When I started this series on March 7 this year with my first piece on the National Museum, I did so with the belief that it would wrap up within five to seven weeks. We are in August now and there is no sign of this series coming to an end because every week a few museums keep getting added to the list. Ostensibly there are at least 10 more remaining now, but chance discoveries like this week’s Accountancy Museum can always expand the options. I am thankful to Ansar Ali, a soft-spoken curator at the National Gandhi Museum, who made me aware of the existence of this institution dedicated to what is known as the language of business. Yes, there is a museum like that and it is in A Block of Sector 62 Noida, but unfortunately very few outside the realm of chartered accountancy know about it.
The fact that there are no signs indicating the presence of the museum inside ICAI (Institute of Chartered Accountants of India) Bhawan has contributed to the ignorance about its existence. “The display board is being readied and it should be up soon. We have written to the Delhi Government twice asking them to include it in the museum listings but never heard from them,” says N.K. Ranjan, Curator, Accountancy Museum of India. When born in 2008 in Sector 1, Noida, it was known as just Accountancy Museum but was renamed Accountancy Museum of India in 2012 after the Ministry of Consumer Affairs permitted ICAI to use the name. In 2011, it shifted to Sector 62.
Situated on the third floor of ICAI Bhawan the museum, Ranjan informs us, is in a way still in the making. “Right now the collection stops at the formation of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India in 1949 but we are working on creating sections on world accountancy and fathers of Indian accountancy,” says Ranjan adding that in 2008, it was Ved Jain, President of ICAI, thought of setting up an accountancy museum. “The idea is to narrate the story and trace the origin and growth of accountancy profession in India.”
Ranjan documents it through a range of stuff like old manuscripts, sculptures, photographs of artefacts stored in museums across the world, important journals, coins, medals, sepia images of the first accountancy board, old balance sheets, etc. The text panels begin with the origin of accountancy in the Sumerian Civilisation. Photos of the Sumerian clay bulla-envelope (a hollow clay envelope inside which were stored tokens), complex counting tokens, Harappan seals, the world’s first coins (issued by the Greeks living in Lydia), the first Indian coins appear in these panels to give a comprehensive picture of the growth of accountancy as a discipline. A digital reproduction of a hand-written cheque dating back to 1725 AD, an old ledger of Mehtab Chand Golecha Group of Jaipur of 1848 AD, a sculpture of a traditional accountant or munim in fibreglass, a replica of the deity of wealth Kubera (based on the Kubera sculpture in the National Museum) and replicas of Harappan seals are some of the highlights of the collection collated by Ranjan.
“The ledger you see is a traditional way of keeping accounts and was called bahi-khata. It is in a language called Mudia or Mahajani which isn’t in circulation at all but interestingly some small shopkeepers in North India still converse in this language. It’s amazing that it still is in mint condition,” says Ranjan.
Another amazing exhibit is a sculpture of Luca Pacioli, a mathematician from Italy and also considered the father of accounting. Ranjan commissioned the sculpture of Pacioli, based on a painting of him made by Jacopo de’Barbari in 1500. Leonardo Da Vinci who was a close friend of Pacioli had illustrated his treatise “Summa de Arithmetica, Geoemtria, Proportioni et Proportionalita (Everything about Geometria, Geometry and Proportions) published in 1494 which revolutionised accountancy.
But despite such a mine of information, Ranjan feels the museum is still a work in progress. “And we are working on it. I am in touch with old members, accountancy firms who lead me and guide me to collectors and places where I will find relevant information. And even though the museum deals with a niche subject we want to get more footfall. Right now we get a lot of members and students as visitors and we haven’t really publicised it.”
(The Accountancy Museum of India, ICAI Bhawan, 3rd Floor A-29, Sector 62, Noida, remains open from Monday to Thursday. There is no entry ticket.)
