On a Saturday afternoon along Route 18, the parking lot at Brunswick Square fills with families carrying bags of basmati and frozen parathas, the radio in the next car tuned to a Bollywood station. The Indians in East Brunswick have made this corner of central New Jersey their own without ever needing a banner over the street to say so. Here, the Diwali lights go up on cul-de-sacs, the school robotics teams run on samosas, and a temple bell carries across the woods near Farrington Lake.
The Place
East Brunswick is a township of just under 50,000 people in Middlesex County, about 29 miles southwest of Manhattan and directly adjacent to New Brunswick. It is a leafy, prosperous suburb of split-levels and colonials, wrapped around Route 18 and threaded with parks, lakes and one of the most respected public school systems in the state.
It sits in the heart of what has become the densest concentration of Indian Americans in the country. The Indian community in Edison and its Oak Tree Road district lie just to the north, and the township shares their orbit while keeping its own quieter, residential character. People come here for the schools and the calm, and stay for the same reasons.
How It Became Indian
For most of its history, East Brunswick was farmland. It was incorporated as a township in 1860 from parts of Monroe and North Brunswick, a scattering of farms along the navigable South River. It stayed small and rural well into the twentieth century.
The Turnpike and the postwar boom
Everything changed with the road. The New Jersey Turnpike, completed through the area in 1952, turned a farming township into a commuter suburb almost overnight. The population more than tripled in a single decade, from 5,699 in 1950 to nearly 20,000 by 1960. Brunswick Square Mall opened on Route 18 in 1973, and the cornfields gave way to subdivisions, schools and shopping plazas.
That new housing stock, built fast and built well, would later become the landing pad for a very different wave of arrivals.
The first Indian families
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 reopened America to immigrants from Asia, and the first Indian doctors, engineers and academics began arriving in central New Jersey in the late 1960s and 1970s. Many came to work at the pharmaceutical and telecom firms clustered nearby, or to teach and study at Rutgers in neighbouring New Brunswick.
East Brunswick, with its new houses and its good schools, was an obvious choice for families who had crossed an ocean partly for their children’s education. These early arrivals were a small, scattered presence, professionals who often drove half an hour to find a temple or a sack of toor dal.
They organised quietly at first: a puja in someone’s living room, a Sunday language class for the children, a potluck of dosa and dal that doubled as a community meeting. Friendships formed around the shared problem of raising Indian children in an American suburb, and those informal networks would later seed the temples and associations that anchor the township today.
Oak Tree Road and the gravitational pull
What accelerated everything was the rise of Oak Tree Road, the South Asian commercial spine running through Edison and Iselin a short drive north. By the 1990s it had become the largest Indian shopping district in the United States, with hundreds of grocers, jewellers, sari shops and restaurants. You could buy fresh okra, gold bangles and a wedding invitation in a single afternoon.
That hub made the surrounding townships livable for Indian families in a way they had not been before. You could keep your kitchen, your festivals and your faith fully stocked, and still raise children in a quiet suburb with a top school district. East Brunswick offered exactly that trade, and Indian families chose it in growing numbers through the 1990s and 2000s.
From a presence to a plurality
The numbers tell the arc. In 2000 the township was about 16 percent Asian. By 2010 that figure had climbed past 22 percent, and by the 2020 census Asian residents made up roughly 28 percent of East Brunswick, with Indian Americans the largest component by a wide margin. In a single generation, an Indian family went from being a novelty on the block to being a near-certain neighbour.
The shift was visible in the everyday: Indian grocers opening on Route 18, the school calendar quietly accommodating Diwali, cricket pitches appearing in the township parks each summer.
It changed the texture of childhood here too. A generation of children grew up bilingual, shuttling between Saturday tutoring and Bharatanatyam classes, between the high school robotics lab and the temple. For them East Brunswick was never a place their parents had adapted to; it was simply home, as Indian as it was American.
The Landmarks
Ved Mandir, originally on Riva Avenue, East Brunswick. One of central New Jersey’s older Hindu congregations, Ved Mandir began serving East Brunswick families and grew until it outgrew its Riva Avenue home, eventually building a large new temple just over the border in Milltown. For decades it was the spiritual anchor for the township’s Hindu families, hosting weddings, festivals and Sunday classes in Sanskrit and scripture.
Brunswick Desi Bazaar, Brunswick Square Mall, 753 NJ-18, East Brunswick. An Indian grocery tucked into the township’s main mall, stocked with spices, lentils, frozen snacks and the day’s vegetables. It is the kind of shop where the shelves are labelled in two languages and the staff know which brand of atta you favour.
Spice Paradise, 206 Route 18, East Brunswick. A restaurant built around Hyderabadi biryani, kebabs, South Indian dosas and Indo-Chinese plates, the layered menu that reflects how many regions of India now live in one township. It draws the weekend crowds that fill Route 18’s plazas.
Brunswick Square Mall, NJ-18 at Rues Lane, East Brunswick. The 1973 mall that once symbolised suburban postwar America has quietly become a gathering point for Indian families, its food court and grocery anchoring weekend routines as much as any temple does.
The Route 18 corridor, East Brunswick. The township’s commercial artery is lined with Indian restaurants and grocers, from Hyderabadi spots to Gujarati snack shops, a working high street for a community that prefers to live on quiet streets but eat from home.
East Brunswick High School, Cranbury Road, East Brunswick. The flagship of a district that the state ranks among its strongest, it is the reason many Indian families chose the township in the first place. Its robotics, debate and music programmes are crowded with the children and grandchildren of those first arrivals.
The township parks, East Brunswick. On summer weekends the fields fill with cricket, the most reliable sign of how thoroughly the community has settled in. What was once an exotic sight is now part of the ordinary rhythm of a New Jersey summer.
Where They Came From
East Brunswick’s Indian families come from across the subcontinent, a reflection of how broad the migration became. There are Gujaratis who form the backbone of the grocery and motel economy, Telugu and Tamil software engineers drawn by the corridor’s tech and pharma jobs, Punjabis, Bengalis and Malayalis among them.
Many arrived not directly from India but from Edison, Iselin or Jersey City, moving outward and upward as their careers matured and their children reached school age. The same pattern shaped nearby townships, from the Indian families of Marlboro to the engineers of Bridgewater. East Brunswick was the suburb you graduated to: bigger house, better district, same temple a short drive away.
The common thread is the professional class that the 1965 reforms favoured. These were doctors, engineers and accountants who valued schools above almost everything, and who found in East Brunswick a place that rewarded that priority.
East Brunswick Today
Today the Indian presence in East Brunswick is simply part of what the township is. Diwali is marked on the school calendar, candidates of Indian origin run for local office, and the grocery aisles on Route 18 carry as much paneer as provolone. The community has not built a single dramatic landmark so much as woven itself through the ordinary places: the mall, the parks, the schools, the PTA.
It is a quieter kind of enclave than the dense commercial strips of Oak Tree Road a few miles north. East Brunswick is where families come to live the suburban life they worked for, leaving the shopping and the spectacle to Edison and Iselin. The bustle is borrowed; the calm is the point.
That balance, a short drive from one of the country’s great Indian commercial districts and yet firmly residential, is exactly what continues to draw Indian families. It is the same calculation that built the Indian enclaves of Princeton and the West Windsor and Plainsboro corridor nearby. They get the food, the festivals and the faith of the corridor, and the schools and quiet of the suburb. It is a trade few other places in America can offer so completely.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Indians live in East Brunswick?
The 2020 census put East Brunswick’s Asian population at roughly 28 percent of nearly 50,000 residents, with Indian Americans the single largest group within that. The Indian community in East Brunswick has grown steadily since the 1990s and is now a defining part of the township.
Why did so many Indian families settle in East Brunswick?
The township combined excellent public schools, new and affordable suburban housing, and proximity to the Oak Tree Road shopping district in Edison and Iselin. For Indian families who prized education and wanted easy access to groceries, temples and restaurants, it was an ideal landing place.
Where do Indians in East Brunswick shop for groceries and food?
The Route 18 corridor is lined with Indian grocers and restaurants, including Brunswick Desi Bazaar at Brunswick Square Mall and Spice Paradise nearby. Many families also drive a few minutes north to the hundreds of shops along Oak Tree Road.
Are there Hindu temples in East Brunswick?
Ved Mandir served East Brunswick families for decades from its original Riva Avenue location before building a larger temple just over the border in Milltown. Central New Jersey is dense with temples, and East Brunswick residents are within easy reach of several, including the major mandirs of the wider region.
How does East Brunswick compare to Edison for Indian residents?
Edison and its Oak Tree Road district are the commercial heart of the Indian community, packed with shops and restaurants. East Brunswick is the quieter residential neighbour, where many families live for the schools and calm while relying on Edison for shopping and festivals.
What festivals does the Indian community in East Brunswick celebrate?
Diwali is the most visible, marked on the school calendar and lighting up homes across the township each autumn. Holi, Navratri and regional celebrations are observed at temples and community halls, and cricket fills the township parks through the summer.
If your family’s story passed through East Brunswick, or any of the places Indians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a village in Gujarat or a city in Andhra Pradesh, to a split-level off Route 18, to wherever you are now.