Abstract
This chapter presents a historiography of radio governance in South Asia, starting with the early 1920s, when radio was introduced into the region. Presenting micro-histories, the chapter blends important occurrences with respect to radio in South Asia, with corresponding shifts in international geopolitics and the media policy ecology. It starts with a dialogue between colonial South Asia and broadcasting imperialism, presenting periodic phases in the broadcasting of radio in the region. The chapter then moves to country-wise postcolonial histories, presenting those of India, East Pakistan/Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The chapter ends with a note on similarities and differences in defining ‘ethnological moments’ in the life of a postcolony.
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Notes
- 1.
Jordheim (2012) fleshes out an analysis of the German historian’s concept of multiple temporalities in his paper, ‘Against Periodization: Koselleck’s Theory of Multiple Temporalities’.
- 2.
There exist contestations between historians on whether pre-colonial South Asia was pre-modern or was modern in a non-Western way. These debates notwithstanding, one can safely suggest that the modern technology of radio emerged as a site for newer negotiations with modernity in the region, since the 1920s.
- 3.
The use of this descriptor is not to draw on island ethnography that was rooted in the colonial enterprise. Sri Lanka, as the island, should be seen as the crossroads for influences carried to it by the oceans.
- 4.
Airing Imperium: A Historiography of Radio Governance in South Asia’, forthcoming in the Journal Global Media and Communication, Sage Publications.
- 5.
Pinkerton (2008) provides information on Gianchand Motwane, an early radio entrepreneur and enthusiast and founding member of the Bombay Presidency Radio Club, as having first recorded a radio transmission in the Indian subcontinent, in 1920. He points to www.chicago-radio.net, which reads, ‘Mr. Motwane rigged up his own radio-transmitter and started broadcasting under the sign of “2-KC” through the Bombay Presidency Radio Club Ltd., of which he was one of the founder-members. He thus became the first person to embark on broadcasting in India’.
- 6.
The blog tracks broadcast and amateur radio. The blogpost, ‘The Story of Radio Broadcasting in Ceylon’ was accessed on September 21, 2016.
- 7.
Zivin draws this moniker from Philip Mason’s ‘The Men Who Ruled India: The Guardians’, published in 1954.
- 8.
Orientalist societies and publications like The Asiatic Review started gaining importance since the establishment of the Indian National Congress, in 1885.
- 9.
This was initiated from the start of the Second World War.
- 10.
Kaul (2014) cites an undated official memo, L/I/1/445.
- 11.
The coinage, Thussu (2000) writes, was itself a product of the Cold War and was put forth by French economic historical Alfred Sauvy, in 1952, even as the world saw division between the East and the West Blocs.
- 12.
The Colombo Plan, akin to the Marshall Plan that enabled the reconstruction of war-ravaged Europe, was a multilateral aid effort in Asia, comprising donor countries like the United Kingdom, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It also brought on board leaders of some Asian countries that were part of the Commonwealth of Nations.
- 13.
Quoted in http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080928/FunDay/fundaytimes_2.html; accessed on January 28, 2017.
- 14.
http://archive.thedailystar.net/forum/2007/may/ensuring.htm; accessed on February 7, 2017.
- 15.
The Sugauli Teaty was signed between the King of Nepal and the East India Company over 1815–1816, following the Anglo-Nepalese War. It dealt with the transfer of territories from Nepal to the East India Company and laid the boundary-line between Nepal and India. It has hence been superseded on various occasions.
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Raghunath, P. (2020). The Postcolony and Its Radio. In: Community Radio Policies in South Asia. Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5629-6_3
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