A minority of them are descendants from people who immigrated as entrepreneurs, businesspeople, merchants, engineers, doctors, religious leaders, students, and other professional occupations beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to the present.

Indo-Caribbean people largely trace their ancestry back to the Bhojpur and Awadh regions of the Hindi Belt and the Bengal region in North India,[16][17] in the present-day states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal and Jharkhand, with a significant minority coming from the Madras Presidency, especially present-day Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

[21] Most Indo-Caribbean people live in the English-speaking Caribbean nations of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and Guyana, the Dutch-speaking Suriname and the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana, with smaller numbers in other Caribbean countries including Belize and the islands of the Lesser Antilles.

These countries have some of the largest Indo-Caribbean populations in the world, and Indo-Caribbeans in these countries have largely congregated in urban areas such as New York City, The Hague, Toronto, Rotterdam, London, Miami/Fort Lauderdale/West Palm Beach, Orlando/Ocala, Houston, Birmingham, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Montreal, Schenectady/Albany, Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Manchester, Washington D.C., and Paris.

The hard work in hot, humid farms required a regular, docile and low-waged labour force, which led to the creation of the Indian indenture system.

In this system, Indians were taken to British, French and Dutch colonies around the world, including in the Caribbean, to work on cash crop plantations.

In the early decades of the sugarcane-driven migrations, the working conditions for the indentured Indian workers were abysmal, due in large part to the lack of care among the planters..

Many from inland regions over a thousand kilometers from seaports were promised jobs, were not told the work they were being hired for, or that they would leave their homeland and communities.

France, for example, negotiated with Britain leading to Act XLVI of 1860, whereby large numbers of Indian indentured labourers were brought for sugarcane plantation work in French colonies in the Caribbean region.

Another factor dissuading Indian women from going to the Caribbean was the invasive medical examination administered upon arrival, which involved inspection of genitals.

As indentureships ended, the Indian men who had come to work as indentured laborers were given small parcels of land to encourage settlement.

Under the indenture system, married Indian women were excused from work on the plantations and planters were required to give them medical care and rations.

There are also small communities in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, French Guiana, Panama, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the Netherlands Antilles and Venezuela.

Modern-day immigrants from India (mostly Sindhi merchants) are to be found on Saint-Martin / Sint Maarten, St. Thomas, Curaçao and other islands with duty-free commercial capabilities, where they are active in business.

The indentured Indians and their descendants have actively contributed to the evolution of their adopted lands in spite of many difficulties, particularly through the development of Caribbean cuisine and music.

These celebrations were not the fact of just the Indian minority, but the official recognition by the French and local authorities of their integration and their wide-scale contributions in various fields including agriculture, education, and politics, and to the diversification of the culture of the Creole peoples.

St. Lucia and many Caribbean countries have dedicated commemorative days to acknowledge the arrival and important contributions of their Indo-Caribbean populations.