In a recent talk conducted by DH-IITJ as part of the “varDHa: Humanistic Inquiry and/in Digitality Series,” on September 16, 2021 , we got to hear Ms. Sanghamitra Chatterjee.
Speaker Profile: Ms. Sanghamitra Chatterjee has several years’ experience in the field of business and corporate archiving. Her professional journey began with the 118-year-old Godrej Group, one of India’s most trusted brands. She has also been an Adviser to the Cipla Archives, Mumbai where she set up archival processes and documented the pharmaceutical company’s core archival collection.
Ms. Sanghamitra Chatterjee
founded Past Perfect Heritage Management in 2016 with a view to taking the art of archiving to businesses, institutions and private families with an illustrious legacy.In the five years that Past Perfect has been around, the company has done path-breaking work with corporates such as Bajaj, Mahindra, Transport Corporation of India, Kirloskar Group and Exide Industries; Institutions such as Willingdon Sports Clubs and several private families who wish to document and communicate their history in exciting, unconventional ways. The company has served as Research Partners to independent authors and film production houses, both in India and abroad on projects ranging from feature films, documentaries and other works of historical fiction.
Sanghamitra was the recipient of the Avabai Wadia Scholarship by K R Cama Oriental Institute for her research on ‘Private Enterprise and Labour Housing in the 20th Century’ where she mapped company colonies and worker chawls across the country. As part of Maritime History Society’s Monsoon Lecture Series, she also researched and delivered a talk on the Scindia Steam Navigation Co.Sanghamitra is a Life Member of the Oral History Association of India and is currently the Joint Secretary of the Association.
Here's an excerpt from the session:
Why Archive ?
The speaker said that it was generally observed that any organisation, corporate or institute started engaging in archiving towards their anniversary (50th, 60th, 75th etc.). They gathered the material and published it as a coffee table book.
In the past 6 years, people have been engaging in archiving for a variety of reasons. One of which is to defend their core. She gave the example of Bajaj Heritage which was set up in 2017. They started archiving to defend their core or preserve their value system. They felt the need because they have inherited their values from Seth Jamnalal Bajaj and Jankidevi Bajaj. For them, Gandhiji was a father figure. They followed the Gandhian principle. Rahul Bajaj and his generation were very proud of their history, just for an example, the women wore Khadi during the weddings or their would be very less people in the Baarat procession during the wedding. So, they decided for the younger generation to not just rely on the dinner table conversations, instead of that, they should preserve their history through archiving.
Another reason for archiving, was training. She gave the example of TCI (Transport Corporation of India). They felt the need to document their history. So, Ms. Chatterjee and her team made short videos of interviews of people to capture various aspects of people. In 1956 they had started of as an organization.
During Research and Interviews, they took Biographical Interviews to get a Bio-sketch of a person. The focus is on Anecdotal stories. Through discussions, the team was able to show TCI, a lot of themes which needed to be taken up, the TCI has a way of training people. It was always that people who joined at the grassroot level, they were recruiting in that way. TCI provided it's employees a chance to grow within the company. How is it that a company restored it's workforce. By giving opportunities to staff at the grassroot level.
Another example was of Bharat Floorings, a 100 crore company which works in innovation design and has an architectural digest. Firdaus Variava, the chairperson, believed in Heritage led marketing to talk to the current audience, design enthusiasts, architects, interior designers. They were open to talk face to face. Conducted physical event, exhibition. The exhibition gave a biography but it was assumed that only the internal people would be interested in their biography. So, they linked Bharat Tiles with Bombay city and it's growth. The tiles could be found in Old City of Colaba, at Marine Drive or at Bombay Central. So, if a person has lived in Bombay, would have walked on Bharat Tiles at some point of time. So, everybody felt the city's history told by Bharat Tiles.
Documenting Institutional Histories
What to Archive: Content and Context
Milestones, stories, memories, values and ethics, experiences, successes, failures, lessons learned. They captured all these through manuscripts, oral histories, photographs, audio visuals, memories, awards and certificates, art and collections and artefacts.
What were the challenges they faced?
When institutions start the process of archiving, they are generally led by the HR or the marketing team in the business families and they have a very weak understanding of what it can lead to. They can't talk to all generations. In a 100 year old company, they have already lost 40 years of data. You need to figure out how to fill in the gap.
Also, with location shifts, they lose archives. For example, during Bombay floods, an advertising company lost it's repositories as they were kept in the basement.
#archiving #institutional #histories
Comments
Post a Comment