Past Imperfect Episode 9: Radio Across Borders with Isabel Huacuja Alonso
SPJIMR Prof. Dinyar Patel is in conversation with Isabel Huacuja Alonso, Columbia University. Before the internet and television, South Asia tuned in to the radio, and the radio helped South Asians forge a shared sense of belonging.
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00:00You're listening to Past Imperfect, a history podcast brought to you by the Center for Wisdom
00:17and Leadership at SPJIMR.
00:20I'm Dinyar Patel.
00:22Radio's golden days in South Asia are long past, but the history of radio can still tell
00:26us a great deal about how popular culture and political power continue to interact in
00:31the region.
00:32Today, I'm joined by Isabel Wakuha-Alonzo, the author of Radio for the Millions.
00:38Wakuha-Alonzo's book examines how, before television and the internet, people listened
00:43to and communicated news and, most poignantly, used radio to find commonalities across hostile
00:50borders.
00:51Stations like Radio Ceylon united Indian and Pakistani listeners with a shared love of
00:55filmy music.
00:57While radio could occasionally strengthen state agendas, it could also remind listeners
01:01of shared cultures, languages, and histories.
01:07Thank you, Isabel, for joining us today.
01:09Your book, Radio for the Millions, tracks the history of radio across the divide of
01:131947 and across three different countries, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
01:18Can you tell us how radio began in colonial South Asia and how its development was different
01:23from the development of radio in other countries and regions around the world?
01:26Sure.
01:27Dinir, thank you very much.
01:28Thank you for having me here.
01:29It's a pleasure to talk to you about my book, Radio for the Millions.
01:35So as I trace in the book, in the first chapters of the book and in the section one of the
01:41book, radio had a very difficult start in South Asia, and there were a multiple number
01:48of reasons for that.
01:50But really the primary reason for it is in around the 1930s, the British government quickly
01:56realized that radio could be used as a way to broadcast nationalist and anti-colonial
02:02ideas, and that deeply worried the British administration.
02:06So that hindered any kind of development of radio broadcasting in South Asia.
02:12Even as the administration paid lip service to the idea that they were developing the
02:16medium, it still sort of stopped them from doing so.
02:19And it was really not until World War II when broadcasts from Japan, Germany, and Italy
02:29really began to gain popularity that the British administration realized that they had to develop
02:37a medium of radio to counteract these broadcasts, and that was a turning point.
02:42It doesn't mean that there wasn't that All India Radio didn't exist earlier, it doesn't
02:45mean that there wasn't investment, but it was always lukewarm investment.
02:49And this is something that people that were involved in radio broadcasting, including
02:52writers, including people in administration, were very aware of and wrote about.
02:58You mentioned in your book about how around the time that radio is beginning in India,
03:04you have the Empire Service that's launched by the BBC, you have a lot of interest from
03:09particular individuals at the BBC to invest in radio in India, and yet the colonial government
03:13seems to be in its usual manner reactionary and uninterested in developing this medium at all.
03:20Yeah, that's correct.
03:21It's never sort of set explicitly, so you have to sort of read between the lines in
03:25the archives to understand that.
03:27Again, there's always lip service that radio is important, that we're going to develop it,
03:31that we have to serve the Indian people, that we're going to have it in many languages,
03:35but the money is just never there.
03:37And yes, you're completely right.
03:39So, one of the stories that is told in the radio is that, first of all, receivers were
03:45exorbitantly expensive, and they were very highly taxed.
03:50And that meant that it was just very expensive to get access to a radio.
03:54But when the Empire Service began to broadcast, which was a broadcasting system that was meant
03:59to really broadcast to British people as well as English-speaking Indians, and can we
04:08edit that part out?
04:09Is that possible?
04:10Yeah, sure.
04:11Sure.
04:12So, it was really when the Empire Service began, it was really, it gained a lot of interest,
04:18and it really increased the number of radio receivers people were buying and the taxation
04:22for it, right?
04:24So, radio shops owners began to say that those taxes needed to be used to develop radio in
04:32India.
04:33Speaking of that, you mentioned about how radio in India was a group experience.
04:39People would gather in shops outside a pan shop or a chai stand or an electronic store,
04:44as you mentioned, and listen to it.
04:47Now, history shows us many other examples of how radio has been kind of a community
04:52listening experience, whether it's the fireside chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the
04:56United States during World War II and the Great Depression, or on other extreme, common
05:03listening practices in places like Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union.
05:08How is group listening different in South Asia, and how is it unique in comparison to
05:12these other group listening practices?
05:14Yes, group listening in community, listening by groups is important in earlier time period
05:20and continues until, I would say, the 80s.
05:23This is not necessarily unique to South Asia, as you point out.
05:28It's actually, historians of radio have shown how listening in community, listening beyond
05:32just sort of the family, but in neighborhoods was actually common throughout the world.
05:37There are particular differences, though, that I think are important to point out.
05:42One is the length of time that that remains important.
05:45So, usually, the break is the transistor.
05:47With the coming and the popularization of the transistor, radio scholars have written
05:51about the individualization of radio listening.
05:54That's not the case in South Asia.
05:56People continue to listen to radio, particularly to Hindi film songs and Hindi film soft programs
06:01on the transistor, but also in community.
06:03And there are sort of signs that show us that.
06:06We can see it through the letters that do that, but also even through the advertisements
06:09of transistors, which always talk about the importance of loudness, because there's an
06:14expectation that it's going to be listening in group.
06:17The other difference in South Asia that I would argue is a difference, but one that
06:22is actually shared, is that it's not just that people are listening in groups, but that
06:28it's not only the listening of radio that becomes important, but the conversations around
06:34radio.
06:36This is really crucial to think about the World War II time period, when the ownership
06:40of radio receivers was quite restricted, in great part due to the British administration's
06:45reluctance to develop the medium.
06:47So, a question that I faced is, why is there so much obsession about the effect of access
06:55broadcasts on Indian audiences, if there are such few receivers, compared to the size of
07:00the population?
07:01And the answer lied, really, in the fact that people were talking about those broadcasts,
07:06and that those conversations about the broad noise were crucial to radio.
07:11And this notion is what I use for the concept of radio resonance.
07:15The idea that the talk about radio, the rumor around radio, is as important as the radio
07:20broadcast.
07:22That is crucial in an earlier time period, but it remains crucial in a later time period,
07:26even when transistors are widely available.
07:29So, for example, for radio programs like the ever-popular Binaka Gitmala, that ranked
07:35songs up by order of popularity, relied on word of mouth as well, because it consciously
07:45asked listeners to talk about songs and to talk about the rankings, right?
07:49So, I would say that in South Asia, radio resonance becomes crucial.
07:54It's not just the community listening, but the talking about that radio broadcast that
08:00becomes really important.
08:02I would say that I think that phenomena is really much more important in South Asia,
08:07and I would argue in the global South, but that that phenomena is actually crucial to
08:12understanding radio everywhere.
08:14And that takes place in a number of parts, including parts of Europe and North America
08:19as well.
08:19And that's something that I outline in the book.
08:23The trick is really that I think that we should really start the...
08:28Our study of the medium needs to start from here, rather than the other way around that
08:32often has happened, rather than from the global North.
08:34Yeah, absolutely.
08:35Yeah, yeah.
08:36And, you know, I mean, building on that, I mean, when you're talking about things like
08:40tracing rumors or community listening habits or thinking about how people talked about
08:46the radio, all of this points to a big challenge in your project.
08:50I mean, it must have been extremely difficult to do the archival research for this project.
08:54I mean, for many of us, you know, if we look at a historical project, we just go into the
08:58archive and we follow a paper trail.
09:00And in your case, as you mentioned in your book, that paper trail doesn't oftentimes
09:04exist, right?
09:05I mean, you can't, in many cases, find old recordings of radio programs.
09:10Sometimes the recordings won't have existed in the first place or there are transcripts
09:13or people have jotted down what they recall from, you know, what they listened on the
09:19radio.
09:19Can you tell us a little bit about the particular challenges that you faced in researching this
09:25book?
09:25Oh, absolutely.
09:27So it's a book that has about a little bit more than a decade of research and has followed
09:34archives literally everywhere.
09:35So unlike other sort of stories that we want to tell, the study of radio doesn't exist.
09:40You're unable to find it in only go to the Indian National Archives or the British Library,
09:46which tend to be the to-go places for historians.
09:49I sort of had to follow them anywhere that they can possibly take me.
09:54And the way that I began this research, which was incredibly helpful, was through oral histories
09:58with broadcasters and with listeners.
10:01And it was by interviewing them about their experience working for radio and listening
10:05for radio.
10:06Sort of telling me about particular moments that were important in radio broadcasting
10:11and then following those moments through various archives.
10:14And sort of that varied throughout through the time period that I worked on.
10:17So for the 1930s to 1945, the World War II time period, we were actually fortunate that
10:26the British government was so paranoid about access radio broadcasts that they actually
10:31transcribed every, almost every single word that was said on the radio.
10:35And those copies were available at the National Archives of India in Delhi.
10:41And I was able to trace those.
10:44For the period of where I focus on music in the post-independence time period, I had to
10:52rely on a number of sources.
10:53So I went to Radio Salon itself in Sri Lanka to look at schedules.
10:58I interviewed people there.
11:00Then I relied on letters and diaries that were kept by listeners that I was able to
11:05trace little by little.
11:07And for the 1965 war, I was able to actually find an entire collection, a large collection
11:13in Radio Pakistan of the 1965 war.
11:16And ironically, my challenge there was dealing with an abundance of recordings and how to
11:23actually study something that was broadcast 13 hours a day, right?
11:27How to actually look at that.
11:29And for the AIR Urdu service, again, I was able to, it's a later time period.
11:35So I was able to interview a number of broadcasters that were part of the AIR Urdu service.
11:41And through them, I was able to access their personal collections of letters and recordings
11:46as well, letters and recordings.
11:48And to read that alongside newspapers, alongside accounts, personal accounts, everything that
11:55I could possibly find.
11:57To summarize it, I really followed the radio airwaves in every way I possibly could and
12:04every clue that I was given.
12:07And that's sort of the way that this was put together by gathering sources across many
12:14places.
12:15So one of the points that you make relatively early in the book is that radio allows us
12:20to see so much of South Asian history in a different perspective.
12:23And the first big moment that you cover in your book is World War II, where you focus
12:28on how after the war began in 1939, Axis powers, so Japan, Italy, and Germany, set up stations
12:35to broadcast in Hindustani, Indian audiences, gaining a remarkably wide listenership.
12:40So what made these Axis radio stations so appealing to Indians during the war?
12:45And what does this appeal tell us about the state of British rule in India during this
12:49time?
12:49Yeah, so Axis radio stations became very appealing to Indian listeners, as well as to those that
12:57would talk about them.
12:59Because the British government, after the break of the war, very actively began to censor
13:07news regarding the war, as well as news regarding the anti-colonial movement.
13:12So there was just an absolute lack of trust in the existing media.
13:15And Axis radio broadcasts provided an outside perspective of it.
13:19As I write in the book, Axis radio broadcasts were also incredibly anti-Semitic.
13:24They exaggerated the truth.
13:26They also broadcast outlied lies about battles and about developments in the war.
13:32And they were very incendiary.
13:35But at the same time, they alleged solidarity with the nationalist movement.
13:42Of course, we all know that that's extremely problematic, given at the very least Hitler's
13:47views on India.
13:48But that created a sense that we can get a different perspective from here.
13:54And that allowed people to really see radio as a place of where you can find a different
13:59perspective and almost a place of resistance as well.
14:03And this is really what I believe accounted for the popularity of it.
14:06And the other thing that is really, really important about Axis radio broadcasts, and
14:11I at least I tried to explain in the book, is really their success in the use of language.
14:18And this is something that the British administration in India certainly noticed, which is that
14:25they broadcast in Indian languages.
14:27They move away from English broadcasting, but they also very much utilize Hindustani
14:32and the notion of Hindustani in North India.
14:34And they did so effectively.
14:35And that sort of certainly helped the radio stations have popularity at that time period.
14:41You point out that at this time, AIR was mostly broadcasting in English, right, before the
14:46war?
14:47AIR was certainly making an effort to increase their broadcasting in Indian languages, in
14:52Hindustani, but also in other Indian languages.
14:55But they hadn't done so, they were not able to sort of gain popularity at the time period
15:00because their broadcasts remained to be very didactic, which is something that and also
15:06it was deeply censored.
15:07So they couldn't, for example, broadcast Gandhi's speeches at the time period until
15:11much later, until really after the war that they began to effectively do that.
15:16So it sort of felt banal when everything, when there's an entire anti-colonial movement,
15:21the war going here and such extreme censorship going on.
15:25But I want to emphasize that I really think that it was the censorship of newspapers.
15:32And when the censorship of newspapers became really strong after 1942, that's really a
15:38turning moment in radio broadcasting and in the way, in the popularity of access radio
15:43broadcasts.
15:43Not just who heard them, but who talked about that.
15:46And of course, a big figure around that moment was Subhash Chandra Bose.
15:49And you talk a lot about Bose and his Azad Hind radio, which was supported by both the
15:54Japanese and the German governments.
15:57You point out that he was really the only nationalist leader in the pre-independence
16:01era to harness the power of radio and harness the power of the airwaves.
16:06At the same time, you demonstrate that study of the radio and his broadcasts particularly
16:12allow us to see some more troubling aspects of Bose's politics, particularly his ties
16:18to and his affinities for fascist politics.
16:21How precisely does radio provide us with a more complete picture of Bose's last few
16:25years as a political leader?
16:27I think radio really brings you to the essence of Bose's role during World War II.
16:32So most histories of Bose have focused on telling a life story across it.
16:38And while that's not necessarily incorrect, I think that often distorts what really happens
16:44in the World War II time period and moves us away from thinking of Bose as a wartime
16:49World War II character and what that kind, what his alliance with Axis powers actually
16:54meant.
16:55So the standard narrative in history has been that the alliance with Axis powers was an
16:59opportunistic one.
17:01I don't think that the opportunistic part is necessarily wrong, but what that fails
17:05to see is how his voice was heard in the context of Axis propaganda.
17:10And what the book shows is that Bose's voice could not have been necessarily separated.
17:15Neither could have Assad-hin radio from Axis propaganda to India.
17:19That was Axis propaganda on the radio that was so increasingly popular and important
17:24to the media scenario there.
17:26And that when we see him in that context, it's very difficult to separate him from the
17:30Axis powers that support him.
17:32And in many ways, it's actually unethical for us as historians to do that because that's
17:36not the way in which contemporaries would have heard his voice.
17:41The chapter, though, that focuses on Subhash Chandra Bose also makes another argument
17:45that I think is really powerful, which is it brings back to the idea of radio resonance
17:50and that the number of people that would have actually heard his voice were actually
17:56quite limited.
17:58However, that didn't mean that radio was not important or that his broadcasting on
18:03radio was not important because the talk and rumor that surrounded those broadcasts were
18:08so crucial to his political persona.
18:11And I connect those rumors to the later rumors of him after his death that he was sort of
18:17still alive and that he returns to.
18:19And one of the points that I make here is that rumor was always his medium.
18:25Rumor was not sort of the medium afterwards, after his life.
18:28It was always his medium if we sort of concentrate on him about at the high point of his career
18:34as during the war.
18:38So I think and this also allows me to sort of be in conversation with radio studies.
18:44And one of the things that I try to think about is how is it that Subhash Chandra Bose
18:51created intimacy with listeners?
18:53And in radio studies, the notion of intimacy and the creation of intimacy through the ear
18:59is really crucial, but it always focuses on the way people speak intimately.
19:04And I try to turn that around and say the ways in which we force people to talk about
19:09us is also a way of creating intimacy and actually rumor.
19:14And in this particular chapter, I talk about gossip.
19:17It's actually true, a very important aspect of the medium as well and the ways in which
19:22it creates intimacy with its audiences.
19:26Yeah, it's quite remarkable how you describe in the book about how, you know, I mean, we
19:30from our perspective, we think of Bose as a figure who is constantly resurrected after
19:35his death in 1945.
19:37But he was resurrecting himself well before that, right?
19:40I mean, you point out in one broadcast, he was responding to rumors that were broadcast
19:45by the BBC.
19:46And even people like Gandhi believed that he had died in a plane accident and came on
19:52the radio and said, you know, he's still alive and he's planning to still broadcast.
19:57What was it?
19:57News of my death were wishful thinking.
20:00It's sort of what he says in the radio.
20:02That's correct.
20:02That's right.
20:03And I can't, I have it in the book, but I can't remember off the top of my head.
20:08One particular news services wrongly first broadcasts that Bose had been killed when
20:14he hadn't been killed.
20:16And then a few other news agencies take it up and continuing, among them the BBC.
20:22And Bose later comes out from Asatian Radio and says that news of my death are wishful
20:28thinking, right?
20:29And he does so on the radio.
20:30So, yes, in a way, he's resurrected himself.
20:34And during World War II, his voice was really what was present, much not his body.
20:40So, in a sense, he was being resurrected and had a ghostly presence even during the war.
20:45Yes.
20:46As you point out, I mean, the only times he really comes back onto Indian territory after
20:50that is, I mean, when he goes to the Andamans, right?
20:53And then, or at least the INA forces go to the Andamans.
20:55And then afterward, during the battle on the borders of India and Burma towards the
21:00end of the war.
21:01And this is really one of the chapters where I really try to sort of dig the point in and
21:07make it clear that radio history is history in the sense that paying attention to radio
21:12really allows us to think about, and to radio and sound history in general, really allows
21:16us to question sort of standard ideas of South Asian history.
21:21So, I'm going to move on now from World War II into the immediate post-war era.
21:26And this is an era where we find radio, amongst many other things in the subcontinent, being
21:31partitioned, if you will.
21:33How did radio change in the turbulent years between the end of the war and 1947 when India
21:38and Pakistan achieved their independence?
21:40And how in particular did certain leaders, for example, Vallabhbhai Patel, who was Minister
21:46for Information and Broadcasting in the interim government, affect these changes?
21:50I think, as I had mentioned earlier, the book focuses on particular moments.
21:53And the first moment, as we mentioned, is World War II, and the second moment is the
21:57immediate post-independence time period.
21:59And it looks at the role of music during this time period.
22:02And following independence and partition and the division of India, colonial India into
22:07Pakistan and India, and Radio Pakistan, as well as All India Radio, we have an increasingly
22:13focus of thinking about what radio can do and what radio should do for creating national
22:18audiences.
22:18And here I focus on a large social uplift campaign that takes place in All India Radio
22:24in the 1950s.
22:26And it takes place under B.B.
22:28Keskar, the Minister of Information.
22:31And he's someone who is deeply committed to music and to Hindustani classical music and
22:35to lesser extent Carnatic classical music as well.
22:39And he believes that radio is the way to create a national soundscape and that the promotion
22:44of classical music is the way to do so.
22:47And he also does so through the promotion of Hindi as a national language, a project
22:54that Patel had actually started earlier prior to independence.
22:58He sort of continues to it.
23:00And it's a large uplifting moment where All India Radio is sort of tried, where B.B.
23:05Keskar tries to remake All India Radio.
23:07This leads to the famous ban of Hindi film songs that takes place in 1952.
23:14And really, it has a ton of resistance from listeners.
23:20The didactic programs that All India Radio starts are not welcome by listeners.
23:28There is a lot of complaints about the ban of Hindi film songs.
23:33There is a lot of complaints about the forcing of classical music into listeners.
23:38There's also a lot of complaints about the language of All India Radio being completely
23:44un-understandable, that listeners could not understand it because it was so highly Sanskritized.
23:49And at this very moment in what is now Sri Lanka, what was then Ceylon, you have the
23:57growth of a commercial radio station, ironically using a transmitter from the British from
24:05World War II that can be heard very well in India.
24:08And this commercial station begins what is known as Radio Ceylon, which becomes the leading
24:13station really for the next three decades.
24:16And that for the most part broadcast Hindi film song and Hindi film song related programs.
24:23So the fourth chapter of the book relates the ways in which that radio station rise
24:29to prominence, how it becomes what listeners often calls king of the airways, and the ways
24:34it really helps make Hindi film songs the soundtrack of South Asia.
24:39And that in doing so, Radio Ceylon harnesses an audience that is beyond borders, not only
24:46in India, but as well as in Pakistan.
24:49Radio Ceylon could be heard clearly in Pakistan, and it develops a very large audience there
24:54as well.
24:55And it goes very much against the kinds of projects that were developed both by All India
25:00Radio and B.V. Keskar during that time period, but also by Radio Pakistan.
25:03So as you mentioned, B.V. Keskar, when he was minister, banned Hindi film songs on the
25:08airwaves in India in 1952.
25:09And as you recall in your book, this was an extremely controversial moment.
25:15And it's quite remarkable that one man could have so much power to dictate the listening
25:20habits of an entire nation, right?
25:22I mean, one man decided that film music was somehow good or too Western or too decadent.
25:28And therefore, there needs to be kind of a top-down project of cultural learning on the
25:35part of the Indian citizenry to develop an appreciation for classical music.
25:39What does this tell us about politics in the Nehruvian era, that so much power was given
25:44to one individual to determine something like this?
25:47First of all, I'm speaking, so it's a podcast, so you can't see me, just like on the radio.
25:52But I'm saying ban would quotations.
25:54There's never a formal ban.
25:56It's a number, as I describe in the book, is a number of incidents that led to the removal
26:00of Hindi film songs from there for about a period of seven years.
26:05Yes, one of the things I tried to emphasize, BB Keskar had a lot of power over All India
26:10Radio, and his decisions did have a lot of power.
26:13But in reality, if we look at what happens in All India Radio during this time period,
26:19actually, it does not go against a lot of the policies that are taking place in Nehruvian
26:23India at the time period.
26:25The idea behind the banning of film songs is actually in line with a socialist project
26:31that looks askance or hears at anything, at a commercial form of music.
26:38So part of BB Keskar's critique of Hindi film songs, excuse me, was this commerciality,
26:43that it was the fact that it was a commercial form of music and a strong belief that the
26:47government would be able to produce better music.
26:49In fact, there's a program that begins called Sugam Sangit, that Anil Biswas actually becomes
26:55involved in that.
26:56And it's an attempt to create light music by the government.
27:02So that was one.
27:02And the other aspect is that Keskar also, in addition to having the better known ban
27:11on Hindi film songs, he also very much centralizes production in All India Radio.
27:16And he believes that music should be produced from Delhi and sort of Hindustani classical
27:20music from Delhi.
27:21And that centralization and that idea of centralization is actually in line with the
27:26Nehruvian way of thinking.
27:27And one of the arguments that I tried to make is that these kinds of nationalist projects
27:35that had communal tendencies are actually also part of that legacy, and that the idealization
27:42of that time period can be problematic, or the idealization in historical records that
27:45we have can be problematic.
27:46And I urge scholars to sort of look at this moment, not as a way it's often put in when
27:52it's described as like a random ban on Hindi film songs, but as a part of a larger context.
27:57Absolutely.
27:57Yeah.
27:57And I'm thinking of Taylor Sherman's recent book where she talks about how the period
28:02of time when Nehru's in power can be seen through several myths.
28:06And one myth that you kind of helped explode over here is how this was an era of absolute
28:13secularism and an era which democracy was firmly in place.
28:19And certainly amongst the listening habits of Indians, people might have tended to disagree
28:24since they couldn't listen to film songs, at least tuning into AIR.
28:28So you talk about how AIR's venture into classical music was something that really
28:36benefited Radio Ceylon.
28:38Radio Ceylon from the 1950s had captured a lot of the interest of individuals in India
28:45and Pakistan by having these programs where they broadcast Hindi film songs to audiences
28:51around the subcontinent.
28:53And you mentioned a popular joke at the time, which was nine out of 10 receivers in India
28:58were tuned into Radio Ceylon and the 10th was out of service.
29:02How significant was Radio Ceylon in shaping a shared popular culture in South Asia right
29:06after partition?
29:07Extremely is the way that I would answer.
29:10I mean, I think the joke nine out of 10 is actually accurate in every way, form.
29:15I mean, Radio Ceylon, talk to anyone over the age of 50 and they will tell you that
29:20they grew up listening to Radio Ceylon.
29:22Radio Ceylon was the to-go radio station.
29:25That's why when people sort of ask me, like, why did you not focus on state broadcasting?
29:30You're sort of paying too much attention to what's outside of the state, right?
29:34And actually, I think that that analysis is wrong.
29:37The only reason why I focused on Radio Ceylon is because I began with a listener, because
29:42I began paying attention to what listeners were actually listening to.
29:45And that was really the number one radio station that people listened from the 1950s, I would
29:52argue, all the way to the 1970s, all the way to then.
29:56And it was the primary form of entertainment, not just the primary form of listening, the
30:01primary form of entertainment for people in India and Pakistan.
30:04And it was a shared soundscape across, I would argue, North India and Pakistan.
30:10It also shaped the way people experience film songs.
30:14I talk about how the various radio programs created certain forms of listening to songs,
30:19but it also shaped the way people experience film.
30:22One of the, I would say that the book is very much in conversation and draws on the rich
30:27literature that we have on film in South Asia.
30:31At the same time, I think that a lot of that literature has focused on the visuality of
30:36film.
30:36And this sort of tries to bring it across and say, listen, people listen to the radio
30:41seven hours a day, four hours a day, maybe seven hours a day.
30:44And they might have watched a film at the most, maybe twice a month, three times a month.
30:49So that experience was crucial.
30:51And listening to the radio did not mean only listening to songs.
30:54It meant listening to songs and descriptions of films as well.
30:58It made paying attention to particular communities and fan communities that were built
31:02through radio listening.
31:03Now, this is also the chapter where I'm able to, I'm really, where I was able to really
31:07work closely with the broadcaster, Amin Sayani, who we're fortunate to still have with us
31:12and with his work and with his collections.
31:16I think one point that you make that's really important is that for many people in South
31:21Asia, listening to a radio broadcast of a Hindi film song was probably the closest that
31:26people would get to experience of a film, right?
31:29I mean, because, you know, films were still quite expensive.
31:32They'd only be played at a theater once, you know, and, you know, people might be able
31:38to see them once or twice.
31:39But on the radio, a much wider section of people across India and Pakistan were able
31:45to either listen to songs for the first time or get a sense of what a movie was or relive
31:52an experience of what it was like to see a particular film in a movie theater.
31:58Oh, yes, absolutely.
32:00When I went to Radio Salon to do research, I met an elderly couple that was traveling
32:06outside of India for the first time who were also visiting the radio station.
32:11And the irony of it is that one of them, I can't remember who, one of them had actually
32:17seen very few films for a variety of reasons, but he was a devouted fan of radio.
32:23So, absolutely.
32:24I mean, I think this is, I think that radio should be studied on its own, right?
32:30And doesn't need to constantly be compared to film.
32:33At the same time, I think that historians of film should pay more attention to the ways
32:38in which films were experienced orally and on the airwaves in particular.
32:42And the other interesting thing about Radio Salon is just its participative character,
32:46in the sense that you talk about how people like Amin Sayani would receive as many as
32:5265,000 letters every week at the beginning of his program from listeners who were responding to
33:00efforts to get them to participate in the rankings of songs.
33:03It really seems in many ways that radio, and particularly Radio Salon over here,
33:08is helping to democratize a certain type of culture, create almost a form of popular culture
33:13with very active participation on the part of people in South Asia.
33:16Yeah.
33:17I mean, I'm not sure I would use the word democratize here, but I think that there
33:21was an ultra-participatory culture that develops, I would argue, begins in the 1950s and really
33:29sort of blooms in the 60s and 70s.
33:33And that ultra-participatory culture is one in which it really involves listeners and
33:37radio programs and uses listener-authored content in the actual radio programs.
33:45So Binaka Gidmala, the better-known one, is a hit parade system that relies on
33:50sales as well as listeners' votes.
33:53But during this time period, we developed a number of radio programs that actually rely
33:59entirely on listener-authored content, on letters, on specific stories that they write.
34:06I'm currently writing a separate article about fan fiction that was read on the airwaves
34:10on Radio Salon, as well as AIR Audible Service.
34:15Participation is really at the key of this time period, and that participation always
34:20relies on a kind of radio resonance.
34:22That is, the talking about radio that becomes crucial.
34:25So in the last two chapters of your book, you focus on the competing agendas of Radio
34:29Pakistan and AIR during and after the 1965 India-Pakistan War.
34:35And one particular individual really stands out from this part of your book, the famed
34:40actress and singer Noor Jehan, who had a career before partition and then migrated to Pakistan
34:46and had a career as a singer over there as well.
34:49And you show how Noor Jehan was used in very different ways for very different political
34:54messages and messaging by both the Indian and Pakistani radio services.
34:59Can you tell us a bit more about how her radio voice was used to send different political
35:04messages by these two competing radio services?
35:07He's one of my favorite characters in the book.
35:10And in one of the interviews, I was asked, like, if you could meet any academic, who
35:15would you meet?
35:17An interview about the book.
35:18And I was like, well, I don't know if I would meet any academic, but I would meet her.
35:22I would want to meet her.
35:23I'm more interested in meeting her.
35:25But yes, I mean, the third section of the book focuses on the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War
35:31and its aftermath.
35:32And the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War in history is sort of like almost unimportant conflict
35:38between India and Pakistan over Kashmir that takes place in 1965.
35:42That lasts a few days and that sort of results in a military stalemate and sort of leads
35:48to problems.
35:49But the real issue is 1971.
35:51In the book, I argue that 1965 is actually a crucial moment.
35:55And I talk about the important role of radio broadcasting by Radio Pakistan in creating
36:02a sense of war.
36:04And Noor Jeha here plays a huge role because what she does is that she volunteers.
36:10By this time, she's no longer in the film industry.
36:13She has migrated to Pakistan from India and she's no longer in the film industry.
36:17And she volunteers to come to Radio Pakistan.
36:20She famously comes in a white sari and she sings on the radio.
36:24And she performs a number of patriotic songs for Radio Pakistan, which were composed then
36:31by a group of musicians and by her as well.
36:34And the songs become memorable.
36:36They're still sort of widely circulated in Pakistan when I was there.
36:40And she becomes sort of the symbol of a warring Pakistan.
36:43And a symbol of a warring Pakistan against an Indian aggressor, which is the narrative
36:52that was pushed by Radio Pakistan at the time period.
36:55And she's really the national symbol of that.
36:58In the aftermath of the 1965 war and in response to that, Indira Gandhi develops the All India
37:05Radio Urdu service, which in reality is supposed to only target Urdu speaking audiences in
37:12Pakistan and to provide news of the war and the war's aftermath and the negotiations from
37:23an Indian perspective.
37:25And that's because during the 1965 war, you have the complete breakdown of diplomatic
37:30relationships.
37:32So the service is meant to do that, but it's slow.
37:35Broadcasters realized that Pakistanis really want to hear Hindi film songs.
37:40So they begin playing that and the service really becomes eight hours a day.
37:45Most of it dedicated to entertainment and to music.
37:48And it's only a small part dedicated to news.
37:51And within this service, which grows in the years to come and becomes very popular in
37:58India as well, even though that's never the intended audience and becomes sort of a connection
38:03across India and Pakistan.
38:05At the very time that Radio Salon's popularity is decreasing because of the deterioration
38:12of the transmitter.
38:14Within the service, a broadcaster begins a program called Awaaz De Kaha Hain, which is
38:20the name of one of her famous songs, as I'm sure many are aware of.
38:25And Noor Jaha becomes the central voice of that program.
38:28And that program is about the exchange of letters between Indian and Pakistani listeners
38:34talking about a shared past.
38:36So it's rather ironic because, and actually rather conscious as a broadcaster does it
38:41consciously, because Abdul Jabbar, the broadcaster and host of that program, uses the voice of
38:48Noor Jaha to talk about connections across both sides of the border and a shared past
38:55against the kind of programming that had been done earlier during the 1965 war that used
39:01Noor Jaha's voice as the voice of Pakistani nationalism.
39:06Yeah, the one thing that really is quite apparent from your book is that radio in many ways
39:11is a way to kind of get across these borders and allow people on both sides of a very,
39:18very hard border.
39:19I mean, as you mentioned, diplomatic relations broke down by 1965.
39:22And of course, we still live in an era where communication between India and Pakistan is
39:27extremely difficult.
39:28Yet through radio, you have people who are communicating with one another.
39:32You even mentioned in the book that people like Noor Jaha are in some ways responding
39:36to what's happening across the border.
39:38She and Lata Mangeshkar, as you mentioned in your book, were kind of competing as big
39:44playback singers in the era.
39:45And when Lata Mangeshkar gave a patriotic rendition of a song, Noor Jaha felt it almost
39:51obligatory to respond in 1965 and become a patriotic singer as well.
39:56So in many ways, you really show how radio knits together two countries which otherwise
40:02are at a moment of extreme hostility by 1965.
40:07I mean, absolutely.
40:08And I think that's sort of the leading theme of the book, the ways in which radio is able
40:15to contest state agendas.
40:18It contests first the state agenda of the British administration during World War II
40:22with access radio broadcast.
40:24Then it contests the state agenda of B.B.
40:28Keskar and his kind of social uplift program with radio salon and with the role of radio
40:36salon and Hindi film programs and then Hindi film song programs.
40:42And then it contests the state agenda of the 1965 war with the rise of the A.I.
40:46or the service and its cross-border audience.
40:49So this is sort of the story that I choose to center in the book.
40:55And it's a story that I chose to center in the book because it's the story that most
41:00strongly resonated with listeners.
41:02It is the story.
41:02It is really what they were tuning into at the time and what mattered to them.
41:08During World War II, there's really little doubt if you pay attention that access radio
41:13broadcasts were the most popular and the most talked about during the 1950s and 60s.
41:18And all the way to the 70s, there's little doubt than radio salon was actually the most
41:23popular radio station.
41:24And same thing with A.I.
41:25or the service.
41:27At the same time, it's not a story of sort of straightforward resistance.
41:32It's also not a story that idealizes what radio does or what it could do.
41:36I think I want to be very clear of the problematic parts of each one of them.
41:40Sort of the ways in which Hindi film songs were commercial and continue to be a commercial
41:47form of music that in many ways obscures and obscures other forms of musical expression.
41:56Same thing.
41:57And the Urdu service's focus on nostalgia is problematic as well.
42:00And a nostalgia for a past is problematic.
42:02And I don't have to say why access radio broadcasts are problematic.
42:06I mean, we all know that.
42:07At the same time, though, this is sort of the reality of what was heard on the radio
42:11and what was shared on the radio.
42:13And in telling radio stories, I think it was our duty to pay attention to what listeners
42:17were listening to.
42:19Especially, I mean, you know, we've seen a lot of literature in the past one or two
42:22decades on partition memories.
42:25And it seems like radio is a really fruitful source for getting those memories of people
42:30to be more publicly accessible.
42:32You talk about how a listener from Pakistan might write to A.I.R.
42:37and ask about what life was like in a town that he or she left, like Delhi or Bulandshahr
42:42or Lucknow.
42:43And similarly, a listener from India might ask about what life was like in Lahore.
42:47I think you mentioned about how one listener asked about the Basant Festival in Lahore
42:51and whether people still celebrated it.
42:53So it's quite poignant in that regard.
42:55Yeah, I mean, radio in the 1970s was doing public history in many ways.
43:00And the A.I.R.
43:00Urdu service certainly was doing what historians are sort of doing now.
43:04And it was doing it on a mass scale and a very popular scale.
43:07And it was doing it out of necessity because people needed to hear that.
43:10It was sort of a necessity thing to survive.
43:12People needed to have that.
43:14So yes, absolutely.
43:16So as we come to the end of this podcast, I want to bring things up to the current moment.
43:20So in current day South Asia, obviously A.I.R.
43:25and Radio Pakistan are not as well listened to anymore.
43:28Radio Salon, I believe, stopped its Hindustani programming some time ago.
43:33But of course, we do have a rather active podcast environment in South Asia.
43:40On really all sides of all borders in South Asia.
43:44Do you see any sort of parallels between the radio ecosystem in South Asia
43:49up until maybe around three decades ago and what we're seeing today with podcasts in South Asia?
43:54Yeah, well, I'm a historian.
43:55So I'm always a little worried to make sort of broad statements about the current moment.
44:00But I'll say a couple of things.
44:02Yes, I do think, first of all, I think this is a particularly exciting time
44:07to have published a book about radio broadcasting,
44:10because I began this research a decade ago when podcasting was just really starting off.
44:16And it's sort of there is a boom of podcasting.
44:20There's a boom of the importance of sound material in South Asia and throughout the world.
44:25And I think that we are returning to a moment in which we really pay attention to
44:30oral media and oral experiences, and they become part of our everyday lives.
44:34I think it's different.
44:36I don't think it's the same.
44:37And I think it's different than the way that radio broadcasting did.
44:40And it's too early to tell what it's too early for us to make
44:44conclusions about how they will resist or state power.
44:50I think it's too early to tell that.
44:51But I think that the story of radio broadcasting, if anything, shows us that
44:58if we want to understand a medium's influence,
45:03paying attention to South Asia is actually crucial to that.
45:07At the very end of your book, you recount a little bit of your own personal history.
45:12So for Radio for the Millions, you've written a transnational history.
45:15But as you recall in your book, you yourself grew up along a very different border,
45:21the border between the US and Mexico.
45:23And your childhood was spent crossing that border and also listening to
45:28what was going on on both sides of the border.
45:30How did that experience shape your approach towards this project,
45:33as well as your approach towards understanding transnational history,
45:37including the transnational history of sound?
45:40Yeah, this is an interesting topic because it took me almost 10 decades to
45:4410 decades, sorry, it took me almost 10 years,
45:46one decade to sort of see that.
45:50So as you mentioned, I grew up on the US-Mexico border
45:53and the cities of Nuevo Laredo and Moreto.
45:55And I grew up really crossing the border for a period of my life
45:59every day, for a short period of my life every day.
46:03And my research obviously takes me to a very different part of the world,
46:08uses different languages.
46:09But when I began this project,
46:11I made it very clear that I wanted to study both India and Pakistan.
46:15Of course, a foreign passport allowed me to do that.
46:18But I was told over and over again that a dissertation should not do too much.
46:22So maybe I should select one of them.
46:24And for me, that story would be incomplete
46:26because the story could only be told if it was trans-border.
46:29And the reason why I think I was so committed to that
46:32is because that's the world I knew.
46:34And that's the world that I would center.
46:37Because to me, that's the world I lived.
46:39And I think that that's what allowed me to center
46:42the cross-border experiences of people,
46:45because that's the one that I lived as well.
46:47It took me a long time to realize that connection.
46:50And it was actually in the classroom
46:53that I began to see that that was at the center of it.
46:56The other thing I want to mention that I think is very important
47:00is just when I was completing this book,
47:05I was having trouble articulating the main argument.
47:08And particularly when studying the AR Urdu service program
47:12and the role of these letters that were performed on the radio,
47:16trying to explain why it matters.
47:19Well, the border is still there.
47:21Going across the border becomes impossible for most Pakistanis.
47:24And for the people that I featured in my radio,
47:26it would have been impossible to get visas at the time period.
47:30And radio didn't break down those barriers.
47:32So why does it matter?
47:34And I found the answer in some of the scholarship
47:38on sound studies and borders.
47:41It was reading Ines Casillas' book on Spanish language radio,
47:47Sounds of Belonging,
47:48and Alex Chavez's book on music across borders
47:51called Sounds of Crossings,
47:53that allowed me to see the value and the importance
47:56in these performances.
47:58That they might not break down borders,
48:00but there are crucial aspects of people's everyday lives.
48:03And it's our duty as historians and as scholars
48:05to study them in that way.
48:07And it was Alex Chavez's idea of sounds of crossings
48:11that enabled me to write that final chapter of the book
48:14and sort of bring it all together with the conclusion.
48:16So it's not just my background, I say,
48:19and growing up where I did and the ways in which I did.
48:22And the attention I paid to cross-border experiences
48:25throughout my research,
48:27but also the scholarship that I read out of interest
48:31that allowed me, I think, to sort of bring it all together
48:33and put it together.
48:34I'm sure the experience you're describing in your book
48:37or your personal experience as well growing up
48:39on the U.S.-Mexico border is in many ways similar
48:44to experiences that people have on other hostile borders.
48:47I'm sure, for example, if we were to talk to someone
48:50from pre-1989 Germany or anyone else living close
48:54by to the Iron Curtain between Western Europe
48:58and Eastern Europe, there'd be similar stories
49:00that you would hear of how radio allowed you
49:02to cross borders without actually stepping across them.
49:05I mean, I think absolutely.
49:06And I think that's where a lot of the research is going.
49:11Radio has had, while radio has been in many parts
49:15state control, it has never been able to stay
49:17within the borders of the state,
49:18simply because of the way the medium works.
49:21So there's a lot of that story to be told.
49:24But I also think that we can extend
49:25that a little further than that.
49:27I think that part of what the book wants to do
49:29is to de-center the role of the state.
49:32And in saying that, I'm not saying
49:34that the state is not powerful.
49:36I'm not saying that the state does not do things
49:39that shape our lives.
49:40What I'm saying is that there are ways
49:42in which people find to live, to continue,
49:45to resist on their everyday lives.
49:47And that is very important to pay attention
49:49to those particular stories.
49:51And I think anyone that grew up like me,
49:54who knows from a very deep way that the border
49:57is at the same time rigid and porous,
50:03will tell similar stories that will de-center the state,
50:06even as they know that their lives
50:08have been affected by the state.
50:10And I think that's sort of at the key of it.
50:12And that is about studying sound,
50:14but also just about how you study anything.
50:16So as you have more and more people like me
50:18that grew up in between places
50:20and in between everything,
50:21I think we will have more studies that do that.
50:23So I think the book that you present
50:25is a really important study
50:26for not just the history of radio,
50:28but in many ways, transnational history in South Asia.
50:32The last thing I want to ask you is,
50:33now that you have this book out,
50:36where is your research taking you?
50:38What future projects do you have in mind?
50:40That's a very nice question.
50:42Too many to begin with.
50:44I have a few going on.
50:45One is, I'm very interested in the role of narrative.
50:49And I think this is related to the podcast
50:51and how sound creates narratives.
50:55So as I mentioned,
50:56one of the projects that I want to pursue later
50:59is looking at a variety of radio narratives
51:02that were created in the 60s and 70s
51:05in Hindi, Urdu, and in English.
51:07And the ways in which sound has been crucial
51:11to the creation of narrative.
51:13One of the things that I'm currently writing
51:16is on the notion of fan fiction
51:18that was read on the radio,
51:21on the AR Urdu service and radio salon.
51:26And they're called Gito Barikaniya.
51:28So they're stories full of songs
51:30and they use songs from that.
51:31So that's the first narrative
51:32that I'm gonna be exploring in that project.
51:34But there's a few others that I have.
51:37I'm also interested in maybe later in a long time,
51:41further pursuing my love for Noor Jahan
51:43and maybe something biographical on her.
51:46It's extremely hard to do so because of sources,
51:49but I find her to be a really fascinating
51:52and important character.
51:54And it also allows me to pursue something
51:56that I wish I had more on the book,
51:58which I do, but I think there was room for a lot more.
52:01And I want to pursue more,
52:02which is gender and the role of gender.
52:04And what is it that women's voices did on the radio?
52:09And I want to do that more through her.
52:14And then lastly, as you know, Denir,
52:17I'm also very, very interested
52:19in the role of radio in Goa.
52:23I studied Portuguese earlier on in my life
52:25and I was able to interview a few broadcasters
52:28from Emisora de Goa.
52:30So it's something that I also hope to,
52:32at some time pursue.
52:34Those sound like a lot of projects to keep you busy.
52:36So I wish you luck with working on them.
52:40Thank you very much for joining us today.
52:41It's been a pleasure to talk to you.
52:43And for all of our listeners who are interested
52:47in learning more about the history of radio,
52:48this is a book that we can strongly recommend
52:51for understanding not just aspects of radio history,
52:53but important aspects of Indian history
52:56or Pakistani history or even Sri Lankan history as well.
52:59So thanks again for joining us today.
53:01Thank you very much for having me, Denir.
53:04You were listening to Past Imperfect,
53:08a special podcast series by SPGIMR.
53:11Brought to you by SPGIMR's
53:13Centre for Wisdom in Leadership.
53:16Produced by Vinita Vivedi.