broadcasting

Balraj Sahni

About: 

Balraj Sahni worked in London as a Hindi-language broadcaster for the BBC's Indian Section of the Eastern Service. His wife Damjanthi Sahni also worked for the BBC. Before moving to London, Sahni had worked with Gandhi in 1938 and taught Hindi and English at Rabindranath Tagore's Visva-Bharati University in Shantiniketan.

He became a successful movie star in India after independence.

Date of birth: 
01 May 1913
City of birth: 
Rawalpindi
Country of birth: 
India
Current name country of birth: 
Pakistan
Date of death: 
13 Apr 1973
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1939-43

Location: 

London

Tags for Making Britain: 

Damyanthi Sahni

About: 

Damyanthi Sahni was married to Balraj Sahni. After their move to Enlgand she found employment with the BBC's Indian Section of the Eastern Service.

Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1939-43

Location: 

London

Tags for Making Britain: 

Z. A. Bokhari

About: 

Before arriving in London, to become director of the Indian Section of the BBC Eastern Service, Bokhari was the director of the Delhi Broadcasting Station of All India Radio. Bokhari was in London in July 1937, where he attended a reception held by Firoz Khan Noon at India House Aldwych. He moved to London to take up the post of Indian programmes organizer for the Indian section of the Eastern Service of the BBC from 1940 to 1945. Sir Malcom Darling recruited Bokhari on the recommendation of the controller of broadcasting for All India Radio, Lionel Fielden, to set up the Indian section of the Eastern Service. Initially Bokhari and his team only contributed a weekly news report and the odd cultural programme.

Bokahri together with Darling were instrumental in recruiting George Orwell, who would be an important asset also because of his friendship with Mulk Raj Anand, who had previously rejected Darling's offer of work at the BBC.  Bokhari hoped that he would be able to persuade Anand and other Indian friends to work for the Indian Section. During his time in London he managed the contracts and programming of the Indian Section of the Eastern Service, working closely with George Orwell. He was also an accomplished broadcaster, regularly transmitting talks in Urdu to India. He accompanied Richard Dimbleby to report on the Indian soldiers stationed with the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940. Organizing and coordinating the activities of the Indian Section of the Eastern Service, Bokhari was instrumental in the the Service’s programming and bringing together the network of free-lance talks writers based at the BBC. In 1945 he took up the position of Director of the All India Radio Station in Calcutta and later moved to Pakistan to become Controller of Broadcasting in Karachi for Radio Pakistan.

Published works: 

Orwell, George, (ed.), Talking to India (London: Allen & Unwin, 1943)

Date of birth: 
01 Jan 1904
Precise DOB unknown: 
Y
Secondary works: 

Fielden, Lionel, Beggar My Neighbour (London: Secker and Warburg, 1943)

Ranasinha, Ruvani, South Asian Writers in Twentieth Century Britain: Culture in Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

West, W. J., Orwell: The War Broadcasts (London: Duckworth/BBC, 1985)

The Times (06 July 1937), p. 21
 

Archive source: 

BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham Park, Reading

City of birth: 
Peshawar
Country of birth: 
India
Current name country of birth: 
Pakistan
Other names: 

Zulfikar Ali Bokhari, Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah Bukhari
 

Locations

Park Lane
London, W1K 7AF
United Kingdom
51° 30' 23.094" N, 0° 9' 7.9128" W
55 Portland Place
London, W1B 1QG
United Kingdom
51° 31' 15.4596" N, 0° 8' 43.6092" W
Indian Section of the BBC Eastern Service
200 Oxford Street
London, W1D 1NU
United Kingdom
51° 30' 55.8288" N, 0° 8' 24.9612" W
Date of death: 
12 Jul 1975
Location of death: 
Karachi, Pakistan
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

early 1920s; 1940-5

S. M. Marath

About: 

S. M. Marath was born into an orthodox Nayar background in Trichur, at one time the capital of Cochin State. His ancestral home was Sri Padmanabha Mandiram in Tirunvambadi, Trichur. He combined a traditional South Indian background with a cosmopolitan education, studying for his BA in English at Madras Christian College and later, in 1934, enrolling at King’s College London. He went on to join the Indian Civil Service in London, working at India House after Independence in 1947. He married Nancy, an Irish woman, had two sons and settled permanently in Britain.

A Wound of Spring, his first novel, appeared in 1960 and is dedicated to his family. Prior to this, between 1934 and 1960, he published short stories, critical essays and reviews, and broadcast regularly with the BBC Home, Education and Eastern Service. Whilst Marath regularly reviewed Indian works in British periodicals – by Mulk Raj Anand, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Aubrey Menen, Jawaharlal Nehru and M. K. Gandhi, among others – he also wrote commentaries on British writers, French literature and religious philosophy. His published works are all set in Kerala, South India, close to his ancestral home. Written in English and drawing on a wide range of sources, they explore broad existential questions. In Janu, his last published novel, he addresses specific issues related to the Indo-British encounter which indirectly draws on his experience as an Indian living in Britain. He died in London in 2003.

Published works: 

The Wound of Spring (London: Dennis Dobson; Calcutta: Rupa & Co., 1960)

The Sale of an Island (London: Dennis Dobson; Calcutta: Rupa & Co., 1968)

Janu (1988)

Example: 

Letter to Mohamed Elias, 23 October 1979, in Elias, Mohamed, Menon Marath (Macmillan India, 1981), p. 44

Date of birth: 
29 Oct 1906
Content: 

Here Marath describes in a letter the impact of English on his life as a writer living in Britain.

Connections: 

Mulk Raj Anand, H. N. Brailsford, Robert Herring, N. Roy Lewis, Aubrey Menen, Krishna Menon, George Orwell, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Raja Rao, Rolfe Arnold Scott-James.

Buddhist Society, Pimlico; Indian High Commission; King’s College London.

Contributions to periodicals: 

Asia

The Hindu Illustrated Weekly

King’s College Review

Life and Letters Today

The London Mercury

The Listener

Times Literary Supplement

Reviews: 

Asia and Africa Review

The Auckland Star

The Bookseller

Cork Examiner

Glasgow Herald

Hindustan Standard

London Evening News

New Statesman

Swaziland Times

Times Literary Supplement

Extract: 

Truth to say, English really has been my language always. The subtleties of English as a medium of communication captivated me right from the start. I never intended to write in any language but English. Perhaps I was one of those Indians who were mentally enslaved by our foreign rulers. I confess this with shame. The direct consequence of this was my coming to England. I think I had come here to be released from this enthralment.

Secondary works: 

Elias, Mohamed, Menon Marath, Kerala Writers in English (Macmillan India, 1981)

Harrex, S. C., The Fire and the Offering: The English Language Novel of India (Calcutta: Indian Writers Workshop, 1977)

Mukherjee, M., The Twice-Born Fiction: Themes and Techniques of the Indian Novel in English (Delhi: Heinemann, 1971)

Relevance: 

Like many other Indian writers in English of his generation, Marath was aware from the outset of the difficulties of translating his experience of Kerala into English and finding an appropriate form to articulate this.

Archive source: 

S. Menon Marath Papers, Add. 73500, British Library, St Pancras

Involved in events: 

India League meetings

Independence celebrations at India House, London

City of birth: 
Trichur, Cochin, Kerala
Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Sankarankutty Menon Marath

Sam Menon Marath

Locations

Teddington
Middlesex, TW11 8ES
United Kingdom
51° 25' 37.2324" N, 0° 20' 14.37" W
Hampstead
London, NW3 6NR
United Kingdom
51° 33' 20.1924" N, 0° 11' 36.7116" W
Date of death: 
02 Jan 2003
Location of death: 
London
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1934
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1934-2003

BBC Indian Section of the Eastern Service

About: 

The Indian Section of the Eastern Service began broadcasting in May 1940. Initially it was on the air for ten minutes daily, broadcasting news in Hindustani, but the service expanded rapidly. Programmes in English, Bengali, Marathi, Sinhalese and Tamil were quickly added and its broadcasting time increased. The Service's brief was to provide a window into Britain and to present the western world through eastern eyes by employing Indian broadcasters living in Britain, such as Narayana Menon, M. J. Tambimuttu, I. B. SarinVenu Chitale and Indira Devi of Kapurthala. In the early 1940s the programmes were organized by George Orwell and Z. A. Bokhari. The Indian Section of the BBC Eastern Service broadcast news (in English, Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati), current affairs programmes, reviews, round-table discussions, poetry readings, plays and music. These were aimed at India’s opinion-forming intelligentsia and students in the hope of maintaining the conditional allegiance of the nationalists in the fraught context of the Quit India Movement of the early 1940s. The Indian Section also broadcast regular messages from Indians resident in the UK and Indian soldiers stationed in England. Morale-boosting programmes for the Indian troops stationed in the Middle and Far East, fighting for Britain in the Second World War, were also a regular part of the Section's output. The Service also became an important tool in countering the Axis propaganda offensive launched by Subhas Chandra Bose’s Radio Azad Hind (Free India), broadcasting from Berlin. Among the many series of programmes were 'Through Eastern Eyes' and 'Open Letters', which featured regular broadcasts from Mulk Raj Anand, Cedric Dover and G. V. Desani, as well as T. S. Eliot, George Orwell and E. M. Forster. The BBC proved to be a dynamic contact zone for South Asian and British journalists, writers and intellectuals and the broadcasts showed the wide range of topics with which they engaged. The Service was later integrated into the BBC World Service.

Published works: 

The Listener

London Calling: BBC Empire Broadcasting

Orwell, George (ed.), Talking to India (London: Allen & Unwin, 1943)

Secondary works: 

Ranasinha, Ruvani, South Asian Writers in Twentieth Century Britain: Culture in Translation (Oxford: Clarendon, 2007)

West, W. J., Orwell: The War Broadcasts (London: Duckworth/BBC, 1985)
 

Date began: 
11 May 1940
Connections: 

Sir Malcolm Lyall Darling, William Empson, Laurence Frederick Rushbrook Williams.

Date ended: 
01 Jan 1965
Archive source: 

BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham Park, Reading

Locations

BBC Broadasting House
Portland Square
London, W1B 1DJ
United Kingdom
200 Oxford Street
London, W1D 1NU
United Kingdom

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