Shortwave Radio and the Anglo-Indian Sense of Belonging

The life of the English listener in India has, until very recently been a rather lonely one. Due to its Colonial history, the language has become a sort of lingua franca in a country with such vast linguistic diversity.  Yet today, only 10-15% of the country speak the language and the percentage of people who are fluent in it is even lower, with generous estimates typically pegging it at around 2-5% of the population.

However, even among this tiny sliver of fluent English speakers, it is a primary second-language at best, with the populace most comfortable speaking their affectionately titled ‘Mother-Tongue’, the language of their family’s place of origin. Across mediums, all of the content we experience in India, reflects this preference as well.

For a small monolingual English-speaking community like mine, the Anglo-Indians (People with mixed British and Indian descent), a sense of seclusion has always weighed heavy on our tiny 400-year-old existence. To say that your “Mother-Tongue” is English, the language of the Colonizer, would always raise eyebrows and leave people silently questioning your ‘Indian-ness’, leading many to migrate abroad over the years.

As I’m sure you’re now asking, how is this relevant to an article about Shortwave Radio? Well, at a time when access to English content – radio, television, film and music – was almost impossible (India only opened up its borders to foreign investment and media in the early 90’s), how did this tiny community manage to preserve its fragile sense of belonging for the last hundred or so odd years? 

For the many who lived outside the big cities, with no local English media present or any access to foreign cassettes or records in the market, Anglo-Indians had but one avenue to listen to their language spoken or sung – Shortwave Radio. For families that had the means to afford them, a Shortwave Radio was the centrepiece of every household.

Stifled by an environment of chatter that was not their own, on the bus, in the office or at the movies, every opportunity to experience media in your ‘mother-tongue’ was a breath of fresh air, a sense of freedom, of not feeling so alone.

I have always been charmed by this facet of my parents and grandparents existence. Long before the age of television and the internet, every evening like clockwork, they’d huddle around the family radio and hope they were lucky enough to catch a good signal of ‘The Voice of America’ or ‘The BBC World Service’ or ‘Radio Ceylon’. 

They knew every frequency, every broadcast time for every channel, which day of the week it came on, who the presenter was, how long they’d be presenting, which songs played last week, and the week before that and so on. I remember my darling Mum, fondly sharing all these stories and me sitting there fascinated by this idea of listening to a world far far away.

In those days, the English Service of Radio Ceylon (Sri Lanka), had the strongest signal due to its proximity and catered to a fledgling English-speaking audience and many Anglo-Indians in India and abroad. You could write them letters and if you were lucky enough, they’d read out your name, where you were from and a wish to a family member. With everyone tuning in at the same time, this was as connected as we got, our own sense of belonging.

This was our escape, our out, from the constant feeling of otherness our countrymen, not always subtly mind you, afforded us. What a beautiful thing it was.

Being a child born in the 90’s (India’s MTV generation), I grew up in a rapidly liberalizing India, suddenly open to the world, starkly different from the one my parents and grandparents inhabited. If you lived in a metropolis like Bombay, you had English music on FM 24/7, MTV and popular British and American shows on television. Then obviously came the internet.

These were all things I simply took for granted, ignorant of how special and preciously anticipated they once were. 

Years later, while I was pursuing my Graduation in Media and Communication, I learnt more about Radio. All of Mum’s stories came flooding back, this sense of charm, wonder and nostalgia filled me up and out of a learned love for the medium, I ended up specializing in Radio Production, despite Radio’s apparent imminent demise.

I remember how puzzled my Uncle was, visiting us from the US back in 2014, when I asked him to get me a Shortwave Radio. You see, by then, the age of the internet, India like many other countries, had no more fascination with Shortwave and sets were impossible to come by. Luckily though, he did oblige.

The whole family found it quite quaint really, that this boy in the modern age, was so thrilled by something they had put to sleep years and years ago. I never had the vocabulary then to express how connected to my roots it made me feel. How in whatever small way, it made me a torchbearer of a long tradition of finding joy in something the world around me never could understand. As obtuse as it may sound, it made me feel Anglo-Indian.

I was hooked immediately, and 10 years on, I am still an avid listener. The beauty of Shortwave is that you never know what you’re going to catch when you sit to scan the airwaves. It’s a treasure hunt almost. Most days you find very few new English broadcasters, but every now and then, you come across absolute gems.

The other day while scanning the airwaves, I came across a station broadcasting in English out of the coastal town of Elburg in the Netherlands, Radio Delta International. Brilliant music, hosted beautifully by a gentleman named Aart. As I was sitting there with my sister enjoying the music, we found a way to send them a message via the internet and request a song. Long shot, but hey, what the hell.

Aart replied immediately!

You can’t imagine what It meant to the both of us, firstly to connect with someone so far away, have them respond, then a few minutes later hear our names live on the airwaves and our song played! Is this what it felt like all those years ago?

These days, every time I catch the Voice of America or the BBC World Service, in some inexplicable way, across space and time, I feel connected to Mum. From where I am now in the 2020’s to the porch of that Old Bungalow in 1970’s Deolali that she’d sit out in, across all this distance, we’re both together, scanning the airwaves for sounds more familiar than the ones we’ve had to endure.

I can’t imagine a history of Anglo-Indians in India that doesn’t pay homage to the sense of solidarity that Shortwave granted us and I hope we never forget that. 

As long as stations like Radio Delta International exist, manned by people as generous as Aart, there’s hope for us to relive what it once was to be so close yet so far away from a sense of belonging.