This week's edition of Wavescan on October 11 continues from Adrian Peterson's trek into Azad Kashmir to this week's Part 2, featuring the book Freedom at Midnight.
Part 1 - Azad (Free Kashmir Radio is available at:
Jeff: Having brought you the story of Dr. Adrian Peterson’s visit to Azad Radio Kashmir (or, Free Radio Kashmir) last week, we thought it would be interesting also to review the radio story of the rest of Pakistan, which gained its independence in 1947. Much of the story is told in a book titled ‘Freedom at Midnight’, which was published in 2005. Here with some extracts from that book and other sources is Ray Robinson in Los Angeles.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. The book was researched and written by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, and it recounts the story of the partition of India into the two heavily populated countries, India and Pakistan. With meticulously detailed and factual information, the authors present the story of the partition of India at midnight between Thursday, August 14 and Friday, August 15, 1947. As an aside, I might mention that that was a very fateful date, as it was exactly two years after the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II on August 15, 1945, and also exactly 20 years before the British Marine Offences Act went into effect on August 15th 1967, forcing the closure of most British offshore radio stations.
Well, in 1947, that critical occasion ended the rule of the British Raj in India, and it provided independence for two nations: the ancient and historic India now in its new form as the Union of India, and the equally ancient though very new Dominion of Pakistan with its two territories, West & East Pakistan.
Back in 1947, in West Pakistan as it was, or just Pakistan as it is now, only two official radio broadcasting stations were on the air: VUL Lahore with 5 kW on 1086 kHz and VUP in Peshawar with 10 kW on 1500 kHz. However, three clandestine stations were also on the air; in Karachi, Peshawar, and in the Kashmir border area between the two countries. This is the radio story for today here in Wavescan, and we take these stations in chronological order.
Back about 18 months before the epic events of Freedom at Midnight, there was a man from Pilibhit up near the border with Nepal, by the name of Tahir Husain. He owned a radio shop in Delhi, and he agreed to assemble a radio transmitter and a power supply, which together were smuggled in three large fruit baskets into a house in Peshawar occupied by Sardar Abdur Rab.
On April 24, 1946, this new clandestine radio broadcasting station was activated on 70 meters, 4285 kHz, in another home in Peshawar. The programming broadcast over this low-power radio station was intended to influence the vote in a coming local political election. The station was moved several times within Peshawar in order to avoid detection, and its short life span ended when the elections were over.
More than a year later, another unusual radio station was inaugurated in Karachi in anticipation of the official recognition of the new Pakistan. This semi-official, semi-clandestine station was set up in Karachi with the approval of personnel serving in the government of the Sind Province.
The transmitter for this radio station was assembled from equipment procured from junk shops in Karachi and it was installed in the Ack Ack army barracks at Malir on the eastern outskirts of Karachi. The first test broadcast from the station took place on August 5, 1947, just a week and a half before the critical Partition Day.
Five days later, the station launched into a schedule of regular broadcasting. Then, on August 14 and 15, the station presented a series of broadcasts in honor of Independence Day with live programming made up of official speeches, commentaries and music.
But ten days later, the station was closed again. The station, which had been established without a license in Karachi during the last few days of authority under the Indian government, was now declared illegal under the new government of Pakistan. And so, it was no more.
On Thursday, August 14, the All India Radio station VUL in Lahore with 5 kW on 1086 kHz was on the air with its regular slew of normal programming. At 11:00 pm on that fateful night, announcer Zahur Azar made his final station announcement under All India Radio.
Then exactly at midnight, he played the new identification signal for the new Pakistan Broadcasting Service. This same announcer, Zahur Azar, then gave the opening identification announcement for the Pakistan Broadcasting Service, Lahore, a station with no official call letters at the time. The opening announcement in English was followed by a similar announcement in Urdu, now the official language of Pakistan, by Mustafa Ali Hamadani.
A similar transition took place at the AIR relay station VUP in Peshawar, with its 10 kW on 1500 kHz. Soon after 11:00 pm on August 14, Yunus Sethi made the final announcement on behalf of All India Radio. Then at midnight, an opening announcement was made on behalf of the Pakistan Broadcasting Service in Urdu by Aftab Ahmad Bismil, followed by a similar announcement in Pashto by Abdullah Jan Maghmoom.
But, very soon after Partition, Pakistan and India began an armed conflict over possession of the Princely State of Kashmir, and as part of the Pakistani war of words, a mobile shortwave station was quickly assembled and inaugurated. An old 500 W communication transmitter from World War II was procured from a junk dealer, repaired, and installed with other equipment on an army truck. A second truck carried a power generator.
This mobile shortwave broadcasting station, installed in two trucks that had previously been Indian Army vehicles, made its first test broadcasts on a tropical band shortwave channel on April 10, 1948. A schedule of regular programming began almost a week later, on April 16.
This was the original station at Trar Khel we told you about last week - Azad Kashmir Radio, or AKR (Azad meaning Free). It was moved around at times in Kashmir to avoid detection, and was eventually lodged behind a grove of pine trees at Trar Khel, a small village some 25 miles inside Kashmir. This small village had, for a temporary period, become the capital for the Pakistani side of Kashmir. Here the radio equipment was taken off the trucks and moved into a room at the isolated rural location.
The 500 W tropical band shortwave transmitter of AKR was surprisingly well-heard, with a clear signal in Peshawar, Lahore and Srinagar, and reception reports were received from as far afield as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kenya. In July 1948, Indian forces bombarded AKR Trar Khel, but without inflicting any real damage.
At the beginning of 1949, Pakistan was allocated radio callsigns in the range APA - ASZ. And so using the AP series first, the existing station VUL in Lahore became APL, and VUP Peshawar became APP. New stations were established in Karachi and Rawalpindi, with the callsigns APK and APR respectively.
In Pakistan today, private stations are licensed on FM only, but the government-operated Radio Pakistan does still use some 20 or more transmitters on medium wave, although call signs are no longer used. The most powerful is a 500 kW unit on 585 kHz in Lawrencepur, now known as Faqeerabad, about 20 miles northwest of the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
And as for the station in Trar Khel, also during 1949, a set of more professional equipment was obtained, and the location of the station was moved to Rawalpindi. It was licensed by the Pakistani government as Rawalpindi 3, but publicly it has continued to identify simply as Azad Kashmir Radio, AKR, to this day.
Back to you, Jeff.
(Ray Robinson/Wavescan)
