Material Lives of Cold War Radio Pasts in India

Abstract

This article explores radio’s material legacies by exclusively focussing on the trajectories of radio-objects, which travelled between foreign broadcasting stations and their Indian listeners during the Cold War years. The presence of such objects in listeners’ homesteads/private collections even today and their affective relationship(s) to them can enable us to examine how radio materially permeated the larger social fabric of listeners’ everyday lives, not just through sound but also a plethora of things. Zooming in on gifts, souvenirs, letters, photographs and memorabilia, the article shows how radio-objects enabled Indian listeners to perform difference and distinction locally, to imagine and experience foreign countries through landscape-objects, to establish networks of South-South epistolary exchange, and to ‘see’ both co-listeners and radio hosts through travelling photographs.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Holding of Radio Berlin International (Hindi), Deutsches Rundfunk Archiv (DRA), Potsdam, https://www.dra.de/de/bestaende/ddr-rundfunk/hoerfunk/.

2 Among others, see: Christoph Classen, ‘Captive Audience? GDR Radio in the Mirror of Listeners’ Mail’, Cold War History 13, no. 2 (2013): 239–54; Christoph Classen, ‘Medialization in Opposing Systems: Approaching a Media History of Divided Germany’, German Historical Institute London Bulletin 41, no. 1 (2019): 19–49; Nicholas John Cull, ‘Reading, Viewing, and Tuning into the Cold War’, in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, ed. M. P. Leffler & O. A. Westad (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), II, 438–59; A. Ross Johnson & R. Eugene Parta, Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe : A Collection of Studies and Documents. Budapest (New York: Central European University Press, 2010); Friederike Kind-Kovács, ‘Voices, Letters, and Literature through the Iron Curtain: Exiles and the (Trans)Mission of Radio in the Cold War’, Cold War History 13, no.2 (2013):193–219; Alasdair Pinkerton & Klaus Dodds, ‘Radio Geopolitics: Broadcasting, Listening and the Struggle for Acoustic Spaces’, Progress in Human Geography 33, no. 1 (2009): 10–27; Alasdair Pinkerton, ‘Radio’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Media Geography, ed. P. C. Adams, J. Craine & J. Dittmer (Farnham [et al.]: Ashgate, 2016), 53-68; Arch Puddington. Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000); Linda Risso, ‘Radio Wars: Broadcasting in the Cold War’, Cold War History 13, no. 2 (2013):145–52; Heiner Stahl, ‘Mediascape and Soundscape: Two Landscapes of Modernity in Cold War Berlin’, in Berlin–Divided City, 1945-1989, ed. P. Broadbent and S. Hake (New York: Berghahn, 2010), 56-66.

3 See for example: Richard. H. Cummings, Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950–1989 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009); Richard. H Cummings, Radio Free Europe’s ‘Crusade for Freedom’: Rallying Americans Behind Cold War Broadcasting, 1950–1960 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland 2010); A.R. Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: The CIA Years and Beyond (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010); Ruxandra Petrinca, ‘Radio Waves, Memories, and the Politics of Everyday Life in Socialist Romania: The Case of Radio Free Europe’, CNT Centaurus 61, no. 3 (2019):178–99. For research specifically on western foreign broadcasters in the German Democratic Republic, see Airy Curtains in the European Ether: Broadcasting and the Cold War, ed. A. Badenoch, A. Fickers and C. Henrich-Franke (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2013), 321-46; Patrick Major, ‘Listening behind the Curtain: BBC Broadcasting to East Germany and Its Cold War Echo’, Cold War History 13, no. 2 (2013):255–75; Emily Oliver, ‘A Voice for East Germany: Developing the BBC German Service’s East Zone Programme’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 39, no.3 (2019): 568–583.

4 One recent and thought-provoking intervention in the African context is: Marissa J. Moorman’s Powerful Frequencies: Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola 1931-2002 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press: 2019).

5 David Lelyveld, ‘Upon the Subdominant: Administering Music on All-India Radio’, Social Text 39 (1994): 111-27 (p.113). For BBC in India, see: Alisdair Pinkerton, ‘A New Kind of Imperialism? The BBC, Cold War Broadcasting and the Contested Geopolitics of South Asia’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 28, no. 4 (2008): 537–55.

6 See for example, Diya Gupta, ‘The Raj in radio wars: BBC Monitoring Reports on Broadcasts for Indian Audiences during the Second World War’, Media History 25, no. 4 (2019): 414-29.

7 Isabell Huacuja Alonso, ‘Radio, Citizenship and the ‘Sound Standards’ of a Newly Independent India’ Public Culture 31, no. 1 (2019): 117-44; Isabell Huacuja Alonso, Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting across Borders (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2023).

8 For All India Radio’s early years up to independence see Indira Baptista Gupta ‘From the BBC’s Shadows? Fledgling

AIR Finding Its Feet’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 42, no. 4 (2022):749-72.

9 For radio broadcasting in colonial India, see David Lelyveld, ‘Upon the Subdominant’; Pinkerton ‘A New Kind of Imperialism?; on community radio, see Y. T. Jayaprakash, , ‘Remote Audiences beyond 2000: Radio, Everyday Life and Development in South India’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 3, no. 2 (2015): 227–39; Y. Nirmala, ‘The Role of Community Radio in Empowering Women in India’, Media Asia 42, no. 1-2(2015): 41–46; on radio and nation building projects in postcolonial India, see Vebhuti Duggal, ‘Imagining Sound through the Pharmaish: Radios and Request-Postcards in North India, c. 1955–1975’, BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 9, no. 1 (2018): 1–23; Steven Hughes, ‘The ‘Music Boom’ in Tamil South India: Gramophone, Radio and the Making of Mass Culture’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 22, no. 4 (2002): 445–73; David Lelyveld, ‘Upon the Subdominant’; on radio and the production of ‘national’ culture or the nationalization of Indian classical music through radio, see Isabell Huacuja Alonso Radio for the Millions and ‘Radio, Citizenship and the ‘Sound Standards’ of a Newly Independent India’ ; on All India Radio and Bombay Cinema, see the intersecting trajectories of All India Radio and Bombay Cinema, see A. Punathambekar, ‘Ameen Sayani and Radio Ceylon: Notes towards a History of Broadcasting and Bombay Cinema’, BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 1, no. 2 (2010): 189–97.

10 Alisdair Pinkerton, ‘A New Kind of Imperialism?’; Pinkerton and Dodds ‘Radio Geopolitics’.

11 On global publics, see Valeska Huber and J. Osterhammel. (eds.) Global Publics: Their Power and their Limits, 1870-1990. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).

12 Vebhuti Duggal, ‘Imagining Sound through the Pharmaish’; Isabell Huacuja Alonso, ‘Songs by Ballot: Binaca Geetmala and the Making of a Hindi Film-Song Radio Audience, 1952–1994’, BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 13, no. 1 (2022): 38-73.

13 Interview Jaipur, 9 April 2022.

14 Interview Bikaner 3 April 2022.

15 Interview Bikaner 2 April 2022.

16 Interview Bikaner 3 April 2022.

17 Veronica della Dora, ‘Travelling Landscape-objects’, Progress in Human Geography 33, no. 3 (2009): 334-54, 344.

18 Interview (telephonic) Srivastava, 3 July 2022.

19 Veronica della Dora, ‘Travelling Landscape-objects’, 334.

20 Among others, see Christoph Classen, ‘Captive Audience? GDR Radio in the Mirror of Listeners’ Mail’, Cold War History 13, no. 2 (2013):239–54; Friederike Kind-Kovács, ‘Voices, Letters, and Literature through the Iron Curtain: Exiles and the (Trans)Mission of Radio in the Cold War’, Cold War History 13:2 (2013), 193–219; Emily Oliver, ‘A Voice for East Germany: Developing the BBC German Service’s East Zone Programme’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 39, no. 3 (2019): 568–83; Susanne Schädlich, Briefe Ohne Unterschrift: Wie eine BBC Sendung die DDR herausfordete (München: Albert Knaus Verlag, 2017).

21 Interview, Bikaner 2 April 2022.

22 Interview, Madhepura 26 March 2019.

23 Interview, Bikaner 2 April 2022.

24 On listening publics, see Kate Lacey, Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013) and Jason Loviglio, Radio’s Intimate Public: Network Broadcasting and Mass-Mediated Democracy (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

25 Joshua A. Bell, ‘Promiscuous Things: Perspectives on Cultural Property through Photographs in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea’, International Journal of Cultural Property 15, no. 2 (2008):123–39 (pp. 124–25). I have dealt with the theme of photographs of listeners as biographical objects in greater depth in Anandita Bajpai, ‘Objects of Love: Remembering Radio Berlin International in India’, in The GDR Tomorrow, eds. Elizabeth Emery, Matthew Hines and Evilyn Preuß, (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, forthcoming 2023), 240-266.

26 Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Objects of Affect: Photography beyond the Image’, Annual Review of Anthropology 41(2012): 226

27 Ibid.

28 Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 137, cited in Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images , eds. E. Edrwards and J. Hart (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 14.

29 Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica, 137 cited in Photographs Objects Histories, eds. E. Edrwards and J. Hart, 14.

30 Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 4.

31 Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of Things (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

32 Interview, Gorakhpur, 11 April 2022.

33 For India specifically see: Alasdair Pinkerton, ‘Radio and the Raj: Broadcasting in British India (1920–1940)’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 18:2 (2008), 167-91; Alasdair Pinkerton, ‘A New Kind of Imperialism? The BBC, Cold War Broadcasting and the Contested Geopolitics of South Asia’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 28:4 (2008), 537–55.

34 Among others, see Janet Staiger, Media Reception Studies (New York and London: New York University Press, 2005), Susan J. Doughlas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2004).

35 See Jenkins’ seminal work on fans and fandoms, where he develops the framework of ‘participatory culture’. Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992).

36 For short-wave listening (SWL), S.I.N.P.O. was a commonly used technique to report to stations about how well one received their signals. Shorthand for Signal strength, Interference (from other stations), Noise (from atmospheric sources), Propagation (disturbance, degree of fading) and Overall Merit (based on reception quality), the code relied on numerical ratings on a scale of one to five, with five being the optimum conditions and one the minimum. In order to ascertain that one had actually heard the programme, most reception report forms asked listeners to describe the overall contents of the programme on a specific date which they were reporting about.

37 Steve Berry, TV Cream Toys: Presents You Pestered Your Parents For (London: Friday Books, 2007); Bob Rehak, ‘Materiality and Object‐Oriented Fandom’ [Editorial], Transformative Works and Cultures, 16 (2014) (see especially the contributions in this issue by Matt Hines, ‘From Dalek half balls to Daft Punk helmets: Mimetic fandom and the crafting of replicas’; Ian M. Peters, ‘Peril-sensitive sunglasses, superheroes in miniature, and pink polka-dot boxers: Artifact and collectible video game feelies, play, and the paratextual gaming experience’; and Forrest Phillips, ‘The butcher, the baker, the lightsaber maker’); Lincoln Geraghty, Cult Collectors: Nostalgia, Fandom and Collecting Popular Culture, (London: Routledge, 2014); Josh Stenger, ‘The Clothes Make the Fan: Fashion and Online Fandom When Buffy the Vampire Slayer Goes to eBay’, Cinema Journal, 45:4 (2006), 26–44; Scott K. Radford and Peter H. Bloch, ‘Grief, Commiseration, and Consumption Following the Death of a Celebrity’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 12:2 (2012), 137–155.

38 See Lincoln Geraghty, ‘Nostalgia, Fandom and the Remediation of Children’s Culture’, in A Companion to Media and Fandom Studies, ed. Paul Booth (New Jersey and Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2018), 161-174 and Sherry Turkle ‘Introduction: The Things that Matter’ in Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, ed. Sherry Turkle (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 3-10.

39 Mike Chasar, Everyday Reading: Poetry and Popular Culture in Modern America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).

40 On the materiality of radio as a communication technology in Nigeria, see Brian Larkin, ‘Islamic Renewal, Radio, and the Surface of Things’ in Aesthetic Formations: Media, Religion and the Sense, ed. Birgit Meyer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 117-136. On the materiality of radio’s sound, see Joe Tacchi, ‘Radio texture: between self and others’, in Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter, ed. David. Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 25-45. Deborah Spitulnik has explored the material aspects of radio technology, its relation to the domestic sphere and beyond, the economic factors (costs of sets and batteries) which determine who has access, and its mobility as a portable machine in Zambia. She calls for broadening the realm of reception studies by stating that ‘The notions of “audience” and “reception”—if limited to the sender/receiver dyad and the individual interpretive moment of decoding messages—neither exhaust nor encompass the range of relations that people have with radio. This does not mean that these notions should be discarded, but rather that they should be expanded or supplemented by the study of other activities and domains of experience that structure media meanings and use’. Deborah Spitulnik, ‘Mobile Machines and Fluid Audiences: Rethinking Reception through Zambian Radio Culture’ in Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, eds. Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, Brian Larkin, (Berkley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2002), 337-354.

41 A similar argument for overcoming a nation-statist focus and engaging with transnational connections enabled by international broadcasting has been proposed recently by Potter et al. in The Wireless World: Global Histories of International Radio Broadcasting, eds. Simon J. Potter, David Clayton, Friederike Kind-Kovacs, Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, Nelson Ribeiro, Rebecca Scales, and Andrea Stanton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).

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Anandita Bajpai

Anandita Bajpai is a Research Fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin, Germany. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the Leibniz Collaborative Excellence Research Project ‘Crafting Entanglements: Afro-Asian Pasts of the Global Cold War’ (K437/2022) funded by the Leibniz Association, Germany. Between 2017-20, she was lecturer at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin. She has been a postdoctoral research fellow in the Modern India in German Archives, 1706–1989 (MIDA) Project, funded by the German Research Council (2014-17). Her previous research has focused on political communication and prime-ministerial rhetoric in India. She is the author of Speaking the Nation: The Oratorical Making of Secular, Neo-liberal India (Oxford University Press, 2018). She is the editor (with Heike Liebau) of the Archival Reflexicon, an open-access bilingual journal for theoretical and conceptual reflections on archival architectures/organizing logics as well as thematic contributions on India-related holdings of German archives (https://www.projekt-mida.de/rechercheportal/reflexicon/).