Not being familiar with Indian food, I recently had a discussion on this topic. My brief web search suggests that most of the Indian hot spices are derived from New World peppers in some way. Was their arrival to the subcontinent a turning point in Indian cuisine, or did they have many hot spicy ingredients beforehand?
There were pre-chilli "hot" spices in India, notably:
Black pepper (Piper nigrum), which has been grown and used in India for over 4000 years.
Long pepper (Piper longum), a hotter relative of black pepper, and also with a long history in India, with certainly well over 2000 years of use, and possibly being older than black pepper. Still used today in India, but, compared to black pepper, little known outside India.
Cubeb pepper (Piper cubeba), yet another relative, was also used, and is still used today (and, outside India is more common than long pepper, but much less common than the ubiquitous black pepper).
Ginger (Zingiber officinale). Unlike the three peppers above, ginger is unrelated, and not native to India. It was probably domesticated in SE Asia, and reached India over 3000 years ago.
Thus, while the most-used "hot" spice, the chilli, is of New World origin, most of the hot spices are of local origin (the various Piper species). The widespread adoption of the chilli and its plentiful use in many dishes was based on the foundation of older "hot" spices - the chilli was a cheap, easy, and tasty alternative to the older spices.
Some "hot" dishes today still use these pre-Columbian spices rather than chillies (and not just in Indian cuisine - Chinese hot and sour soup is a classic example).
For a concise summary of the impact of the Columbian Exchange on Indian cuisine, see the reply by u/EvanRWT in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2omd8q/how_did_the_introduction_of_north_american_spicy/
For a more detailed answer by u/I_am_oneiros see https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4rwri1/what_was_indian_food_like_before_contact_with_the/