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Baliga, born near Mangalore, studied History all his life. That was a time when History was a respected subject, not a throwaway one as it is today. Taking his degree from Madras University, he went on to the University of London to do his Master’s and Doctoral degrees.

Back in Madras, he was in August 1934 appointed Probationary Curator of the Record Office. The Curator was Percy Macqueen, ICS. Baliga was sent to London to train at the Public Record Office there — an irony, record-keeping having started in Madras before it had in London! On his return in 1935, he succeeded Macqueen and for nearly 25 years thereafter was to make the Madras Record Office a model not only for India but the East. At that time, Madras had the largest volume of records in India, possibly in Asia. It still has a splendid collection, though greater care and accessibility might be wanting.

During World War II, when Madras felt itself threatened by the Japanese, he supervised the shifting of all the records to Chittoor. He began arranging for the revision of all the old Gazetteers (doing Tanjore, Madura, Coimbatore and South Arcot himself). And he wrote the two-volume ‘Studies in Madras Administration’, a classic for administrators, besides preparing detailed notes for administrators and legislators on a variety of subjects, ranging from the judiciary to land reform.

Of the importance of archives, he once wrote, “The value of archives for national planning and reconstruction is not sufficiently realised. Most of the States do not possess any organised archives and some that do cannot be said to utilise them to the fullest extent possible or necessary. And yet, there can be no doubt that the very object with which the archives are preserved is to make readily available information for assisting administration. Nor can there be any doubt that the archives, recording as they do all the achievements and aspirations of past Governments, contain a mine of information on all sorts of administrative, economic and social schemes for reforms. In them are treasured the most considered views and ideas of the most experienced statesmen, administrators and legislators of the past on a variety of vital matters of public interest.”

It was Governor William Langhorne who in 1672 began the practice of record-keeping. In 1805, Lord William Bentinck, the then Governor, urged the establishment of a Record Office — 33 years before London’s Public Record Officer — and appointed a Record Keeper, one Mootiah, “the Principal Native Servant in the Political and Military Department…who has engaged the respect of every Government.”

In 1909, the Record Office moved from rooms in the Fort to its present home in Egmore.

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