Since its independence in 1947, India has accepted various groups of refugees from neighbouring countries, including partition refugees from former British Indian territories that now constitute Pakistan and Bangladesh, Tibetan refugees that arrived in 1959, Chakma refugees from present day Bangladesh in early 1960s, other Bangladeshi refugees in 1965 and 1971, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees from the 1980s and most recently Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. In 1992, India was seen to be hosting 400,000 refugees from eight countries. According to records with the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, as on January 1, 2021, there were 58,843 Sri Lankan refugees staying in 108 refugee camps in Tamil Nadu and 54 in Odisha and 72,312 Tibetan refugees have been living in India.

India does not have a national refugee law, but it has always accepted refugees from neighbouring countries using the principles enunciated by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1959: refugees will be accorded a humane welcome, the refugee issue is a bilateral issue and the refugees should return to their homeland when normalcy returns. Despite the lack of a formal law, the Supreme Court of India has used the Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Article 13 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to uphold the obligation of refugee protection by the government.

India is not a State Party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, nor has it enacted national legislation to deal comprehensively with refugees. Instead it deals with refugees largely at political and administrative levels, and has only ad hoc systems in place to deal with their status and needs. The legal status of refugees is, therefore, no different from those of ordinary aliens whose presence is regulated by the Foreigners Act of 1946.^{[citation needed]}

Over several centuries, the Indian subcontinent has offered shelter to people fleeing from persecution in their homeland.

Parsis, a Zoroastrian community, migrated to the Indian subcontinent due to Islamic persecution between the 12th and 16th centuries. According to Qissa-i Sanjan, a Zoroastrian legend, Zoroastrianism collapsed as a state-sponsored religion a few centuries after the conquest of the Sassanid Empire. Consequently, some Zoroastrians migrated to what is now the Indian state of Gujarat to maintain their religious tradition. The descendants of newer Zoroastrian immigrants, fleeing the persecution of non-Muslims by Iran's Qajar dynasty (1794–1925), are known as Iranis. When India gained its independence, Parsis and Iranis retained legal citizenship.

Indian nationality law is governed by the Citizenship Act (Articles 5 to 11 of the Constitution of India), which was passed in 1955 included creating a National Register of Citizens (NRC). Further Citizenship (Amendment) Acts were passed in 1986, 1992, 2003, 2005, 2015 and 2019.

The National Register of Citizens of India (NRC), maintained by the government of India, is meant to contain names to identify Indian citizens, but it has only been implemented thus far in the border state of Assam. The government prepared the first register after the 1951 census but did not update it until an order by the Supreme Court of India in 2013. India's federal and state governments are at various stages to implement the NRC in all areas.^{[clarification needed]}

The current Indian nationality law largely follows the jus sanguinis (citizenship by descent) as opposed to the jus soli (citizenship by right of birth within the territory).