"Search of Bengali Harlem: South Asian Migration and Settlement in New York City, 1910s-1950s"

Wow! Thanks to Maheen and Dinu for directing me to this

Check out this article "NYU’s Vivek Bald Reveals Early Desi Diaspora in New York"

"Bald gives a peep look into the fascinating and little-known history of South Asian New York before 1950.

The existing literature tells us that immigration from the subcontinent was merely a trickle during that period. But, starting from the stories of three Bengali Muslim men who migrated undocumented to New York during this period, Bald draws on scholarly literature, archival material, and oral histories in an effort to answer the question: what exactly did the Indian presence in New York look like in the first half of the 20th century?

His answer to the question leads us to the histories of Indian lascar sailors along the New York waterfront and to a community of former-lascars who settled in Harlem in the 1920s-1940s. These men married Puerto Rican and African American women from their adopted neighborhood and worked as dishwashers, cooks, and factory workers.

Bald reveals that by the late 1940s, they had opened some of the city's first halal butchers and Indian restaurants, and also became a significant part of the larger Harlem landscape and were building links with local religious and political figures, including Malcolm X."