Census 2016 data released on Tuesday revealed that Indian population in Australia has grown to 455,389, up from 295,362 recorded in Census 2011.
Of Australia’s 24.4 million people, today Indians comprise of 1.9% of the total population.
The 2016 distribution by state and territory showed Victoria had the largest number of Indians with 169,802 followed by New South Wales at 143,459.
While New South Wales is Australia’s most populated state, more Indian migrants have chosen to live in Victoria.
Indian population in Victoria has grown from 111,787 to 169,802 and in New South Wales has gone up from 95,387 to 143,459.
Queensland and Western Australia are two other states with high Indian population with 49,145 and 49,385 respectively.
Census 2016 registered 27,594 people born in India in South Australia, 10,414 Indians in ACT and 3,598 people in Northern Territory.
Tasmania has the smallest Indian population in Australia at 1,980 people.
INDIAN LANGUAGES WIDELY SPOKEN IN AUSTRALIA
Along with a spurt in number of people born in India who now live in Australia, Census 2016 also revealed how Indian languages have grown in Australia.
Hindi came out as the top Indian language spoken at home in Australia with 159,652 speakers, with Punjabi a close second at 132,496.
Hindi and Punjabi have made it to top ten languages spoken in Australia.
The other languages which have seen a big jump are Tamil (73,161), Bengali (54,566), Malayalam (53,206), Gujarati (52,888), Telugu (34,435), Marathi (13,055) and Kannada (9701).
Other small languages too were recorded in this year’s census. Konkani language has 2,416 speakers, Kashmiri language registered 215 speakers, Oriya has 721 speakers, Sindhi is spoken by 1,592 speakers across Australia.
Source: ABS Census 2016
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