The Indies or East Indies (or East India) is a term often used to refer to the Malay Archipelago ^*, in contrast to the West Indies, which refers to the Caribbean. In a wider sense, the Indies is also used to describe lands of South and Southeast Asia, occupying all of the former British India, the present Indian Union, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and also Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, which was last called the Dutch East Indies before independence.

The East Indies also include Iranian Balochistan, Indochina, the Philippine Islands, Brunei, Singapore and East Timor. It does not, however, include Irian Jaya (West Papua), which is part of Melanesia.

The inhabitants of the East Indies are often called East Indians, distinguishing them both from inhabitants of the Caribbean which is also called the "West Indies," and from the indigenous peoples of the Americas who are often called "Indians" or "American Indians." However, the peoples of the East Indies comprise a wide variety of cultural diversity, and the inhabitants do not consider themselves as belonging to a single ethnic group. Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam are the most popular religions throughout the region, while Christianity, Sikhism and various traditional beliefs and practices are also prominent in some areas. The major languages in this area draw from a wide variety of language families, and should not be confused with the term Indic, which refers only to a group of Indo-European languages from South Asia.