In April 1953, Kenya was at war. For five months, the forests around Nairobi had been the site of open conflict between British colonial forces and a loose association of guerrilla fighters known as the Mau Mau. In a government meeting, held in the barricaded town of Thika, British officials speculated that communist agitators and liberal activists could soon destabilise the war effort.
Their main concern, however, was a dangerous new threat to the colonial order: the “false and subversive propaganda” being transmitted to Kenya by the Indian media.
British officials had reason to be anxious. In the early 1950s, All India Radio (AIR) began regular broadcasts to East Africa in English, Gujarati and Hindi. By 1953, they had also created a service in Swahili – the most widely-spoken language in the region. Together, these broadcasts gave vocal support to anti-colonial movements, urging their African and Asian listeners to unite against British rule. They also gave a platform to nationalist activists, allowing them to escape the strict confines of colonial censorship.
At the same time, however, Indian broadcasters often failed to recognise the complex realities of East African politics – a fact that sometimes limited their influence on the ground.
The decision to bring Indian radio to East Africa reflected the ambitious politics of the Nehru era. Hoping to expand their influence on the world stage, and inspired by India’s own struggle against empire, a generation of diplomats began to offer political support to communities living under colonial rule.
The Mau Mau Rebellion made Kenya a particularly important target for this anti-colonial policy. Progressives in the Nehru government were particularly concerned about the bans on newspapers and political parties and horrified by the detention of civilians in fortified camps.
For a generation who still remembered India’s own struggle against British rule, the Kenyan Emergency may have seemed all too close to home.
In response, Nehru’s Ministry of External Affairs instructed AIR to criticise British rule at every opportunity, raising awareness of “the great repression and suppression of the Africans” around the world. Over the subsequent years, broadcasters would praise the Kenyan people’s campaign for “political self-determination and economic justice”, blaming colonial segregation for driving the territory “headlong into race war”. Only a “humane and imaginative policy”, they argued, could address popular grievances and put a stop to widespread rebellion.
Broadcasters were particularly interested in reaching East Africa’s large Indian population. As the region moved toward independence, argued Nehru, services from Delhi had the potential to promote mutual understanding, encouraging its Asian listeners to “help the Africans in various legitimate ways”.
This rhetoric was often paternalistic, presenting India as a benevolent benefactor of the nationalist movement. Ultimately, however, it also encouraged Asian editors across the region to reproduce anti-colonial broadcasts in their own newspapers, bypassing the colonial government’s strict control of the African press.
Connections like these were reliant on networks of progressive activists across the region. One prominent AIR contributor was the dissident journalist Pio Gama Pinto, who supplied news and commentary from his hometown of Nairobi.
Another was Joseph Murumbi, the socialite secretary-general of the Kenya African Union and future vice president of Kenya. Murumbi had escaped Nairobi in March 1953 thanks to a plane ticket smuggled to him by the Indian high commission. In Delhi, he took to AIR to denounce the arbitrary violence of colonial rule, accusing British officials of supporting a policy of “judicial and police terror” across the territory.
AIR also began to employ other East Africans living in India, including the Zanzibari nationalist Ahmad Rashad Ali and the future government minister Asanterabi Nsilo Swai.
These writers and announcers were generally trusted to produce broadcasts which would be interesting and relevant to their own communities: “I am a free man to talk on any controversial subject,” claimed one Tanganyikan announcer, “so long as [it is] fairly represented.”
AIR also began reading listener letters from across the region, functioning as a form of social network for its East African audience.
By 1953, colonial administrators had begun to see AIR as a significant threat. In exile, they argued, the affable Murumbi had transformed “a most dangerous agitator”. They also attacked Pinto for his “consistent denigration of British rule”, arguing that his broadcasts constituted a ‘veiled incitement to colour war’.
They also claimed that the AIR Swahili Service risked creating unrest by “exaggerating every incident of African defiance” – not least because its signal was often stronger than that of the colonial radio services.
British officials used this threat to secure investment for their own propaganda initiatives. In November 1953, deputy governor Frederick Crawford of Kenya wrote anxiously that AIR had become a “very real difficulty” across the region.
As a result, he explained to the Colonial Office, he now needed funding for two new radio transmitters. These would allow the government radio state to produce an “attractive programme” of music and entertainment for the same timeslot as the Swahili broadcast from Delhi, competing directly with AIR to sustain British influence.
At the same time, however, colonial administrators also chose to crack down on anti-colonial activists. In 1954, Pinto was arrested on suspicion that he was smuggling arms for the Mau Mau – the first and only Kenyan Asian to be arrested for participation in the conflict. Detained without trial in the interest of “maintaining public order”, he would spend the next four years in a British prison camp.
As time went on, Indian broadcasters struggled to keep up with the pace of change. In 1955, they provided listeners with detailed coverage of the Bandung Conference. In 1956, they became vocal critics of British policy during the Suez Crisis. Over the next few years, however, AIR was also forced to compete with powerful new broadcasters, from the militant anti-colonialism of Radio Cairo to the sober analysis of the BBC Swahili Service.
By 1960, AIR still had listeners across East Africa – but their audiences paled in comparison to popular local services from Kenya, Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
The idealistic rhetoric of Indian broadcasts also failed to account for important political realities. The idea of cooperation between African and Asian activists had been relatively popular in 1952, but this solidarity soon began to wear thin. Concerned by the violence of Mau Mau and eager to protect their own political power, many activists had abandoned anti-imperialism in favour of a pragmatic alliance with the colonial state.
“We have often flattered ourselves by claiming support for African aspirations,” argued the Kenyan Asian leader N.S. Mangat in 1956, “[but] to aid and abet those trying to reduce Europeans to the same level as Africans is to court disaster.”
By working with African activists to expose the abuses of colonial rule, Indian officials had hoped to build a working solidarity between African and Asian communities. Together, they created engaging broadcasts that became a source of serious concern for the British authorities.
At the same time, however, AIR’s idealistic language of solidarity often failed to account for, let alone overcome, social and political divides. In a dangerous political landscape, some tensions proved too great to overcome.
Alex White is a freelance journalist and historian with a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
