SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA, May 12, 2011: Two decades ago, Indian-Americans started changing the story of Silicon Valley’s Asian community. In a striking example of the growth and growing diversity of the Bay Area’s Asian-Americans, the spiking Indian-American population has fanned out to affluent towns offering excellent schools, from Cupertino in the heart of Silicon Valley to San Ramon in the East Bay.
The trend — revealed this week in the latest snapshot from the 2010 census — is surfacing in tabla drumming and Sanskrit classes offered out of living rooms, Indian markets and world-class cricket fields.
“My whole world is complete within two miles of my home,” said Kinjal Buch, 46, an Indian-born engineer who calls Cupertino home.
Among Asian groups, none grew more rapidly than Indian-Americans. Their numbers in Santa Clara County jumped from about 67,000 to nearly 118,000 in a mere decade. It’s hard to imagine now, but there were only about 5,200 Indian-Americans in the county in 1981. In California, the number of Indian-Americans grew by 68 percent to 528,176 over the decade, and in the nine-county Bay Area the number grew by 53 percent to 244,493.