NASHUA – The election last week of Nashua’s Latha Mangipudi to the New Hampshire House of Representatives is a sign of growth for the state’s Indian community, since she appears to be the first Hindu to ever serve in that job. But it’s hardly the only such sign these days.

Some signs are quite visible. In January, for example, a Hindu temple opened in a barn on Broad Street – after facing opposition based not on fear of theology but fear of traffic. On Saturday, Maggie Hassan became the first governor to visit Nashua’s annual celebration of Diwali, one of the biggest festivals in the Hindu calendar, held by the Indian Association of New Hampshire.

Other signs, however, are more subtle. Consider Shishu Bharati, a school of Indian culture that has had a branch in Nashua for more than a decade.

The school, which meets Sundays in Nashua High School South, teaches children from kindergarten through eighth grade about the languages and culture of India. It is popular with Indian professionals who don’t want their children to lose touch with their heritage.

Recently, however, Principal Jay Pandit has noticed something interesting: Mixed-heritage couples are sending their children, too.

“Before, both parents had some roots in India. Now you will see one of the parents, their roots could be Irish or Italian or something like that. That is new,” Pandit said. “That’s good. The other parent is curious.”

Signs of people marrying outside the community is standard for immigrant groups in melting-pot America. In many ways, though, New Hampshire’s Indian community has not followed standard patterns.

Traditionally, early representatives of an outside community are working class immigrants, such as French-Canadian mill workers and Italian granite-quarry workers, who settle in distinct neighborhoods and slowly spread out over the generations. But modern arrivals from the Indian subcontinent to New England have often been high-income professionals, who from the start have been able to afford homes and apartments throughout the region.

“I don’t think we don’t have Indian neighborhoods in Nashua,” said Manoj Chourasia, chairman of publicity for Indian Association of New Hampshire. “We are pretty much well dispersed.”

Indians are concentrated in one way, however: They work so often in the fields of software and medicine that it has become a stereotype, as Mangipudi noted half-jokingly. “I tell people: I’m not a doctor, I’m not an engineer,” she said.

But the stereotype-
busting only goes so far. Mangipudi does hold a graduate degree – in speech and hearing, for her work as a speech language pathologist – and her husband, Krishna, is a computer engineer.

Many languages

Mangipudi, 52, was born in Mysore, a city roughly the size of Boston near Bangalore in southwest India. The youngest of seven children, she grew up amid several of India’s many languages – Tamil, her mother’s language from south India; Kannada, the language of the surrounding state of Karnataka; Hindi, the national language; and English, also a national language.

“I read and write Hindi. I went to Kannada school until seventh grade,” she said. “From eighth grade, schooling was in English.”

This linguistic diversity is also reflected in Nashua’s Shishu Bharati school: Students choose from among six languages, including Telugu, Gujarati and Mahati.

Mangipudi said both her parents had the equivalent of high school degrees – her father worked for India Railways – but pushed their children to do better, including the girls. (She has five sisters.)

Mangipudi received her undergraduate and masters degrees at the All-India Institute of Speech and Hearing in Mysore, and in 1985 came to Lexington, Mass., where her sister lived. She worked as a speech-
language pathologist in Massachusetts schools, although she had difficulty getting the American Speech-Language Association to accept her degree.

“Few people had come from India, and I had to do the masters again,” she said.

Although people from India were hardly a novelty in Greater Boston in the 1980s, there were still some assimilation bumps – some from the fact that she, like most Hindus, is a vegetarian.

“Sometimes, I survived on chocolate chip cookies and milk,” she said. “In Belmont, one of my supervisors took me out to lunch. I did not eat cheese or mayonnaise at that time. I asked for a sandwich that was French bread with carrots and tomatoes. The deli person said, this is the weirdest sandwich I have ever seen.”

She met Krishna in Massachusetts, although he is also from Mysore and their families knew each other. They married and eventually had two children, Sarayu and Vikas, who are now 25 and 23.

The family moved to Nashua in 1989 and Mangipudi became a U.S. citizen in 1994. “My daughter was in third grade; she played the national anthem on her flute,” she recalled. “I have now lived in Nashua longer than I have lived anywhere.”

All along, she said, her assimilation into American society, like that of most Indians, was eased by two things: “We don’t have the language barrier – English is a very common language in India. Also, we have democracy.”

Her father “was an activist in India” she said. “We grew up in being engaged in the process.”

So becoming involved, first in parent-teacher organizations, then in the Nashua Board of Education, then in Democratic politics in the first-in-the-nation primary state, was a natural.

First from India, probably

Mangipudi said her decision to run in the special state representative election was partly a function of empty nest syndrome – with her children grown, she has more time outside her job as a speech pathologist.

“My kids and my husband kept saying – OK, you’ve been talking about it, now do it,” she said.

Mangiupdi’s ethnic background didn’t play much of a role in her campaign, although it did lead to one moment of controversy after her opponent, Republican Peter Silva, joked “I thought I was in New Delhi” when watching the party primary at Bicentennial School.

She certainly had strong support from other south Asians in the city.

“It was wonderful – we are all proud of her,” said Prithvi Kumar, president of the India Association of New Hampshire. “Some day we may see a governor.”

Mangipudi’s status as the first Hindu and first Indian state representative in New Hampshire history isn’t absolutely certain, since there’s historical repository for the ethnic origins of elected officials, but is very likely.

“Based on conversations I have had with staff and the House clerk’s office with decades of institutional knowledge, it’s our belief Latha Mangipudi will be the first of Indian descent elected to the House in state history,’’ said House Information Officer Mario Piscatella. “This is not a scientific conclusion, however.’’

One previous state representative – Saghir Tahir of Manchester – was born in New Delhi, the capital of India, right around the time of independence. But he was Pakistani; his family moved to Lahore, Pakistan, when he was a child, before he emigrated to the U.S. in 1972. He died Oct. 16, 2013.

As for Mangipudi, she said the nationality that matters now isn’t India.

“This is my home. First I’m an American – I’m proud being a first-generation American-Indian,” she said. “This country has given me an opportunity to grow and raise a family.”

“This country is built on immigrants,” she said.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashua
telegraph.com. Follow Brooks on Twitter (@GraniteGeek).