Indya was born to a Puerto Rican mother and Catholic immigrant father from the Dominican Republic who were both practicing Jehovah's Witnesses. As a child, Indya started acting in a way that their parents interpreted as traditionally "feminine," and they used punishment in an attempt to alter their child's sexuality. "Because I was assigned male at birth, they expected me to be masculine or to perform the way they thought young boys should perform," they explained in a May 2019 interview with Elle. "And I did not. They didn't understand." However, they learned to accept this as a lack of comprehension rather than cruelty. "They had never experienced what it was like to have a family member who was genderqueer," they added.