Often found perched on roadside trees and wires, it is common in open grassland and scrub forest habitats, and has adapted well to human-modified landscapes.

The Indian roller was one of the many bird species originally described by Carl Linnaeus in the 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae, where he coined the binomial name Corvus benghalensis.

[3] In 1766, Linnaeus described an Indian roller under the name Coracias indica,[4] based on a description by George Edwards in 1764 of a specimen collected in Sri Lanka.

[5] The latter name was used for many years; Indian ornithologist Biswamoy Biswas suspected it was because Linnaeus' 12th edition of Systema Naturae was preferred as the starting point for formal descriptions.

German ornithologist Ernst Hartert determined there were distinct northern and southern subspecies and allocated benghalensis to the former and indicus to the latter.

However, Biswas noted that the type locality (where the specimen was originally found) for benghalensis was Madras Presidency, which lies within the range of the southern subspecies, and proposed a neotype be selected from Bengal, where Linnaeus had assumed the taxon had come from.

The flight feathers on the wings have the same purple-blue colour of those on the tail, with a similar pale blue band across the most distal five or six primaries.

[10] The Indian roller has a monosyllabic contact call which varies from a short chack to a longer, harsher tschow.

[14] The Indochinese roller is darker, larger and has a purplish brown and unstreaked face and breast,[9] and blue-green forehead.

[27][28] The species is common, and often found in open woodland dominated by trees of the genera Acacia and Prosopis, and has adapted well to human-modified landscapes such as parks and gardens, fields, date and coconut palm plantations.

[14] In Oman, it is common in the Al Batinah Region and in cultivated areas east of the Sharqiya Sands below elevations of 1,000 m (3,300 ft).

[29] In India, it was sighted at elevations ranging from sea level in the Bhitarkanika Mangroves and the Gulf of Mannar to about 2,100 m (6,900 ft) in the Nilgiri Mountains.

They patrol their territory by flying at treetop height or three-stories high and when an intruder is spotted, they drive it away by a fast rolling flight.

They drive away Indian jungle crows (Corvus culminatus) from nests and have even been recorded repeatedly divebombing an Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus),[10] and flying at humans.

[14] Haemoproteus coraciae live inside the red-blood cells[36] and Leucocytozoon blood parasites have been recorded in the lung tissues.

[37] Parasitic helminth worms Hadjelia srivastavai, Cyrnea graphophasiani,[38] Habronema thapari[39] and Synhimantus spiralis have been recorded from the gizzards of Indian rollers.

[40] The breeding season is March to June, slightly earlier in southern India,[9] when adult males and females form pair bonds.

[14] During courtship, mates perform aerial displays which include steep, undulating flights, somersaults, nose-drives, hovering and lateral rolling.

[10] The Indian roller descends to the ground to capture insects and to a lesser extent amphibians, reptiles, birds, and small mammals.

[55] The Indian roller is associated with Hindu legends and said to be sacred to Vishnu; it used to be caught and released during festivals such as Dussera or the last day of Durga Puja.

[56] Adding its chopped feathers to fodder for cows was believed to increase the latter's milk yield, giving it the Telugu name of "paala-pitta" (పాలపిట్ట, pālapiṭṭa), meaning 'milk bird'.

[12] A Hindustani name is "neelkanth" (Hindi: नीलकंठ; Urdu: نیل کنٹھ, romanized: nīlkaṇṭh),[57] meaning 'blue throat', a name associated with the deity Shiva due to a legend that he drank the Halahala poison emerging from Samudra Manthana to save the world but stopped it from going past his throat, turning it blue.

[58] A nomadic tribe of fortune-tellers from the Vishakapatnam area wore feathers of the Indian roller on their head utilizing the folk belief that the bird could foretell events.

[64] At the height of the plume trade in the early 20th century, the Indian roller was sought for export of its colourful feathers, and was among the most widely killed bird species in India.