shed light on ordinary Indian Americans and their lived social realities. Its findings are based on a nationally representative online survey of 1,206 Indian American residents in the United States—the 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS)—conducted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace between September 18 and October 15, 2024, in partnership with YouGov. The survey, drawing on both citizens and noncitizens in the United States, was conducted online using YouGov’s proprietary panel of U.S.-based participants and has a maximum margin of error of +/- 3 percent.

Findings from the 2024 survey build on the 2020 IAAS, a similar survey fielded by the authors ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Both the 2020 and 2024 iterations are cross-sectional surveys of the Indian American population. The IAAS is not a panel dataset that interviews the same respondents over time, even if its sample is representative of the Indian American population. Therefore, one must exercise caution in using the two surveys to interpret changes in the Indian American population over time.

This study addresses seven questions concerning Indian Americans’ social realities: 

1. How do Indian Americans engage in civic and political life in the United States?
2. How connected are diaspora members to India, their ancestral homeland?
3. How do Indian Americans balance and navigate multiple identities linked to their host and home countries?
4. What role do religion and caste play in the diaspora members’ lives?
5. To what extent is rising majoritarianism, both in India and the United States, a concern for the Indian diaspora?
6. How do Indian Americans experience and perceive discrimination in the United States?
7. How informed are Indian Americans about politics in India and the United States? 

This study is the third in a series of three empirical papers on Indian Americans’ views during the 2024 U.S. election cycle. The first, released in October 2024, explored the political attitudes and preferences of Indian Americans in advance of the November presidential election. The second, published in March 2025, examined their foreign policy attitudes.

Survey Overview

The data for this study are based on an original representative online survey—the 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey—of 1,206 Indian American adults. The survey was conducted by polling firm YouGov between September 18 and October 15, 2024. The survey included both U.S. citizen and noncitizen respondents.

YouGov recruited respondents from its proprietary panel of 500,000 active U.S.-based residents. For the 2024 IAAS, only adult respondents (ages eighteen and above) who identified as Indian American or a person of (Asian) Indian origin could participate. YouGov employed a sophisticated sample matching procedure to ensure that the respondent pool was representative of the Indian American community in the United States. All the analyses in this study employ sampling weights to ensure representativeness.²

The overall maximum margin of error for the IAAS sample is +/- 3 percent. This margin of error is calculated at the 95 percent confidence interval. Further methodological details can be found in appendix A, along with a state-wise map of survey respondents.

The survey instrument contained over one hundred questions organized across five modules: basic demographics, U.S. politics and voting behavior, foreign policy and U.S.-India relations, culture and social behavior, and Indian politics. Respondents were allowed to skip questions except for certain demographic questions that determined the flow of other survey items.

Table 1 provides a demographic profile of the IAAS sample in comparison to the Indian American population as a whole. The latter relies on data from the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) on the Asian Indian population in the United States.³ The ACS is an annual demographic survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and is widely used to construct sample survey frames in the United States.

Two Spheres of Engagement: Civic and Political

This section reviews Indian Americans’ engagement in the civic and political spheres of American life.

Civic Engagement

The survey asked respondents whether—in the past one year—they participated in any of four common methods of civic engagement: attending a protest, march, demonstration, or rally; attending a public meeting, such as for a school board or city council; performing voluntary community service without pay; or working with others in their community to solve a collective problem.

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 percent of respondents (see figure 1). Working with community members to solve a problem followed closely behind (14 percent). Attending a public meeting (8 percent) or participating in a protest or demonstration (6 percent) were less-common forms of civic engagement.

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

Figure 1 disaggregates the results by place of birth and citizenship status. Respondents were classified as belonging to one of three categories: U.S.-born citizen, foreign-born U.S. citizen, and noncitizen. Across all four civic engagement categories, U.S.-born citizens reported the highest levels of civic engagement, occasionally by a large margin (visible in community service and local problem-solving). There was no clear pattern, however, when it came to foreign-born citizens and noncitizens. For instance, noncitizens were marginally more likely to attend a protest (6 versus 4 percent) and perform community service (15 versus 12 percent) than foreign-born citizens, but they were less likely to engage in community problem-solving (8 versus 10 percent). Both groups were equally likely to attend a public meeting (7 percent apiece).

To assess the degree of civic involvement with diaspora-linked groups, the survey separately asked whether respondents belonged to any Indian American organizations or groups, such as cultural, regional, religious, caste, community, or school organizations. Twenty-eight percent of respondents replied in the affirmative. When respondents were asked explicitly about South Asian organizations or groups (to include those with a membership beyond the Indian diaspora alone), 22 percent reported ongoing membership.

Political Engagement

The survey also asked respondents about whether they participated, over the past one year, in any of five political activities: contributing money to a candidate, party, or campaign organization; contacting one of their elected representatives or another government official; discussing politics with friends and family; posting comments online about politics; or volunteering or working on a political campaign.

As shown in figure 2, two-thirds of all respondents (67 percent) reported discussing politics with friends and family—nearly 20 percentage points higher than 2020 levels (45 percent). 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. Indian Americans were much less likely to engage politically in other ways. Twenty-four percent reported posting comments on political issues online, 14 percent contributed money during the campaign, and 10 percent apiece 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 percent 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. For instance, nearly an identical share of U.S.-born and foreign-born citizens (70 and 69 percent, respectively) reported discussing politics with family and friends in the previous year, compared to 56 percent of noncitizens. Similarly, a nearly identical share of U.S.- and foreign-born citizens reported contributing money to a campaign (17 versus 15 percent); noncitizens lagged, at 5 percent. These gaps are expected: Noncitizens cannot vote and are often restricted from making campaign contributions. Yet 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.

When it comes to the other elements of political engagement, there was greater separation between U.S.-born citizens and their foreign-born counterparts. However, in all categories, U.S.-born citizens participated at the highest rates, followed by foreign-born citizens and then noncitizens. 

Sixteen percent of U.S.-born citizens contacted a government official, while only half as many foreign-born citizens (8 percent) and one-quarter as many noncitizens (4 percent) did the same. As far as online political engagement was concerned, 30 percent of U.S.-born citizens posted comments on political issues online, compared to 23 percent of foreign-born citizens and only 14 percent of noncitizens. In the final category—volunteering or working on a political campaign—19 percent of U.S.-born citizens reported engaging in this activity, compared to much smaller shares of foreign-born citizens (5 percent) and noncitizens (4 percent).

Dimensions of Connectivity to India

This section explores Indian Americans’ connections to their ancestral country, India. It does so by assessing measures across three dimensions: legal, personal, and cultural.

Legal Connectivity 

Forty-one percent of IAAS respondents—the modal category—were naturalized U.S. citizens (see figure 3). Thirty percent of respondents belonged to the second generation; that is, they were born in the United States to immigrant parents. A small fraction—just 5 percent—were born in the United States to parents who were also born in the United States, making them members of the third generation. An even smaller fraction, 3 percent, belonged to the fourth generation (they, their parents, and their grandparents were all born in the United States). Overall, 79 percent of the IAAS sample were U.S. citizens. The remaining 21 percent of the sample consisted of non–U.S. citizens.⁴

Indian law prohibits dual citizenship. However, people of Indian origin can apply for Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) status—a designation that, despite its name, does not confer actual citizenship. Instead, OCI status offers foreign nationals of Indian descent visa-free travel to India and privileges such as the ability to live and work in the country. While not a legal marker of nationality, obtaining an OCI card requires a degree of effort and documentation, making it a reasonable proxy for measuring the strength of an individual’s ties to India.

Overall, 38 percent of IAAS respondents without Indian citizenship reported having an OCI card.⁵ For those who were eligible but did not possess an OCI card (n=523), the survey further probed their reasoning. Fifty-nine percent of respondents reported that they either did not see the need or did not want OCI status. Nineteen percent reported that they did not know about the OCI card or its benefits and 14 percent said the application process was too cumbersome. Another 8 percent provided another (unspecified) reason.

Personal Connectivity

The survey asked respondents about their engagement across four specific dimensions of personal connectivity: travel to India over the past year, support for religious organizations in India in the past year, support for nonprofit organizations in India in the past year, and communication with friends and family in India at least once a month. If respondents engaged in none of these activities, they had the option of saying so.

As context, 48 percent of respondents reported that they had immediate family members (such as a spouse, parent, sibling, or child) residing in India. 

Fifty-five percent of respondents reported communicating with friends and family in India at least once per month, the most common form of personal engagement (see figure 4). Thirty-nine percent reported traveling to India in the past year, the second-most-common activity. The two other enumerated activities were less common: 17 percent supported religious organizations in India in the past year while 14 percent supported nonprofit organizations in India. Overall, 27 percent of the sample reported engaging in none of these activities.

There was interesting variation based on respondents’ backgrounds. Seventy-one percent of noncitizens reported communicating with friends and family in India regularly, compared to 56 percent of foreign-born citizens and 46 percent of U.S.-born citizens. Similarly, noncitizens were more likely to have traveled to India in the previous twelve months (46 percent) than either U.S.-born citizens (39 percent) or foreign-born citizens (34 percent). Noncitizens were also the most likely to support religious organizations in their ancestral country (21 percent), with 19 percent of U.S.-born citizens and 13 percent of foreign-born citizens reporting the same.

There was one dimension on which U.S.-born citizens were the most connected to India, and this was the support of nonprofits. Nineteen percent of U.S.-born citizens reported providing such support, compared to 13 percent of noncitizens and 10 percent of foreign-born citizens. Finally, when it came to respondents who had not engaged in any of the enumerated activities, foreign-born citizens led the pack at 33 percent, with U.S.-born citizens (25 percent) and noncitizens (17 percent) following behind.

Cultural Connectivity

The survey examined a second dimension of connectivity with India, which has to do with Indian culture (see figure 5). The survey asked whether respondents had watched Indian movies/television in the past month; had participated in or enjoyed Indian dance, music, or art in the past six months; or had eaten Indian food in the past month. Eight in ten Indian Americans (81 percent) reported eating Indian food in the past month—the most common of the three activities. Sixty-five percent watched Indian television or movies in the past month, while 38 percent engaged with Indian dance, music, or art in some form or fashion in the past six months. Only 7 percent 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. Noncitizens were roughly 20 percentage points more likely to have watched Indian television/movies (77 percent) than U.S.-born citizens (58 percent), with foreign-born citizens situated in between (64 percent). On the other two dimensions—arts and food—the differences between groups were not so large.

Being Indian American

All IAAS respondents were U.S. residents of Indian origin. However, this certainly does not mean that all respondents felt equally Indian or connected to the Indian part of their identity in the same manner. This section examines how Indian Americans understand their own identity. It first looks at the importance respondents placed on “being Indian.” Next, it looks at their own self-identification as a member of an immigrant minority group in the United States. It concludes by exploring how respondents navigated their multiple identities as Indians and Americans.

Importance of Being Indian

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

While respondents in general valued the Indian aspect of their identity, it seems reasonable to expect there to be variation on this score based on respondents’ place of birth. For instance, Indian Americans born in the United States might be less inclined to say that “being Indian” is important to them compared to their counterparts born in India. 

As figure 6 suggests, these differences existed, but they were modest. For instance, 45 percent of U.S.-born respondents reported that being Indian was very important to them, while another 41 percent stated it was somewhat important to them—for a total of 86 percent. On the other hand, 88 percent of foreign-born respondents reported the same, with a marginally higher share (49 percent) reporting that their Indian identity was very important.

What is noteworthy here is that, among those born in the United States, the importance of being Indian seems to have grown between 2020 and 2024 (see figure 7). In 2020, 70 percent of U.S.-born respondents stated that being Indian was very or somewhat important, a share that grew to 86 percent in 2024. Conversely, as one might expect, the percentage reporting that their Indian-ness was unimportant was cut in half, from 30 to 15 percent, over the four years.⁶

This is even more notable given that there was very little change among those born outside of the United States. There was a slight uptick in the importance foreign-born respondents placed on their Indian identity, but it is modest: 83 percent in 2020 compared to 88 percent in 2024.

Self-Identification

Thus far, there is an implicit assumption that respondents self-identify as Indian Americans, but that is a simplifying assumption. In reality, individuals can choose to self-identify in ways that reflect their own personal values and politics. 

To explore this possibility, the survey asked respondents to select the one label that best describes their background from a list of eight identity categories (plus an “other” option). While people may hold multiple overlapping identities, this question required respondents to prioritize the identity that feels most central.

As figure 8 demonstrates, roughly one-quarter self-identified with the label Indian American (26 percent). While this was the modal response, it was not the overwhelming choice of respondents in the sample. Twenty-two percent identified as Asian Indian, 20 percent identified as Indian, and 14 percent identified as Asian American. Other labels were less popular: 7 percent identified as South Asian American, 5 percent selected American, 2 percent identified as nonresident Indian, and only 1 percent identified as Asian American Pacific Islander. An additional 2 percent reported another form of self-identification.

Curiously, the share of IAAS respondents identifying as Indian American dropped significantly between 2020 and 2024. In 2020, 43 percent of respondents identified as Indian American, but that share dropped to 26 percent 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 percent in 2020 to 20 percent in 2024.

When disaggregated by place of birth, the data show that the decline in the propensity to identify as Indian American is common to both U.S.- and foreign-born respondents (see figure 9).

Among respondents born in the United States, the share identifying as Indian American declined from 48 to 29 percent between 2020 and 2024. The share of foreign-born respondents identifying this way dropped from 40 to 24 percent over the same period. Interestingly, there was a sharp rise in U.S.-born respondents identifying as Asian Indian; this share nearly doubled from 12 percent in 2020 to 23 percent in 2024. Among foreign-born respondents, the proportion identifying as Asian Indian soared from 2 to 23 percent (while the share identifying simply as Indian declined from 33 to 27 percent). The popularity of the Asian American label has also grown since 2020; 16 percent of U.S.-born respondents and 12 percent of foreign-born respondents embraced this label (up from 6 and 7 percent, respectively).

Navigating Multiple Identities

Members of all diaspora communities must grapple with navigating multiple identities, one associated with their ancestral homeland and another associated with their adopted homeland. The survey tried to understand how respondents perceived the push and pull between different aspects of their identity. Specifically, it asked respondents whether they felt more Indian than American, more American than Indian, equally Indian and American, or neither Indian nor American.

The modal response of respondents was that they felt equally Indian and American. Forty-seven percent selected this middle ground option. Twenty-four percent, however, stated that they felt more Indian than American, and an identical twenty-four percent said the opposite—that they felt more American than Indian. A small proportion, 5 percent, stated that they felt neither Indian nor American.

Not surprisingly, responses to this question varied by place of birth (see figure 10). Foreign-born citizens, for instance, were almost twice as likely as U.S.-born citizens to report that they felt more Indian than American (29 versus 17 percent). Conversely, 33 percent of U.S.-born citizens reported that they felt more American than Indian, compared to 19 percent of foreign-born respondents. But perhaps what is most telling is the large and virtually indistinguishable proportion of both categories of respondents who felt equally Indian and American: 46 percent of U.S.-born respondents and 48 percent of foreign-born respondents.

Again, the resurgence in Indian-ness is clear when comparing 2024 to 2020 data (see figure 11). In 2024, 47 percent of respondents said they felt equally Indian and American, roughly the same level as in 2020 (45 percent). However, the share of respondents who felt more American than Indian dropped 7 percentage points in four years, from 31 to 24 percent, while the share who felt more Indian than American rose from 19 percent in 2020 to 24 percent in 2024.

Religion and Caste

The survey asked several questions about respondents’ religious identities, religious practices, and caste affiliations.

Religion

Overall, 55 percent of respondents identified as Hindu—by far the largest category (see figure 12). Fourteen percent identified as Muslim, which is about equal to the Muslim proportion of the population in India. Eight percent identified as belonging to the Christian faith (4 percent Roman Catholic and 4 percent Protestant). Collectively, respondents who identified as atheist, agnostic, or no religion in particular accounted for 14 percent of the sample.

In addition to asking respondents about their religious identities, the survey also asked them a series of questions about religiosity. These questions followed a template developed by the Pew Research Center. When asked how important religion was in their life, 74 percent responded that it was very or somewhat important. There was a striking variation in responses by religion, however (see figure 13).

Seventy-one percent of Muslims reported that religion was very important in their life, with another 20 percent stating it was somewhat important. Fifty-seven percent of Christians said that religion was very important, and 32 percent stated it was somewhat important. Interestingly, Hindus placed less emphasis on religion’s importance: 38 percent stated it was very important, while 41 percent reported it was somewhat important. Religion’s importance was lowest for those in the “other” category, largely driven by respondents who were atheist, agnostic, or bore no religious affiliation.

The survey next asked about religious attendance, or the number of times respondents attended religious services (aside from weddings and funerals). Twenty-eight percent reported they attended services once or several times a week, and 14 percent reported attending once or twice a month. Most respondents attended religious services sparingly: 58 percent said that they attended religious services a few times a year or seldom/never.

Once more, the variation by religion was easily discernible (see figure 14). But in this case, Christians and Muslims both reported very high levels of religious attendance—54 and 51 percent, respectively, attended once or several times a week. Hindus’ reported religious attendance was significantly lower, with 22 percent attending services regularly and another 17 percent attending once or twice a month. Most Hindus rarely attended religious services: 58 percent selected “a few times a year” or “seldom or never.” The “other” category was the least likely to attend services, with 58 percent reporting that they seldom or never attend religious functions and 17 percent reporting they attended a few times a year.

Extensive survey data collected by Pew Research Center in India in 2020 suggested that regular (weekly or more) religious observance was higher in India, especially for Hindus and Muslims. Seventy percent of Indian Muslims reported attending religious services at least once per week (compared to 51 percent in the United States in 2024), and 50 percent of Indian Hindus reported doing the same (compared to 22 percent of those in the United States in 2024). Rates among Christians were roughly the same across countries (55 percent in India and 54 percent in the United States). 

In addition, the 2024 IAAS survey asked respondents how frequently they prayed (outside of the times they attended religious services). Forty-five percent of respondents reported praying once or several times per day, and another 17 percent reported praying once or several times per week. Ten percent reported praying a few times a month, and 25 percent stated they seldom or never prayed.

Muslims and Christians reported being the most dedicated to prayer, according to figure 15. Seventy-one percent of Muslims and 58 percent of Christians reported praying once or several times a day, while 44 percent of Hindus reported doing the same. Twenty-five percent of respondents in the “other category” prayed daily. In India, according to Pew Research Center, daily prayer was practiced by 77 of Christians, 66 percent of Muslims, and 59 percent of Hindus.

Caste

The survey also asked about respondents’ caste identities. Caste has acquired a newfound resonance in American society in recent years due to several, interconnected factors.

First, there have been 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.  This has injected caste into the public debate in the United States like never before. Second, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and concerns about systemic racism in the United States, several authors, observers, and activists drew direct parallels between the caste system in India and racial discrimination in the United States. This created new bonds of solidarity between Dalit (lower caste) advocacy groups in the United States and their minority counterparts. Third, universities, localities, and even some states have proposed new regulations prohibiting discrimination based on caste. For instance, in 2022, California State University added caste as a protected category in the university’s antidiscrimination policy (a measure later implemented by Brown University). This was followed by the Seattle City Council’s 2023 decision to include caste as a protected category under the city’s antidiscrimination laws. That same year the California legislature passed a bill prohibiting caste discrimination, a measure ultimately vetoed by the state’s Democratic governor (on the grounds that existing antidiscrimination laws encompassed the issue of caste).

Of the survey’s 1,206 respondents, 32 percent reported that they did not identify with any caste (see figure 16).⁷ Forty-six percent identified as General or Upper caste, 5 percent of respondents identified as members of the Other Backward Classes (OBC), 2 percent identified as Scheduled Caste (or Dalit), and 1 percent identified as Scheduled Tribe of Adivasi. Fourteen percent of respondents did not know what their caste identity was.

The survey then asked respondents about their views on new laws or regulations prohibiting discrimination based on an individual’s caste identity (called anti-caste laws). A decisive majority—77 percent—of respondents supported such measures (see figure 17). Nearly half of all respondents, 49 percent, strongly supported such alterations. Only 11 percent of respondents opposed caste-based anti-discrimination laws or regulations, while 12 percent expressed no opinion.⁸

On support for anti-caste measures, there was variation by respondents’ places of birth. Eighty-three percent of U.S.-born citizens strongly or somewhat supported new rules to prohibit caste discrimination, compared to 75 percent of naturalized citizens and 67 percent of noncitizens. Noncitizens were also much more likely to report “don’t know” (18 percent) to this question compared to either U.S.-born citizens (8 percent) or foreign-born citizens (13 percent).

Notably, support for new anti-caste prohibitions was stronger among respondents not belonging to the Upper Caste category, although the difference was not large. Among this latter group, 86 percent supported new rules, compared to 79 percent of Upper Caste respondents and 73 percent of those without a caste affiliation.

There was a modest degree of partisan variation on this question. While there was broad support across party lines, Democrats (81 percent) and independents (80 percent) were more likely to support new measures on caste compared to Republicans (70 percent). Interestingly, when disaggregated by respondents’ preferred political party in India, there were no significant differences between supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the opposition Indian National Congress. This is notable because pro-Hindu groups typically perceived as close to the BJP and its ecosystem have been the most vocally opposed to caste-based regulation in the United States, on the grounds that it demonizes Hindus.

Majoritarianism

A common theme in both American and Indian politics in recent years has been the rise of majoritarian nationalism. In the United States, Trump’s first presidential campaign was marked by thinly veiled appeals to white majoritarian sentiment. On the campaign trail, Trump and his surrogates frequently spoke about the threat of unchecked immigration, the destruction of American culture, and the need to speak up for the country’s forgotten voices. As president, Trump doubled down on many of these themes.

For instance, in the aftermath of the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a white supremacist gathering that saw neo-Nazis march through the streets and violently clash with counterprotesters, Trump downplayed the violence and famously stated that there were “very fine people on both sides.” Trump’s statement provoked a major controversy for its minimizing of racist elements and implicit endorsement of white nationalism.

The survey probed respondents’ views on the threat they perceived emanating from white nationalism. Specifically, they were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the statement that the August 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville exemplified a growing threat to minorities in America.⁹

The overwhelming majority of Indian American respondents agreed that it does (see figure 18). Eighty-one percent either strongly or somewhat agreed with the proposition. Sixteen percent somewhat disagreed, and four percent strongly disagreed.

Rising majoritarianism has also been a hallmark of Indian politics, especially since the BJP’s return to power in 2014. Indeed, over the past decade since Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed power, there have been numerous critiques of the vitality of India’s democracy, chief among them a growing sense of religious majoritarianism underpinned by the rise of the Sangh Parivar—the constellation of more than three dozen Hindu nationalist organizations, including the ruling BJP.

To probe respondents’ views on nationalism, the survey asked respondents to reflect on a controversial incident that took place during the 2024 Indian general election campaign. Specifically, the survey presented respondents with the following piece of factual information: “At an April 2024 campaign rally, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to Muslims as ‘infiltrators’ and warned that an opposition victory would result in Hindus’ land and mangalsutras (wedding necklaces) being forcibly redistributed.” The survey then asked whether respondents agreed with the notion that this language was an example of growing threats to minorities in India.

Seventy percent of respondents either strongly or somewhat agreed that Modi’s statement exemplified the growing threat to minorities in India (see figure 19). Just 31 percent of respondents disagreed with the notion.

Overall, 69 percent of Indian Americans were concerned about the threat of Hindu majoritarianism in India, compared to 81 percent who recognized the prospect of rising white nationalism in the United States. Disaggregating responses by religious identity does show some variation, although perhaps not as much as one might think (see figure 20). 

On the question of Hindu majoritarianism, Hindus were the least likely to agree that Modi’s speech exemplified the growing threat to minorities; two-thirds of Hindus agreed with the proposition. That contrasted with 75 percent of Muslims, 71 percent of Christians, and 74 percent of respondents from other religious categories.

The threat perception was higher for all groups when it came to white nationalism in the United States. Eighty percent of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians agreed with the proposition that the Charlottesville rally represented a white nationalist threat. Eighty-two percent of respondents identifying as “other” similarly agreed.

Of all religious groups, only Hindus were significantly less likely to express concern about the threat of Hindu majoritarianism when compared to white nationalism. For all non-Hindu groups, the average threat perception of white supremacy was higher than for Hindu majoritarianism, but the levels were statistically indistinguishable.

Discrimination

One social reality that many minorities in the United States regrettably confront is discrimination. The survey asked respondents whether they personally experienced discrimination in the past twelve months on one of five grounds—their skin color, country of origin, religion, gender, or caste. This measure was based on respondents self-reporting their own firsthand experiences of encountering discriminatory behavior (see figure 21).

One in two respondents (49 percent) reported experiencing discrimination in the past one year. The most common form of discrimination was biased treatment based on one’s skin color, something 31 percent of respondents experienced. Twenty percent of the sample reported being discriminated against due to their country of origin, 19 percent experienced discrimination due to their religion, and 15 percent encountered gender-based discrimination. The least-common form of discrimination that respondents reported was caste-based discrimination, experienced by 7 percent of all respondents.

As the 2020 IAAS found, U.S.-born citizens were much more likely to report discrimination than others. According to the 2024 data, 64 percent of U.S.-born citizens reported being discriminated against, compared to 38 percent of foreign-born citizens and 42 percent of noncitizens.

The survey followed this up by asking about respondents’ perceptions of discrimination. It asked respondents the extent to which they perceived significant discrimination in the United States on caste or anti-Hindu, anti-Muslim, or anti-Sikh sentiment. The authors selected these options based on their salience in society at the time the survey was fielded (figure 22).

Overall, Indian Americans perceived discrimination against Muslims to be the most significant: 58 percent of respondents reported that it was very or somewhat significant. This was followed by discrimination against Sikhs (44 percent), Hindus (40 percent), and caste-based discrimination (38 percent). Across categories, between 13 and 18 percent of respondents expressed no opinion.

Political Knowledge

When discussing the attitudes of the Indian diaspora in the United States, one question that often arises is the extent of Indian Americans’ knowledge about politics and political developments in India. After all, there are good reasons to expect that Indians who immigrated to the United States from India or a third country may gradually lose touch with the politics of their homeland. For the children of immigrants born in the United States, this distance may be even greater.

To establish a measure of political knowledge, the survey asked all respondents three straightforward, factual questions about Indian politics and political history:

• Who selects the prime minister of India?
• Who was India’s first prime minister after independence?
• Which colonial power controlled India prior to the country’s independence?

To create a baseline against which to evaluate responses, the survey also asked respondents three factual questions about American politics and political history:

• Which of the following rights is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?
• For how many years is a U.S. senator elected—that is, how many years are there in one full term of office for a U.S. senator?
• When a justice is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, how long are they appointed for?

Across the entire sample—which comprised naturalized citizens, U.S.-born citizens, and noncitizens alike—fewer than 40 percent of respondents (39 percent) correctly identified that the party or coalition with a Lok Sabha majority selects the prime minister (see figure 23). Thirty-one percent said it was the voters’ decision, 10 percent said it was the president’s decision, and 4 percent said it was up to the state legislatures. Seventeen percent did not know the answer.

Respondents fared much better on the other two questions on India. Seventy-three percent correctly identified Jawaharlal Nehru as the first prime minister, although 13 percent could not say. Eighty-eight percent of respondents correctly identified Great Britain as India’s preindependence colonizer.

Respondents had significant knowledge gaps when it came to U.S. politics as well (see figure 24). Sixty-two percent correctly responded that freedom of religion is guaranteed by the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Fifty-two percent correctly identified that a U.S. senator serves a six-year term. And 61 percent accurately noted that Supreme Court justices enjoy a lifetime appointment.¹⁰

Were there differences in political knowledge based on respondents’ places of birth? Figure 25 displays an additive index of political knowledge on India (with the x-axis representing how many of the three knowledge questions they answered correctly) disaggregated by country of birth. Unsurprisingly, foreign-born respondents were more likely to get all three questions correct compared to their U.S.-born counterparts (36 versus 27 percent), although a reasonable share of them (22 percent) got either zero or only one item correct. Roughly equal shares (42 percent of foreign-born and 40 percent of U.S.-born respondents) got two out of three correct.

When it came to knowledge of U.S. politics, 40 percent of U.S.-born respondents answered all questions correctly compared to 29 percent of foreign-born respondents (see figure 26). The latter, in turn, were twice as likely to answer zero items correctly (22 versus 10 percent).

Conclusion

This study offers a broad overview of the social realities of Indian Americans. Although it is far from exhaustive, it highlights several key issues pertaining to how Indian Americans engage with civic and political institutions, relate to India, navigate questions of identity, confront discrimination, and assess the threat posed by rising nationalism.

It also provides nuance and context that add a dose of reality to sweeping generalizations about the community’s proclivities. For instance, 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. But the evidence here suggests that there are multiple forms of connectivity, many of which are actively practiced even by those born in the United States.

Notably, respondents’ acknowledgement and appreciation of their Indian-ness seems to be rising, rather than falling. While much of the media reporting around Indian Americans emphasizes their achievements and successes, they are neither immune to discrimination nor isolated from the rising tides of nationalism. Finally, 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 U.S.-India relations, these knowledge gaps could lead to misunderstandings or even confusion.

Immigrants’ self-identities can be a contentious political issue, not least within the community itself. This study demonstrates that self-identities are liminal, as seen from the decline of the idea of “Indian American” as an identity category and the concomitant rise of the term “Asian Indian,” even as there are few takers for the label “South Asian.” This finding is a reminder that researchers and analysts should not be too glib or superficial in their assessments of complex social groups. Indian Americans, to paraphrase Walt Whitman, contain multitudes.

Appendix A: Methodology

Respondents for this survey were recruited from an existing panel administered by YouGov. YouGov maintains a proprietary, double opt-in survey panel comprised of 500,000 U.S. residents who are active participants in YouGov’s surveys.

Online Panel Surveys

Online panels are not the same as traditional, probability-based surveys. However, due to the decline in response rates, the rise of the internet, smartphone penetration, and the evolution in statistical techniques, nonprobability panels—such as the one YouGov employs—have quickly become the norm in survey research.¹¹ In the 2024 U.S. election cycle, for instance, The Economist partnered with YouGov to track the presidential election and political attitudes using a customized panel.¹² YouGov’s surveys have been repeatedly found to be among the most reliable in predicting U.S. voting behavior due to their rigorous methodology, which is detailed below.

Respondent Selection and Sampling Design

The data for this study are based on a unique survey of 1,206 people of Indian origin. The survey was conducted between September 18 and October 15, 2024. To provide an accurate picture of the Indian American community writ large, the full sample contains both U.S. citizens (N=982) and non-U.S. citizens (N=224).

Sample Matching

To produce the final dataset, respondents were weighted to a sampling frame on gender, age, race/ethnicity, and education. The sampling frame is a politically representative modeled frame of U.S. adults, based upon several reliable national surveys and administrative datasets: the American Community Survey (ACS) public use microdata file, public voter file records, the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration supplements, the 2020 National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll, and the 2020 Cooperative Election Study (CES), including demographics and 2020 presidential vote.

To generate the weights, the respondent cases and the frame were combined, and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, and region. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles.

The weights were then raked on education, region, and a two-way stratification of age and gender to produce the final weight.

Data Analysis and Sources of Error

All the analyses for this study were conducted using the statistical software R and employ sample weights to ensure representativeness.

The analyses in this study focus on the entire sample of citizens and noncitizens (N=1,206), which has a margin of error of +/- 3 percent. All margins are calculated at the 95 percent confidence interval. 

Figure 27 shows the geographic distribution of survey respondents by state of residence.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge numerous individuals and organizations for making this study possible. We are grateful to Alexander Marsolais, Clara Cullen, Alexis Essa, and their colleagues at YouGov for their help with the design and execution of the survey. Caroline Mallory also aided with the design of the survey.

This project has been reviewed and approved by the American University Institutional Review Board (Protocol #IRB-2025-32).

At Carnegie, we owe special thanks to Haley Clasen for editorial support for this paper. We would also like to acknowledge Amanda Branom and Jocelyn Soly for lending their graphic design talents to the data visualization contained in this study. Haley, Amanda, and Jocelyn have been instrumental in producing all three studies published using the IAAS 2024 data. Sharmeen Aly, Alana Brase, Aislinn Familetti, Clarissa Guerrero, Helena Jordheim, Jessica Katz, Heewon Park, Mira Varghese, Katelynn Vogt, and Cameron Zotter contributed design, editorial, and production assistance.

While we are grateful to all our collaborators, any errors found in this study are entirely the authors’.