•Influence of solar variability on the Indian climate has been studied.•Indian climate appears to be influenced by solar variability.•Mechanism for Sun–climate relationship may be related solar polarity also. We use Indian temperature data of more than 100years to study the influence of solar activity on climate. We study the Sun–climate relationship by averaging solar and climate data at various time scales; decadal, solar activity and solar magnetic cycles. We also consider the minimum and maximum values of sunspot number (SSN) during each solar cycle. This parameter SSN is correlated better with Indian temperature when these data are averaged over solar magnetic polarity epochs (SSN maximum to maximum). Our results indicate that the solar variability may still be contributing to ongoing climate change and suggest for more investigations.