Thank you to the staff of Wavescn for Part 1 of Indian Broadcasting
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| Photo via India Today |
Part 1 – 1920-1936
Jeff: Last month, on June 8, Akashvani in India celebrated 90 years since the official renaming of the Indian Broadcasting Company as ‘All India Radio’. On Thursday this week, July 23, it will be 99 years since the IBC, the predecessor of AIR , was first inaugurated in Bombay. So today, Ray Robinson takes a look back at the circumstances surrounding that historic event.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. And I must start by acknowledging that much of the material for today’s feature comes from an excellent article written by Sandipan Basu Mallick, VU3JXD, which was published in last month’s journal of the Indian DX Club International, the ‘Asian DX Review’.
The story of broadcasting in India began with a handful of curious men, homemade transmitters, experimental aerials and an almost magical belief that voices could travel through the sky. Imagine Bombay in 1920. The city was alive with the energy of a rapidly changing world. Electricity was becoming more common. Motorcars were appearing on the streets. Wireless communication had begun transforming shipping and military operations across the globe.
Among those fascinated by this new technology was a young entrepreneur named Gianchand Motwane. Motwane was not merely a businessman. He was an experimenter, one of those restless minds who saw possibilities where others saw impossibilities. In 1920, he conducted what is widely regarded as the first radio transmission in India. It was modest by modern standards — a low-powered experimental broadcast — but it demonstrated something extraordinary: voices and sounds could travel without wires. The future had arrived. The transmission lasted only a short time, but it marked the beginning of Indian broadcasting history.
Over the next few years, wireless enthusiasts began gathering in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. They were part scientists, part hobbyists and part adventurers. They assembled receivers from imported parts, strung aerial wires across rooftops and spent evenings listening to distant signals fading in and out of the static.
In August 1921, a collaborative experiment between The Times of India and the Posts and Telegraph Department transmitted a program from Bombay. Remarkably, the signal was heard more than a hundred miles away in Poona. For those who experienced it, the achievement seemed almost miraculous. The possibilities of radio had become impossible to ignore.
The early 1920’s were the years of the radio clubs. The Radio Club of Bombay began regular broadcasts in 1923. In Calcutta, the Radio Club of Bengal followed with its own transmissions. In Madras, enthusiasts established the Madras Presidency Radio Club, which soon became one of the most active centers of broadcasting experimentation in India.
These pioneers worked with limited resources and often improvised equipment. Yet they possessed something more valuable than money: enthusiasm.
In Calcutta, demonstration broadcasts conducted with Marconi equipment amazed listeners. Music concerts and speeches travelled through the air to audiences miles away. Newspapers reported these experiments with excitement. Radio was still a novelty, but it was rapidly becoming a sensation.
In Madras, broadcasting owed much to the efforts of dedicated individuals such as C. V. Krishnaswamy Chettiar, who assembled transmitters from imported components and helped create a functioning radio service. Programs included music, talks and educational content. Loudspeakers were installed in public places so that even people without receivers could listen.
For many Indians, this was their first encounter with broadcasting. Listening itself became a social event. Families gathered around receivers. Friends invited neighbors to hear distant voices. Public demonstrations attracted curious crowds. Radio was not yet a household appliance. It was an event. Few realized that these modest clubs were laying the foundations for one of the world's largest broadcasting networks.
The defining moment arrived on 23 July 1927. The Indian Broadcasting Company had been established to create a professional broadcasting service for India. Its first station was ready in Bombay.
Newspapers across the region reported the event. One report published in The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser described the inauguration of the "Bombay Beam Radio Station" and highlighted the significance of this technological achievement. Lord and Lady Irwin, the Viceroy and Vicereine of India, travelled to Bombay to formally inaugurate the station. The ceremony attracted dignitaries, businessmen and wireless enthusiasts. There was a sense that something historic was unfolding.
Speaking at the event, Lord Irwin reflected on the power of broadcasting to connect people separated by distance. He noted that radio could provide companionship and information to those living in remote locations. Looking back nearly a century later, his words seem remarkably prophetic. The Bombay station began regular broadcasting on that day. Just over a month later, Calcutta received its own station. For the first time, organized broadcasting had truly arrived in India.
Yet success was far from guaranteed. Running a broadcasting service in India during the 1920’s was expensive. Receivers were costly. The audience was still relatively small. Revenue struggled to keep pace with expenditure. The Indian Broadcasting Company faced mounting financial difficulties.
In March 1930, barely three years after its triumphant launch, the company collapsed and entered liquidation. The future of broadcasting in India suddenly appeared uncertain. Had the story ended there, radio in India might have developed very differently. Fortunately, public support for broadcasting had already grown strong enough to prevent its disappearance. Political leaders, listeners and public figures recognized its potential importance. So, the Government stepped in.
On 1 April 1930, broadcasting resumed under government management as the Indian State Broadcasting Service. The patient had been saved.
Every great institution eventually encounters an individual who shapes its destiny. For Indian broadcasting, that person was Lionel Fielden. A senior BBC producer, Fielden arrived in India in 1935 as the first Controller of Broadcasting. He inherited a service that was financially fragile, organizationally uncertain and geographically limited. Yet he also recognized its immense potential. Fielden believed radio should not be merely an urban entertainment service catering to elites. It had to speak to India in all of its diversity. It had to reach villages as well as cities. It had to represent Indian culture rather than simply imitate British broadcasting.
Under his leadership, expansion accelerated. New stations were planned. News services were improved. Programming became more diversified. And most importantly, the service acquired a new identity.
On June 8, 1936, the Indian State Broadcasting Service was officially renamed All India Radio. The name captured an ambitious vision: a broadcasting service for the entire nation. Few could have imagined how profoundly that vision would shape India's future.
And we’ll pick up the story again next week, with the looming War years, Independence in 1947, and beyond.
(Ray Robinson/Wavescan)