Although the TA states that it "does not provide a full time career", soldiers can choose to remain embodied for longer periods.

TA personnel are entitled to all benefits available to the Indian Army, except gratuity and pension which are determined by the number of full years served.

In 1687, the Governor and Council of Fort St. George ordered the creation of the Companie of Trained Bands, a part-time force based in Madras.

This force was established to defend against the rival French East India Company and native princely states.

The Companie played a role in the Battle of Plassey on 23 June 1757, and many of its part-time units were eventually converted into regular and irregular forces.

The Indian Defence Force Act of 1917 mandated military service for all European males (except clergy) aged 16 to 50 permanently residing in British India, including princely states.

The ITF was restructured into the newly formed Territorial Army, and the UOTC was converted into the National Cadet Corps (NCC).

[4] Post-independence, the Territorial Army Bill was introduced in the Constituent Assembly (the then Parliament of India) on 23 August 1948.

[9] During the India-China conflict in 1959, defence minister V. K. Krishna Menon, in a radio address, asked Indians to volunteer for the TA.

The first review of 1971 defined it as "... to provide part-time military training to gainfully employed citizens of the nation"; and the 1982 review said "... TA should be based on part-time and full-time units and recruitment to be all citizens who fulfil the prescribed standard, while in consonance with the traditional concept, every effort should be made to enroll gainfully employed persons".

77/1984, the present role of the TA is to "relieve the regular army from static duties and assist civil administration in dealing with natural calamities and maintenance of essential services in situations where life of the communities is affected or the security of the country is threatened and to provide units for regular army as and when required".

[15] In February 2020, General Bipin Rawat stated "TAisation of defence forces" is a way to reduce the cost of running the military.

[16] In July 2022, the TA started recruiting Mandarin-language graduates as officers as part of an effort by the Indian Army to increase its expertise in Mandarin and Tibetology amid the 2020–2022 China–India skirmishes and efforts of China's People's Liberation Army to recruit Hindi interpreters for posting in Tibet Autonomous Region.

[20] The TA, as part of the Indian Peace Keeping Force, was involved in peacekeeping activities in Sri Lanka from 29 July 1987 to 24 March 1990.

[18] The TA participated in rescue and relief operations following the 2001 Gujarat earthquake and protected oil installations in Vadodara during the riots the followed the Godhra train burning incident in 2002.

The Ecological Battalion units planted 2.5 crore saplings over 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres) of land at Mussoorie and Pithoragarh hill stations in Uttarakhand, Bikaner and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, ravines of Chambal in Madhya Pradesh, and Bhatti mines in Delhi.

[14] As of 2021, Ecological Task Forces has planted 6.9 crore saplings covering an area of 72,761 hectares (179,800 acres) with a 65-to-75-percent survival rate.

[15] In 2020, plans to increase the presence of TA personnel in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were made due to concerns about Chinese intrusion.

From March 2020 onward, following a restructuring of the Indian Armed Forces, the TA is headed by a Director General of Territorial Army (DG TA); this role is held by a lieutenant general from the Indian Army, and comes under the office of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) of the newly created Department of Military Affairs, which is under the Ministry of Defence.

The idea of raising oil-sector units was mooted after civil unrest in Assam in 1980, which resulted in a loss of more than ₹5,000 crore in oil production.

Norman Borlaug, the director of Mexico's International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center proposed to India's prime minister Indira Gandhi to use the Indian Army to recover the region's ecology.

[27] In 2018, the Composite Ecological Task Force (CETF), also called Ganga Task Force, was raised as part of the Namami Gange Programme of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), which aimed to maintain the cleanliness of the Ganges river.

The unit comprises ex-servicemen whom the Central Pollution Control Board trains to test the river water.

[29] On 3 June 2022, after reviewing a report by a constituted committee and with the agreement of the Ministry of Defence and Directorate General of Territorial Army (DGTA), the Ministry of Railways disbanded five out of the six Railway Engineers Regiments (TA) that were based at Jhansi, Kota, Adra, Chandigarh, and Secunderabad, keeping only the Jamalpur regiment for operational duties along the critical, 361-kilometre (224-mile) New Jalpaiguri-Siliguri-Newmal-Alipurduar-Rangiya rail link through the Siliguri Corridor and to Rangiya as proposed by the Ministry of Defence.

[33] H&H units are deployed in northern and eastern regions of the state and 70 percent of the infantry battalion troops are sent for counterinsurgency duties.