Almost a century ago, India’s first broadcast went out from Bombay. What did the airwaves transmit in the early years?
Kalbadevi friends, optometrist Hemant Samani. Pics/Suresh Karkera
Do I speak into this thing?” Gandhiji enquired, staring at the microphone. There he was, in 1931 England, attempting a radio broadcast for America. Faced with the newish contraption, he floundered, wondering how it received and relayed his speech to crowds.
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Techno-sceptic then, the Father of the Nation soon realised broadcast was a sharp weapon to spread the battle cry. Unlike the press, the illiterate masses accessed radio widely. Consummate communicator that he was, Gandhi grew aware it was essential for him to become increasingly media savvy.
Florist Kantibhai Sukhadia discuss daily favourite programmes heard on their Murphy radio and transistor
Things kickstarted before his gauche tryst with the mike. In June 1923, the Radio Club of Bombay made an inaugural broadcast. The Indian Broadcasting Company was created on July 23, 1927. All India Radio (AIR) launched six years later in 1936, with Czech emigre pianist and founder of the Bombay Chamber Music Society, Walter Kaufmann, immortalising its signature strain based on raga Shivaranjini.
Smack amid World War II, the Raj desperately sought to squash opposition swelling with the Quit India movement of August 1942. Print media was gagged, other communication channels were censored, radio spouted no more than innocuously general bulletins. But mottos like “Karenge ya marenge (Do or die)” spurred a simple college girl to embark on a clandestine mission. A secret radio station was rigged by Usha Mehta and her supporters. It conveyed anti-imperialist messages via a portable set assembled by mechanical engineers sympathetic to the cause.
Ameen Sayani at his recording studio with Zahida Bhushan, Madhubala’s sister. Pic courtesy/Rajil Sayani
Congress Radio—also dubbed Ghost Radio or Freedom Radio—crackled forth on August 27, 1942, from a Chowpatty top-floor residence. From atrocities perpetrated in Ashti and Chimur in Maharashtra to the Chittagong raid, events were fearlessly featured. Ushaben announced mainly in Hindi. Ram Manohar Lohia, Achyutrao Patwardhan and Coomi Dastur read English versions.
“This is the Congress Radio calling on 42.34 metres from somewhere in India” the underground missives echoed provocatively. Courting arrest, the conspirators dodged police patrol vans searching for their elusive signal for three months. They turned to Chicago Radio, pioneered by Gianchand Motwane from Larkana in Sindh and his son Nanik. The firm, specialising in radio and loudspeaker equipment, was built on the bravery of those stalwarts who withstood whiplashes on ice in jail at the hands of the threatened English.
Sports commentary legend AFS Talyarkhan transmitting his trenchant take on a match in his heyday
By 1947, significantly, six stations functioned from Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Madras, Lucknow and Tiruchirappalli. Named Akashvani (voice from the sky) since 1956, AIR is among the largest global broadcasters, with 99 per cent population covered by 420 radio stations in 23 languages and 179 dialects.
The British left Ceylon powerful short-wave transmitters belonging to Mountbatten’s South East Asia Command. Colombo picked them for commercial radio in Sinhalese, English, Tamil and Hindi. Ameen Sayani’s show, Binaca Geetmala, on Radio Ceylon, offered the most mellifluous salutation. “Beheno aur bhaiyyo…” he warmly intoned for the programme proving the perfect model for a Bollywood hits countdown. Orange radio flickers seemed to blaze brighter at 8 pm midweek with his cheery, pitch-perfect adaab: “Main aapka dost Ameen Sayani bol raha hoon aur aap sun rahe hain Binaca Geetmala.”
Bombay Presidency Radio Club at Colaba, from where the country’s first broadcast went out in June 1923. Pic/Bipin Kokate
I & B Minister BV Keskar’s dour 1952 ban on film songs caused AIR to slide. At that point, Daniel Molina, an American in Bombay, opportunely established Radio Advertising Services. Sayani’s elder brother Hamid ran its production wing. As Keskar’s clout waned, AIR welcomed popular formats with the Vividh Bharati network from October 3, 1957.
“Minsters and bureaucrats have a frighteningly myopic vision. What gave anyone the right to believe that shastriya sangeet only was what the people needed?” poses Jawhar Sircar, former CEO of Prasar Bharati, alluding to Keskar’s sweeping edict.
Gerson da Cunha (extreme right) at St Xavier’s College, with the Fr Llorens Trophy for his role in Saint Joan—a performance he rushed from to give an AIR talk. Pic Courtesy/Gerson Da Cunha
According to him, Bollywood has always represented Indian popular culture better than others. “Bombay’s film industry beat Calcutta as it had none of the snootiness of Bong intellectualism, which prides itself on being avant-garde, like the French. Bombay symbolised a more embracive, inclusive attitude. The no-nonsense but fun-loving city had no hang-ups and was not choosy or insular. It never imposed any ‘cut-off’ level of intellect on the rest of the population. What the culture vultures forget or deny is that Hindi films and their songs were a supra language that united Indians who spoke different languages. The lyrics, whether Shailendra’s or Gulzar’s, articulated a common and collective mood. Bombay ruled the waves and chose not to be shut in the isolation of auditoriums.”
Championing wider autonomy for media practitioners, Sircar observed, in On Stage magazine, ahead of the Jamshed Bhabha Memorial Lecture that he presented at the NCPA in August 2019: “India will forever be the land of heroes and songs. Keskar had decided that the information and entertainment lifeline of the nation would not air Bollywood songs as he thought them vulgar and westernised, and hoped instead that his country would begin to appreciate highbrow classical music. This is when Binaca Geetmala came up as a metaphor of revolt. Even Western classical music was edged out. I know of unverified correspondence between Nehru and Keskar wherein the latter refused to play Western classical music calling it colonial, and Nehru retorted, ‘Do you doubt my patriotism?’”
Brilliantly conjuring visual images sports buffs related to, AFS (Bobby) Talyarkhan’s polished style and crisp delivery raised games reportage to a class act. “Writing took me to broadcasting,” said the doyen of sports commentary, who contributed The Column for this paper in the 1980s and had initiated the country’s first sports page at Free Press Journal. His unique sign-off for the Take It From Me series has enduring recall—“Do you get me Steve?”
When I interviewed the legend on Sunday afternoons at the CCI, just before his death in July 1990, he stressed: “Not cricket alone please. Football fans in the east, hockey lovers elsewhere, should remember me.” AFST’s field debut anchored a 1934 Quadrangular match in Esplanade Maidan. Averse to mike sharing, he often talked for six hours nonstop. “Bobby’s bladder is as strong as his blubber,” quipped editor Frank Moraes.
An introduction to eugenics campaigner Marie Stopes by AIR boss KB Sethna in the Taj lift proved embarrassing. “What do you broadcast about?” she asked AFST. “Balls,” he answered. Hurriedly adding “and bats”. Dr Stopes severely handed him her book on birth control. “If the dear lady visited the hotel chemist, the hot-gospeller of family planning would see more material aids of an intimate nature than found on the Rue Blanche in the days which were all nights,” he observed.
While journalism led AFST to broadcasting, the twin highs of theatre and radio gripped Gerson da Cunha a generation after. Juggling them was equal pleasure and pressure for the St Xavier’s boy in the late 1940s. Barely did the curtain close on him playing Squire Baudricourt in a Dramatic Club presentation of Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, he rushed for a radio reading and was unmissed till his name was called for winning the Fr Llorens Trophy for acting.
“The medium had an important presence in my childhood. Devoted to the radiogram, my father jotted lists of favourites. He kept waking hours to catch the BBC’s Daventry programmes. There were music shows too, accompanied by the German anthem and sometimes the dreadful Nazi one,” says da Cunha, humming faint bars of the former over chai and cheese toast.
Da Cunha credits AIR station director Victor Paranjoti for enthusing him about radio and Adi Marzban as a great inspiration through years of helming English programming with Derek Jeffereis—“Radio appealed to the little show-off residing in us. I was deeply involved with the station. Theatre directors watching me try to fit the two interests together knew I wouldn’t attend some rehearsals.”
Filing AIR stories, he had some outstanding encounters in the 1950s. When Nehru landed at Santa Cruz airport from a UN Security Council meeting, the rookie reporter was ready with weighty questions, including the statesman’s view on the Suez Crisis. “A tired figure appeared at the plane door. At the base of the gangway, I managed asking: ‘A good flight Prime Minster?’ And could feel his fatigue as he put his hand on mine, saying, ‘Yes, it was wonderful.’”
“Working on a transmission of Yehudi Menuhin’s concert with the Bombay Symphony Orchestra on the Excelsior Cinema stage, I marvelled at the sounds his Strad produced. Foolishly requesting the most famous violinist on earth for an autograph, I was touched he wrote: ‘To Gerson da Cunha, in memory of our joint evening.’”
Despite television beaming from 1972 and FM broadcasting from 1977, radio remains the common man’s constant companion. In Kalbadevi, optometrist Hemant Samani and florist Kantibhai Sukhadia sit at neighbouring shops opposite Chandan Wadi. Tuning in daylong between customers, the friends faithfully exchange views on favourite shows. “Ameh radio paachhal paagal chhaiyye—We’re mad about radio,” says Samani. “My parents wouldn’t miss KL Saigal songs, and I was an AFST and Vijay Merchant fan. During the 1965 Indo-Pak war, my father switched on BBC. Following news of Lahore and Rawalpindi, he insisted, ‘No hearing one-sided accounts.’”
Today, more than ever, a toxically polarised populace could use such objectivity.
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay.You can reach her at meher.marfatia@mid-day.com/www.meher marfatia.com
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