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TCA is currently the proud custodian of over A reflection of this respect for maintaining records
1.6 million Tata-related Archival Records of may have remained confined to his own personal
evidential and historical value and this number collection of documents if the following incident
keeps growing. The first business archives to be had not happened: In 1953, JRD Tata wanted some
set up in India, TCA has become a model for information about Tata Airlines, which he had
businesses desirous of preserving their past. started and nurtured till it was nationalised by the
Government of India. He was shocked and surprised
THE GENESIS to find that he was denied access to these old records.
Tata Central Archives was launched by JRD Tata Recalling this event, JRD Tata, in 1978, wrote in a note
on January 7, 1991, at the Bombay House to Tata directors:
Auditorium in Bombay (now Mumbai). A seminar
on ‘The Creation and Management of Business “... all the early records of Tata Airlines were
Archives’ was also held after the launch. swallowed and dispersed into the records of Indian
Airlines, into which Air-India Limited was merged.
Its real genesis, however, could perhaps be traced As a result, many dramatic and historically
back to a letter written to JRD Tata by his father important or striking events and stories have been
RD Tata, in the autumn of 1922, advising him to lost. I therefore strongly urge that each of our
write down and note everything he saw or heard, companies should make it a point to maintain, in a
so it could serve as a useful record and reference separate set of files, copies of exceptionally important
for the future. JRD Tata took this advice to heart or interesting correspondence, speeches and reports
and developed a strong respect for preserving which have played an important part in the
historical records. Company’s history, in the past and will in the future.”

At the launch of the Archives in 1991, seated in the first row, in the centre, is JRD Tata along with SA Sabavala on
his left and JJ Bhabha and RM Lala to his right, together with the participants and faculty at the seminar. $

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