It's so sad to learn that BBC Hindi which I grew listening to will be no more - April '2011 onwards. If at the age of 16, in era of 1990s when satellite channels had not even started full fledged operation and internet was a distant reality, being placed in a small municipal town, I knew terms/names like West Bank, Gaza Strip, Boutros Ghali, Simon Peres, Yasir Arafat, Bosnia, Chechnya, Slobodan Milosevic, AS Roma, Bundesliga etc. credit goes to BBC Hindi.
Memories of those evenings, specially summer, are still fresh when we, in a group, religiously used to tune in to short wave broadcast of BBC Hindi on a 3-band Philips radio. Invariably electricity used to play all it's stunts to keep us in dark, but despite of the buzzing sound of short wave and the irritation involved in catching the frequency, BBC would not let us remain in dark and ignorant. Sitting in a place where electricity was a luxury, where any English newspaper used to reach one day late, we not only knew but used to discuss The Gulf War, Palestine Issue and the Bridgetown Test between Australia & West Indies.
Almost 70 years after its first radio broadcast in India, BBC Hindi service which was religiously followed by generations of listeners, who considered it the most credible source of news, will be missed by everyone from farmers to Maoist rebels.
Its credibility was acknowledged both by Govt, as well as rebels. On several occasions, Rajiv Gandhi accepted that he believed on the news only after he heard it from Mark Tully’s mouth on BBC (news of Indira's death). Reports suggest that even Maoists in the isolated jungles of eastern India tune in for the BBC Hindi. BBC Hindi has to its credit making of many IAS officers specially from Hindi-rural belt.
I still remember names of few correspondents e.g. Rehan Fazal, Atul Prem Narayan, Qamar Ahmed, Seema Chisti, Rupa Jha, Manikant Thakur and Malay Neerav etc... For a large section of people back home, radio, short wave, frequency and other related terms will lose its meaning. Whenever I will visit my hometown I will miss one of my oldest companion.
However BBC Hindi can be accessed at the link mentioned below even after 1st April 2011.
To know more about BBC Hindi presence since independence click here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/institutional/2009/06/090626_institutional_info.shtml
Memories of those evenings, specially summer, are still fresh when we, in a group, religiously used to tune in to short wave broadcast of BBC Hindi on a 3-band Philips radio. Invariably electricity used to play all it's stunts to keep us in dark, but despite of the buzzing sound of short wave and the irritation involved in catching the frequency, BBC would not let us remain in dark and ignorant. Sitting in a place where electricity was a luxury, where any English newspaper used to reach one day late, we not only knew but used to discuss The Gulf War, Palestine Issue and the Bridgetown Test between Australia & West Indies.
Almost 70 years after its first radio broadcast in India, BBC Hindi service which was religiously followed by generations of listeners, who considered it the most credible source of news, will be missed by everyone from farmers to Maoist rebels.
Its credibility was acknowledged both by Govt, as well as rebels. On several occasions, Rajiv Gandhi accepted that he believed on the news only after he heard it from Mark Tully’s mouth on BBC (news of Indira's death). Reports suggest that even Maoists in the isolated jungles of eastern India tune in for the BBC Hindi. BBC Hindi has to its credit making of many IAS officers specially from Hindi-rural belt.
I still remember names of few correspondents e.g. Rehan Fazal, Atul Prem Narayan, Qamar Ahmed, Seema Chisti, Rupa Jha, Manikant Thakur and Malay Neerav etc... For a large section of people back home, radio, short wave, frequency and other related terms will lose its meaning. Whenever I will visit my hometown I will miss one of my oldest companion.
However BBC Hindi can be accessed at the link mentioned below even after 1st April 2011.
To know more about BBC Hindi presence since independence click here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/institutional/2009/06/090626_institutional_info.shtml
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