Where the Indian community lives in Melbourne

Tarneit has the largest Indian community: 27% of residents reported Indian ancestry, 28.8% were born in India, and 22.2% speak Hindi or Punjabi at home. Truganina and Aintree follow. These 15 suburbs came from a field of 278 eligible Melbourne suburbs. In Melbourne suburbs of 2,000+ residents, 5.2% of people were born in India (2021 Census).

Suburbs are ordered by the share of residents who were born in India. Indian ancestry fragments across Punjabi, Tamil, Gujarati and other groups in the census, so country of birth is the more reliable signal of where the community lives. Only suburbs with at least 2,000 residents are included, and percentile ranks are computed within Melbourne's pool, so the list reflects concentration relative to other metro suburbs.

They are different census angles on the Indian community: country of birth counts only those who migrated, ancestry is the broadest, since it includes people born here, and language at home counts the actively speaking core. They rarely match, and seeing them together tells you whether a suburb's community is long-established, newly-arrived, or somewhere in between.

They measure different things and come from different census questions. Ancestry is a multiple-response question (a person can report up to two), so it isn't a clean share of population; birthplace counts only people born overseas; and language counts only those who still speak it at home. This is descriptive demographic data, not a recommendation to seek out or avoid anywhere.

The figures are from the 2021 Census, the most recent available until results from the August 2026 Census are released in 2027. The top 15 is recomputed whenever we refresh the census data.