Drive north on Route 206 out of Princeton, past the office parks and the old Dutch churches, and within fifteen minutes you reach a township where two in five residents trace their roots to Asia, and a very large share of those to India. The story of Indians in Montgomery, New Jersey is one of the quietest and most complete suburban transformations in the state: a farming district of barely two thousand people a lifetime ago, now a place where Diwali is debated at school board meetings and Hindi is taught on Friday nights in the middle school cafeteria.
The Place
Montgomery Township sits in the southern corner of Somerset County, wrapped around the northern edge of Princeton like a green collar. It is not a single downtown but a scatter of small communities: Belle Mead, Blawenburg, Harlingen, Skillman, and Rocky Hill nearby, stitched together by Route 206 and Route 518 and a great deal of preserved open land.
The township was incorporated on 21 February 1798 and named for General Richard Montgomery, the Continental Army officer who fell at the Battle of Quebec. For most of the next two centuries it was farmland, with the Sourland Mountains rising along its western flank.
Today it is one of the wealthiest municipalities in New Jersey. Based on 2013 to 2017 federal survey data, its median household income of roughly 180,660 dollars ranked second in the state among towns with more than 10,000 residents. Princeton University is a short drive south, and the pharmaceutical and research corridor that runs through Mercer and Somerset counties is the engine behind much of that wealth.
How It Became Indian
There was no single moment when Indians arrived in Montgomery. There was a slope, and the township climbed it faster than almost anywhere else in New Jersey.
The farming township, before
Well into the middle of the twentieth century, Montgomery was a rural place of perhaps 2,350 people, its life organised around Dutch Reformed congregations and family farms. The Reformed Dutch Church of Blawenburg, built in 1830 and 1831 on what is now County Route 518, is a relic of that older world, when the surnames on the township rolls were Dutch and English and the land grew crops rather than subdivisions.
That township simply does not exist anymore. The fields became cul-de-sacs, the population multiplied roughly tenfold, and the people who filled the new houses came, in very large numbers, from the other side of the world.
The Princeton pull
The first Indians to settle around Montgomery did not come for the township itself. They came for what surrounds it. Central New Jersey is one of the densest concentrations of pharmaceutical, biotechnology and research employment in the United States, anchored by the campuses near Princeton and Lawrenceville, and reinforced by Rutgers and the universities of the Princeton corridor.
From the 1980s and 1990s onward, Indian engineers, physicians, pharmacists and scientists arrived in this corridor in steady numbers, many on professional and skilled-worker visas. New Jersey has long held one of the largest Indian-American populations in the country, concentrated first in Middlesex County towns like Edison and Iselin. Montgomery became the place families moved to once the children reached school age.
Following the schools
For Indian families across central New Jersey, Montgomery offered a specific and powerful draw: its schools. The Montgomery Township School District is consistently rated among the strongest in the state, and Montgomery High School in Skillman was ranked number 26 among New Jersey high schools in U.S. News and World Report’s 2025 edition.
The numbers behind that reputation are stark. At Montgomery High School roughly 67 percent of students test proficient in mathematics against a state average near 38 percent, and reading proficiency sits above 80 percent. The Advanced Placement participation rate is around 71 percent. For a community that places extraordinary weight on education, those figures functioned like a beacon.
So the move was often a two-step migration. Families landed first in the older Indian enclaves of Middlesex County, established themselves, and then, when school choice mattered most, bought in Montgomery.
The tipping point
The census tells the story plainly. In 2000, residents of Asian descent made up about 11.5 percent of Montgomery’s population. By 2010 that figure had more than doubled to roughly 25.6 percent. By the 2019 to 2023 federal estimates, the Asian share had climbed to about 41 percent, some 9,704 people out of a township of around 23,700.
Federal data does not break the Asian category down by national origin at this level, so the precise Indian share is not officially published. But the texture of the township, its restaurants, its grocery aisles, its weekend classes and its festivals, makes clear that Indians are the largest part of that figure by a wide margin.
From newcomers to neighbours
What began as individual home purchases became, within a generation, a community with its own institutions and its own rhythm. Indian families did not cluster into a single street or pocket. They spread across Belle Mead, Skillman and Blawenburg, sending their children into the same classrooms, joining the same parent associations, and slowly reshaping what a Montgomery weekend looks like.
The Landmarks
Mango Tree Indian Cuisine, 2311 US Highway 206, Belle Mead. Described as the first authentic dine-in Indian restaurant in Montgomery Township, it became a fixture along the Route 206 retail strip and a marker of how far the community had grown. The space has since carried on as a vegetarian Indian restaurant, a reminder that the demand it answered did not fade.
Montgomery Shopping Center, Route 206 at Route 518, Skillman. Anchored by the ShopRite of Montgomery at 1325 US Highway 206, this is the township’s everyday hub. Its aisles and neighbouring storefronts have steadily made room for the spices, lentils and produce that Indian home cooking demands, the quiet retail signal of a changing customer base.
Montgomery Upper Middle School, Skillman. On Friday evenings the building takes on a second life as the home of the Montgomery Hindi School, where a corps of volunteer teachers leads language classes from roughly seven to half past eight. It is where many children of the township first learn to read the script their grandparents wrote in.
Montgomery High School, Skillman. The single biggest reason many Indian families chose the township, and now a place where South Asian names crowd the honour rolls, the science fairs and the graduating classes. Its reputation drew the community, and the community in turn helped sustain its reputation.
Montgomery Promenade, Route 206. A 292,700-square-foot mixed-use development rising on a long-vacant parcel along Route 206, anchored by a Whole Foods Market, with first openings expected in 2026. It is the next chapter of the retail landscape that a more diverse, more affluent township has called into being.
Reformed Dutch Church of Blawenburg, 424 County Route 518, Blawenburg. Built in 1830 and 1831, this white-clapboard church is the township’s memory of its founding population. Standing within sight of the new arrivals’ subdivisions, it frames the full arc of Montgomery’s story in a single landscape.
Princeton Airport, Route 206. A small general-aviation field within the township’s bounds, it is a low-key landmark of the corridor’s professional character, the kind of quiet infrastructure that surrounds a community of engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs.
Where They Came From
The Indians of Montgomery did not arrive from one region of the subcontinent. They came as professionals, which meant they came from wherever India’s universities and technical institutes were strongest, and that is to say from almost everywhere.
The community draws on the broad streams of skilled Indian migration to the United States: software engineers and IT professionals, many with roots in the southern states and the western cities; physicians and pharmacists serving the region’s hospitals and drug companies; and scientists tied to the pharmaceutical and biotech campuses of the Princeton corridor.
Because the migration was filtered through profession rather than village or caste, Montgomery’s Indian community is unusually mixed in language and origin, a Tamil family next to a Gujarati one next to a Punjabi one, united less by a shared home region than by a shared path: education, a skilled visa, a first home in Middlesex County, and finally a house zoned for Montgomery’s schools.
Montgomery Today
Montgomery in the 2020s is a township where the Indian presence is no longer remarked upon as new. It is simply part of the fabric. The fight over whether to make the last day of Diwali an official school holiday, a petition that gathered more than a thousand signatures, is the kind of debate that only happens where a community has reached real demographic weight.
The cultural calendar reflects it too. Diwali music and dance events fill the schools, and the township’s Indian families take part in the wider cultural programming of organisations like the Indo-American Cultural Foundation of New Jersey, which runs Navratri Garba nights, Independence Day gatherings and Diwali dinners across the central part of the state.
It is, honestly, a community defined by its comfort. There is no struggling immigrant quarter here, no faded main street. The Indians of Montgomery are doctors and engineers and pharmacists living in one of the wealthiest towns in New Jersey, sending their children to one of its best high schools, and quietly reshaping what an old Dutch farming township means in the twenty-first century. The transformation is so thorough that it has become ordinary.
Montgomery’s path echoes other affluent suburbs where Indian families have concentrated around top schools, from the Indian community in Stone Ridge, Virginia to Indian families in Gilbert, Arizona, the new arrivals in Celina, Texas and the Indian households of Milton, Georgia. Closer to home, the same corridor shaped the Chinese community of neighbouring Princeton and, in a very different register, the Syrian Jews of Deal down the New Jersey shore.
Frequently Asked Questions
How large is the Indian community in Montgomery, New Jersey?
Federal estimates for 2019 to 2023 put Montgomery’s Asian population at about 41 percent, roughly 9,704 of around 23,700 residents. The census does not publish a separate Indian figure at the township level, but Indians make up the large majority of that Asian share, making the Indian community in Montgomery one of the most concentrated in central New Jersey.
Why did so many Indian families move to Montgomery?
Two forces drove it: jobs and schools. The Princeton-area pharmaceutical and research corridor employs large numbers of Indian engineers, physicians, pharmacists and scientists, and Montgomery’s highly rated public schools drew those families once their children reached school age. Many arrived after first settling in the older Indian enclaves of Middlesex County.
How fast did the Indian and Asian population grow?
Very fast. The Asian share of Montgomery’s population rose from about 11.5 percent in 2000 to roughly 25.6 percent in 2010 and to around 41 percent by the 2019 to 2023 estimates. Few New Jersey townships changed so completely in a single generation.
Are there Indian restaurants and shops in Montgomery?
Yes. Mango Tree Indian Cuisine at 2311 US Highway 206 in Belle Mead was described as the township’s first authentic dine-in Indian restaurant, and the Montgomery Shopping Center on Route 206, anchored by ShopRite, serves much of the community’s daily shopping. More retail is arriving with the Montgomery Promenade development on Route 206.
How do Montgomery’s schools rank?
Among the best in the state. Montgomery High School in Skillman was ranked number 26 in New Jersey in U.S. News and World Report’s 2025 list, with maths and reading proficiency far above state averages and an Advanced Placement participation rate around 71 percent. Those schools are a central reason the Indian community in Montgomery grew so quickly.
Is Diwali a school holiday in Montgomery?
It is a live question. A petition gathered more than a thousand signatures asking the Montgomery Township Board of Education to recognise the last day of Diwali as an official day off, citing the township’s large Asian population. The debate itself reflects how significant the community has become, regardless of where the calendar lands.
If your family’s story passed through Montgomery, or any of the places Indians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a technical institute in India to a first apartment in Edison, to a house zoned for Montgomery’s schools, to wherever you are now.