Drive north on Rochester Road on a Saturday morning and the signs begin to change. A bakery case at Patel Brothers fills with warm samosas and small boxes of Diwali fireworks. A queue forms at a dosa griddle. The Indians in Troy, Michigan have made this affluent Oakland County suburb one of the largest South Asian centres in the American Midwest, and they did it not in a single ethnic enclave but across cul-de-sacs, office parks and the best-rated school district in the state.
The Place
Troy sits about twenty miles north of downtown Detroit, an affluent suburb of roughly 87,000 people in Oakland County. The first land purchases in what became Troy Township were recorded in 1819, but the city as it exists today is a post-war creation, incorporated on 1 February 1955 to head off annexation by its neighbours, as the Troy Historic Village records.
What followed was a white-collar boom. The upscale Somerset Collection mall, corporate headquarters for firms such as the auto-parts giant Magna International, and the technology cluster known as Automation Alley turned Troy into a commercial powerhouse rather than a bedroom community.
The median household income now sits near $119,000. That prosperity, and the engineering and technology jobs that produced it, is exactly what drew a particular kind of immigrant.
How It Became Indian
An automotive town that needed engineers
Indian migration to metro Detroit was always tied to the work the region offered. The auto industry and its vast web of suppliers needed engineers, and the hospitals needed doctors. Indian arrivals to the area have clustered heavily in information technology and the medical fields, and Troy, ringed by supplier offices managing IT contracts for the carmakers, was a natural landing point.
The pattern took root after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed the national-origin quotas that had effectively barred Asian immigration for decades. Indian professionals who arrived in the late 1960s and 1970s were overwhelmingly skilled: engineers, physicians, and the early computer programmers who would later define Troy’s appeal.
They did not arrive to a ready-made community. The first families were scattered, a doctor here, a chassis engineer there, meeting in living rooms and rented halls for the festivals that punctuated the year. Troy in those early years was still becoming itself, its office towers rising along Big Beaver Road, its school district building the reputation that would later prove decisive. The two stories, the suburb’s and the community’s, ran in parallel from the start.
The temple comes first
You can date the community’s confidence to a single meeting. On 25 January 1975, about thirty Hindu families gathered at the Northwood Inn in Royal Oak to discuss building a temple. It was an audacious idea for so small a group.
By that March they had raised $140,000 in pledges from roughly 200 families. They bought eighteen acres at the north-west edge of Troy for $70,000, broke ground on 1 June 1980, and inaugurated the Bharatiya Temple on 19 July 1981, with the renowned Swami Chinmayananda presiding.
The professionals arrive in force
Through the 1980s and 1990s the trickle became a stream. The H-1B visa programme, expanded sharply in the 1990s, brought waves of Indian software engineers precisely as Troy’s suppliers were computerising their operations. Families who had rented apartments began buying houses, and they chose Troy deliberately.
The draw was schools. Troy School District consistently ranks among Michigan’s best, and for immigrant parents raised on the idea that education is the surest ladder, that ranking was worth a premium on a mortgage. Word travelled along professional and family networks: if you wanted your children at a top school and yourself near the engineering jobs, you bought in Troy.
That logic compounded. Each family that moved in told the next, and the Asian share of the classrooms climbed year on year until it reshaped the district itself. Spelling-bee trophies, science-fair ribbons and crowded calculus classes became part of Troy’s civic identity, and the schools that had drawn the community in now bore its imprint.
A community without a single high street
Unlike the Indian shopping strips of Edison, New Jersey or the dense flat blocks of Jackson Heights in Queens, Troy never grew a single Indian main street. The community settled across the whole suburb, its presence marked instead by a temple on Adams Road, a cluster of grocers and restaurants on Rochester Road, and the steadily rising Asian share of the classrooms.
By the 2000 census Troy counted 4,697 Asian Indians, enough to rank the city among the twenty largest Indian communities in the United States, according to the documented history of Indian Americans in metro Detroit. The growth did not stop. It spread, too, into neighbouring Novi, Farmington Hills and Canton, the four suburbs together forming the backbone of Indian metro Detroit.
The Landmarks
Bharatiya Temple, 6850 North Adams Road. The spiritual anchor of Indian Troy, founded by thirty families in 1975 and inaugurated in 1981. Its main prayer hall seats around 600, its principal deities Sri Lakshmi Narayana, Sri Ganesh and Sri Hanuman were installed in 1983, and it serves roughly 600 dues-paying member families today.
Patel Brothers, 5055 Rochester Road. The grocery hub for South Asian Troy, stocked with spices, lentils and fresh produce flown in for a homesick clientele. Its bakery turns out rotis, samosas and paneer puffs, and come autumn the shelves fill with Indian sweets and the small fireworks families set off for Diwali.
Neehee’s, 4924 Rochester Road. A vegetarian street-food favourite where the dosas, pani puri and Indo-Chinese plates draw weekend queues. It is the kind of place where parents introduce American-born children to the chaat of their own childhoods, mango lassi in hand.
Honest Restaurant, 5029 Rochester Road. Just across the way, another all-vegetarian kitchen built on Gujarati and Mumbai street food, from vada pav and samosas to the towering Mysore dosa. Its presence, paired with Neehee’s and Patel Brothers, made this stretch of Rochester Road the closest thing Troy has to an Indian high street.
Somerset Collection, 2800 West Big Beaver Road. Not an Indian institution, but the upscale mall that symbolises the prosperity that drew the community here. On festival weekends its corridors fill with families shopping for the gold and silk that mark Indian celebrations.
Troy High School, 4777 Northfield Parkway. One of the flagship schools whose reputation pulled Indian families into the district. Across Troy School District, roughly 39 percent of students are now Asian, a figure that reflects how completely the community wove itself into the town’s civic life.
Where They Came From
Troy’s Indians are not from one place. The early professional wave drew heavily on Gujarat, Punjab and the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, the regions that sent so many of India’s engineers and doctors abroad in the decades after 1965.
The vegetarian, Gujarati-leaning menus at Neehee’s and Honest hint at one large strand of that population. The growth of Telugu-speaking institutions across metro Detroit, including the Sri Venkateswara temple that opened in nearby Novi in 2013, points to another.
What united them was less a home region than a profession and an ambition. They came as the most educated immigrant stream in American history, chasing the engineering and medical work that Detroit’s economy still offered, and they chose the suburb with the schools to match.
Troy Today
Indian Troy is now a settled, second-generation place. The children whose parents bought in for the schools have graduated from Troy High and the district’s other campuses, and many have stayed in the region or returned to raise families of their own. The Asian share of Troy approaches 28 percent of the population, with Indians the largest single group within it.
The community remains diffuse by design. There is no Indiatown sign, no single block to point to. Instead there is the temple humming on Adams Road, the Rochester Road grocers and restaurants, cricket matches in summer parks, and Diwali lights strung across suburban porches each autumn.
The rhythms are seasonal. Late October brings the rush at Patel Brothers for sweets and the small fireworks of Diwali. Summer brings the crack of bat on ball as cricket clubs claim the public fields. Through it all the temple keeps its calendar of festivals and weddings, the gathering point that thirty families willed into being before the community around it had fully formed.
It is, in its way, the quintessential American success story told with Indian particulars: arrival on a skilled visa, a house bought for the schools, a temple raised by subscription, and a generation of children who grew up knowing both the masala dosa on Rochester Road and the Michigan winters outside. Troy did not absorb its Indian community so much as the two grew into each other. For a parallel story of professional Indian migration drawn west by technology, see the Indians in Cupertino, California; for another immigrant chapter written in the same metro Detroit, see the Chaldeans of Detroit.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Indians live in Troy, Michigan?
The 2000 census counted 4,697 Asian Indians in Troy, ranking it among the twenty largest Indian communities in the United States at the time. The community has continued to grow since, with Asians now making up close to 28 percent of the city’s population and Indians the largest group within that.
Why did so many Indians settle in Troy, Michigan?
The Indians in Troy, Michigan were drawn by engineering, IT and medical work tied to the auto industry and its suppliers, and above all by Troy School District, one of the best-rated in the state. Affluent, safe and full of professional jobs, Troy was a natural fit for a highly educated immigrant stream.
Where is the Bharatiya Temple in Troy?
The Bharatiya Temple stands at 6850 North Adams Road in Troy. Founded by about thirty families in 1975 and inaugurated in 1981, it is the spiritual anchor of the Indian community in metro Detroit, with a prayer hall seating roughly 600 worshippers.
Where can you find Indian food and groceries in Troy?
The cluster runs along Rochester Road, including Patel Brothers grocery at 5055 Rochester Road and the vegetarian restaurants Neehee’s at 4924 and Honest Restaurant at 5029. Together they form the closest thing Troy has to an Indian high street.
How are Indians connected to Troy’s schools?
The Indians in Troy, Michigan are deeply tied to Troy School District, whose strong rankings drew immigrant families willing to pay a premium to enrol their children. Asian students now make up roughly 39 percent of the district’s enrolment.
How does Indian Troy relate to Novi, Canton and Farmington Hills?
Troy is one of four neighbouring suburbs, alongside Novi, Farmington Hills and Canton, that together form the heart of Indian metro Detroit. Families and institutions span all four, including the Sri Venkateswara temple that opened in Novi in 2013.
If your family’s story passed through Troy, 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 house bought for the schools off Rochester Road, to wherever you are now.