A do-or-die situation

Usha Mehta before a bust of Mahatma Gandhi

It was like a game of hide and seek, except that it wasn't a game at all. The short-lived Congress Radio was established in 1942 to create awareness about India's Independence movement instead. Its story is filled with mystery, intrigue and the eventual arrest of the team behind it. What happened is that a bunch of youngsters in their 20s, enthused by Mahatma Gandhi's ‘karenge yaa marenge' speech in 1942, decided to take matters into their own hands. They set up a ham radio station named after the Congress, to counter the colonial agenda being disseminated by All India Radio, which was run by the British back then.

Dr Usha Thakkar

Dr Usha Thakkar, president of Mani Bhavan, the Gandhi Museum on Laburnum Road, will now shed light on its brief history at a talk organised by the Asiatic Society of Mumbai this evening. She tells us about the fascinating network of nameless informers who would supply fodder for the radio station's bulletins, the first of which was read out by Usha Mehta, then a 22-year-old student. "These informers could have been from any part of India, and my idea is that they would pass on information to political leaders who were underground, via scraps of paper, letters or word of mouth in order to escape the British surveillance systems. Those leaders would then relay that information to the station's team, who would write the bulletins by hand on paper before reading them out," Thakkar says.

These clandestine operations carried on for three months, with the team frequently shifting locations across Mumbai in order to hide their tracks. They eventually did get caught, though, bringing the gallant endeavour to an end. But their efforts remain imprinted in history as a direct fallout of Gandhi's call for action, truly embodying his ‘karenge yaa marenge' ethos, which means ‘do or die'.

On: Today, 6.30 pm
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