Pan-Asian Metropolis — Indian Los Angeles

INTRODUCTION

Despite its historic and cultural importance, there seems to be surprisingly little out there about Metro Los Angeles’s sizable Indian community. Los Angeles is, after all, known for its unparalleled ethnic diversity — especially of Asian communities — and India is the most populous nation (Asian or otherwise) on Earth. But, for whatever reason, searching up anything online yields very little — and even if you put “East Indian” in quotes, the results are almost invariably dominated by indigenous Americans. I found even less on the shelves of bookstores and libraries.

We rightly celebrate the fact that Los Angeles has the country’s largest Burmese, Indonesian, and Mongolian communities. And reasonably informed Angelenos known that Los Angeles is home to the largest Cambodian and Thai communities outside of their respective homelands. Yet, even if their numbers are all added together, those communities still amount to less than half of our Indian population. The Indian community is even bigger, in fact, than Los Angeles’s relatively higher profile Iranian and Taiwanese communities (also the largest outside of their homelands).

I suspect Indian Los Angeles is overlooked for several reasons — none of them exactly nefarious. For starters, even though Los Angeles’s Indian community is large — there are many cities with much larger Indian populations. Not only is Los Angeles’s Indian community not the largest outside of India, it’s not even the largest in the US. For that matter, it’s not even the largest in California.

Los Angeles’s Indian community is also highly diffuse. The allure of uniplexes, low crime, and good schools is apparently stronger than the gravitational pull of any Indian enclave. Some suburbs, like Culver City, Irvine, Santa Clarita, and Torrance, which have noticeable Indian presences — even though in none do Indians make up the most or second-most numerous ethnicities. There is a neighborhood known, widely if unofficially, as Little India — but the city in which it’s located did its best to hide that fact by opposing the installation of freeway signs that would’ve announced its existence and raised its profile.

Make no mistake, though. The presence of Indians in Los Angeles has heavily influenced the civil rights movement; radically shaped our vegetarian culinary scene; and profoundly influenced religious and spiritual leanings, fashions in music and clothing and more. The exchange has gone in the other direction, too. If not for Los Angeles, there would be no Bollywood — or, at the very least, it would be known by another name.

HISTORY OF INDIAN AMERICANS, CALIFORNIANS, AND ANGELENOS

Indian Americans are, today, the second-most numerous Asian American people, after Chinese Americans. The first Indian Americans were brought to the American colonies by the East India Company in the 17th century as servants and slaves. Most Indians who came to the US voluntarily, though, settled in the West — at least initially. Most, too, were Sikh men. By 1900, there were likely between roughly 715 and 2,000 Indian Sikhs living here, primarily in California. Many had come from British Columbia, where they’d been invited to work as farmers, only to be chased south, across the border, by murderous Canadian racists. After finding work, for a time, in the lumber mills of Bellingham and Everett, Washington, these Sikh pioneers found themselves again faced with racist hostility. After the Bellingham Riots of 5 September 1907, many Sikhs again migrated south, ultimately settling in Northern California.

Within a few years, there were yet more Indians emigrating to Northern California from the port of Hong Kong to the Angel Island Immigration Station, which was in operation in San Francisco from 1910 until 1940. Angel Island was the West Coast’s equivalent of Ellis Island in the East. Naturally, whereas Ellis Island’s arrivals were mostly Italian, Jewish, Polish, German, and Irish — in short, Europeans — Angel Island mostly processed Asian immigrants from China, India, Japan, and the Philippines — although many Mexicans came through there, too.

These Indian Californians often found work for railroad companies like Southern Pacific Railroad and Western Pacific Railroad. Those railways, along with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company, all passed through the town of Stockton. Not coincidentally, it was there, in 1912, that the first Sikh Gurudwara was established in the US. It was also not coincidentally followed by a swift response — the passage of the California Alien Land Law of 1913, which prevented non-citizens from owning land in California — and only white people, then, were eligible for naturalization.

“Whiteness,” as a concept based on pseudoscience, has always been a fuzzy and malleable concept. Bhicaji Framji Balsara, an immigrant from India, had been granted citizenship in 1909. Basara was a Parsi. India is highly ethnically and linguistically diverse. There are 705 officially recognized ethnic groups and quite a few more that are not officially recognized. Indians come in many shades and this judge, it seems, reckoned that Parsis, at least, were white. He also noted that Balsara was “a gentleman of high character and exceptional intelligence,” which, it seems, was not a strike against him. Another Indian immigrant, Akhoy Kumar Mozumdar, was granted citizenship in 1913.

When Bhagat Singh Thind applied for citizenship, however, he was denied. He was a writer and lecturer on spirituality. He’d served in the US Army during the First World War. It was decided, though, that he was not white. He went to court, represented by Sakharam Ganesh Pandit — a lawyer and civil rights activist, and, since 1914, an American citizen. On 19 February 1923, the US Supreme Court issued a verdict against him and all Indians in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind. After that, all Indians were ineligible for citizenship. Some, like Mozumdar, had their citizenship revoked. Bhagat Singh Thind’s citizenship was restored in 1935, after a law was passed making veterans — even non-white ones — eligible for citizenship.

Not only were Indians ineligible for naturalization, anti-miscegenation laws made it illegal from them to marry whites. It did not prevent the mixing of non-whites, though, and in the West, many Punjabi men married Mexican women before emigrating to the US illegally. In fact, between 1920 and 1935, roughly 1,900 undocumented Indian Mexican immigrants are estimated to have entered the US. Their immigration was, in many cases, facilitated by the Ghadar Movement, a party whose main purpose was to secure the independence of India from the United Kingdom. Many of these Indian Mexican families settled in the Border Region‘s Imperial County.

Most Indians in the West, until the 1940s, worked in agriculture. The Bracero program brought thousands of Mexican guest workers to California’s farms. As a result, many Indian Californians pivoted out of agriculture into other occupations. Many opened markets. Many others found work as taxi drivers. A group of Gujaratis opened hotels in Sacramento and Stockton. By 1955, two-thirds of hotels in San Francisco were run by Gujaratis. From there, they eventually came to own many hotels and motels across the US within a few decades.

Dalip Singh Saund was born in Chhajulwadi in 1899. In 1919, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the University of Punjab. In 1920, he came to California and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied food preservation. In 1925, he began farming in Imperial County. He organized the Indian Association of America in 1942, which was instrumental in lobbying for the passage of the Luce-Celler Act.

The Luce–Celler Act opened the door to would-be Americans ever so slightly. As a result of its passage, in 1946, up to 100 Indians and 100 Filipinos (occupied by the US from 1898 until 1946) could become Americans annually. In 1956, Dalip Singh Saund became the first Sikh and Asian elected to the US Congress representing California’s 29th District — representing most of the east San Fernando Valley. SG Pandit died in Los Angeles in 1959. Bhagat Singh Thind died in Los Angeles in 1967.

One year later, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (enacted in 1968), finally opened the door to immigrants from outside of Northern Europe. Between the passage of the Immigration Act and 1994, roughly 40,000 Indians immigrated to the US annually. Many came from countries other than India, including, especially, Australia, Canada, Fiji, Guyana, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia, Mauritius, Singapore, South Africa, Suriname, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, and the United Kingdom.

Increasingly, Indian immigrants began to favor the East Coast rather than West and today, the New York City-Newark Metropolitan Area contains the largest population of Indian Americans by far. The older, San Francisco Bay Area community, is still the nation’s second-largest. The growth of the Information Technology industry in cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, and Pune lead to an influx of immigration to the Silicon Valley, with immigration from India peaking in 2000, when 90,000 arrived.

With large Indian communities in both the San Francisco Bay Area and Metro Los Angeles, California — with a 2023 population of 898,267 Indians — still has by far the largest statewide population of Indian Americans of any state. It’s followed, in descending order, by New Jersey, Texas, and New York. As far as cities, the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth largest communities are those of Chicago; Dallas; Washington, DC; and Los Angeles. As of the 2020 Census, there were 201,538 Indian Americans living in Metro Los Angeles. The most spoken Indian languages in Los Angeles are, in descending order, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Urdu, Gujarati, Nepali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada. That list, however, includes figures from several other South Asian peoples, namely Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, and Nepalis.

INDIAN RELIGION AND THE INFLUENCE OF “EASTERN MYSTICISM” ON LOS ANGELES’S CULTS AND NEW RELIGIONS

When I reflect upon the influence of other cultures on Los Angeles’s, I usually think of music and/or food. With Indian culture — while both of those are important within Los Angeles (and will be explored shortly) I can’t think of any other culture that has had so much religious influence on Los Angeles since the missionization and subjugation of Native peoples under the Spanish. While only about 2% of Angelenos are Buddhist and 1% are Hindu — two religions born in India — both have had significant influence on the many cults, new religions, occult practices, and spiritual movements with which Los Angeles’s identity is widely and rightly associated.

India, itself, is a multi-religious country. Although its government is currently dominated by the right wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, roughly 28.4 million Indians do not practice Hinduism. India has one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. There are also significant numbers who practice Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Adivasi, Jainism, Baháʼí, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism. Finally, some 25 million or so Indians practice no religion at all.

The religious breakdown of Indian Americans is also dominated by Hindus — although they comprise a plurality, if not outright majority — with 48% of Indian Americans self-identifying as such. The next largest group, comprising 15% of Indian Americans, are Christians, who are far more dominant here than in India, where they comprise only about two percent of the population. Muslims and Sikhs each comprise about eight percent of the population. About 18% of Indian Americans are not religious.

As for Los Angeles’s homegrown movements — the influence of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism — can be seen, whether acknowledged or not, in movements and philosophies like Manly P. Hall’s Church of the People, Carlos Castaneda‘s Tensegrity, George King‘s Aetherius Society, Reyji‘s Buddhafield, Roger Hinkins‘s Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, and others.

INDIAN BUDDHISM IN LOS ANGELES

Buddhism arose in India and is based on the teachings of Indian Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhism is only practiced by about .7% of Indians, though. Most Buddhism in the Los Angeles, accordingly, is practiced by Angelenos with roots in East Asia or is filtered, at least, through an East Asian rather than South Asian lens. The largest Buddhist temple in the Americas, for example, is the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights — a branch of Taiwan’s Fo Guang Shan.

California has the second highest percentage of Buddhists, after Hawaiʻi. Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Scottish Angeleno, John Muir, all took an interest in both Hindu and Buddhist teachings which they combined into American Transcendentalism. In 1875, Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, and William Quan Judge founded the Theosophical Society — also influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism — and there are several Theosophy lodges in Los Angeles.

HINDUISM IN LOS ANGELES

Left to right: Swami Vivekananda at the Mead Sisters’ in South Pasadena, Baba Bharati, Hari Rama, and Swami Prabhavananda

Hinduism is the oldest widely practiced religion, with roots dating back more than 4,000 years. While all states in the US have one or more Hindu centers of worship, California tops the list with 296 centers. Hindu spiritual leader Swami Vivekananda’s first visited Southern California in 1899 and stayed at several homes between giving talks about Hinduism and yoga at clubs, meeting halls, &c. A Hindu hermit, Baba Bharati, founded the Rama Krishna Temple in Los Angeles in 1911. Yogi Hari Rama helped spread Hinduism in the 1920s and founded the Benares League of America in Los Angeles in 1928. Swami Prabhavananda, a disciple of Swami Vivekananda, founded the Vendanta Society of Southern California (which became the Hollywood Vedanta Temple) in Los Angeles in 1930. The first really big Hindu temple here, the Malibu Hindu Temple, was built in 1984. The even bigger BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Los Angeles opened in Chino Hills in 2012.

SELF-REALIZATION FELLOWSHIP

The Self-Realization Fellowship was founded by Paramahansa Yogananda. He was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh in Gorakhpur in 1893. He came to the US in 1920 to spread the teachings of his Kriya Yoga guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri. He settled in Los Angeles in 1925, where he established the Self-Realization Fellowship headquarters in Mount Washington’s abandoned Goodrich-Mount Washington Emphysema Hospital. One of his students was German Lebensreform practitioner and immigrant, Benedict Lust. In 1946, he published his autobiography, Autobiography of a Yogi. He died in the Biltmore Hotel in 1952.

LEBENSREFORM, GERMAN-INDIAN CONNECTIONS, AND THE NATURE BOYS

The translation of the Upanishads into Latin, in 1902, was hugely influential on transcendental German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Lebensreform was another German movement inspired by both German Romanticism and Indian philosophy. Several German Lebensform practitioners emigrated to Los Angeles.

Left to right: Arnold Ehret, William Pester, and Gypsy Boots

Arnold Ehret migrated to Los Angeles and published Rational Fasting (1914) and Mucus-less Diet (1922), which later became important texts for hippies — although he didn’t live to see their influence as “the world’s champion faster” died in Los Angeles shortly after a lecture in 1922. That same year, German writer Hermann Hesse published Siddhartha: Eine Indische Dichtung, about a young man’s journey of self-discovery during the time of Guatama Buddha. When it was translated into English in 1951, it was championed by Henry Miller and the Beats — and became another foundational text for beatniks and hippies. William Pester migrated from Germany and started a commune in Tahquitz Canyon around 1916. From 1940-1946, Pester served time in San Quentin for having oral sex with a teenage boy. He moved to Los Angeles around 1948. One of the best known Nature Boys, Gypsy Boots, lived in the Tahquitz Canyon commune and appeared as a contestant on You Bet Your Life in 1955. He moved to San Francisco in 1967 to be there for the Summer of Love, where he was embraced by the hippies.

John Richter, the son of German immigrants, opened the raw food restaurant, the Eutropheon Café, with his wife, Vera Weitzel, in Downtown Los Angeles. They later opened a location in Laurel Canyon that was a popular meeting place and hang-out spot for American disciples of Lebensreform that came to be known as Nature Boys. The Nature Boys lived communally or outdoors. They grew their hair long. They wore robes and sandals and practiced yoga and vegetarianism. in many ways anticipated the hippies — although unlike the hippies, they eschewed drugs. In 1941, eden ahbez, began playing piano at the store. He lived underneath the first “L” of the Hollywood Sign and wrote the song “Nature Boy” (recorded in 1947 by Nat King Cole).

WKFL – FOUNTAIN OF THE WORLD

Francis Herman Pencovic was born in San Francisco in 1911. After serving in the Second World War, Pencovic began claiming that he’d been born 240,000 years earlier on the planet, Neophrates. He named his movement, WKFL – Fountain of the World. Although it sounds like the name of a radio station in Florida, WKFL, in this case, stood for “Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith, and Love.” In 1949, when Standard Air Lines Flight 897R, crashed into the Simi Hills, members of WKFL – Fountain of the World administered aid to the thirteen crash survivors. The press were fascinated by the appearance of barefoot, robed, longhaired, and bearded cult members.

Pencovic rechristened himself Krishna Venta (Krishna comes from the Sanskrit, कृष्ण, or “Kṛṣṇa”) in 1951. Venta was murdered in Chatsworth in 1956 when two former followers, Peter Duma Kamenoff and Ralph Muller, suicide-bombed a dormitory, taking with them seven bystanders. The surviving members of the cult relocated to Mount Shasta, where they were supposedly visited by both Charles Manson and Sun Myung Moon. Deprived of their founder, however, WKFL petered out in the early 1970s.

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was born in Rajim in 1918. He began teaching a form of silent meditation he called Transcendental Meditation (TM) in the mid-1950s, based on the teachings of his master, the Hindu Advaita monk, Brahmananda Saraswati. He brought the teachings to a broader audience during a series of tours, beginning in 1958. In 1959, he lectured in Los Angeles, where he developed a three-year plan, the Spiritual Regeneration Movement, to propagate TM across the world. It was after a TM lecture that John Densmore, then of the Psychedelic Rangers, met Ray Manzarek, then of Rick & the Ravens, which led to the formation of the most Los Angeles of Los Angeles bands — the Doors. In 1966, the Maharishi established the Students’ International Meditation Society (SIMS) and the SIMS Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

The also quintessentially Los Angeles band, The Beach Boys’ 1968 album, Friends, was also largely influenced by their involvement with the Maharishi. In 1974, Maharishi International University was founded at the site of the former Parsons College in Fairfield, Iowa. In 1975, the Maharishi made his last visit to the Spiritual Regeneration Movement Centre in Los Angeles and on that occasion met TM proponent and filmmaker, David Lynch. The Maharishi died in 2008.

DIVINE LIGHT MISSION

Hans Ji Maharaj founded Divine Light Mission (DLM) in India in 1960. His son, Prem Pal Singh Rawat, was born in Haridwar in 1957. In 1966, after the death of the guru, his son — then eight years old — assumed leadership of the DLM. In 1971, Rawat defied his mother by traveling to the UK and the US, where local branches of DLM were established and rapidly expanded. By 1973, DLM had over a million followers in India and tens of thousands of followers in the West, along with dozens of ashrams and hundreds of centers. In 1973, when he was fifteen, the teenage guru was the impetus of a three-day music, dance, and religious festival held in the Houston Astrodome, Millennium ’73. It was billed as the most significant event in human history and one that would usher in one thousand years of peace.

Rawat’s marriage to a non-Indian in 1974 caused a rift with Prem Pal and his wife on one side — and his mother and two brothers on the other. In November 1974, Prem Rawat, his wife, and his entourage moved into large property in Malibu that served as DLM’s West Coast headquarters. His mother and two of his brothers returned to India where his eldest brother, Satpal Maharaj, took control. After fires burned in the Santa Monica Mountains in 1978, Rawat and his group, moved to Miami Beach. In 1980, Rawat abandoned his title of “Perfect Master” and stripped out the Hindu-influences from DLM. DLM’s name was changed to Elan Vital in 1983 and DLM’s ashrams closed. Rawat returned to Malibu in 1984. Elan Vital ceased operations in 2010.

SIKHISM IN LOS ANGELES

The Hollywood Sikh Temple (Image: the City of Los Angeles)

Sikhism originated in Punjab in the late 15th Century CE out of the spiritual teachings of Guru Nanak. Most of California’s earliest Indian immigrants were Sikhs and today there are still more Sikhs inCalifornia than in all other states combined. Most Sikhs still live in Northern California counties, with only Southern California’s Kern County making the state’s top ten. Los Angeles County has the eleventh largest Sikh community in the state. Los Feliz’s Vermont Gurdwara was established in 1969 and is most likely the oldest in Los Angeles. Its current gurdwara, the Hollywood Sikh Temple, was completed in 1996.

3HO

Dinner of the Los Angeles-Bombay Sister-City Committee in Los Angeles, February 1973 Philip Hoskins (far left), Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty (fourth from left), Yogi Bhajan (third from right), and Pamela Dyson (far right) (Image: Beads of Truth, March 1973)

The 3HO (Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization) was founded by Yogi Bhajan in 1969. Yogi Bhajan was born Harbhajan Singh Puri in Kot Harkarn in 1929. In 1968, he emigrated to Toronto. In 1969, he established 3HO in his new home, in los Angeles, which introduced principles of Sikhism to hippies. In 1970, he appeared at the Atlanta International Pop Festival. In 1972, he launched a program to treat heroin addiction through a combination of yoga and garlic juice. Singh died in 2004, after which numerous accusations of sexual abuse surfaced.

THE SOURCE FAMILY

The Source Family was also heavily influenced by Indian philosophy and religion. Its founder, Father Yod, was born James Edward Baker in Cincinnati in 1922. Yod, also known as YaHoWha, was also heavily influenced by the practices of 3HO’s Yogi Bhajan. In 1969, the Source Family launched a vegetarian restaurant, the Source Restaurant, on the Sunset Strip. Yod founded a commune in Los Feliz and led a band, Father Yod and the Spirit of ’76 — later known as Ya Ho Wha 13. Sky Saxon (né Richard Marsh), formerly of The Seeds, joined the Source Family and performed with the band in 1973. In 1974, the Source Family moved to Hawaiʻi, where Father Yod died after a hang gliding accident in 1975.

JAINISM IN LOS ANGELES

The teak jain Temple in the India pavilion at the 1904 World’s Fair (Image: Jessie Tarbox Beals, 1904)

Jainism emerged between the 9th and 6th centuries BCE, making it one of the oldest religions still practiced today. It has about five million practitioners. The three main pillars of Jainism are non-violence (ahiṃsā), non-absolutism (anekāntavāda), and asceticism (aparigraha). Locally, Manibhai Mehta began welcoming Jains from the region into their Cerritos home to pray. In 1971, Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanu, Lalit Shah, Mahendra Khandhar, and other Jains discussed forming a local Jain organization. The Jain Center of Southern California (JCSC) was founded in 1979. It hosted the first Federation of Jain Associations in North America (JAINA) convention in 1981. It was also in 1981 that the JASC acquired the St. Louis Jain Temple. The temple was built for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition — a world’s fair that took place in Missouri in 1904. It was a replica of the Tomb of I’timād-ud-Daulah in Agra, ad was the first Jain temple in the US. After the exposition, it was supposed to have been shipped to India but, instead, was sent to Las Vegas, where it was renamed “the Gateway to Luck,” part of the Castaways resort and hotel casino. In 1987, Steve Wynn bought and demolished the Castaways to make way for his Mirage resort. In 1995, the temple was shipped to Buena Park where it was reassembled.

BIKRAM YOGA

Bikram Choudhury was born in 1944 in Calcutta. In 1971, Choudhury emigrated to the United States and began to teach hist own style of hot yoga. He opened his first studio in Los Angeles in 1973, teaching his own style of yoga. In 1984, he married Rajashree Choudhury. In 2009, he began a series of unsuccessful copyright suits to protect the series of postures practiced in his yoga studios. A documentary about him, Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator, was released in 2019 about allegations of sexual assault and discrimination. In 2016, he divorced his wife. In 2017, a court awarded his former lawyer, Minakshi Jafa-Bodden, $7 million after Bikram Choudhury fled back to India.

ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS IN INDIA AND INDIAN LOS ANGELES CHRISTIANS

The major Abrahamic religions all have longer histories in India than many might realize. Islam was supposedly brought to India by Sheikh Ubaidullah in 661CE and today Islam is the second largest religion in the country. Los Angeles’s Muslim community, about half a million in number, is diverse and — although I haven’t researched it deeply — I’ve never read anything that suggests that there are distinct Muslim congregations oriented around ethnicities. About 85% of Indian Muslims are Sunni and 15% are Shia — and there are mosques serving both in Los Angeles.

The Cochin Jews (or Malabar Jews) purportedly arrived in India in the 10th Century BCE. Later populations arrived after they were expelled from Iberia in 1492 or during the Second World War. After the creation of Israel in 1948, most Indian Jews moved there. Christianity was supposedly introduced to India by Thomas the Apostle in 52 CE. He came to Malabar in search of the Jews there. He was killed with a spear in 72 in Mylapore. Christianity is India’s third-largest religion but, despite Thomas’s efforts, it didn’t really date off until the Portuguese re-introduced it in the 15th Century. Some Indian states — Nagaland, Mizoram, and Meghalaya — have Christian majorities. Most Indian Christians do belong to specifically Indian denominations — namely the Church of North India and the Church of South India — both of which are united Protestant denominations. Los Angeles is home to several Indian American churches.

INDIAN MUSIC, INDIAN ANGELENO MUSIC, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON RAGA ROCK AND OTHER LOS ANGELES MUSICAL DEVELOPMENTS

The music of India is surely one of the world’s greatest musical traditions. Vast in its diversity and stretching back far into prehistory, its impact on music both within and without India is immeasurable. There are cave paintings in India depicting dancers and musicians that have been dated to roughly 30,000 BP. The West, for the most part, discovered Indian music relatively recently — namely, in the mid-20th Century.

One the first celebrated Indian musicians was a pianist and keyboard player Korla Pandit who arrived in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Pandit was a mysterious figure who provided his own account of his background. He was born in New Dehli to a French opera singer and a Brahmin. He apparently studied in the UK and arrived in the US at the age of twelve, where he furthered his studies at the University of Chicago. He tapped into his exotic background to score the radio drama, Chandu the Magician, which debuted on Los Angeles’s KHJ. The series starred Gayne Whiteman as an American named Frank Chandler, who’d learned supernatural skills from a yogi in India. In 1949, the composer was featured on KTLA’s Korla Pandit’s Adventures In Music. Two years after his death, in 1998, writer RJ Smith revealed the truth about Korla Pandit — that he was a light skinned black man from St. Louis named John Roland Redd. For fans, The Master of Kora Pandit, a presentation by author Brian Kehew, is scheduled to take place at the Philosophical Research Society on 6 April.

Ravi Shankar, on the other hand, was actually Indian. He began performing the sitar, publicly, in 1939. In 1952, he met violin virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin, who exposed Shankar to a larger western audience. In 1956, Shankar released Music Of India (Three Classical Rāgas) on British label, His Master’s Voice. By the early ‘60s, Western guitarists like Sandy Bull, Robbie Basho, Davey Graham, and John Fahey — as well as jazz musicians like John Coltrane and Yusef Lateef — were incorporating elements of Indian music into their performances and compositions. In 1965, British rock bands including the Beatles, the Kinks, and the Yardbirds were incorporating sitar, tabla, and drones into their compositions. Shankar and his wife fell in love with Southern California. He opened a branch of the Kinnara School of Music in Los Angeles in May 1967. He and his wife moved to Encinitas in 1992. He died at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, San Diego in 2012.

By 1966, the sitar was the go-to musical masaala for musicians hoping to add a dash of exotic flower power coloring to otherwise fairly straightforward pop songs. Los Angeles bands, in particular, seemed to have taken to the sitar. Pop songs like The Association’s “Wantin’ Ain’t Gettin’,” The Mamas & The Papas’ “People Like Us,” Scott McKenzie‘s “San Francisco,” The Stone Poneys‘ “Evergreen,” The Turtles “Sound Asleep,” and numerous tracks by The Strawberry Alarm Clock (all based in Los Angeles) all made prominent use of Indian instrumentation. Los Angeles band, the Byrds, used guitar tunings and composition, rather than Indian instruments, to create so-called “raga rock” exemplified on songs like “Eight Miles High,” “Why,” and “Mind Gardens.” The Doors, another Los Angeles band, further epitomized raga rock with their epic, “The End.”

Left, the Byrds, and right, Strawberry Alarm Clock — two Los Angeles bands with their sitars

Public radio station KPFK had a program devoted to Indian music at least as early as 1965. The Hollywood Bowl seems to have emerged as Los Angeles’s hub of Indian music. 4 August 1967 was the date of the Festival from India, starring Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar. Alla Rakha, Bismillah Khan, Mahapurush Misra, Palghat Kollengode Viswanathan Narayanaswamy, (Burmese musician) Palghat R. Raghu, and Ravi Shankar all performed there in 1967. “Flowers and incense” were welcomed — presumably if the former was nag champa. That same year, public television station KCET aired a Ravi Shankar performance. As far as I know, however, there wasn’t a full-time Indian radio station in Los Angeles until 2016. That year, sports station 980 KFWB “The Beast,” was was reborn as Desi 980 “Hollywood’s Bollywood Station.” Sadly, it proved short lived, and ceased to exist on 31 October of the same year.

It’s not really surprising, but most Indian Angelenos musicians don’t work within Indian musical traditions — although some, obviously, do. Hyderabad-born DJ, Arshia Fatima Haq is the founder of Discostan, a ”diasporic discotheque which imagines past, present and future soundscapes from Beirut to Bangkok via Bombay.” Indian Angeleno musicians include Aashish Khan, Ambi Subramaniam, Avanti Singh, Bindu Subramaniam, Julie Quang (half-Vietnamese, half-Indian), Lakshminarayana Subramaniam, Leela Subramaniam, Mx. Puja Singh, Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, Prateek Rajagopal, Raja Kumari (née Svetha Yallapragada Rao), Sameer Gadhia (of Young the Giant), Sapra, Shaheen Sheik, Shilpa Sadagopan, Vijayashree (aka “Viji”) Subramaniam, Zoya, and Zubin Mehta. Indian Angeleno producers include Arjun “6ix” Ivatury and Jeff Bhasker.

INDIAN CUISINE AND RESTAURANTS IN LOS ANGELES

I remember my first experience with Indian cuisine fairly vividly, considering how long ago it was — and how many times I’ve eaten Indian food since. It was 1993, when I was in school at the University of Iowa. Ritu Jain opened a restaurant on Dubuque Street called Masala Indian Cuisine. I’m pretty certain that I dined there on opening day — certainly no later than the opening weekend. There was a lunch buffet and I, being a student with almost no money, then sustained myself almost entirely by eating once a day at buffets. Before Masala, I mostly alternated between a Godfather’s Pizza on the Ped-Mall and a place around the corner called Magnifico’s Mostly Italian. A third buffet in the rotation would do wonders for expanding both my culinary horizons and, no doubt, improve the diversity of my gut biome. Until then, I had only ever seen Indian food represented onscreen… namely in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which depicted dishes based around insects, snakes, monkey brains, and eyeball soup. But Masala, somehow, was vegetarian — so I was safe. I scooped a bit of everything onto my tray and, unsure how exactly to eat it, looked around the room where I observed my fellow diners scooping bites with naan and papadam (neither of which I knew the name of) and so I did the same. A short time later, Magnifico’s was replaced with Paramjeet Singh‘s India Cafe — but two Indian buffets were better than one and, to be honest, I could only stomach so much “all you can eat” spaghetti. Nearby Fairfield, home of the Maharishi International University, is the town in Iowa (the eighth whitest state) with the largest percentage of Indians and, I assumed, the reason there were two good Indian restaurants in Iowa City.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1999, I was thrilled with the quantity of and quality of Indian restaurants, which exceeded Iowa City’s two by some measure. I soon learned, however, that if you express admiration for Los Angeles’s Indian restaurants, a self-appointed expert will — sooner or later — shrug and confidently declare that none of Los Angeles’s more than 300 Indian restaurants are actually that good. According to these experts, you will find excellent Indian food in London; Macau; Singapore; Washington, DC; New York City; and San Francisco — and presumably India — but somehow not Los Angeles. Although I wish I could argue otherwise, I don’t really have a lot of experience in any of those places. In New York City, I dined at Panna II Garden and I liked it just fine.

I can’t, though, understand what about Los Angeles — recognized by most serious people as one of the world’s greatest food cities — would make it incapable of producing and sustaining a single great Indian restaurant. Maybe it’s like bagels and pizza — two foods Angelenos have gotten so used to hearing just can’t be made in Los Angeles that many actually start to believe it — despite the obvious illogic and ample evidence to the contrary. Then again, maybe there’s some other factor at play. Once, when I was hanging out with my friend, Sanjukta Paul, she called Paru’s — a now-closed but locally beloved South Indian restaurant. She inquired about yogurt rice and the person on the phone remarked with apparent surprise that she must be Indian — suggesting that the bulk of their clients were not — and not that there’s anything wrong with it but they, likely, thus catered to non-Indian tastes. The only person I ever remember recognizing there was Mickey Dolenz. But that can’t be the story at every Indian restaurant in the city.

Perhaps there are other issues at play. I once listened to journalist, Padma Lakshmi, discuss the history of Indian restaurants on a podcast or radio program. I may be misremembering the exact details — but I think she said that, until relatively recently — maybe the 1970s — most Indians ate food at home and restaurants were almost exclusively associated with hotels. I also think that I heard or read something similar about Irish cuisine. It’s possible, I suppose, that many cuisines followed parallel evolutionary paths. Speaking of Laskshmi, she’s an Angelena. Padma Parvati Lakshmi was born 1 September 1970 in Chennai but emigrated to the US to live with her mother at the age of four and afterward the two moved to La Puente. When she was seven, she was seriously injured in a car crash after leaving the Hindu temple in Malibu. She graduated from William Workman High School in 1988. After graduation, she left Los Angeles for university but, when she was married to Indian author, Salman Rushdie, the moved back to Los Angeles. They divorced in 2007 and, I believe, left the city once again. But, in my reckoning, that makes Rushdie an Angeleno, too.

As someone who hasn’t followed an animal-based diet since 1989, I love that Indian restaurants are, even when not vegetarian, without fail, extremely vegetarian friendly. This makes sense. 38 or 39% of Indians self-identity as vegetarian, and 9% are vegan — making it the most vegetarian country in the world — handily beating out number two Taiwan. On the other hand, Americans have, for at least the last twenty years, eaten more animal flesh than any other nationality. Los Angeles, though, has long been the vegetarian and vegan capital of the US — in no small part due to the influence of Buddhism and Hinduism but also along with concerns about health (of the diner, animal, and planet).

Los Angeles’s first dedicated vegetarian restaurant opened in 1900 — but it was opened by associates of John Harvey Kellogg‘s Battle Creek Sanitarium and the menu was therefore built around processed grain-based Kellog’s products like bromose, granose, nuttose, nucose, and protose. Other items on the menu, like gluten mush with milk, steamed figs, stewed prunes, and Graham sticks don’t exactly whet one’s appetite.. All of these first generation vegetarian restaurants, though, had seemingly closed by the early 1920s — around the same time — and perhaps not coincidentally — that Indian food arrived in the city. The Self-Realization Fellowship’s Self-Realization Café seems to have offered food at least inspired by indian cuisine with items like “Hindu-style Calcutta croquettes” which, I suppose, might’ve been pakoras or samosas.

There were seemingly, though, no dedicated Indian restaurants as late as 1959, when Harnam Singh of San Francisco’s Taj of India wrote to a Los Angeles Times columnist to inquire about the viability of opening Los Angeles’s first Indian restaurant. Singh, it seems, didn’t end up opening a restaurant in Los Angeles and the first dedicated Indian restaurant in Los Angeles County was quite possibly Princess of India, which opened in Long Beach’s North Wrigley neighborhood in 1962. The proprietor was the mononymous Sita, a graduate of the University of Madras. The restaurant featured not just food for the stomach but food for thought. In 1964, Sita delivered a talk there entitled “The Indian Woman’s Place in the Home and Community.” At least two more Indian restaurants followed in the city of Los Angeles. Rajah’s Elephant Walk Restaurant was open in East Hollywood by 1965. Satya Singh opened the Lakshmi Dining Room in the Hollywood Studio District in 1965.

A diet of Indian food was apparently part of the hippie starter kit — along with Afghan coats, ankhs, cannabis, kaftans, nag champa, and patchouli oil. In the 1970s aftermath, Indian restaurants really began to take off in Los Angeles. Their most enthusiastic champion was almost certainly Colman Andrews, a restaurant critic who wrote about many Indian restaurants for the Los Angeles Times before going on to co-found the magazine, Saveur. Most of the Indian restaurants of the 1970s were located in the Westside, which almost certainly reveals something about both their clientele and their owners. In Santa Monica, for example, several Indian restaurants were owned by British Asians. Across the mediascape, a fair amount of column space seems to have been spent debunking diners’ strange expectation that all “authentic” Indian food is endurance defyingly spicy.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by AGRA CAFE INDIAN CUISINE (@agra_cafe)

Moti Mahal opened in Santa Monica in 1972. The Shalimar Indian Restaurant moved from Santa Monica to Westwood Boulevard in 1973. That same year, Paul Bhalla brought Lahore native Tariq Z. Khwaja from London to run his new Indian restaurant, Paul Bhalla’s, in Westwood. By 1974, Wilshire Vista had Bengal Tiger, Hollywood had Omar’s, and a second location of Moti Mahal had opened in Sherman Oaks… which, by then, was also home to Pride of India. Downtown Pasadena had Taj of India. By 1976, there was Akbar’s (started by former the 23-year-old former chef at Paul Bhalla’s) and Kashmir in Venice (run by the Haji Waz Ullah Family from Detroit) — both in Marina del Rey. Santa Monica was home to Dhava and the Gypsy’s (owned by Indo-Englishwoman, Tina Todd). There was Shaheen in Hollywood, Shish Mahal in Culver City, and Gitanjali just south of West Hollywood (run by former UN relations officer, Prem Chadda, his wife, Tara, and his brother, Virender). After Prem and Tara divorced, she opened her own Indian restaurant, Shanta, which she later re-named Shakun.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by All India Cafe (@allindiacafe)

By 1977, Bengali-style restaurant, Shaheen, had changed its name to Taj Mahal and Torrance boasted California’s only vegetarian Indian restaurant, Devyani Master’s Devi India Foods. The evolution and elevation of vegetarian food accelerated as more vegetarian Indian restaurants opened. The Indian hotel and vegetarian restaurant chain, Madhu’s Dasaprakash, moved opened what was apparently its first stateside location on La Cienega around 1980. Devi’s opened in Redondo Beach in 1982 — but soon after added meat to the menu. The first location of India Sweets and Spices opened in Culver City in 1984. Randy Ellis’s Kingsley Garden opened in or around 1987 and had a menu of both vegetarian Indian and Mexican dishes. The celebrated Chameli opened in Rosemead around 1991. The first location of Woodlands was originally vegetarian and opened in 2000 in Little India.

LITTLE INDIA

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by India Sweets & Spices (@indiasweetsandspices)

LITTLE INDIA

The roots of Los Angeles County’s Little India are a bit hard to pin down. According to Los Angeles Times reporter, Jessica C. Lee, the region’s first Indian grocery store, Selecto Spices, was persuaded “by the Indian community” to move from Hollywood to the “more centrally located Artesia” in 1970. Yet, in 1977, Selecto Spice’s address was listed as having been 5128 1/2 Santa Monica Boulevard, in East Hollywood. Furthermore, it’s hard to reconcile the description of Artesia, in Southeast Los Angeles, as being “more centrally located” than Hollywood — which is in the region literally known as Central Los Angeles.

Another version of Little India’s origins appeared in the same newspaper — albeit an older edition. In 1995, John Canalis, credited the creation of Little India to Balkishan Lahoti, a Cerritos resident who began “selling spices and foods out of an Artesia garage” in 1971. Lahoti’s grocery, the name of which is never mentioned, apparently later moved to Bellflower, though, and another decade would pass before Little India truly began to rise.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sona Chaandi (@sonachaandi)

Mala Malani opened Sona Chaandi there in 1980 by which time there were apparently at least two other Indian businesses on Pioneer Boulevard — one of which may have been the Bombay Store. Babu and Varsha Patel opened Neema Sari Palace there in 1981. Premji Keray opened Pioneer Cash & Carry in 1982. Dipak Malani opened Sari Niketan in 1983. Kundan Sabarwal opened the Ziba Beauty Center in 1986. By then, Ravi Merchant had also opened the grocery store, Patel Bros. Moni Ryal, who launched an Indian fast foot chain, Reena Samosa Center, in Norwalk in 1981, opened a location on Pioneer Boulevard in the summer of 1986. By 1987, Moti Mahal had either moved or opened another location in Artesia. The State Bank of India opened a branch in Little India in 1988.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Pioneer Cash & Carry (@pioneercash)

The name, “Little India” was commonly used at least as early as 1986. The first suggestions for official designation began around 1991, with the formation of the Little India Chamber of Commerce, created by Standard Sweets & Snacks founder Ramesh Mahajan. Over the next ten years, the corridor’s Desi character gradually extended beyond the core five blocks northward into Norwalk and southward into Cerritos. In 2005, not wishing to offend any non-Indians — and completely misunderstanding the concepts of both ethnic enclaves and place making — the city of Artesia, instead of designating the area “Little India,” went with the both hopelessly vague and annoyingly cumbersome “International and Cultural Shopping District.” Because of its prolix moniker, CalTrans rejected efforts to install signs on freeways, thus further depriving the enclave of recognition. Nevertheless, Huell Howser featured the neighborhood on a 2016 episode of his series, Visiting, entitled “Little India.”

Like most commercial corridors, Little India struggled during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of the blame seems to have been pointed at online competition and not enough storage space for cars. COVID, while still here, is manageable for most with vaccines and healthy practices. Carbrain, however, has proven to fatal to many neighborhoods and entire cities. Long Carbrain is often terminal. The only cure for Carbrain is and has always been to improve active and mass transit. Humans like tree-lined wide well-maintained sidewalks, bike lanes, and dining parklets. Dedicated bus lanes and trains are much more efficient than private automobiles — which require vast amounts of storage space that cost more revenue than they generate.

Thankfully, Metro is in the process of restoring rail service to Little India. Passenger service on Pacific Electric’s (PE) West Santa Ana Branch ended in 1950. The new line is forecast to open in 2035 — although, obviously, speeding that along would be fantastic. Metro originally called the project, the West Santa Ana Branch Transit Corridor — a nod to the old PE line. They then solicited suggestions for a new name from the public. I thought something like the “Little India Pioneer Express” might be a good name. Think of India’s iconic Goa, Dibrurgarh Rajdhani, and Mandovi expresses. That would help advertise the area and bring more business there in the meantime. Metro, though, with shades of the “International and Cultural Shopping District” compromise, decided on the less evocative Southeast Gateway Line.

HOLLYWOOD INDIA

I haven’t researched the topic extensively but one of the earliest Hollywood films set in India was surely the 1917 version of A Little Princess. Like most Hollywood depictions of India from that era, it starred no actors with Indian backgrounds. It was filmed at Pasadena’s Busch Gardens. The Green Goddess, made in 1923, also featured no Indians but was filmed in a New York City studio. It was remade in 1930. Even as late as 1952, when Monsoon was released, it was still common to make a film about Indians and set in India but that which featured no Indian actors. However, it was also that year that B-Movie director William Berke made perhaps the first US-Indian co-production, The Jungle, released in India as Kaad. It starred a cast of Hollywood and Indian actors, was filmed in India, and was scored by Gopalan Ramanathan.

Hollywood’s representations of India and Indians began to more often aspire, at least, to a degree of authenticity, after Indian Cinema became better known. Satyajit Ray’s 1956 film, অপরাজিত (Aparajito), was the second in a trilogy but it was the first to be really celebrated at Europe’s “Big Three” film festivals: Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, and Festival de Cannes. Hollywood was, as usual, willing to overlook celebrated international films in favor of its own products, regardless of quality. The Academy awarded the Best Picture Oscar that year to Around the World in 80 Days.

1966’s Maya was based on a novel by Pakistani writer, Jalal Din that was adapted by Angeleno novelist, John Fante. Although Clint Walker and Jay North received top billing, its cast featured mostly Indian actors including Sajid Khan. Indra Sen Johar, Paidi Jairaj, Nana Palshikar, Madhusdan Pathak, and Sonia Sahni. After its success, Khan and North co-starred on a television series of the same name. Not only was it, most likely, only the second American television series to star an Asian American — it turned Sajid into a teen idol. In 1969, he released a collection of cover songs titled Sajid, on Colegems.

I’m sure that I have missed many, but Hollywood returned to India for films including City of Joy (1992), The Jungle Book (1994), A Little Princess (1995), Jungle Boy (1998), The Jungle Book (2016)… perhaps the reader is noticing a trend. I feel like The Darjeeling Limited, released in 2007, was at least aware of this tradition of Westerners abroad in exotic India. I enjoyed it although I fail to remember any specifics. I’d watch it again.

INDIAN ANGELENO FILM AND FILMMAKERS

The film lover the world over, Indian Cinema is practically synonymous with Bollywood. Bollywood, although prolific and India’s most popular cinema, is just one. I have only watched a few Indian films. Only one was Bollywood. I can’t remember the name. Bollywood, I think it’s fair to say, is fairly formulaic — so what I can remember of it does little to narrow it down. It starred Amitabh Bachchan whose protagonist I found arrogant, obnoxious, and creepily pushy. This was supposed to be charming, it seemed. After a couple of hours, I cut my losses. There was still another hour left, I think. I never finished it.

It’s also worth pointing out that, as hinted at earlier, there are many robust Indian cinematic traditions outside of Bollywood — although most are similarly dominated by the musical genre. Commercial Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayam films all attract huge audiences in India. There are smaller but still prominent industries in Bengal, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Gujarat, and Bhojpur. As a film major, I was of course introduced to the films of Satyajit Ray as part of my education in “World Cinema” and, if memory serves correctly, he was the only Indian filmmaker we watched any films of. I’m not sure how true it is — but the impression that we were given about Ray was that he, like Akira Kurosawa, was far more popular with international film critics and film students than he was with mainstream audiences at home. I wonder, though, if that’s not true for nearly all art filmmakers.

Ray’s films, for their part, tended to do better at film festivals outside of Los Angeles too. It’s no secret that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, based in Beverly Hills, has always been extremely biased towards Hollywood productions. As of 2023, India has submitted a total of 56 films for Best Foreign Language Film/Best International Feature Film consideration. Of those, 34 have been Hindi, ten have been Tamil, four have been Malayalam, three have been Marathi, two have been Bengali, two have been Gujarait, one was Assamese, one was a bilingual Hindi-Tamil film, one was Telugu, and one was Urdu. Only three have been nominated: Mother India (1957), Salaam Bombay! (1988) and Lagaan (2001). None has ever won.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Indian Film Festival of L.A. (@indianfilmfestival)

Despite the Academy’s cold shoulder,, Los Angeles does host the annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA). It was launched in 2002. Despite its name, it is also open to filmmakers from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and all South Asian diasporic peoples. In other words, it is open to all South Asian countries and people. Why, I wonder, not call it the South Asian Film Festival, then? The Latin American Film Festival, after all, isn’t called “the Mexican Film Festival.” The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival isn’t called “the Chinese Film Festival.” Maybe there’s a good reason and I just am not aware of it. I suspect, however, that it doesn’t help in the cause of getting people to realize that there are 626 million South Asians who are not Indian, though.

There are fewer opportunities to see Indian films outside of film festivals than there used to be — unless one counts normie streaming sites like Netflix, which seem to be heavily padded with Bollywood product. For people who prefer to watch films on movie screens, however, the opportunities are few. Until not too long ago a multiplex — The NAZ 8 in Lakewood — that almost exclusively screened Bollywood films (with English subtitles). I haven’t checked in a while, but the AMC Orange 30 in Orange at least used to also frequently show Bollywood films. DVD stores, too, are in decline — although, perhaps, specialty stores catering to immigrants will keep them alive longer than box chain generalists. Bollywood Music & Gifts and Ziba Music & Gift Center both used to sell Indian DVDs. Probably a good idea, before any DVD run, to double check that they still do — and that they’re still in business.

I reckon the best-known Indian American filmmakers are M. Night Shyamalan, Mira Nair, and Tarsem Singh. Nair has a long career as an independent filmmaker and M. Night Shyamalan had worked within the Hollywood system but, to my knowledge, neither has ever called Los Angeles home. Tarsem Singh, usually billed simply as Tarsem, graduated from Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design — so he counts, in my book. Independent Indian Angeleno filmmakers include Natasha Subramaniam, Param Gill, and Vibha Kulkarni. Other Indian Angelenos working behind the camera include production designers Minolae Jain and Nidhi Jarmanwala, producers Radhika Bansal and Shardul Sharma, and editor Aayush Gaur.

Indian Angeleno actors, being in front of the camera, have as a rule, naturally enjoyed higher profiles. One of the first Indians to work in Hollywood was Aayush Gaur-born Lal Chand Mehra, who began appearing in Hollywood films starting with 1927’s The King of Kings. Although the majority of his roles were uncredited, he also apparently advised Hollywood filmmakers and gave lectures, locally, on Indian culture and customs. Mysore-born Sabu (né Sabu Dastagir or Selar Sabu) began appearing in Hollywood films starting with a British film, 1937’s Elephant Boy. He became an American citizen in 1944. He was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Merle Oberon (born Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson) claimed, for most of her life, to have been born in Tasmania — in part to hide her mixed-race South Asian origins. She was actually born in Bombay and raised in Calcutta. She moved to Los Angeles in 1934 and died in Malibu in 1979.

Other Indian actors who live, or have lived, in Los Angeles include Anil Kapoor, Annet Mahendru, Anwar Molani, Avan Jogia, Danny Pudi, Dileep Rao, Erick Avari, Geraldine Viswanathan, Guru Singh, John Abraham, Kal Penn, Kapil Talwalkar, Karan Brar, Karan Soni, Maaz Ali, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Manish Dayal, Maulik Pancholy, Megan Suri, Melanie Chandra, Michelle Khare, Mindy Kaling, Nandana Sen, Navi Rawat, Nitya Vidyasagar, Noureen DeWulf, Parvesh Cheena, Pooja Batra, Poorna Jagannathan, Prabhakar Prasad, Preity Zinta, Priyanka Chopra, Raghuram Shetty, Ravi Naidu, Reef Karim, Richa Moorjani, Ritesh Rajan, Rizwan Manji, Sajid Khan, Sarayu Rao, Sathya Jesudasson, Serena Varghese, Shah Rukh Khan, Sharmila Devar, Sheetal Sheth, Shelley Malil, Shereen Khan, Shishir Kurup, Sonal Shah, Srinivasa Kapavarapu, Summer Bishil, and Tiya Sircar.

INDIAN ANGELENO TELEVISION

On television, KSCI used to be “TV’s United Nations,” with programs in Arabic, Armenian, Farsi, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Hindi. It was found in 1977 and was closely tied to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and TM. Its call letters stood for “Science of Creative Intelligence.” Early on, it presented prerecord presentations from the Maharishi. In November 1985, the owners, the World Plan Executive Council, loaned $350,000 to help the Maharishi International University in Fairfield. Sadly, KSCI ended its multi-lingual programing and switched, in 2017, to infomercials (in English).

There may not be any Indian programs on Los Angeles television anymore but television is barely even television anymore. Most people I know now stream whatever they stream on cellphones and laptops. I can’t say anything about its affect on the quality of programming — but it is democratizing, I suppose. There are Indian Angeleno YouTubers like Dharminder “Dhar” Mann, Liza Koshy, and Safiya Nygaard who, I suppose, are sort of like the “television personalities” of yore.

There are, though, still television series, of course, and since the 2010s, several have starred Indian American leads or ensembles, including the aforementioned Maya (1967-1968), Outsourced (2010-2011), The Mindy Project (2012-2017), Unfair and Ugly (2018), Never Have I Ever (2020-2023). All are filmed and/or set in Los Angeles (or Orange County). Indian Angeleno television writers include Prashanth Venkataramanujam and Vali Chandrasekaran.

INDIAN DANCE AND INDIAN ANGELENO DANCERS

Paleolithic cave paintings in India depicting dancers indicate the ancientness of dance in India. Over thousands of years, numerous well-established dance traditions developed and codified, including Classical (Bharantanatyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Manipuri, Mohiniyattam, Odissi, and Sattriya) as well as folk and tribal dances too numerous to name. Contemporary Indian dance, the sort one sees in Bollywood films, is, of course, another globally popular style. Garba (ગરબા) is a type of Gujarati dance and there are several annual Garba nights around Los Angeles County during the Navratri season.

In Los Angeles, today there are several Indian dance companies, schools, and studios including AATMA Performing Arts, Bollypop, Dance Bollywood, Lunasha Bollywood Dance Company, Navarasa Dance Theatre, NDM Bollywood Dance Company, Nitya Shetra School of Dance, Nupur Academy LA, Sevdha, and Shingari’s School of Rhythm. Notable Indian Angeleno dancers include Achinta S. McDaniel, Kirthika Alwar, Malini Taneja, Medha Yodh, Mythili Prakash, and Ramya Harishankar.

The dancer most responsible for having introduced Indian dance to Los Angeles was quite possibly Ruth St. Denis (née Ruth Dennis). She was not Indian but in 1915, she and dancer Ted Shawn co-founded the American Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, which taught Indian dance and modern dance influenced by it. As unlikely as it may sound, the catalyst for her interest in, broadly speaking, “the Orient,” came from a poster for Egyptian Deities she saw in 1904. In 1906, she performed a piece titled, Radha.

Obviously, not all Indian Angelenos are practicioners of Indian dance — but Somen “Steve” Banerjee was not even a dancer. He does, however, require mention because he was instrumental in developing the art of male striptease. Banjaree was an entrepreneur and the founder of Chippendales, the popular male striptease troupe. He was born in Bombay in 1946. After a failed venture with a backgammon club, he took over a gas station. In 1974, Banjaree bought a bar in Palms called Destiny II and renamed it Chippendales. I honestly have no idea why he chose the name of a rococo furniture style but he did — and Chippendales clubs opened in Torrance, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas, and New York City. In the 1980s, he tried to have four of his associates and former associates murdered, which landed him in prison. He hanged himself in his cell a year into his 26-year sentence. The story inspired the films The Chippendales Murder (2000) and Just Can’t Get Enough (2001); the documentary, Curse of the Chippendales (2021); the podcast, Welcome to Your Fantasy (2021); and the series, Welcome to Chippendales (2022).

INDIAN ART AND INDIAN ANGELENO ARTISTS

India’s ancient art traditions encompasses painting, pottery, sculpture, and textile art. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has a South and Southeast Asian Art collection. There are South Indian Bronzes at the Norton Simon Museum. Right now, there’s an exhibition titled I Will Meet You Yet Again: Contemporary Sikh Art at the Fowler Museum.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Fowler Museum at UCLA (@fowlermuseum)

Not surprisingly, most Indian Angeleno artists work in newer traditions including multi-media and photography. Indian artists who’ve at least at one time called Los Angeles home include Faris McReynolds, Natasha Subramaniam, Rytham Singla, Suchitra Mattai, and Vaishnavi Patil.

INDIAN LITERATURE AND INDIAN ANGELENO WRITERS

Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood

Indian literature begins in ancient times with an oral tradition. The earliest known written work, the Rig Veda was written in Sanskrit between 1500 and 1200 BCE. The Ramayana and Mahabharata were written down in the 2nd millennium BCE. The Bhagavad Gita, perhaps the best known and most read work of ancient Indian literature, was notably translated into English in 1944, by Anglo-Angeleno writer Christopher Isherwood and Swami Prabhavananda of the Vedanta Society of Southern California.

Writer Tulika Mehrotra, whose debut novel, Delhi Stopover, was published in 2012, used to live in Los Angeles. The aforementioned Salman Rushdie — one of the few writers whose reputation extends far beyond his readership — moved to Los Angeles in 2000 and only live here for a few years. His relationship with Los Angeles, however, went back much further, to the 1970s, when he worked as a copywriter and producer on Clairol commercials. Other Indian Angeleno writers included Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla and Mansi Shah.

POLITICS

California has been the home of several Indian American politicians. The most well-known, likely, is Oakland-born half-Indian Kamala Harris, who in 2021 became the first female Vice President of the US.

The aforementioned Dalip Singh Saund served three terms (from 1957 until 1963) in the US House of Representatives.

Trinidadian Dougla Mervyn Malcolm Dymally moved from Missouri to Metro Los Angeles in the 1950s. From 1963 until 2008, he was elected to multiple positions in the California Assembly, California Senate, US House of Representatives, and was a Lieutenant Governor.

Los Angeles-born/La Palma-raised physician, Amerish Babulal “Ami” Bera, assumed office in the US House of Representatives in 2013.

Jewish-Indian Kesha Ram Hinsdale grew up in Santa Monica. After graduating from Santa Monica High School in 2004, she moved to Vermont, where she served in the Vermont House of Representatives from 2009-2016. In 2021, she assumed office in the Vermont Senate.

In 2018, Republican Harish “Harry” Singh Sidhu became the mayor of Anaheim. He resigned, however, in 2022 when it became public information that he was under FBI investigation for corruption. In 2023, he plead guilty to obstruction of justice, wire fraud, making false statements to the FBI, and making false statements to the FAA.

In Los Angeles, City Councilperson Nithya Raman was elected in 2020 with more votes than any candidate for City Council had ever received. Within a month, the city’s right wing responded with an attempted recall. In 2024, despite nearly being gerrymandered out of her district, she handily defeated a right wing challenger despite the support of the powerful Los Angeles Police Protective League and most of the regressive corporate class.

INDIAN ANGELENO SPORTS & ATHLETES‘

Like any culture, India has its sporting life. Traditional sports include kabaddi and kho kho. There may be some informal kabaddi leagues in Los Angeles but I can’t say for certain. Association football (soccer) is popular everywhere in the world, pretty much, and India is no exception. Ashish Chattha, who plays for Orange County SC, is Indian. The most popular sport in India, by far, is cricket. Los Angeles has been home to a couple of cricket players of note, including Abhimanyu Rajp and Timil Patel. Rajp and Deepak Gosain co-own the Los Angeles-based SoCal Lashings, who play in Minor League Cricket league.

Other notable Indian Angeleno athletes include tennis players Prakash Amritraj and Stephen Amritraj; and American football players Brandon Chillar and Sanjay Lal.

OTHER NOTABLE INDIAN ANGELENOS

Other notable Indian Angelenos include academics Chandrashekhar B. Khare, Portonovo S. Ayyaswamy, Rajit Gadh, Ricky J. Sethi, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Sanjukta Paul, Satya Atluri, Sendhil Mullainathan, Shrikanth Narayanan, and Vijay K. Dhir; comedians Aparna Nancherla, Aziz Ansari, Gerry Bednob, and Rajiv Satyal; fashion designers Anand Jon and Waris Ahluwalia; inventor Harvinder Sahota; jounralists Davan Maharaj, Deepa Fernandes, and Zain Verjee; and scientists Bedabrata Pain, Chandra Kumar Naranbhai Patel, Mani Lal Bhaumik, Santhosh Nadipuram, and Swati Mohan.

INDIAN ANGELENO HOLIDAYS AND OBSERVANCES

There are three national holidays in India — Republic Day (26 January), Independence Day (15 August), and Gandhi Jayanti (2 October). I’m not sure how widely any of those are celebrated within Los Angeles’s Indian diaspora. I can say, however, that there are numerous Holi and Diwali festivals every year — because I’ve attended both. There are also annual Ganesh Chaturthi, Janmashtami, Navaratri, Onam, and Thaipusam observances in Los Angeles.

There are also local festivals and events like

INDIAN ANGELENO COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS

There are several organizations catering to and representing Los Angeles’s sizable Indian community but the glaring absence of one is almost as notable. There is, as yet, no Indian consulate in the US’s second largest city. In 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that two new consulates would open in the US — and that one would be in Seattle. There are already consulates in Atlanta, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Also in 2023, former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti became the United States ambassador to India. Current Mayor Karen Bass wrote a letter to India’s Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, pledging to support the opening of a consulate in Los Angeles. So far, however, there remains no Indian consulate here.