Indian Community • New York City
Hindi-Speaking Community in New York City
47,387 Hindi speakers • The most dispersed Indian community in the metro • Hicksville, Forest Hills & Queens Village • Anchored by the Ganesh Temple in Flushing
47,387 Hindi speakers makes this New York’s second-largest Indian language community — and its most scattered. There is no Hindi neighbourhood in the way there is a Punjabi Richmond Hill or a Bengali Jamaica. Families from Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana are spread from Hicksville to Forest Hills to central Westchester, and the largest single concentration in the state is not in the city at all. What holds the community together is institutional rather than geographic: the Ganesh Temple in Flushing, the India Association of Long Island, and the India Day Parade on Madison Avenue every August.
Last updated: August 2026 • Full Indian Community guide for New York City →
Where Hindi-Speaking Families Live
No area of New York holds more than about 6% of the metro’s Hindi speakers — compare that with Punjabi, where three adjoining Queens areas hold more than two-fifths. This is a community defined by dispersal (ACS 2024).
Hicksville and central Nassau County
2,802 Hindi speakers — the largest concentration in New York State, and it is on Long Island rather than in the city. Hicksville has a Little India along Broadway and Route 107 that has been developing since around 1990, with more than 5,000 Indian residents making up roughly 12% of the hamlet. The India Association of Long Island, founded in 1978, runs Holi, Vaisakhi, India Fest and Diwali events across Nassau and Suffolk. Plainview, Syosset and Jericho continue the settlement, with some of the strongest school districts in the state.
Forest Hills & Rego Park
2,779 — the urban counterweight. Prewar co-op buildings, the E and F trains into Manhattan in about twenty-five minutes, and no car needed. This is where Hindi-speaking professionals working in Manhattan concentrate, and it has a very different character from the Long Island suburbs.
Queens Village, Bellerose & Rosedale
2,245 — houses rather than apartments, and the same eastern Queens corridor that anchors the Gujarati and Malayali communities.
Westchester and the northern suburbs
1,726 in central Westchester, with more in the northwest of the county. Westchester draws Hindi-speaking families in medicine, academia and finance, and the commute into Manhattan runs on Metro-North rather than the subway.
Across Nassau and Queens
North Hempstead (1,521), Richmond Hill and Kew Gardens (1,518), western Hempstead (1,267), Jackson Heights (1,205), Flushing and Murray Hill (1,187), northeast Hempstead (1,140), Elmhurst and Corona (1,057) and Glen Cove and northern Oyster Bay (1,029).
What the number does and does not mean. Hindi is a first language for families from the Hindi belt, and a second language for a great many Indians from elsewhere. Census table B16001 records the language spoken at home, so a Marathi or Kannada family speaking their own language domestically is not counted here even if they are fluent in Hindi. Read 47,387 as the size of the Hindi-speaking-at-home population, not as the number of people in New York who speak Hindi.
Temples & Religious Life
The Hindu Temple Society of North America, Flushing
45-57 Bowne Street — Sri Maha Vallabha Ganapati Devasthanam, universally called the Ganesh Temple. The Society was incorporated in January 1970, acquired the site of a disused Russian Orthodox church, built to Agama Sastra specification, and consecrated the temple on 4 July 1977, making it one of the first traditional Hindu temples constructed in the United States.
It is South Indian in form and liturgy, which is worth knowing if you are arriving from North India — the priests, the rituals and the calendar reflect that tradition. It is nonetheless the anchor institution for Hindu New York across regional lines, and its basement canteen is a city institution in its own right.
Others in Flushing and beyond
BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir is a few blocks away at 43-38 Bowne Street, with a second mandir on Long Island. Bowne Street is one of the densest concentrations of Hindu religious institutions in the country. Additional temples and satsang groups serve Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland, and ISKCON maintains a long-established presence in Brooklyn.
Hindi-speaking Muslim, Sikh, Jain and Christian families
The Hindi belt is not uniformly Hindu, and this page should not imply otherwise. Urdu and Hindi are closely related and New York has 65,972 Urdu speakers — the most of any metro we track — spanning Indian Muslim, Pakistani and Hyderabadi families and concentrated in the Hempstead area of Nassau County. Bihari and Rajasthani families, both Hindi-speaking, have their own traditions; see our Bihari and Rajasthani national guides.
Festivals & Community Life
The India Day Parade
The largest Indian parade outside India, organised by the Federation of Indian Associations NY-NJ-CT-NE. The 44th edition runs on Sunday 16 August 2026 along Madison Avenue from East 38th Street to East 27th Street, with a street festival and cultural programme at the end of the route. The Empire State Building is lit in the Indian tricolour on 14 August and there is a flag hoisting in Times Square on 15 August.
FIA also runs state-specific events through the year — Bihar Diwas, Odisha Diwas, Gujarat-Maharashtra Day — which are often the most direct route into your particular regional community.
The festival calendar
Diwali is an official New York City public school holiday, added to the Department of Education calendar from 2023. Note that in the 2026-27 school year it falls on Sunday 8 November and so produces no day off — check the calendar each year rather than assuming. Holi in spring is celebrated widely, including at the Phagwah Parade in Richmond Hill, which is an Indo-Caribbean event that Hindi-speaking families attend in numbers. Navratri, Janmashtami, Raksha Bandhan, Karva Chauth and Chhath Puja — the last observed at the water’s edge by Bihari families — fill out the year.
Language and culture
Hindi classes run mainly through temples and cultural associations rather than school districts. The Ganesh Temple and the India Association of Long Island are the usual starting points. Bollywood is well served: several cinemas across Queens and Long Island run Hindi releases on opening weekend, and the metro is a reliable stop for touring Indian musicians and playback singers.
Food & Shopping
North Indian food is the cuisine Americans think of as Indian, which makes it the easiest to find and the hardest to find done well. What Hindi-speaking families in New York generally want is regional and domestic rather than restaurant: the food of Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Bihar and Haryana rather than the standardised curry-house menu.
Awadhi cooking from Lucknow — the slow-cooked kebabs, biryani and korma of the UP nawabi tradition. Rajasthani dal baati churma, gatte ki sabzi and the dry-region cooking built around minimal water. Bihari litti chokha, sattu and the mustard-oil profile shared with Bengal. Punjabi-Delhi chole bhature, rajma chawal and the tandoor.
Street food is the strongest suit: chaat of every kind, golgappe, aloo tikki, samosa, and the sweets — jalebi, gulab jamun, barfi, ladoo — sold by weight for functions.
Where to shop: 74th Street and 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights remains the metro’s central Indian commercial district, with groceries, sweet shops, spice merchants and restaurants inside two or three blocks. Hicksville’s Broadway and Route 107 corridor is the Long Island equivalent and closer for Nassau families. Both carry atta, whole spices, fresh paneer, seasonal produce like methi and sarson, and the specific brands families expect. Halal butchers serve the Urdu-speaking and Muslim communities across Queens and Nassau.
Choosing a Neighbourhood
Because this community is dispersed, the choice comes down to your commute, your budget and your school priorities rather than to where your people already are — there is a Hindi-speaking presence almost everywhere in the metro.
Forest Hills and Rego Park if you work in Manhattan and want to stay car-free. Twenty-five minutes on the E or F, prewar co-ops, and a walkable neighbourhood. You pay New York City income tax of up to 3.876% on top of state tax.
Hicksville, Plainview, Syosset and Jericho if schools are the priority. Some of the strongest districts in New York State, a substantial South Asian presence, the Little India strip on Broadway, and no city income tax — offset by Nassau property taxes near 1.79% of market value and a car for each adult.
Queens Village, Bellerose and Floral Park for the middle path: houses rather than apartments, still inside the city, close to the Nassau line and to the eastern Queens Indian corridor.
Westchester if you are in medicine, academia or finance in the northern suburbs, commuting on Metro-North rather than the subway.
Whichever you pick, the Ganesh Temple in Flushing is reachable from all of them, and for many families that is the fixed point they organise the rest around.
For cost of living, the job market, schools, climate and practical information covering all communities in New York, see our Indian Community in New York City guide.
Data Sources
U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 2024 5-Year Estimates, table B16001 (Hindi and Urdu spoken at home, persons aged 5 and over), aggregated from Public Use Microdata Areas covering the five boroughs plus Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland counties • Temple and community organisation websites and direct verification • Federation of Indian Associations NY-NJ-CT-NE • NYC Department of Education calendar • Queens rent and property tax data as cited. Read our full research methodology →