British Indians are citizens of the United Kingdom (UK) whose ancestral roots are from India. Currently, the British Indian population exceeds 2 million people in the UK, making them the single largest visible ethnic minority population in the country. They make up the largest subgroup of British Asians and are one of the largest Indian communities in the Indian diaspora, mainly due to the Indian–British relations (including historical links such as India having been part of the British Empire and still being part of the Commonwealth of Nations). The British Indian community is the sixth largest in the Indian diaspora, behind the Indian communities in the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and Nepal. The majority of British Indians are of Punjabi and Gujarati origin with various other smaller communities from different parts of India including Kerala, West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Among the first Indians to travel to the United Kingdom was a young boy called Peter Pope. The boy was given by a commander of a Dutch ship on its way to Myanmar to the British sailor, Thomas Best in 1612. The boy was brought to England in 1614 where he was placed under the care of Patrick Copland who was a chaplain and who subsequently taught him to read and write in English. His education in England was paid for by the East India Company.

Under Patrick Copland's recommendation, the boy was baptised on 22 December 1616 and given the name of "Peter" which was given by King James I. A few months after his baptism, he returned to India with Copland to "convert some of his own nation".

People from India have been travelling to Great Britain since the East India Company (EIC) recruited lascars to replace vacancies in their crews on East Indiamen whilst on voyages in India. Initially, these were men from the Indo-Portuguese or Luso-Asian communities of the subcontinent, including men from Bombay, Goa, Cochin, Madras and the Hugli River in Bengal. Later men from Ratnagiri were hired. Some of them were then unable to obtain passage back due to the price and had no alternative than to settle in London. There were also some ayahs, domestic servants and nannies of wealthy British families, who accompanied their employers back to Britain when their stay in South Asia came to an end. British soldiers would also sometimes marry Indian women and send their children back to Britain, although the wife often did not accompany them. Indian wives of British soldiers would sometimes ask for passage home after being divorced or widowed if they did accompany their children. In 1835, the husband (a British soldier serving in His Majesty's 1st Foot Regiment) of Bridget Peter, a native of Madras, died. She petitioned the Directors from Chelsea Hospital 'in a state of destitution' to pay for her return to India. They agreed to pay to return her and her three children.

The Navigation Act 1660 restricted the employment of non-English sailors to a quarter of the crew on returning East India Company ships. Baptism records in East Greenwich suggest that a small number of young Indians from the Malabar Coast were being recruited as house servants at the end of the 17th century, and records of the EIC also suggest that Indo-Portuguese cooks from Goa were retained by captains from voyage to voyage. In 1797, 13 were buried in the parish of St Nicholas at Deptford.

During the 19th century, the East India Company brought thousands of Indian lascars, scholars and workers to Britain largely to work on ships and in ports. It is estimated 8,000 Indians (a proportion being lascar sailors) lived in Britain permanently prior to the 1950s. Due to the majority of early Asian immigrants being lascar seamen, the earliest Indian communities were found in port towns. Naval cooks also accompanied them.

The first Western-educated Indian to travel to Europe and live in Britain was I'tisam-ud-Din, a Bengali Muslim cleric, munshi and diplomat to the Mughal Empire who arrived in 1765 with his servant Muhammad Muqim during the reign of King George III. He wrote of his experiences and travels in his Persian book, Shigurf-nama-i-Wilayat (or 'Wonder Book of Europe'). This is also the earliest record of literature by a British Indian. Also during the reign of George III, the hookah-bardar (hookah servant/preparer) of James Achilles Kirkpatrick was said to have robbed and cheated Kirkpatrick, making his way to England and stylising himself as the Prince of Sylhet. The man was waited upon by the prime minister of Great Britain William Pitt the Younger, and then dined with the Duke of York before presenting himself in front of the King.

One of the most famous early Indian immigrants to Britain was Sake Dean Mahomet, a captain of the British East India Company and a native of Patna in the Indian state of Bihar. In 1810, he founded London's first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostanee Coffee House. He is also valued for introducing shampoo and therapeutic massage to the United Kingdom. Another early Indian to settle in the United Kingdom was the Mughal noblewoman of Purnea in Bihar, Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa, who married into the aristocratic Ducarel family and moved to the United Kingdom in 1784 where she lived until 1822 when she died in Newland, Gloucestershire.