Broadcasting the popular: All India Radio’s western music programming in the postcolonial era.

After the country became independent, All India Radio continued the colonial practice of broadcasting western popular music on a regular basis. This paper tries to analyse the reasons behind this decision, given the very small audience that such programming enjoyed. I begin by providing a brief history of broadcasting in the colonial era to demonstrate how that system served as a model for AIR’s subsequent policies. Next, the paper examines the controversies surrounding the ban on Hindi film music on Indian radio, to point out the curious fact that no such interdiction was passed on western popular music. I then look at the crucial role played by English as the primary linguistic medium for governing the postcolonial nation and conclude with the suggestion that the meaning of western pop on All India Radio needs to be understood as a means of governmentality that was instrumental in the making of postcolonial modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]