On a weekday morning in the Hills section of Basking Ridge, the school bus stops read like a roll call of South India and Gujarat: a Telugu mother in a salwar walking her daughter to the corner, a Tamil father in a quarter-zip heading toward the Verizon campus, a Gujarati grandmother taking the long loop around the cul-de-sac for her morning steps. The Indians in Basking Ridge did not arrive to a Little India. They arrived to one of the wealthiest townships in New Jersey, drawn by a corporate headquarters and a school district, and quietly made it one of theirs.
The Place
Basking Ridge is the largest village in Bernards Township, in the Somerset Hills of north-central New Jersey, roughly forty minutes west of Manhattan when the roads cooperate. The township was chartered in 1760 and named for Sir Francis Bernard, a colonial governor of New Jersey, and its old centre still turns on a 1717 Presbyterian church and the 1809 Brick Academy.
For most of its history this was horse country and farmland, the kind of place where Lord Stirling built a grand colonial estate and a single white oak in the village centre stood for some six hundred years until it was finally taken down in 2017. Today the township is affluent and professional, with a median household income recorded at $123,285 in the 2010 census and only a sliver of families below the poverty line.
What changed it was not a railroad or a mill. It was an office building.
How It Became Indian
The headquarters that started it
In 1976, AT&T opened its corporate headquarters in Basking Ridge, a sprawling complex on a 135-acre campus off Mount Airy Road. For a quiet farming township, this was a transformation. Thousands of white-collar jobs landed at once, and with them came a hunger for housing within commuting distance of the gate.
The engineers and managers AT&T recruited in the 1970s and 1980s increasingly included Indians, many of them trained at the IITs and recruited into telecom, computing and research. They were exactly the kind of professional immigrant the 1965 Hart-Celler Act had opened the door to, and a campus full of technical jobs in a top school district was precisely what they were looking for.
The numbers from that first decade are tiny. In 1980 the township counted only 81 Asian residents, about half a percent of the population. The seed was small, but it was planted next to a very large employer.
The Hills, and the families who filled them
In 1987, a large planned community called the Hills began selling housing units in the township: townhouses and condominiums on the eastern side, near the interstate, more attainable than the older colonials in the village. The timing could not have been better for a young Indian engineer at AT&T with a new green card and a first child on the way.
The Asian share of Bernards Township climbed in step with the Hills. From 0.5 percent in 1980 it rose to 3.1 percent in 1990, then 7.8 percent in 2000, with the absolute count passing 1,900 residents. Townhouse by townhouse, a community formed without ever being named.
From telecom to pharma to finance
The 1990s and 2000s scattered Indian families across more than one industry. AT&T fractured and reorganised, and in 2002 the company sold its Basking Ridge headquarters to the pharmaceutical firm Pharmacia for $200 million. The campus passed through Pfizer’s hands and eventually became the operational headquarters of Verizon, where One Verizon Way today holds seven interconnected buildings and thousands of employees.
That churn mattered for the Indian community because central New Jersey was, by then, a corridor of work. The pharmaceutical and biotech belt around the Indian community in nearby Bridgewater and the Route 206 spine, the financial-services firms reachable on Route 78, and the consulting and IT-services world all drew on the same pool of Indian professionals. A family could change employers three times and never need to change its address or its child’s school.
The school district as gravity
If the headquarters brought the first families, the schools kept them and brought more. The Bernards Township district, and Ridge High School in particular, became a name passed between Indian families across the state. Ridge won a National Blue Ribbon in 2009 to 2010 and has sat among the top thirty high schools in New Jersey in the years since.
For immigrant parents who had bet their move on their children’s education, that ranking was the entire argument. The Asian share of the township nearly doubled again, from 13.8 percent in 2010 to 24.1 percent by 2023, with Indians among the largest groups inside that figure. By the 2020s, roughly one in four residents of Bernards Township was Asian, and the once-rural township had become, demographically, something its 1976 self would not have recognised.
The Landmarks
Sri Venkateswara Temple (Balaji Mandir), Bridgewater. A short drive up the corridor from Basking Ridge, this traditional South Indian stone temple was inaugurated in 1998 after the Hindu Temple and Cultural Society of USA bought the Bridgewater land in 1992. For Telugu and Tamil families in the Somerset Hills, the Balaji Mandir is the closest thing to a regional anchor, and its festival calendar pulls Basking Ridge families down Route 206 for weddings, Brahmotsavam and the South Indian cafeteria.
Tandoori Mela, 562 Allen Road, Basking Ridge. One of the township’s own Indian restaurants, set among the office parks rather than in a strip of competitors. It does the work that a community kitchen does in a town without an Indian high street: catering the Diwali office party, feeding the cricket crowd, plating the everyday North Indian dinner a family is too tired to cook.
One Verizon Way, Basking Ridge. The 135-acre campus that began as AT&T’s 1976 headquarters and became Verizon’s operational base. More than any temple or restaurant, this is the landmark that explains the community: a generation of Indian engineers and managers passed through these buildings, and many of them bought homes within a few miles of the parking lot.
The Hills, eastern Bernards Township. The planned community that opened for sale in 1987 and absorbed wave after wave of arriving families. Drive its loops on a weekend and you will hear Telugu, Gujarati and Tamil over the hedges, smell tempering spices from the townhouse kitchens, and pass driveways with both a minivan and a freshly washed sedan.
Ridge High School, Basking Ridge. A National Blue Ribbon school and a perennial state top-thirty, and for many Indian families the reason the move was worth it. Its science fairs, its spelling-bee feeder culture and its packed AP rosters carry the unmistakable fingerprints of a community that treats education as the family business.
Lord Stirling Park and the Great Swamp edge. Over a thousand acres of fields, woods and trails on the township’s southern flank. On weekend mornings the loops fill with Indian families walking off a heavy breakfast, grandparents in sneakers and saris doing their measured laps, the ordinary American outdoor ritual performed in a thoroughly Indian register.
The Brick Academy and the village centre. The 1809 schoolhouse, now home to the Historical Society of the Somerset Hills, sits in the old colonial heart by the 1717 Presbyterian church. It is the Basking Ridge that predates everyone, the deep New England-style green that newer arrivals inherit and, increasingly, help maintain.
Where They Came From
The Indians of Basking Ridge are not from one place, and that is the point. The community is heavily South Indian, with large numbers of Telugu families from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and Tamil families from Tamil Nadu, the regions that fed the IT and engineering pipelines hardest in the 1990s and 2000s. The pull of the Balaji Mandir in Bridgewater reflects that South Indian weight.
Alongside them are Gujarati families, often a half-step ahead in the migration and more likely to be in business or pharmacy, and a steady scatter from Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and the Hindi belt. The common thread is class rather than region: these are families who arrived with degrees, on professional or skilled-worker visas, and who chose the township deliberately.
That deliberateness sets Basking Ridge apart from older New Jersey landing places. The Indian heart of Iselin and the commercial strips of Edison drew Indians to ready-made Little Indias; Basking Ridge drew them, instead, to a corporate campus and a school ranking, and asked them to bring the community with them.
Basking Ridge Today
Today, roughly a quarter of Bernards Township is Asian, and Indians form one of the largest threads in that number. You see it in the obvious places, the Diwali events on the township calendar, the Holi colours on a community lawn in spring, the names on the honour roll, and in the quieter ones, the second Indian grocery run that ends in Bridgewater because Basking Ridge itself never grew a Patel Brothers.
That absence is telling and honest. This is not a commercial Little India with a row of sari shops and sweet houses. The grocery and the big temple sit a corridor away, in Bridgewater and Iselin, and Basking Ridge functions as the affluent residential half of a wider central-Jersey Indian geography that runs through the Indian families of Hillsborough and the university-town professionals of Indian Princeton. People live here and shop there, and nobody finds that strange.
What Basking Ridge offers instead is the suburban prize the first AT&T recruits were chasing: a top district, a safe township, big colonial houses on quiet roads, and a campus full of professional work within a short commute. Two generations in, the Indian families who came for the headquarters and stayed for the schools are no longer newcomers. Their children grew up here, came back here, and are raising the next round of Ridge students in the same townhouses on the same loops in the Hills.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Indians live in Basking Ridge, New Jersey?
There is no exact Indian-only count published for the village, but Bernards Township, which contains Basking Ridge, was about 24.1 percent Asian as of 2023, roughly 6,700 residents, up from 13.8 percent in 2010. Indians make up one of the largest groups within that Asian population, so the Indian community in Basking Ridge numbers in the low thousands.
Why did Indians settle in Basking Ridge specifically?
The main draws were the AT&T corporate headquarters that opened in 1976 and the top-ranked Bernards Township school district. Indian engineers and professionals recruited into telecom, and later pharma and finance along the central-Jersey corridor, settled near the campus, and the school reputation kept families there and attracted more.
Where is the nearest Hindu temple to Basking Ridge?
The Sri Venkateswara Temple, also called the Balaji Mandir, in nearby Bridgewater is the main temple serving Indians in Basking Ridge. It was inaugurated in 1998 and is a traditional South Indian stone temple with a community centre and cafeteria.
Is there a Little India in Basking Ridge?
No. Basking Ridge is an affluent residential township rather than a commercial Indian district. For sari shops, sweet houses and large Indian grocers, families drive a short distance to Bridgewater, Iselin or Edison, which anchor the wider central-New-Jersey Indian community.
What part of India are Basking Ridge Indians from?
The community is heavily South Indian, with many Telugu families from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and Tamil families from Tamil Nadu, reflecting the IT and engineering migration of the 1990s and 2000s. There are also significant Gujarati families and arrivals from Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala.
How good are the schools in Basking Ridge?
Very good, which is a large part of why Indian families chose the township. Ridge High School won a National Blue Ribbon in 2009 to 2010 and has ranked among the top thirty high schools in New Jersey, and the Bernards Township district is consistently rated among the state’s best.
If your family’s story passed through Basking Ridge, or any of the places Indians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a town in Andhra Pradesh or a street in Ahmedabad, to a townhouse in the Hills and a desk on the old AT&T campus, to wherever you are now.