You can tell by the power sockets. India uses the old British round-pin standard (like South Africa), while the UAE (like Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and other countries that gained independence from Britain after the late 1940s) use the current square-pinned one.

It’s an odd sensation to be passing through an airport somewhere exotic and then, oh hello, there’s a British power socket.

I mean they were only transferred over after the first world war iirc? but hey their currencies were pegged to the INR after independence for a while!