Indians in Jersey City: the 2026 guide to India Square, Journal Square, Newport, the Heights, Hoboken and Secaucus

Jersey City is the centre of Indian life in Hudson County and the Indian high street nearest to Manhattan. The US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2020–2024 counts 37,794 people in Jersey City who identify as Asian Indian, alone or in combination with another group — 12.9% of the city’s 294,078 residents, with a margin of error of ±2,246. The same survey counts 56,007 in Hudson County (7.8% of 718,323), so about two in every three Indian residents of the county live in this one city. Counting only people who gave Asian Indian and no other group, the figures are 36,527 for the city and 54,093 for the county. The survey is a sample, so every figure is an estimate. The 2020–2024 release was read through Census Reporter on 23 October 2026; the site’s New York guide uses the earlier 2019–2023 release for the whole New York–Newark–Jersey City metro area that Jersey City belongs to (730,444), and Edison and Middlesex County, further south, have their own page.

The national rules — visas and the H-1B lottery, the Social Security number, federal tax, remittances, the OCI card and Indian passports — are in the site’s US topic guides and are linked rather than repeated: jobs and visas, cost of living, the OCI card, passport renewal, sending money to India and what to take to India. This page is about the city and the Hudson County towns around it; Indians in New York covers Queens and Long Island, and Indians in Edison has the New Jersey tenant, health and school rules in full.

Indians are the largest Asian group in Jersey City by a wide margin. The same survey table counts 37,794 Asian Indians against 17,888 Filipinos and 14,649 Chinese, so the Indian count is more than twice the next group’s. Of the Indian residents, 27,693 (±1,852) were born in India — almost three in four — and the rest were born here or elsewhere. Wikipedia’s articles on India Square and on Jersey City record about 3,000 Indians on the stretch in 1980, more than 27,000 Asian Indians (10.9% of the city) in the 2010 census and an estimated 31,578 in 2017; those are different measures from the 2020–2024 survey, so the direction of travel is clear and the exact growth is not.

The numbers

Inside the city, the ZIP code tabulation areas (the Census Bureau’s approximation of postal ZIP codes) show where the community lives:

The rows add up to 37,514; the other 280 live in ZIP code 07311, which has 1,714 residents. The shares are our own division of the survey’s estimate by its estimate of residents, so both carry margins of error, and a ZIP code is not a neighbourhood boundary.

How the community took shape

India Square is the part of Newark Avenue where the community’s shops gathered: Wikipedia names Patel Brothers and Subzi Mandi among its grocers, beside electronics, video and clothing shops and restaurants, and describes it as the highest concentration of Asian Indians in the Western Hemisphere — a phrase to read as a description rather than a measurement. The New York guide tells the wider story of the metro area. The Jersey City chapter also has a hard part. Wikipedia’s article on the Dotbusters describes a hate group active in the city from 1975 to 1993 that attacked South Asian Americans and took its name from the bindi: in July 1987 a Parsi man, Navroze Mody, was attacked and died four days later, and days afterwards Kaushal Saran was beaten into a partial coma in the Heights; 58 hate crimes against Indians were reported in New Jersey in 1991, and the community answered with political action and new bias-crime penalties. Today the same avenue holds what its organisers call New Jersey’s largest street Navratri.

Where people come from in India, and the languages

No official count says which Indian state a community comes from, because the census asks about ancestry, not language. The evidence is on the street, and it is anecdotal. The festival that fills Newark Avenue every October, Navratri, is "rooted in Gujarat", in the organisers’ words, and its garba circles are danced by everyone. Surati for Performing Arts, at 844 and 846 Newark Avenue, promotes Indian dance, music and theatre; HindiUSA runs a Hindi weekend school in Jersey City; and the avenue’s directory lists, among much else, Bengali Sweet House and Sri Ganesh’s Dosa House. The honest summary is that every region has a presence, that Gujarati is the language most visible in public, and that the groups described below are where the current contacts for each language appear.

Where Indians actually live

• Journal Square and India Square (07306) — the biggest count of any ZIP code in the county: 11,397 and 21.1%. Newark Avenue, the Govinda Sanskar Center and Journal Square PATH are within a ten-minute walk of each other.
• The Heights (07307) — the hilltop neighbourhood north of Journal Square, around Central Avenue: 8,172 and 19.2%.
• Downtown (07302) — Grove Street, Exchange Place, Paulus Hook and Hamilton Park, the PATH-and-finance end of the city: 8,414 and 15.0%.
• Newport (07310) — the waterfront towers: 4,896 people and the highest share in the table, 30.6%.
• Hoboken — a separate city with 4,015 Asian Indian residents (6.8%, ±1,007), PATH and light-rail connections, and rents above Jersey City’s.
• Secaucus — 5,302 Asian Indian residents, 24.3% of the town, the highest share of any Hudson County municipality in the survey; the Shree Swaminarayan Temple is on Penhorn Avenue.
• Bayonne, Union City, North Bergen and West New York — Indian shares of 0.9% to 2.7%, but North Bergen has the BAPS mandir, and Bayonne has the lowest median asking rent of the towns in the rent table below.
• Harrison — across the Passaic from Newark, with 2,024 Asian Indian residents (9.9%) and a PATH station on the Newark–World Trade Center line.

The national steps — the Social Security number, a bank account without a credit history, federal tax withholding, keeping your visa status — are in the jobs guide and the cost-of-living guide. This is the Jersey City order of things.

1. A furnished room or a short let, not a lease. Landlords want pay slips, a credit check and sometimes a guarantor, and you have none of them on day one. A room near Journal Square or in the Heights, or a month in a furnished flat in Newport or Downtown, buys the fortnight you need to see the commute. Never transfer money for a room you have not stood in; what New Jersey lets a landlord charge is in the Edison guide.
2. The Social Security number. Apply at a Social Security office once your status allows; the lease, the credit card, the licence and the second bank account all get easier once it arrives.
3. A bank account and a US number. Banks open accounts with a passport, visa papers and an address, and a prepaid SIM bridges the first week. Remittance apps and their fees are compared in sending money to India.
4. PATH. The station gates take a contactless bank card or phone, and the Port Authority’s TAPP card sells unlimited one-, seven- and 30-day passes; SmartLink one-ride tickets stopped on 4 May 2026. Buses and the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail are NJ Transit’s, and fares for both can be paid on its app.
5. Health cover from the first day. An employer plan usually starts on day one or the first of the next month; check which. If you are not covered, Get Covered New Jersey opens for 2027 on 1 November 2026 — see health.
6. Ask whether the building is rent-controlled. Jersey City has its own ordinance, and many tenants do not know whether their flat is covered; ask the landlord in writing and the city’s Office of Landlord/Tenant Relations, as explained in renting.
7. Your New Jersey driving licence. The Motor Vehicle Commission asks for six points of identification, proof of a New Jersey address and a Social Security number, an ITIN or an affidavit; the Edison guide has the details. Couples without children often live in Jersey City without a car.
8. Know which state you work in. New Jersey and New York have different income taxes. A Jersey City address with a Manhattan job is normal; you will file a New York non-resident return and a New Jersey resident return, with a credit in New Jersey for the tax paid to New York. A tax preparer who already has Hudson County clients is worth the first-year fee.
9. Enrol the children. Jersey City Public Schools registers three- and four-year-olds for pre-K through an online portal; kindergarten and older children register at the district — see schools.
10. The consulate, only when you need it. Passport, OCI and visa files for New Jersey go to the Consulate General in New York through VFS Global; read the consulate section before you book anything.
11. Newark Avenue on a weekend. Walk it from Kennedy Boulevard to Tonnele Avenue, find the grocer, the sweet shop and the temple, and the phone number of a tax preparer and a doctor follows from the notice boards faster than from any search — and the groups on Namaste Community (below) do the same without knowing anyone first.

Zumper’s Jersey City page, updated on 22 October 2026, gives an average asking rent of $2,597 for a studio, $2,700 for a one-bedroom, $2,925 for a two-bedroom and $3,000 for a three-bedroom, with a citywide median of $2,870 across all sizes — 4% below a year earlier, when renters paid about $33 more a month. At the cost-of-living guide’s ₹95 to the dollar, $2,700 is about ₹2.6 lakh a month. These are averages of current listings and they move; the cost-of-living guide quoted $2,750 and $2,910 from earlier in October. The official survey is lower because it counts everyone who rents, including long leases signed years ago: the Census Bureau’s median gross rent (rent plus utilities) for Jersey City is $2,007 (±$39) in the 2020–2024 survey, against $1,894 for Hudson County and $1,720 for New Jersey.

Zumper does not list Newport separately; "The Waterfront" and Liberty State Park ($3,194) are the nearest of its areas. Elsewhere in the city it shows Bergen-Lafayette at $2,415, the West Side at $2,300, Greenville at $2,200 and McGinley Square at $2,125. The Census Bureau tops out its median gross rent at $3,500, so "$3,500 or more" for Newport means the true median is higher. Journal Square’s asking average sits far above its survey median, which includes older leases and any flats under rent control. Property tax is inside every rent: Hudson County’s effective rate is 1.56% in the cost-of-living guide’s table.

Rent control in Jersey City

Jersey City has its own rent-control ordinance, Chapter 260 of the municipal code, administered by the Office of Landlord/Tenant Relations ((201) 547-4821) and heard by the Rent Leveling Board, which met on Thursday 15 October 2026 at 4 Jackson Square. The city’s CPI chart, posted on 20 October 2026, states the rule in section 260-3: in a property subject to rent control, an owner may not impose or collect an increase greater than the percentage on the chart or 4%, whichever is less; an increase above that goes to the Office on (201) 547-5127. The hard question is whether a given building is covered. One of the city’s forms is a "Five or More Unit Registration", third-party summaries differ on thresholds and exemptions, and in January 2026 Mayor James Solomon ordered a citywide audit because many tenants do not know whether their home is lawfully subject to rent control and have no easy way to check. If the audit finds a covered building, tenants are to be told in writing and complaints go to the Rent Leveling Board. Before you sign, ask the landlord in writing whether the building is registered under Chapter 260, and ask the Office.

The state rules and the scams

The New Jersey rules that apply in every town — the deposit cap of one and a half months’ rent, the $50 cap on application fees since 1 May 2026, the 30-day return of the deposit with interest, the good-cause eviction rule and the free tenant help — are set out in the Edison guide and the Department of Community Affairs’ Truth in Renting booklet. New York City’s FARE Act does not cross the river, so ask in writing who pays any broker fee before you view. The scams are the usual ones for an Indian-heavy market: a flat at half the going rate from an "owner abroad" who wants a deposit before a viewing, a "broker" on a WhatsApp group who asks for cash for a landlord’s listing, and a room with no lease and a deposit above the legal cap. Nobody legitimate asks you to pay to see a flat. The towns of Hudson County set their own local rules, so ask the town, not just the postal address, whether a building is covered.

Jersey City is built around PATH, the Port Authority’s train to Manhattan and Newark, and a commuter picks the address by the station. The fares changed in 2026, so here is the table as it stands in October.

The PATH lines that matter

• Newark–World Trade Center runs all day and night: Newark Penn Station, Harrison, Journal Square, Grove Street, Exchange Place and the World Trade Center.
• Journal Square–33rd Street (via Hoboken) runs Journal Square, Grove Street, Newport, Hoboken, Christopher Street, Ninth, 14th and 23rd Streets and 33rd Street in Midtown. From 17 May 2026 its weekend service runs 10 am to 9 pm every ten minutes, and late at night it is combined with the Hoboken–33rd Street service.
• Hoboken–World Trade Center and Hoboken–33rd Street complete the four lines; in May 2026 all four began running seven days a week for the first time since 2001, with Friday night trains every 20 minutes until 2 am.
• India Square is about a ten-minute walk from Journal Square station, up Kennedy Boulevard to Newark Avenue; the NJ Transit buses stop on the avenue itself.

Light rail, buses and ferries

The Hudson-Bergen Light Rail runs from Bayonne along the Jersey City waterfront through Exchange Place and Newport to Hoboken, and north through Union City to Tonnele Avenue in North Bergen; it is the connection between Bayonne and the PATH stations. NY Waterway ferries cross from Paulus Hook and Hoboken to Lower Manhattan and Midtown, with fares on its own site. Citi Bike racks stand on the Newark Avenue strip and docks at the PATH station.

Airports

Newark Liberty is the airport for Jersey City: PATH to Newark Penn Station, then NJ Transit to the airport station and the AirTrain, as in the Edison guide. Air India flies Delhi–Newark and Mumbai–Newark; the routings the New York guide quotes from March 2026 have changed often since 2025, so check the airline for your dates.

Driving and parking

Couples without children often live in Jersey City without a car, and the cost-of-living guide puts New Jersey car insurance at about $256 a month for full coverage. Parking is the squeeze: IndiaSquare’s directions warn that many residential blocks need a zone permit for stays over two hours, that street meters fill up on weekends and that the Journal Square garages are the safe choice on festival nights. Before you drive on an Indian licence, read the Motor Vehicle Commission’s rules for new residents in the Edison guide.

Redevelopment of Jersey City’s waterfront has made it one of the country’s large banking and finance hubs, and Wikipedia’s article gives it the nickname "Wall Street West". Its list of companies headquartered in the city includes the National Stock Exchange, Verisk Analytics, Lord Abbett and Forbes, with Computershare, ADP and Fidelity running operations there. Banks occupy the towers: Wikipedia records JPMorgan Chase moving 2,150 jobs to a company-owned building in Newport in 2015, AIG leasing at 30 Hudson Street from 2021 and Bank of America taking about 550,000 square feet at Newport Tower in 2024. It is a reference summary rather than a payroll, and a firm that is on it may have moved since.

At least one Indian technology firm has its global headquarters in the same district. Hexaware Technologies, a global technology and business-process services company operating in 34 countries, opened its global business headquarters on the 24th floor of 185 Hudson Street, near Exchange Place, in March 2025, according to Jersey Digs. Newport and Downtown, where the 2020–2024 survey finds 31% and 15% Indian residents, are next door to these offices. Further afield, central New Jersey’s Raritan Center and the pharmaceutical corridor, described in the Edison guide, are a drive or an NJ Transit ride away.

What New Jersey pays

The state minimum wage is $15.92 an hour in 2026 and rises to $16.48 on 1 January 2027, the Department of Labor announced on 29 September 2026. An H-1B salary leaves much more than that, but how much depends on the state taxes: the take-home pay table shows New Jersey’s net on salaries from $90,000 to $250,000. A New Jersey resident working in Manhattan files a New York non-resident return and a New Jersey resident return, with a credit in New Jersey for the tax paid to New York, which is why the commute decides the paperwork as well as the fare.

The visa question

The H-1B is the main route and the subject of 2026’s policy fight: the weighted lottery, the fees and the $100,000 proclamation payment for workers admitted from abroad. All of that is national and set out in the jobs guide, along with the legal routes, where the jobs are and the rules for doctors and nurses. Check an employer’s record in the public sponsorship data before you accept, and read the risks of benching and borrowed CVs in Indian employers and consultancies.

Starting a business

Newark Avenue runs on small businesses — grocers, jewellers, sweet shops, travel agents, tax preparers — and the shopkeepers organise: the Jersey City Asian Merchant Association, a non-profit, was formed to deal with everyday problems of the business district and now promotes the Navratri festival. Licences, sales tax and business registration are state and city matters; start with an accountant who already has clients on the avenue. "Pay for a guaranteed job and a visa" is the oldest fraud in the community, and the scams section of the jobs guide lists the patterns: nobody can sell you a job in America.

Jersey City is dearer than central New Jersey and far cheaper than Manhattan, and the difference is rent. The site’s cost-of-living guide, written in October 2026, puts a family of four with one child in daycare, one car and one commuter at about $9,300 a month (₹8.8 lakh at ₹95 to the dollar) in the Edison–Jersey City–Princeton corridor, and the gross salary that takes at about $140,000 with nothing saved. A single professional sharing a two-bedroom near Journal Square or in the Heights can live on far less than the averages; a family that wants a house and a school district usually looks to the suburbs and pays in commuting time instead.

What a month looks like

For the newcomer: a one-bedroom at $2,700 plus a 30-day PATH pass at $131.50 is $2,831.50 before food, a phone plan, utilities, internet and the health-insurance premium your employer deducts; a shared two-bedroom halves the rent. For the family: rent or a mortgage plus a property tax that is inside every rent, one car or none, daycare or after-school care, and the New York tax return if the job is across the river. The full family budgets in dollars and rupees and New Jersey’s take-home figures are in the cost-of-living guide; this page only adds the local prices.

Where the Indian saving is

Groceries. A month of atta, dal, rice, spices and vegetables bought in bulk on Newark Avenue usually costs much less than the same in small packets from a Downtown or Hoboken supermarket, which is why so many families from Newport and the Heights make one big trip a month to India Square. The things that cost more than newcomers expect are the Manhattan commute, winter heating, childcare, dental work (often insured separately), a winter coat and, for the car owner, parking. Sending money home is cheaper by bank transfer than by cash; the remittance guide explains why since the 2026 remittance tax.

American health care runs on insurance, and the first job in Jersey City is to know what yours is. An employer plan is the normal route for H-1B, L-1 and most professional arrivals, with a premium taken from each pay cheque and a deductible before the plan pays; students are covered by their university’s plan. What a family plan costs in 2026, what an emergency-room visit bills and how to insure parents visiting on a tourist visa are covered in the cost-of-living guide. Choose an in-network primary-care doctor in the first month; an urgent-care centre is far cheaper than an emergency room for anything that is not an emergency.

If you are not covered

Get Covered New Jersey is the state’s own insurance marketplace. The Department of Banking and Insurance announced on 14 October 2026 that open enrolment for plan year 2027 runs from 1 November 2026 to 31 January 2027; outside that period you can enrol only after a qualifying life event such as moving or a birth. The subsidies, the state’s help and the hospital charity-care programme (free care at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, with a sliding scale above) are explained in the Edison guide, and which subsidies you qualify for depends on your immigration status.

Hospitals, and what changed in March 2026

• Jersey City Medical Center, 355 Grand Street, Downtown — part of RWJBarnabas Health and described on its page as a regional referral and teaching hospital. After March 2026 it is Jersey City’s only hospital emergency room, on press reports at the time.
• Heights University Hospital (the former Christ Hospital, Palisade Avenue) closed. Its operator, Hudson Regional Health, said the emergency department would suspend services on Saturday 14 March 2026 at 7:30 pm. An ambulance was to stand outside for two weeks afterwards, and community services were to continue at the Heights Medical Office Building, 142 Palisade Avenue, where Alliance Community Healthcare, a federally qualified health centre, was to use space for primary and preventive care. If you live in the Heights, the nearest emergency room is now across the city; call 911 and let the ambulance crew choose the destination.
• Hudson Regional Health also operates hospitals in Hoboken, Bayonne and Secaucus; the Hoboken and Bayonne hospitals came to it from the CarePoint Health bankruptcy in 2025. Ask what each offers before you rely on one.
• Hackensack Meridian Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen is open, with a $50 million emergency-department expansion under construction.

Help in your language, and emergencies

Ask in the groups below for doctors who speak your language rather than searching blindly; IndiaSquare’s directory lists family doctors, a home-care agency, pharmacies and a diagnostics practice on and around Newark Avenue. Dial 911 for an emergency, 988 for the national suicide and crisis line and 211 for local services in New Jersey. Before enrolling in any means-tested benefit, check with a legal-aid group whether it affects a future green card.

In New Jersey a child attends the public school district of the town where the family lives, so the address decides the school, and Jersey City, Hoboken, Bayonne, Union City, North Bergen and Secaucus are six different districts with their own reports, boundaries and calendars. Jersey City Public Schools names six high schools — Dickinson, Ferris, Lincoln, Snyder, Innovation and Liberty — and covers a larger area than the neighbouring districts. The state publishes measures, not a league table; how to read its School Performance Reports, and what the state’s rules on enrolment, kindergarten age and immigration status are, is in the Edison guide. The site’s cost-of-living guide explains how the school district sets the rent.

Pre-K in Jersey City

The district registers three- and four-year-olds for pre-K through an online portal. For 2026–27 a child had to be three (Pre-K3) or four (Pre-K4) on or before 1 October 2026. Families can choose a public school by attendance zone or a contracted child-care centre, and may register at only one programme. The portal opened on 1 March 2026, and registering by 31 March mattered if a school was oversubscribed: those children go into a lottery, with transport provided to other schools. The documents: the child’s birth certificate, two current proofs of residency, an up-to-date immunisation record, a health history form, a medical examination form completed by a doctor and a home-language survey. The Early Childhood Office is on 201-915-6078 or 201-915-6045. Expect the same March timetable for 2027–28, and read the page then.

The 2026–27 calendar, and Diwali

Classes begin on Thursday 10 September 2026 with a full day, the superintendent says. The calendar as mirrored by AgendaHero shows the district closed on Monday 21 September for Yom Kippur, Thursday 26 and Friday 27 November for Thanksgiving, 24 and 25 December and then 28 to 30 December for winter recess, Wednesday 10 March 2027 for Eid al-Fitr (marked tentative) and 29 March to 2 April 2027 for spring recess. Diwali is not on it. It falls on Sunday 8 November 2026, so no school day is lost; Dhanteras on Friday 6 November and Bhai Dooj on Tuesday 10 November are ordinary school days. Read the district’s own calendar for changes.

Colleges and universities

Hudson County Community College is at 70 Sip Avenue beside Journal Square PATH. The former New Jersey City University is now Kean Jersey City: Kean University’s merger with it was set to close on 1 July 2026, and NJCU students became Kean students for the autumn term. Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken and the other campuses of the region are a PATH or light-rail ride away. The rules for F-1 status are in the jobs guide.

Childcare and weekend schools

Child Care Aware of America’s 2024 state table puts full-time centre-based infant care in New Jersey at $20,213 a year; the district’s public pre-K for three- and four-year-olds is the first thing to ask the Early Childhood Office about, including whether a place carries any fee. HindiUSA, which teaches Hindi at 28 places and online and says it has grown from two students to over 4,000, lists a Jersey City school, and Surati for Performing Arts and the temples run their own classes — ask at the desk, because timetables change each term.

India Square is the run of Newark Avenue between Kennedy Boulevard and Tonnele Avenue, with grocers, sweet shops, jewellers, travel agents, pharmacies and restaurants along it. The addresses below are from IndiaSquare’s 2026 merchant directory, which lists 49 businesses and shows live opening hours, and from the grocers’ own pages, all read on 23 October 2026.

The grocers

• Patel Brothers, 780–782 Newark Avenue — the chain with stores across New Jersey, here at the corner of Kennedy Boulevard.
• Subzi Mandi Cash & Carry, 832 Newark Avenue — the Jackson Heights chain’s Jersey City store, listed in the directory and named by Wikipedia, with Patel Brothers, among the avenue’s grocers.
• Apna Bazar, 2975 John F. Kennedy Boulevard — the chain that began in Jackson Heights; its store is on the boulevard, not on Newark Avenue.
• Greengrocers: Miami Growers, 451 St Pauls Avenue, and Shree Bhavani Fruits & Vegetables, 133 Halleck Avenue, are in the directory.

Sweets, snacks and restaurants

• Rajbhog Sweets & Snacks, 812 Newark Avenue, Mithaas, 795 Newark Avenue, Bengali Sweet House, 836 Newark Avenue, and Hot Breads, 808 Newark Avenue, for sweets, snacks and bakery.
• Rasoi, 810 Newark Avenue; Sri Ganesh’s Dosa House, 809 Newark Avenue; Chaska Fine Indian Cuisine, 826 Newark Avenue; and Golconda Chimney, 806 Newark Avenue, listed as open until 1 am. Vegetarian-only, halal and Jain kitchens differ place by place, so ask before a family dinner.
• Pan shops — Laxmi Pan Center, 813 Newark Avenue, Patel’s Paan Bar, 786 Newark Avenue, and Sheetal Pan Center, 789 Newark Avenue.

Jewellers and the rest

Ganpati Jewelry (820 Newark Avenue), Popular Jewel of London (816), Taj Diamonds (819) and London Jewelers (796) are among the jewellers; Topex Electronics (818) sells electronics; Travel World (813 Newark Avenue) and Sagar International Travel (713) are travel agents. As with any large jewellery purchase, compare two shops and get a written bill with the weight and purity.

What the avenue is like

Parking is by meter on the avenue and its side streets, or in the Journal Square garages that IndiaSquare lists; NJ Transit buses 80, 84 and 86 stop on the avenue itself, and the Navratri nights close it to traffic altogether. Opening hours, days and halal or vegetarian status change, so read recent reviews and call before a family dinner. The businesses listed on Namaste Community’s directory are in the US directory; add the shop that is missing and review the one that saved your Diwali.

Hudson County has eleven Hindu places of worship on the Consulate General of India’s list of temples in its jurisdiction, eight of them in Jersey City, and the larger temples of New Jersey are further south. The entries below are drawn from the Consulate’s lists (read on 23 October 2026) and from each place’s own page where it has one; most small mandirs have no website or recent listing that could be found, so telephone before travelling, and times change with the season and with festivals.

Sikh and Jain places

The Consulate’s list of gurdwaras in New Jersey includes the Nanak Naam Jahaj Gurudwara at 1080 West Side Avenue, Jersey City NJ 07306, (201) 432-1122; its current diwan and langar times were not found, so call first. The larger Sikh centres are in Bridgewater and Windsor, in the Edison guide, and the Jain Center of New Jersey has its derasars in Franklin Township and Essex Fells, described there too.

The larger temples, further afield

The BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham in Robbinsville, the Sri Venkateswara temple in Bridgewater and the BAPS and Krishna temples in Edison are covered in the Edison guide; the Ganesh Temple and the first BAPS mandir in Flushing, the Jain Center of America in Elmhurst and ISKCON Brooklyn are in the New York guide. Muslim and Christian families from South Asia worship at mosques and churches across the county; the groups below are the quickest way to find the nearest to you.

Indian Jersey City is organised by merchants, temples and cultural groups, and the associations are where the festivals, the language classes and the help happen. Many are volunteer-run, meet in temple halls and school auditoriums, and change committees every year, so the current contact is usually a phone number passed on by someone who went last year.

The merchants and the temples

• Jersey City Asian Merchant Association (JCAMA) — a non-profit of Newark Avenue merchants formed to tackle the everyday problems of the business district, which also funds scholarships, one-teacher schools in rural India and help for area colleges and hospitals, runs non-political get-out-the-vote drives and promotes IndiaSquare’s Navratri with the Journal Square Restoration Corporation and the Govinda Sanskar Center; the City of Jersey City and the state’s Urban Enterprise Zone are supporting partners. IndiaSquare’s office is at 813 Newark Avenue, and its classifieds page accepts free local ads.
• Temple societies — ask at the desk of the Govinda Sanskar Center, the Hindu Dharmic Sabha Mandir or the BAPS centre about classes and programmes for children, which change each term.

Language and culture

• Surati for Performing Arts, 844 and 846 Newark Avenue, (201) 792-2650 — a non-profit promoting Indian art and culture through dance, music, theatre, crafts, classes, lectures and workshops, which held its first formal Diwali gala at the Barrow Mansion on 7 November 2025.
• Saraswati Cultural Association (SCA) — organiser, with the City of Jersey City, of SCA Diwali on Hudson at Exchange Place, a free festival of dance, Bhangra, food and vendors that ran on Saturday 4 October 2025 from noon to 6 pm; a listing for the 2026 edition, the twelfth, names Exchange Place but no date was found, so check with the association.
• HindiUSA teaches Hindi at 28 places and online, Jersey City among them, to more than 4,000 students.
• Federation of Indian Associations (NY-NJ-CT) — the umbrella body behind Madison Avenue’s India Day Parade, described in the New York guide; the Edison guide covers the Telugu, Gujarati and other regional associations of central New Jersey. Every region has a presence somewhere in the metro area — Bengali Durga Puja committees, Marathi mandals, Tamil sangams, Malayali samajams — and they are too many, and too changeable, to list reliably.

Help organisations

Free legal help for tenants comes from Legal Services of New Jersey and the Community Health Law Project, named by the Department of Community Affairs, and Get Covered New Jersey’s certified assisters help with insurance at no cost. Before paying any "consultant" for paperwork, ask one of these first.

Cricket, dance and the arts

Cricket is a summer-weekend fixture in the region’s parks, and the groups below are the quickest way to find a club short of players. Classical and Bollywood dance schools are easy to find in the Indian neighbourhoods; ask other parents before you pay a term’s fees. The events calendar for Jersey City carries what is on near you, from garba nights and Diwali programmes to concerts and film screenings.

Jersey City’s Indian year turns on one street. Newark Avenue is closed to traffic for the garba of Navratri each autumn, the largest outdoor Navratri in New Jersey on Wikipedia’s account and on the organisers’; Diwali is the season of the temple pujas; and spring has Holi.

Navratri on IndiaSquare

This year was the 23rd celebration. The organisers say entry is free every night, the festival is alcohol-free, with security on site, that more than 15,000 people join the circles on Newark Avenue each night and that about 100,000 participants and visitors come over the four nights; each night begins with puja and aarti to Ambe Maa before the garba and dandiya raas, and the nights stream live online. For the last night, take PATH to Journal Square and walk up Kennedy Boulevard, bring your own dandiya sticks, and use a garage rather than the street: parts of the avenue are closed. Weather updates are posted on the festival’s social pages on the day.

Diwali in Jersey City, 2026

Diwali is on Sunday 8 November. The Consulate General is closed that day, Dhanteras is on Friday 6 November and Bhai Dooj on Tuesday 10 November, and neither is a school holiday. The Diwali page for Jersey City collects the events as they are confirmed. The wider New Jersey calendar — Oak Tree Road’s India Day Parade, the banquet-hall melas — is in the Edison guide, and the Manhattan events, Diwali at Times Square among them, in the New York guide. Every date on this page for the festivals comes from the organiser or the Consulate General; confirm before you buy a ticket.

The other rhythms

Spring belongs to Holi and the temples, summer to the India Day parades across the river, October to garba and Dussehra, and the winter to Pongal and Republic Day. The events posted near Jersey City on Namaste Community appear below.

Jersey City’s Indian community runs on WhatsApp. There are groups for apartment towers, employers’ H-1B batches, temple volunteers, Telugu, Tamil, Malayali, Gujarati and Bengali associations, universities’ incoming classes and cricket teams, and Facebook groups where people ask for the links. The groups are how the community has always organised itself, and nothing on this page is going to change that.

What the groups are good at, and what they are not

They are fast and generous. Ask at ten at night which Journal Square doctor speaks Gujarati, or whether a Heights landlord can still ask for two months’ deposit, and someone answers before eleven. But you need to know somebody to be added, the links in circulation are often dead, and a group of a thousand strangers is exactly where the "guaranteed job, pay the training fee first" and "room in Jersey City, send the deposit today" scams begin. The same questions about rent control, the PATH fare and the Get Covered deadline are asked every month and the answers scroll away. Every member sees your phone number. And a group does not know where you live: a room in Hoboken and a garba night in Edison arrive with the same weight as the one around the corner.

What Namaste Community adds

Namaste Community keeps the community’s groups, events and businesses in one place, alongside the same pages for other cities.

• Groups for Jersey City. The site lists local groups at /groups/in/usa/jersey-city, and the app has local groups — moderated, tied to a place — and events and a directory in one place.
• Events. Garba nights, Diwali programmes, concerts and festivals are in the Jersey City events calendar, and the ones near you appear under the festival section above.
• A directory. Grocers, restaurants, temples and services are listed in the US directory, with reviews from people who used them.
• Ask. A question about rent control in Journal Square, a tax preparer on Newark Avenue or a Telugu class in the Heights can be asked once in the Ask section of the app and website, where the answer stays for the next person instead of scrolling away. Anonymous mode is there for the question you would not put under your own name.

Your first week

1. Open the Jersey City groups and join the general one and the one for your language, your neighbourhood or your interest. Read before you post — the answers to the paperwork questions are often already there.
2. Go to one event in your first fortnight — a Sunday at a temple, a garba night on the avenue, a cricket net. It is the fastest way from "the Indian community in Jersey City" as a phrase to three people whose names you know.
3. Ask the question you actually have, and say which part of Hudson County you are in: the rent, school and tax answers differ between Jersey City, Hoboken, Bayonne and Secaucus.
4. When you have found your flat, your doctor and your grocer, leave a review or an answer for the next person arriving from Hyderabad, Ahmedabad or Kathmandu.

If the group you need does not exist yet — a parents’ group in the Heights, a Kannada group in Newport, a team short of a wicketkeeper — start it. It appears below for the next person searching.

Hudson County’s South Asian communities are not only Indian, and everything on this page about renting, PATH, Get Covered New Jersey, the schools and the scams applies identically to Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepali and Sri Lankan households. The differences are the consulate, the festival calendar and the aisle you head for. The Census Bureau’s 2020–2024 release counts people by detailed Asian group, alone or in any combination, and shows the shape of each community in the county:

Pakistani

Hudson County has about 5,400 Pakistani residents by the survey, two-thirds of them in Jersey City, where the community is about a tenth the size of the Indian one. Pakistan’s Independence Day on 14 August and India’s on 15 August fall a day apart. Middlesex County, around Edison, is the larger Pakistani centre in New Jersey, as the Edison guide shows.

Bangladeshi

The Bangladeshi community in New Jersey is mainly north of here: Paterson, in Passaic County, has the second-largest Bangladeshi community in the country, as the New York guide notes, and only about 640 live in Hudson County by the survey.

Nepali

Hudson County has about 1,200 Nepalese by the survey, against about 1,500 in Middlesex County, and 565 of them live in Jersey City. Dashain, Tihar, Chhath and the Nepali New Year are the community’s festivals; the groups below are where their dates appear, and Adhikaar, the Nepali-speaking workers’ centre described in the New York guide, serves them from Queens.

Sri Lankan

The survey counts 48 Sri Lankans in Jersey City with a margin of ±46, which is too few to say anything about; Hudson County has about 380. The Tamil New Year in April and Pongal in January, and Sinhala and Tamil associations, surface in the groups below.

Filipino and others

The largest Asian group after Indians in Jersey City is Filipino, with 17,888 in the survey, and Chinese is third at 14,649. The city’s rent-control rules, school calendar, PATH fares and tax rules apply to them identically.

Consular services

New Jersey falls under the Consulate General of India in New York, at 3 East 64th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, New York NY 10065. Its jurisdiction includes New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Delaware. Official working hours are 9:00 to 17:30; documents are submitted on working days from 9:30 to 11:30 and collected from 16:00 to 16:30, consular queries are answered on +1 (347) 721-9243 from 9:30 to 13:00 and 14:00 to 17:00, Monday to Friday, and on holidays it opens from 10:00 to noon for emergencies only. Its 2026 holiday list, last updated on 23 September, closes it on Dussehra (Tuesday 20 October), Diwali (Sunday 8 November), Guru Nanak’s Birthday (Tuesday 24 November), Thanksgiving (26 November) and Christmas Day (25 December). From Journal Square it is a PATH ride to Midtown and then a subway or bus to East 64th Street.

You will rarely need to go in person. Passports, OCI cards, visas for non-Indian family members and surrender certificates are lodged through VFS Global, which runs the consulate’s application centres in New York and, since 1 August 2025, in Edison — a sub-centre of the New York consulate, so a file lodged in Edison still goes to New York. The fees, documents, the e-OCI and the order of steps are national and are in the OCI card guide and the passport renewal guide. Nobody can shorten the consulate’s queue for a fee, so avoid an "agent" who promises to. For a file stuck past the published time, the MADAD portal is the formal grievance route. Gifts and customs for the trip home are in what to take to India.

Help lines

• 911 for police, fire and ambulance; 988 for the suicide and crisis line; 211 for local services.
• Rent control and landlord complaints: the city’s Office of Landlord/Tenant Relations on (201) 547-4821, and (201) 547-5127 for an increase above the allowed percentage; the Attorney General’s junk-fee page for hidden rental fees; Legal Services of New Jersey and the Community Health Law Project for tenants.
• Insurance: Get Covered New Jersey (GetCovered.NJ.gov) and, for hospital bills, the Department of Health’s charity-care line at 1-866-588-5696 or 609-292-4709.
• The consulate on +1 (347) 721-9243 for consular queries on weekdays.

Your status, in 2025–26

The rules around status changed repeatedly in 2025 and 2026, and a mistake now costs more. The H-1B lottery has been weighted towards higher wage levels since February 2026; the $100,000 payment for workers admitted from abroad has been struck down by two courts but not withdrawn; and from 15 September 2026 F-1 students are admitted to the end date on their I-20 rather than for "duration of status". All of it is set out in the jobs guide. Keep copies of every I-797, I-20 and pay slip, never let a grace period run out unnoticed, use a legal-aid group or a licensed attorney before you pay a consultant, and treat any caller who says your visa will be cancelled unless you pay as a fraudster. The "digital arrest" and fake-officer scams are described in the remittance guide.

Safety, honestly

Jersey City is a large, dense city, and the Indian streets are busy ones, which helps. The ordinary rules apply: keep your phone out of reach on crowded platforms, do not leave anything visible in a parked car, lock bicycles twice and be careful late at night on empty streets near stations. The scams that hurt newcomers most are housing and job frauds, not street crime — fake listings and deposits above the legal cap, "training fees" for jobs, and calls from people pretending to be the consulate, the police or immigration. The city’s history is part of the picture: in the 1980s and early 1990s the Dotbusters targeted South Asians here, and the community’s response included political action and tougher bias-crime penalties. Report a hate incident to the police — 911 if anyone is in danger — and, if you want support afterwards, contact a temple society or one of the legal-aid groups above.

The weather, and what to read next

New Jersey winters are cold, with snow most years from December to March, and summers are hot and humid; buy a proper coat and boots in October, before the first cold week. The national rules on jobs and visas, cost of living, the OCI card, passports and remittances are in the guides linked above; Indians in New York covers the city, Long Island and Queens, Indians in Edison covers central New Jersey, and Indians in the USA lists events, groups and businesses across the country.