All India Radio (AIR) is now All Modi Radio but must I miss classical music on AMR ?

We acquired our first Radio set in 1962. It played on the medium wave and two short waves channels. We were very young and more wonder struck by the string antenna that hung overhead across the veranda, which could clearly sing and speak and that too in different voices.

Dad was a connoisseur of both Hindustani and Western classical music and in his free hours, spent most of his time reading and listening to music. As he worked on the Desk in The Indian Express, he was mostly on night duty and returned home only after 3 am. But my mother, a government school teacher, had to rush to her school early morning. We too had to catch the school bus.

Dad would be pulled out of bed before mother left for her school. It was his job to supervise our breakfast and get us ready for school. Groggy eyed and half asleep, he would switch on the radio around 6 am. And till we left, the sound of bhajans would reverberate in our house.

On holidays we discovered that around 8 am in the morning news in Hindi would come on Delhi A and immediately after that the morning news in English would be aired on Delhi B.

As teenagers we learnt to turn the knob to Delhi C, when dad was not at home, and listened to Vividh Bharati which played Hindi film songs. By the time we reached higher classes in school, we also learnt about Delhi D which played Yuva Vani, Pop, Jazz and Rock and of course filmi music of our times. But Delhi A and B were what my father listened to. On Delhi A there would be half an hour of Hindustani classical vocal or instrumental programme immediately after the morning news in Hindi. Another hour of Hindustani classical music followed from 11 am to 12 noon.

After the 1 pm English news, there would be Western classical music on Delhi B. On certain days of the week, Pop, Rock or Jazz would also be played. Again after 10 pm at night Delhi A would play Hindustani classical music for one hour and Delhi B would play Western music, except on Fridays and Mondays when they would air songs and music requested by soldiers and listeners.

Above all Delhi A would air Hindustani and Carnatic music as ‘National Programme; this would be accompanied by explanatory commentary along with an introduction to the Ustad/Pandit or Guru who would be playing on the instruments or singing. The national programme would come on Saturdays and Sundays from 9.30 pm to 11 pm.

All that is now gone!

The medium wave stations were getting increasingly difficult to catch on our radio sets, although in our cars, the AM reception is very clear even now. But suddenly Delhi A and B (now they are known as Rajdhani and some other name) have stopped playing anything except government propaganda or Modi campaign in the garb of news or information all day and all night.

And all music is off from both 81.9 Khz and 66.6 Khz. I noticed this a few days after the COVID induced lockdown. Initially I thought this was perhaps to mourn the death of people dying of the coronavirus all over the world.

But a month passed, then another and yet another and now it is more than six months. But those stations have metamorphosed into Radio Modistan, and not one but two stations. Even if one accepts the possibility that it had something to do with the COVID-19 situation, there should have been some official explanation. Moreover, when everything is getting back to normal despite the pandemic, why single out the traditional music programmes on Delhi A and B?

A few of my friends who believe in conspiracy theories are convinced that the reasons are political. The Government, they say, wants to obliterate everything which connects us to the pre-Modi era of over 70 years in which we have lived and grown up. They want to shape the present in their own imagination and bury the past.