India Day Parade Thrills Many Thousands Along Madison Avenue

One of Manhattan’s most impressive cultural celebrations, the 44th annual India Day Parade returned to Madison Avenue on Sunday Aug. 24, drawing many thousands of participants and spectators to the blocks East 38th Street and Madison Square Park. Organized by the Federation of Indian Associations, the event bills itself as the world’s largest Indian Day parade and celebrates Indian Independence Day, whose historical date is Aug. 15, 1947. This year’s theme was “Harmony in Heritage.”

Unusually for a Madison Avenue parade, which almost always draw smaller crowds than their Fifth and Sixth Avenue counterparts, there was also a substantial media presence, with numerous Indian outlets sending reporters, as did NBC and Fox 5 New York. By comparison, numerous other Madison Avenue parades attract no media attention beyond their ethnicity other than a few freelance photographers and live streamers.

That the India Day Parade has come to garner this much attention is apt both historically, as the nation is considered the world’s largest Democracy, and locally, with a large and diverse Indian population living in the New York City metropolitan area. That this population is so diverse and, except for Queens, predominantly lives outside the five boroughs, might explain why so few politicians attend the event. Indeed, this year, the only elected officials in sight were Governor Kathy Hochul, State Senator Jeremy Cooney from Rochester, and Michigan Congressman Shri Thanedar, though a candidate for New York State Attorney General, Saritha Komatireddy was also in attendance.

Komatireddy’s presence offered a window in the many nuances of ethnic politics in the Empire State. A former federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York (covering Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island) and a Chief of Staff with the Drug Enforcement Agency, Komatireddy is a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Fiercely anti-crime and pro-American, Komatireddy is running on both the Republican and Conservative Party lines. If Komatireddy’s campaign seems like a longshot in against the incumbent Democrat Letitia James—who is no stranger to many parades and patriotic events herself—her presence this India Day was notable. Indeed, with some of her campaign workers wearing sharp white sports shirts with Saritha’s name emblazoned on them, one might think she was the incumbent.

Though she personally arrived a bit late, spirits were high around Governor Kathy Hochul’s sound truck as her staff, including a brassy female emcee, and the crowd awaited her arrival on East 36th Street. When the Governor did arrive, the emcee, who’d been hyping up the crowd for over 15 minutes, she pulled back just slightly, announcing “Don’t bum rush the truck!” then laughing and quickly repeating, in effect, “I’m sorry, that was my Bronx side talking, please don’t crowd the truck.” A reporter, also with Bronx roots, took this opportunity to step up to the truck and high five the emcee for speaking in the vernacular, and telling it like it is.

Celebrities and Celerity

There was speculation among the crowd whether Mayor Zohran Mamdani would attend the event. To be clear, his attendance was never announced, nor were there any signs on the ground that his advance people were present or anyone else specifically from the Mayor’s Office. Still, Hizzoner did attend the Queens India Day Parade in Floral Park a day earlier and, as the son of Indian parents, and the city’s first Mayor of Indian descent, some though Hizzoner might make a surprise appearance.

When a couple large black SUVs with dark tinted windows arrived at the top of the parade route’s while everyone waited for the Governor, they were soon swarmed by spectators. Was that the Zohran some wondered?! Seeing how these vehicles were outside the formal NYPD and private security line at East 38th Street, it almost certainly was not—and this supposition proved true. Rather, the celebrities were two Bollywood stars, actress Pooja Hegde, who also served as Chief Guest of Honor, and actor Adivi Sesh, served as Grand Marshal.

“It was truly an honour and a matter of immense pride to be the Guest of Honour at the India Day Parade in New York,” wrote Hedge— who has 28.1 million Instagram followers— in a social media post after the event. “There was something incredibly surreal about seeing the streets of New York come alive with so many Indians, proudly celebrating our country and everything that connects us to home.”

While Mamdani’s absence was widely noted by the Indian media, they offered no speculation to why Hizzoner would skip the event, which all prior Mayors since Ed Koch have attended. Whether Hizzoner’s decision was simply to highlight his own Queens political roots, or to distance himself from an event that aroused some controversy in 2024 over a float representing the Hindu temple of Ram Mandir, which Indian Muslims took great offense to, is unclear.

On the gently sloping downhill of Madison Avenue, once the parade started rolling and walking, it didn’t much matter. Department of Correction and NYPD Desi Society phalanxes were there and the NYPD Marching Band too, likewise a diversity of religionists: Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Jainism.

When a reporter stopped to take a photo of a parade truck of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which was adorned with a large banner reading “Love for All, Hatred For None,” “The Messiah Has Come” and www.muslimsforpeace.com, the parade men amiably insisted that he join them a group photo. Looking up at the bearded, turbaned, soulful visage of their Messiah, who is named Mirzah Ghulan Ahmad and lived from 1835 to 1908, the reporter straightened his press pass, took off his sunglasses and said, “of course!”