Originally established as the Imperial Record Department in 1891, in Calcutta, the capital of British India, the NAI is situated at the intersection of the Janpath and Kartavya Path, in Delhi.

[5] K. R. Narayanan, then President of India, declared the "Museum of the National Archives" open to the general public on 6 July 1998.

The NAI has a Regional Office at Bhopal and three Record Centres at Bhubaneswar, Jaipur and Puducherry.

[6][7][8] The National Archives of India also holds regular exhibitions such as the display of declassified files on Subhas Chandra Bose in 2016 and the recent exhibition, "The Jammu and Kashmir Saga", commemorating 70 years of Jammu and Kashmir's accession to India which was held from 10 January 2018 to 10 February 2018.

[12] Abhilekh-Patal is an online portal to access National Archives of India’s reference media and its digitized collections via the internet.