Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting Across Borders by Isabel Huacuja Alonso (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by:

• Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting Across Borders by Isabel Huacuja Alonso
• Pradip Ninan Thomas (bio)

Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting Across Borders By Isabel Huacuja Alonso. New York: Columbia University Press, 2023. Pp. 312.

A comprehensive history of early radio in South Asia has yet to be written. In fact, ham radio, radio clubs, imperial radio, clandestine radio, and anti-colonial radio have contributed to the tapestry of radio broadcasting on the Indian subcontinent beginning from the early 1920s onward. Isabel Alonso's well-researched and textured cultural history of radio on the subcontinent contributes to our understanding of some aspects of this history. Alonso uses the term "radio resonance" to make a case for the resilience of radio listenership in an era characterized by resolute efforts to cleanse and purify the composite cultural traditions associated with what was once the lingua franca of North India, Hindustani, which was based on both the languages of Hindi and Urdu. In the context of contemporary attempts to purify Indian culture of its Islamic influence and bend broadcasting to the political project of Hindu nationalism, resonance as an act of resistance and enactment of citizenship offers a way to understand commonalities and solidarities across the divides of border, nation, and state. In this sense the soundscape, both personal and collective, remains an important counter to the attempts to contain and subdue the imaginary of citizens to majoritarian visions. There is another equally important contribution that Alonso makes—which is the case that the book makes for our need to understand historical continuities when dealing with the histories of technologies such as that of radio broadcasting.

Alonso's narrative is built around studies of broadcasting linked to three historical events—World War II, independence, and the 1965 war between India and Pakistan. The key story outlined in the volume is of the factors that led to the gradual decline of Hindustani as the language of broadcasting in North India and the emergence of Hindi- and Urdu-centric broadcasting in India and Pakistan after these two countries gained their independence in 1947. In India, successive ministers of information and broadcasting, including Sardar Vallabhai Patel and in particular B. V. Keskar, were expressly [End Page 733] involved in cleansing All India Radio (AIR) of its tawaifi (courtesan, lowbrow) Hindustani/Muslim influences, especially film music, and its replacement with "uncontaminated," "pure" Hindi/Hindu music traditions. Alonso recounts the well-known story of Radio Ceylon cashing in on Indian film music and the migration of radio listenership from AIR to Radio Ceylon in the context of experiments with radio nationalisms in India. A key takeaway from this volume is the enduring nature of radio resonance, the lasting nature of "Hindustani nostalgia," and the persistence of its "structures of feeling" across territorial borders in spite of the nationalisms on both sides, which have relentlessly been employed to enforce a separateness between people, traditions, and cultures. Alonso recounts the nostalgic longings featured in listeners' letters written to AIR's Urdu broadcasting unit, which was established at the tail end of the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965. These letters expressed the strength of commonalities and of a common humanity, of continuities in spaces, places, and lives on both sides of the border, notwithstanding the unspeakable sufferings and horrors of the Partition and the passing of time.

I found the chapter on the anti-colonial, pro-Axis Azad Radio, established by the enigmatic Subhas Chandra Bose, to be most perceptive, for it questions the narrative of the Congress that claimed to be the sole heir of the anti-colonial movement, through highlighting the broadcasting/propaganda wars during World War II. The Congress, too, used guerrilla radio such as its "Voice of Freedom" to counter British radio propaganda. But Bose was also an anti-colonialist, although he believed with many that India's future lay with those fighting against the British. Azad Radio was used for counterpropaganda purposes, such as spreading rumors about the failure of the Allied war effort. Radio rumors were preceded by rumors by traditional means as an anti-colonial strategy during British rule, much as today's social media rumors produce misinformation and...