As
would be expected after such a massive earthquake that occurred recently, the
Himalayan country of Nepal is still in recovery mode in a slowly progressive
move towards normalcy. Crumbled
buildings are still yielding the dead, and during the past week a few living
though injured survivors have been rescued.
Massive aid has been brought in to
Nepal, and the need for just as much further aid is still required. It is indeed additionally requisite that a
monumental endeavor on the part of the Nepali government as well as its
citizens will need to be implemented in order to piece together again the
regular routine of family and business life throughout their nation.
The mountainous country of Nepal
lies as a buffer state between its hugely larger neighbors, China and India.
The country itself is 500 miles long and 150 miles wide. The northern areas are composed of rugged and
high mountain ranges, and the southern areas are made up of farmlands and
villages, though in many locales it is still quite hilly. The total population is in the range of 27
million, and their capital city is Kathmandu with around ¾ million
inhabitants.
From the very earliest times, people
have lived in the Nepali areas of the Himalaya Mountains. It is thought that the earliest known society
in Nepal were the Kusunda people, who lived in what is now western Nepal.
According to a feature article
broadcast by the BBC London three years ago, there was only one person left who
still speaks the Kusunda language.
Subsequently however, a few other people who are fluent in the language
have been discovered, and the known total now stands at seven or eight. There are several different theories
regarding the Kusunda language, including that the Kusunda people and their
language are related to the Andaman Islands, and to Irian Jaya, western New
Guinea.
A national census in 2011 listed 123
spoken languages in Nepal, though the regional language of Kathmandu, Nepali,
has become the official national language.
The Nepali language is closely related to Hindi and Bengali, and it is
written with the Devanagari script, as in Hindi.
Around 500 BC, small kingdoms and
clan confederations began to grow in the southern more hospitable areas of
Nepal. A prince in one of these small
kingdoms renounced his royal privileges; he led an ascetic life, and developed
a new religion. The young prince is
better known in our era as Gautama Buddha.
However, Buddhism is not the
dominant religion in Nepal these days.
Around 10% are Buddhist, and around 80% are Hindu. Both Islam and Christianity are minority
religions in Nepal.
Towards the end of the 1700s, the
various communities in Nepal began to come together as one nation, though this
was accomplished in several bloody battles.
British influence came to Nepal with the growing encroachments of the
British East India Company in Calcutta, and this included another war.
The Royal family in the Kingdom of
Nepal provided top government leaders, including Prime Ministers, for more than
two centuries, though these days, Nepal is considered to be a Federal
Parliamentary Republic.
It was back in the year 1929 that
the first radio receivers were imported into the country of Nepal. The royal family imported from England half a
dozen already assembled receivers that were made available to family members
and top government officials. It is
stated that Mr. Dev Mani Dixit in Kathmandu imported the seventh radio
receiver independently from England and when he received it, he staged a
celebration party to honor the occasion.
It is probable that the imported
English radio receivers back then were housed in ornate wooden cabinets and
that they were capable of receiving radio stations that were broadcasting on
the mediumwave and longwave bands.
However, at that stage, there were no radio transmitters in Nepal, and
the only radio broadcasting stations on the air anywhere nearby
were located in India. At that time, the
broadcasting stations in India were transitioning from the experimental era to
the early era under what later became AIR, All India Radio.
During the earlier part of World War
2 in Asia, the government of Nepal confiscated all radio receivers throughout
Nepal and they were taken into storage at Singha Durbar in suburban
Kathmandu. At the time, it is estimated
that there were just 500 receivers in Kathmandu itself. However in 1946, many months after the war
was concluded, the receivers were returned to their owners.
Available information would indicate
that the first radio transmitter in Nepal was a low powered unit that was
installed for official communication purposes in 1939. This transmitter, rated at just a ¼ kW
we would suggest, was heard in the United States in December on a communication
channel 14780 kHz with the identification announcement “Radio
Kathmandu”. For a couple of months, this station was
heard occasionally in the United States at 4:00 am and 9:30 pm, eastern.
During the era before the official
government radio broadcasting station, Radio Nepal, was established in 1951,
there were at least four separate occasions when radio broadcasting was
attempted. However, none of these
attempts resulted in establishing a permanent station.
In April 1945, the American radio
journal Radio News carried a news item stating that a shortwave station that
identified as “The
Voice of the Himalayas” was on the air from 3:00 am to 9:00 am American eastern time. The operating frequency was 11790 kHz in the
standard 25 metre band.
Nothing else is known about this
purported ‘Voice
of the Himalayas”.
Was it an unsuccessful attempt at program broadcasting via the ¼ kW
communication transmitter? I guess we
will never know!
However, during the following year
(1946) there was another beginning for radio broadcasting in Kathmandu. Prime Minister Padma Shamsher
Rana, a member of the royal family, had a radio transmitter assembled from
radio receivers that were brought back into the country by soldiers returning
home after the end of World War 2.
This radio station was placed on the
air so that the Prime Minister could address the nation on important issues. It was on the air for only a few months at
the most.
Two years later in January 1948, the
same prime minister assembled a hybrid carrier current style system at Bijuli
Adda in suburban Kathmandu. The
equipment was transferred from Bojhpur in eastern Nepal where it had been in
use locally under a company style title, Mohan Aakashbani.
This hybrid telecommunication system
consisted of a low power transmitter with programming that was distributed over
the telephone system, as in cable radio.
However, the signal from the transmitter could also be picked up direct
on a radio receiver.
This prime minister resigned
on April 30 (1948), and the radio station was closed soon afterwards. However, the radio station was reopened in
August under the new prime minister,
Mohan Shamsher who was another member
of the Rana royal family. He also
imported two new radio transmitters, though it does not seem that they were
ever installed and taken into usage.
Then in early 1951, a group of
political leaders installed a radio broadcasting station at Biratnagar, in
eastern Nepal near the border with India.
This station was on the air for just a few weeks at the most, under the
political title, Prajatantra Nepal Radio.
However shortly afterwards, all of
the available radio equipments were assembled in Kathmandu and installed into a
two storey building that had been previously in use as a privately operated
school. With the usage of the previous ¼ kW
shortwave communication transmitter, Nepal Radio made its inaugural broadcast
on 7100 kHz in the 40 metre amateur band, on April 3, 1951.
And that’s
where we plan to pick up the story again, here in Wavescan next week.
(AWR-Wavescan/NWS 324)
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