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If there is an index.html or index.htm or a variant of these files inside of the directory, the web server won't let you browse through directories. If I redirect “/index.html” to “/”, will this allow browsing of my website because it no longer has a page titled “/index.html” or does the page it is redirected to, i.e.,"www.sample.com/" still serve as the index page? In other words, will my site show directories as a result of this change to avoid duplicate content?

I don`t think you have a problem with
www.example.com
www.example.com/index.html

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html

Thanks for the link about duplication of content. I'm concerned about the canonization aspect of /index.html and / being read as two sites for ranking.

I am hoping this .htaccess script will take care of this (only one domain):

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index\.html$ / [R=301,L]

I think google is pretty clever :wink: and will see all of these as 1 site

www.example.com/
www.example.com/index.htm
www.example.com/index.html
www.example.com/index.php

example.com/
example.com/index.htm
example.com/index.html
example.com/index.php