Indians make up around 1.35% of the Netherlands’ population and the approximate population of Indians in the Netherlands as of 2023 is 2.50 Lakh. The majority of the people of Indian descent in the Netherlands are of Indo-Surinamese origin and the approximate population is 2 Lakhs the rest 50 thousand are Indian Expats or NRIs.
Indians began migrating to Suriname in 1873 as indentured laborers, mostly from the modern-day Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and the surrounding regions. Up until the independence of Suriname in 1975, all the Indo-Surinamese were formally part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and thus owned a Dutch passport. After the independence, a significant portion of the Indo-Surinamese population migrated to the Netherlands.
Indian Expats have recently immigrated especially information technology professionals. As of 2019, about 48,724 people of Indian immigrant descent lived in the Netherlands. Most of them live in the provinces of North Holland, South Holland, and North Brabant.
Source: MEA report about overseas Indian population.