By Sarah Chatta, Maya King and Jeff Adelson

Thirty years ago, when Ramesh Kilawan’s Indo-Caribbean family moved to their home in South Ozone Park in Queens, only one other South Asian family lived on the quiet block. Today there are more than a dozen.

Over time, Mr. Kilawan’s community grew, as thousands of Muslim, Sikh and Hindu immigrants moved to nearby Jamaica and Richmond Hill, filling the streets with Caribbean roti shops, Indian grocers and temples.

But even as the influx transformed the neighborhoods into areas now known as Little Punjab and Little Guyana, few in the South Asian diaspora were deeply engaged in electoral politics until this year, when Zohran Mamdani’s bid for mayor began to catch fire.

Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens and a democratic socialist, emerged victorious in the Democratic primary in June, fueled in part by a novel, diverse coalition that included broad swaths of South Asian voters in New York.

The election signals a high-water mark for political participation among South Asian New Yorkers.

Turnout among South Asian voters increased by 40 percent compared with the 2021 primary, according to a New York Times analysis of voter records and demographic estimates based on voters’ names and neighborhoods from a nonpartisan data firm, L2.

The community still only represents a small share of voters. There are roughly 450,000 South Asians in New York City, about 5 percent of the population. They have typically made up a smaller share of the electorate than other ethnic constituencies, in part because a large share of the community is made up of noncitizens or those too young to vote. But the community has been growing rapidly, including a Bangladeshi population that has nearly tripled in the last decade.

To read the entire article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/nyregion/mamdani-south-asian-voters.html

Photo credit: Lev Radin/Shutterstock