India's Ear

Sprawling, spawning, polyglot India is a tough territory for radio. Its 352,837,778 inhabitants, 89% of them rural, speak some 225 languages and assorted dialects of each. No receiving sets are manufactured in India, and a 50% duty makes their import prohibitive. Finally, electric power is scarce and only battery sets can be generally used.

In spite of these handicaps, in 1926 two private companies set up transmitters, began broadcasting from Bombay and Calcutta. They might as well have broadcast into a dead mike. The two companies had a known audience of only 3,000 licensed radiowners. The Government of India stepped in, in 1930 bought the two stations, established All-India Radio (AIR). Two years later BBC began broadcasting its Empire programs to India and in 1935 sent smart Lionel Fielden out to make India more radio-minded.

Hampered by official red tape, Fielden hired to help him tall, twinkle-eyed Zulfiqar Ali Bokhari, who, as a translator for the Army, had become an adept red-tape dodger. By introducing a series of talks on "Widow Remarriage," "Untouchability," etc. he shocked the orthodox public into listening to his Bombay station. Objections were many and various. His assistant was kidnapped, mortified by being left in a bathing suit on top of a hill.

With an engineer and a sound truck Bokhari had toured the countryside to let isolated farm communities hear the voices from the ether. Ryots (farmers) looked upon the sound truck with suspicion: they thought it probably meant more taxes. In one mud village skeptical natives listened in ominous silence to the "voice from Delhi"; when the engineer, hitherto unseen, was spotted inside the van after the broadcast, they clamored indignantly that they had been duped. Bokhari, trying to pacify them, promised to bring the voice back while the engineer remained outside, in plain view. Bokhari threw the switch, fiddled with the dials-no sound. Delhi had gone off the air. The villagers reached for stones and Bokhari and the sound truck fled.

Gradually some headway was made. Communal radios were installed by the Government in many towns. When it became apparent that the natives never knew exactly what time it was, automatic timers were attached. The receivers were locked away in closed rooms safe from curious hands. The number of licensed sets climbed slowly to 100,000 (untaxed, pirate sets kept pace with them); the number of broadcasting stations increased to nine. Then came war.

When Berlin's Dr. Faruqui beamed his short-wave newscasts directly into India, BBC really got busy. The doctor's rude comments on the British went down entirely too well with the natives. BBC sent a hurried S O S for Zulfiqar Ali Bokhari.

To London rushed Bokhari to organize publicity, reorganize BBC programs for his countrymen. A friend of Gandhi, Bose, Nehru and other top notchers in the Indian National Congress, Bokhari hopes to make "freedom of India" the focal point of all his broadcasts. Aiding him, is his old boss Lionel Fielden.

Month ago, shows for the Indian troops got under way. Last week Bokhari began broadcasting a daily ten-minute Hindustani news commentary. When his aides reach London June 1, propaganda for the Indian will be brought to its full wartime strength with additional programs in Gujerati, Marathi, Bengali, Pushtu, Sindhi, Tamil, Teligu, Malayalam.

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