Radio and the Raj: broadcasting in British India (1920-1940)

Abstract

India’s early radio development is considered in this paper as both a natural inheritor to those great modernising works of the 19th century (namely the railways, the postal
service and the electric telegraph), but also as a heavily contested – and much debated – tool of modern 20th century mass communication. In the absence of early listener accounts, the interweaving ‘radio stories’ of prominent broadcasters and administrators are brought to the fore both as a useful historical source on radio’s development, but also in an effort to understand the personal and institutional connections that persisted in the administration of the British Raj by the Government of India (New Delhi) and India Office (London). This paper also, though, exposes the power of individual
personalities in advancing and or resisting radio’s progress during the inter-war years (c.1922-1940). Of particular note was the involvement of Sir John Reith (Director General of the BBC), Lord Birkenhead (Secretary of State for India) and, from 1935, Lionel Fielden (the Government of India’s first Director of Broadcasting) in promoting domestic Indian broadcasting – although with strong direction and influence from the BBC.