These are supposed to have left Israel before the time of the Maccabees when the Judeans were under threat by the Hellenizers (read the books of Maccabees for reference). They look like Marathas and speak Marathi but maintained Jewish diets and circumcision and Sabbath
This is a map of the state of Maharashtra where the Beni Israelis lived.
This is a state of India of about 300,000 sq km and a population of 70 million. The majority of these live in the megapolis of Bombay (which has the separate cities of New bombay and Thane linked) or its whereabouts.
This state was formed in 1960 out of the old Bombay Province and other princely states when India re-organized its states by language. The majority language here is Marathi which is a Western Indic language belonging to the Indo-Irani branch of the Indo-European language family.
The people are divided into the Deccanni people (from the plateau called the Deccan) -- with the cultural center as Pune, then the Vidarbha people from the interior with the center as Nagpur (nearly the exact center of India with summer temperatures of up to 120 and the Konkani areas with Bombay, Ratnagiri as centers.
The original folks in Bombay - Bassein now call themselves "East Indians" -- these are mainly Catholic and have been for 500 odd years since the Portuguese came across there.
When God said He would gather His people back to the land of Israel I trust He knew who they were and will sort the out.
Thank you for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!
An Indian convert to Judaism from Mumbai, now living in Kiryat Arba, has told me that I look very much like one of the Bnei Israel that he met there. If I knew how to upload pictures to this site, I’d let you judge for yourselves.