The Sound of Friendship: Warm Wavelengths of Radio Berlin International During the Cold War Years in India

Presenter:

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Abstract

Radio Berlin International, also called the “voice of the German Democratic Republic” began its journey as a broadcasting station on the 20th of May, 1959. The station was an important medium for presencing the GDR in five continents across the world. Its Hindi Department, established in 1967, enjoyed an enormous popularity across the vast stretch of Hindi-speaking parts of India. This paper will trace the history of the radio station’s trajectory in two directions– from the perspective of those behind the microphone– the presenters, translators, journalists of the Hindi department on the one hand, and from the perspective of those glued to the radio set– the listeners and fan clubs of the station in India on the other. The rich written, visual (photographs and travelling objects), oral and aural sources (sound files of individual broadcasts), which inform this truly entangled history of India-GDR relations, have hitherto not been the subject of any systematic research endeavours. The paper will elucidate how the lexical repertoire of sneh, pyar, garmahat, mananiyta– affection, love, warmth and recognition, which informs both the narratives of the presenters as well as the listeners, needs to be taken seriously in order to unpack a history of emotions which duly entangles itself with tactile materiality. How did India become a site for sonically mapping Cold War affiliations? How were love and recognition performed through objects (gifts sent to fans by the station) and letters (fan mail)? The paper will contribute to the panel by combining theoretical debates from the fields of Cold War history, the history of emotions and a historical anthropology of material culture.