From Indians to Indian Americans: How Tampa Bay s Indian Community Was Built

When people speak of the immigrant groups that helped to build Tampa into the great city that it is today, they usually speak of the Italians, Cubans and Spaniards, because their contributions in the late 1800s and early 1900s laid the groundwork that turned a sleepy section of Florida, once covered with guava fields and mangroves, into a thriving metropolis. But, in the last three decades, Tampa has seen the rise of a new and vibrant immigrant community, namely the Indian American community (meaning those men and women with roots in India) that is helping lead Tampa into a better tomorrow. Yet, the majority of the Tampa Bay community still seems unaware of the significance of Indian Americans in the life of the city. The purpose of this book is to finally shed some light on Tampa's least known culture and to document the men and women who built Tampa's Indian community before they all pass on. Other immigrant cultures waited over a century to begin compiling their histories and some of them have been lost. By documenting the history while most of the first and second generation Indians are still alive and young, it has been possible to compile a firsthand look at how Tampa's Indian American culture was built, who its leaders are and from where they've come.