According to Pew Research Centre, almost half of India’s migrants are living in just three countries: the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Pakistan and the United States (US).
In 2015, Pakistan was home to the second-largest number of Indian migrants after the UAE, said a published report on its website.
It said that some 3.5 million Indians have been living in the UAE, making it the most favourite destination country for Indian migrants.
Over the past two decades millions of Indians have migrated there to find employment as labourers.
Surprisingly, Pakistan has the second-largest number of Indian migrants, with two million in the research centre’s report.
Almost two million more Indian migrants live in the US, making up the country’s third-largest immigrant group, the report added.
During the last 25 years, the number of global Indian migrants has more than doubled, growing nearly twice as fast as the world’s aggregate migrant population.
In 2015, 15.6 million people born in India were already living in other countries.
In another old study conducted in 2010, Pew Research Centre revealed that India’s religious minorities were actually moving from their country at a greater rate than the majority Hindus, who made up 80% of India’s population.
Approximately 19% of the migrant population from India is Christian, though they form only 3% of the entire population. On the other hand, Muslims made up 27% of the Indian migrant population living abroad, compared with roughly 14% of the population in India, it explained.
India has a long history of migration. Many Indian migrants moved to Africa, the Caribbean and within the Indian subcontinent itself, over a century ago.
Few of the top destinations for Indian migrants in recent years remained Persian Gulf countries, North America and Europe.