How 9/11 changed what it meant to be Indian in America

TWENTY-FIVE years after the September 11 attacks, the Indian-American story of 9/11 goes beyond remembering the nearly 3,000 people killed that day.

It includes the Indian-linked victims whose names remain at the 9/11 Memorial in New York, families in India and the United States who lost relatives, and people who faced suspicion, harassment, profiling and violence because they were Indian, Sikh, Muslim or simply appeared to be South Asian.

The attacks on September 11, 2001, killed 2,977 people after 19 al-Qaida operatives hijacked four passenger planes. Two were flown into the World Trade Center in New York, one into the Pentagon and another crashed in Pennsylvania. The victims' names are inscribed at the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan.

A visitor holds a baby at the Empty Sky 9/11 Memorial with One World Trade Center and Lower Manhattan in the distance on August 23, 2026 in Jersey City, New Jersey.Getty

Among them are Indian-linked victims including Alok Agarwal, Mukul Kumar Agarwala, Hemanth Kumar Puttur and Sneha Anne Philip. The Memorial's official database lists victims individually and does not publish a separate nationality-based count.

Indian media have long reported that 41 Indians died in the attacks. During Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2014 visit to Ground Zero, Indian reporting said nine Indian victims were among the names at the Memorial's north pool.

American flags and flowers line the memorial pool at the National September 11 Memorial to mark the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 terror attack at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2023 in New York.Getty

For the families, the story was never about a statistic.

Hemanth Kumar Puttur was from India and was working in New York when the attacks took place. His memorial record identifies him as a consultant with Marsh & McLennan.

Alok Agarwal had moved from Delhi to the United States and was working for Cantor Fitzgerald at the World Trade Center.

How the attacks changed life for Muslims, Sikhs and south Asians

Sneha Anne Philip was a physician living in Lower Manhattan. She disappeared on September 10, 2001. A New York court later ruled that she died in the World Trade Center attack, and her name remains on the Memorial.

But for the Indian and South Asian community in America, another chapter began just four days later.

On September 15, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh immigrant from India, was shot and killed outside the gas station he owned in Mesa, Arizona. His killer believed Sodhi was Muslim or Arab and targeted him because of his beard and turban. Sodhi was not connected to the September 11 attacks. The Justice Department has documented his murder as an early case of the violent backlash that followed 9/11.

The Justice Department says its Civil Rights Division investigated more than 800 incidents after 9/11 involving violence, threats, vandalism and arson directed at Arab Americans, Muslims, Sikhs, South Asian Americans and people perceived to belong to those groups. Federal charges were brought against 54 defendants, resulting in 48 convictions, while the department also worked with state and local authorities on 150 non-federal criminal cases.

Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh immigrant from India, was shot and killed outside the gas station he owned in Mesa, Arizona. .

The department's Community Relations Service also began working with Arab American, Muslim American and Sikh American communities after the attacks as reports of harassment, discrimination and violence increased.

For South Asians, the experience was complicated by the way race and religion were often read together. Muslim Americans faced new surveillance and security measures, while Sikhs were targeted because of visible religious markers such as turbans and beards. Other South Asians could also find themselves viewed through the same lens.

Academic research on Asian Indian Americans has documented that experience. One study of second-generation Asian Indian Americans found that participants described greater awareness of race and discrimination after 9/11, including experiences of profiling and suspicion.

The South Asian Council for Social Services, or SACSS, had been founded in New York in 2000. After 9/11, it says the organization became an emergency hub, helping families with mental health support, legal aid, food and other assistance as people dealt with grief, fear and the loss of income and stability.

SACSS later created a Book of Memories documenting South Asian and Indo-Caribbean victims, preserving personal stories alongside their names. The organization says the project contains 38 profiles.

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The Sikh Coalition traces its origins to the same post-9/11 period, when Sikh Americans were confronting violence and discrimination and seeking civil-rights support. This year, it has released anniversary resources and is preparing to join the Sodhi family for a vigil in Mesa on September 15, marking 25 years since his murder.

The anniversary is also forcing a question about memory.

“Many in my generation remember exactly where we were on that horrific day” in 2001, said Beth Hillman, president of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum and a US Air Force veteran.

Muslim men pray during a Day of Remembrance open house at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York September 11, 2002 in New York City. Getty

Yet today, “100 million Americans were not even born or are too young to remember” the tragic events.

Pew Research Center's latest survey shows that 83 per cent of US adults born before 2001 remember exactly where they were or what they were doing when they heard the news of the attacks. Among people who were at least 10 years old in 2001, the figure is 93 per cent.

But 10 per cent of American adults today were born after 2001. Among adults ages 18 to 24, 60 per cent say they first learned about 9/11 in class or through schoolwork. Pew's survey of 5,166 US adults was conducted August 24-30, 2026.

That change matters for Indian-American families. Those who remember 2001 carry memories of the attacks and what followed. Younger Indian Americans may know the events through family stories, school lessons, memorials and community institutions.

For many families, it is not only the destruction of the World Trade Center. It is a name on the Memorial, a relative who never came home, a phone call to India and the fear that followed. It is also the experience of discovering that being Indian, Sikh or South Asian could suddenly carry a different meaning in public.

The broader Muslim-American experience shows how durable the post-9/11 effect has been.

Pew's latest research found that 43 per cent of US adults say Muslims are less patriotic than other Americans, while 42 per cent say Muslims have a negative impact on the country. In January 2026, 51 per cent said Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence, compared with 25 per cent in March 2002.

The FBI's annual hate-crime data, as analyzed by Pew, show that reported anti-Muslim incidents rose from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001. They reached 205 in 2025 but have not returned to the pre-9/11 level. Pew cautions that its anti-Muslim category does not include hate crimes motivated by bias against ethnic groups such as Arabs or South Asians.

Those figures are about Muslim Americans, not Indian Americans generally. But they help explain the wider environment in which many South Asian communities lived after 9/11.

In New York, that history is visible through the experiences of people who grew up during the backlash.

Asad Dandia was eight when he watched the attacks on television at his Pakistani-immigrant parents' home in New York. Years later, when he was 19, a man who had joined a mutual-aid charity Dandia had started revealed that he was an NYPD informant monitoring Dandia and his community.

"It was heartbreaking, but it was also terrifying," he recalled. "My relationship with the world around me shifted underneath my feet."

Dandia and rights groups later won a legal settlement that restricted the NYPD from launching similar surveillance programs and established a watchdog to monitor the department.

Twenty-five years later, he sees a different city.

"Twenty-five years after 9/11, we mourn and we grieve what happened, and at the same time, we recognize that I am not responsible for what happened," he told AFP. "I don't deserve to be targeted for what happened, and I am as much of a New Yorker as anybody else in that respect," said Dandia, who leads walking tours centered on the city's Muslim communities.

Gadier Abbas, an attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said, "there is a lot of hope."

"You see American Muslims in every single walk of life, almost at every single level, and that's a testament to the vibrancy of the community."

The same change can be seen in the institutions that grew after 9/11.

SACSS expanded its work. The Sikh Coalition became a national civil-rights organization. Community leaders built stronger networks around legal help, education, security and advocacy.

The Sikh Coalition's anniversary work this year reflects that continuing effort. Alongside its remembrance plans, it is directing communities to a South Asian Coalition learning hub with video testimonials, school resources and other material documenting the legacy of 9/11.

The anniversary also comes as the country continues to deal with the physical consequences of the attacks.

The federal World Trade Center Health Program now covers more than 150,000 responders and survivors. Reuters reported this week that more than 9,000 members of the program have died since the attacks.

On September 10, Reuters reported that a new government-funded study will examine the long-term health of children exposed to the toxic environment around the World Trade Center. Approximately 25,000 children lived or attended school near Lower Manhattan at the time, and the research is intended to address gaps in knowledge about illnesses that may emerge decades later.

The anniversary itself will be observed in New York on Friday.

Relatives will read the names of the people killed in the attacks. The ceremony will begin at 8:40 a.m., shortly before American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower. Two beams of light will again rise from lower Manhattan in the evening.

President Donald Trump will observe the anniversary at the Pentagon rather than Ground Zero, while Vice President JD Vance and former presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are expected at the Manhattan ceremony, according to AFP.

For Indian Americans, the 25th anniversary comes with a memory that is both American and deeply personal.

The community remembers those who died. It remembers Balbir Singh Sodhi, an immigrant from India who became one of the first victims of the backlash. It remembers families who dealt with loss and uncertainty, and community organizations that stepped in when people needed help.

It also remembers a time when identity itself could become a source of suspicion.

That history is now being passed to a generation that increasingly has no personal memory of September 11.

The Memorial will preserve the names. Families will preserve the stories. Community organizations will continue to document what happened after the attacks.

For Indian America, that is what the 25th anniversary is ultimately about: remembering not only what was lost on September 11, but what changed in the years that followed.

(With inputs from agencies)