This is an edited version of the text of my
introductory remarks for a panel discussion on: “Profit from the Past: The
Power of Family and Business Archiving”, held on August 9, 2016 at Mumbai,
organised by Asset Vantage.
As a student of development administration
since 1965, I have documented the processes of change – in societies,
organisations and individuals – and analysed the factors that influence these
processes. In these endeavours, I have dealt with archives – good bad and
indifferent – at academic institutions, business organisations,
government, non-profit organisations, and families.
After half a century of research
experience, I have come to the conclusion that we Indians have little sense of
history, even though we have such a rich and long tradition as a society and
culture. I find this trait especially inexplicable, since I come from Rajasthan
– a land where families and dynasties employed charans and bhaats to compile
and narrate their histories. This trait of ours has especially affected the
subject of business history.
I am sure all of us have a wealth of
memories which we consider far more valuable than all the other wealth that we
may have made in our lifetime. And it is a wealth we are ever willing to share
with our dear ones. What this wealth of memories is to individuals, archives
are to institutions and organisations. They are the non-capitalised wealth of
organisations. They provide evidence on which narratives are based. They
comprise objects and materials that represent events, people and developments
in the journey of an organisation.
But without getting into too much academic
discourse about the discipline of archiving, let us briefly understand what the
word archives refer to.
As a noun, an archive refers to
a collection of historical documents or records providing information
about a place, an institution, or a group of people. Constituents of the noun
archive could be: documents, letters, personal diaries, ledgers, photographs,
audio recordings, videos, artefacts, and digital materials on social media,
etc.
As a verb, archiving refers to the task of
placing or storing something in an organised collection. Constituents of the
verb archiving include: creation of archives, which comprises a) Selection
process; and b) Identification of the information content of the resource. It
then covers organising, storage and preservation of those resources and
developing a retrieval or search system. Those whose work is described by the
verb are, today, a highly specialised profession.
Most people or organisations want to
document their biographies/histories for specific events – when they reach
important milestones. So the exercise is always event-led or event-based. When
I was in the corporate world, I have dealt with a ‘brochure’ that was published
at the end of a decade of operations, and a book while celebrating the silver
jubilee of the organisation. Two of the biographies I have worked on were
published to mark the birth centenary of individuals.
The first task is, of course, sifting
through the materials. The task is generally so humongous and so time-consuming
that most people want to postpone it. In organisations, it is so thankless a
task that no one, other than perhaps the librarian, is assigned the function.
And, unless the person has an interest in history, he or she does the task
rather grudgingly. But one realises the importance of such a collection only
when one wants to write a history or a biography. Without such resources, these
publications turn out to be just brochures and the biographies are just
hagiographies! I have had to turn down several such assignments because there
was a lack or archival materials to build a narrative based on facts — not just
hearsay.
I will not go into the details of ‘how’ to
archive because that is not my specialisation. But, as a social historian, I
would like to emphasise that, unless you create the archives for your family or
organisation, you are obliterating a part of our history. I firmly believe that
all of us are living through such fascinating times, that if we do not document
our experiences and store them in a way that the future generations may have
access to them, and learn from them, we are not doing justice to ourselves as
well as to the next generation. And, while technology has made letters and
other forms of written documentation almost obsolete, it offers so many easy
methods to create, to store, to retrieve and to share, that we have just no
excuse for not performing this task.
I have shared some of experiences — of
using archives and creating narratives from archival objects by way of
examples. These are: Institutional Archives;
Interpreting Archival Resources;
Enhancing Family Archives; The Brick that Launched HDFC;
Family Archiving: Dr LM Sanghvi and the Duncan Medal.
All the examples illustrate the availability of an archival resource and how a
social historian puts the information content of that resource in its context
by researching on that content.
Some of the books showcased demonstrate the
way a historian draws information from, say, letters —about the life and
living conditions of that period. These books also bring to life how archival materials can be used as design elements.
The topic of oral history has acquired
special importance in the current times as we seem to have moved away from
committing our thoughts to pen and paper and rely more and more on oral
communication. The importance of recorded interviews was poignantly brought out
by Voices from the Inner Courtyard – the biography of Leela Somani. For writing
the book, I had recorded my interviews with her husband and her daughter-in-law
both of whom passed away a few years after the book was released. Those oral
history records have become an invaluable part of the family’s archives today.
If you are hesitant about sharing your
experiences by putting your thoughts on paper, please create oral histories by
keeping audio-recorded personal diaries. Technology enables you to protect your
privacy and to preserve these records. Imagine how much you would be
contributing to the discipline of business history of this country.
No comments:
Post a Comment