The Ghost Radio - Congress transmitter 1942

This is Congress radio calling from somewhere in India on 42.34 meters

The Vilayati RDF lorries were making yet another circuit trying to triangulate the weak radio signals which were now becoming regular. The CID had started out early in the morning, driving around Girgaum to locate the dammed congress transmitter which came alive twice a day. Even though the lady at the mic announced it was ‘from somewhere in India’, Dy Inspector Fergusson and CID officer Kokje knew it was right under their noses, in Bombay. Ferguson was tracking it himself, with a radio receiver in his car, tuned to the frequency. The lorries drove around slowly, the detection coil on the roof of the van spun around on their axis, trying to pinpoint the transmitter, but the strength of the signal was low. Fergusson made notes as the frequency decreased or increased, but he simply could not get a fix.  Both could hear the transmissions, waxing and waning, sometimes crackling, and by now officers had memorized the voices of the main announcers, a woman, and a man.

Oct 1942 –The transmission started at 8:30 AM with the playing of the popular rallying anthem of the masses - Sare Jahan se Accha" formally known as "Tarānah-e-Hindi" ("Anthem of the People of Hindustan"), an Urdu language patriotic song for children written by poet Muhammad Iqbal in the ghazal style of Urdu poetry.

After a garbled speech by a male announcer, they heard the lady announcer stating – This is Congress radio calling from somewhere in India on 42.34 meters. Now you will hear a program on the Vijaya Dashami. After another 25 minutes the transmission ended with a playing of ‘Vande Mataram’… followed by an announcement that an English program will be aired at 39 meters. That was ominous warning for the listening police detectives, a second transmitter was coming up! Ferguson was wondering about the irony – It was in 1940 that Jinnah announced his desire for a separate Pakistan while the anthem sung by the masses of Hindustan, was originally penned by a Muslim in Lahore!

By the time they got a reasonable signal strength, it was the end and the anthem was playing - The transmitter went off the air. The maze of buildings in front of them were impossible to comb through. Too late again to track the infernal device, but the two officers knew from experience that it would come on again at 845PM and that it may move to some other location. That the Congress had some radio experts advising them, was clear and it had been two months now on the trail of the anti-British Congress radio team, with no success.

How did we get here? A quick recap of the situation would give you proper perspective. The mass movements against British rule had strengthened and were entering the end stages, but the great war was on. Subhash Chandra Bose had slipped out earlier in 1941 and made his way to Germany, broadcasting on the Azad Hind Radio, rallying his supporters. In Dec 1941, Japan bombed Burma and were soon in possession of SE Asia, after decimating the British at Singapore, Malaya and Burma. The eastern Indian borders were under threat and in the summer of 1942, the very prospect of an invasion of Madras had driven the population crazy. Famine as well as the British policy of scorching earth and destroying agriculture fearing an invasion were making things very rough for India.

The British were worried about the INA and of a large number of Indians tying up with the victorious Japanese, waiting at the gates. Roosevelt from America was breathing heavily done their necks, pushing for a resolution in India. On 8^th August 1942, Gandhiji and the Congress launched the Quit India movement at Bombay with a ‘Do or Die’ motto. Within hours, the Raj cracked down and arrested tens of thousands of Congress leaders, including all the main national and provincial figures. Indians recoiled and very soon, the huge civil disobedience movement created utter disarray. Post offices and railway stations were damaged, offices were demolished, cash and stamps were destroyed, railway lines were damaged and telegraph wires were cut.

A motivated Nanak Motwane, the Sindhi owner of Chicago light and Radio, a company dealing with electronic equipment and holding a virtual monopoly on all imported audio equipment such as microphones and loudspeakers in the sub-continent, committed the events of the congress meetings, to film. He also had the singing of Sare Jahan Se Acha by Master Krishna, cut on Vinyl. As we will soon see, this interesting entrepreneur who was the first person to broadcast on radio in 1920, was to figure in the conspiracy which followed. It was said that Ram Manohar Lohia mooted the idea, authorizing a congress worker Vithaldas Madhavji Khakar to start a radio station. Khakar’s association with a failed Parsi businessman Nariman Printer, would go on to crystalize this into a workable project.

Nariman Abarbad Printer’s association in the project gave it the impetus, but as we will see, also its eventual downfall, when his past caught up with him. One of the early HAM radio enthusiasts of Bombay, with a callsign VU2FU, Printer hailed from Rawalpindi and was educated in Lahore. He moved to Bombay and started a radio and wireless engineering school in Byculla named Bombay Technical institute, in 1931. Not a very astute businessman, Printer was perennially in debt and always getting into trouble with authorities, frequently accused of fraudulent practices such as cheating his students. In 1937, he went to England with five students, to study television and purchase a unit, with an intent to get back and install the first transmitter in India to broadcast films and music, but returned the next year without having made much progress. He had hoped to organize a circle of interested people in Bombay and to get them to install receivers, and thus become the first viewers in India. According to the court documents, he purchased a radio transmitter and was licensed in 1938, after his return. But when the WW II commenced in 1939, all licenses were cancelled.

Printer did not surrender his set, but hid the parts for the future and instead started a new business with Khakar and RA Mehta, to manufacture and sell Kerogas equipment (a retrofit unit to run cars on Kerosene). This business also ran into trouble when the government banned the use of Kerogas, due to Kerosene shortage. Printer, never short of ideas now decided to make Hydrogas units from Calcium carbide. During the next three years, his expenses skyrocketed, he borrowed heavily from his partners, reaching nowhere and racking up a Rs 60,000 debt. By July 1942, Khakar and Mehta were fed up and took over his offices at Noble chambers and decided to disassociate themselves from Printer’s ventures.

It was after the arrest of the congress leaders on 8th August that Khakar (presumably goaded by Lohia) approached Printer and asked him to build a transmitter for Congress, with the parts he had hidden. With additional parts purchased from NG Motwane at Chicago radio, Printer reassembled the radio at his home. Seeing the heavy risk in their venture, Printer asked his partners to find a proper venue for the transmissions, and on the 29th August, they rented a top floor flat in ‘Seaview’, Chowpatty. The congress bulletin of 3rd Sept announced that transmissions would commence on Sept 3rd, at 845PM, on 41.78 meters. This was when a young 22-year-old Usha Mehta joined the gang and started to prepare the material for transmission with Khakar. The radio actually went on air on Aug 27th, 1942.

Printer as you can imagine, was the technical brain and he sensed that the authorities would start tracking the station and try to shut it down. He suggested that they move quickly and after a fortnight at Chowpatty, they moved to Ratan Mahal in Walkeshwar Rd.

The transmitter continued to be relocated, and on Sept 25^th, it was moved to Ajit Villa at Laburnum Rd (this was RA Mehta’s home) and from there on Oct 4^th to Laxmi Bhavan at Sandhurst Rd. The team soon figured out that live transmissions through a microphone were not as good as recorded ones evidenced by the opening and closing music records. At that point, they decided to create home cut records of programs and play them on the phonograph. Vithaldas Jhaveri procured a record cutting machine from Chicago radio and it was at his home that Khakar and Usha Mehta recorded and cut the transmission discs.

Khakar was just a 4^th standard English pass, and worked for his father in the tile business until he teamed up with NA Printer. He was possibly supported and financed by Ram Manohar Lohia in this Radio enterprise and was one of the chief arrangers and voices on the radio. Usha Mehta, a spinster, was more literate, she had completed her BA and LLB by 1939, a Fulbright scholarship in US and was articulate in Hindi as well. An ardent congress worker, she was Khakar’s fearless lieutenant and the chief broadcaster. The two others in the team were Vithaldas and Chandrakant Jhaveri, the former a wealthy congress worker, the latter also a wealthy jeweler and had been previously associated with Khaker and Mehta. The gang as you can see was all Gujrati, save for Printer a Parsi and Motwane (only tangentially connected as a supplier of equipment), a Sindhi. Many others such as Thakur the radio engineer, Jagannath, Misra, RA Mehta, Tanna and so on were briefly involved, we will get to hear of them later in the story.

As Printer guessed, the police were on to them quite early, in fact the same day as the transmission started. Their task was to find the illegal radio, shut it down and nip it all in the bud. Fergusson and Khokje (CID War Branch) headed the team, while police stenographers typed out each of the transmissions. Fergusson drove around with his radio receiver tuned to the Congress radio frequency after noting the fixed transmission times, working together with the RDF lorries, trying to triangulate the signal. Fergusson eventually deduced that the transmitter was between Chowpatty and CP Tank, and with this intelligence, the police placed a watch on another amateur radio enthusiast, BM Tanna (He had been arrested previously in 1940 for broadcasting about cotton futures) as well as the officers of Chicago radio who could easily assemble such a transmitter.

Remember that the airwaves were not so crowded in those days and even though these broadcasts of that lowly 10W unit were picked up as far as Burma, complaints of poor quality made the team think of increasing the units’ power. Printer offered to get it up to 100W and again, the suppliers as you can imagine were Motwane’s Chicago radio, but his officers were careful in making sure that the company’s name was removed from the components. The Blailey crystal unit was changed and the transmissions were now at the 42.34-meter band.

I guess finances were not a big problem and the gang moved again, this time to Parekh Wadi in Girgaum, renting 4 rooms and transmitting from room 106. Simultaneously they decided to assemble a second unit to transmit in English at 39 meters from the Paradise Bungalow in Mahalakshmi. I am sure they knew the police were closing in, but the desire to be the do or die warriors for Gandhiji and the Congress had already lit the fire in their bellies. These radio warriors were at war and cared not of any consequences.

The topics broadcast covered news as well as many other issues, in Hindi and English, read mostly by Khekar and Usha Mehta, though other announcers including a mysterious Parsi lady are mentioned. They read about the anarchist rule of the British, Gandhiji’s teachings and opinion, death and destruction in the global war, the plight of Indian Muslims, Japanese submarine attacks on shipping in the Arabian sea, arrests and picketing, appeals to stop supporting the railway, stop factory work, not visit cinemas, inflation, Nazi evil, goondagiri, life in the villages, hartals, suspended policemen, false propaganda, the declaration of independence by Abdul Ghaffar Khan, rapes by soldiers, and what not. Speeches by leaders such as Sardar Patel and many others were aired. A look at the subjects will tell you what a small but determined group, can achieve!

They covered the South as well, such as the mishap of a warship near Calicut, of American soldiers being washed ashore there, torpedoed by a Japanese sub, the shameful acts of Sir CP, crowded Travancore and Cochin jails, even some funny news like the British arrest of donkeys in Delhi ( the donkeys were supposed to represent the Viceregal executive council) and the owner, who represented the Viceroy.

How did Fergusson close in? Neither the RDF lorries nor Fergusson’s monitoring of the broadcast led them to the final location of the Congress radio. It was all purportedly due to the involvement of BM Tanna, the only other amateur broadcaster in Bombay, who was trying to make a second radio for the Congress. Tanna ran a company named Tanna Radio Acoustics, and the radio engineer who was working on it reported the matter to the military police. The police allowed the assembly to go on, and accosted the persons who came to take delivery of the set on 31st Oct 1942. The Tanna brothers were quickly arrested, so also Nihalchand Shah, the manager of Chicago Radio.

On Nov 11th Nihalchand’s interrogation let to the apprehension of Chicago radio’s chief engineer Jagannath Thakur, who by the way was also the person who maintained the Printer made Congress transmitter and helped cut the records and now working on assembling a new and powerful set for Tanna. Thakur spilled the beans and within no time, Khaker, Jhaveri and Printer were arrested on 12th. Printer led the police to Parekh Wadi and they closed in in room 106.

What happened next is crucial and takes us in different directions, if you think independently from the presiding Judge’s conclusions. As things went, the 845 PM transmission was concluding when the police burst into the room. In the room, they found Usha Mehta and Chandrakant Jhaveri transmitting. At that juncture, the fuse blew and the Pancha who were there to make the nama concluded their work summarily with some kerosene lamps. Room 106 was sealed and Mehta and Jhaveri were taken to the CID office.

The next day, the police again went to Room 106, photographed everything, made notes about the transmitter (now with radio experts Mistry & Majumdar), the Phillips check radio, 120 records and bedrolls. Following all this Vithaldas Jhaveri was arrested on 13th and NG Motwane on 18th. The second unit under assembly was also seized on 19th at Walkeshwar. Experts concluded that the handwritten labels on the records were in Khaker’s handwriting. Inspector Khokje then raided the offices of Chicago Radio, and VG Motwane, Nanak Motwane’s brother was also arrested, but released soon after.

A case was subsequently registered on IPC 120B against Khakar, Usha Mehta, the two Jhaveri’s, and Motwane. Printer and RA Mehta took a plea deal and became prosecution witnesses. While all accused pleaded not guilty, Usha Mehta remained mum, and tight lipped. The defense argued at the trial the following year, that it could not be proven that the transmissions took place from the Parekh Wadi transmitter, while Khokje insisted that the Vande Mataram was being played as they entered. Fergusson who was monitoring the broadcast said that the transmission went off air just after Hindustan Hamara was played. The prosecution maintained that Fergusson was mistaken.

The judge concluded that Khokje was in error since the panchnama and the photographs do not show the needle on the Vande Mataram record nor does any other mention show that record was on play and that the fuse must have blown well before the police arrived on the scene. A long discussion then transpired on the frequency of the transmission, and the conclusions (from the case record) of a technical nature, can be termed as poorly arrived at by a team of non-technical people. Anyway, the judge established that there was no second set on the basis that no further transmissions were heard for another three months. In Feb 1943, a lone transmission came on air and then that station also ceased transmissions. Another clinching aspect was the presence of the 120 hand cut records and that 35 of them had recordings which matched the transcripts made by the police, earlier.

There is another angle readers must now take note of, which is the contention that the British initially felt a 5th column was at work, that this radio was to support a Japanese invasion, but as the investigation continued they agreed that this radio was purely an effort to spread the congress manifesto and inform the masses of events, sans censorship.

Printer’s dealings were discussed in more detail since it was key to the prosecution’s case and the general conclusion was that he was an unscrupulous man, who not only cheated students and other creditors, he also tried to cheat Khekar and the radio gang by making false claims about hardware, crystals, radio power and what not, to embezzle more money from them. But his evidence stood up to scrutiny and matched material evidence. RA Mehta the other witness insisted that he was a reluctant party in this whole endeavor and that Printer forced him all the way to be the front man in renting all the homes and rooms which were used for the project.

To sum it, it was determined in March 1943 by Justice Lokur that Khekar actively formed the conspiracy, and Mehta and Jhaveri were of course, caught red handed. Motwane’s direct connection to the conspiracy and his company’s involvement in supplying the active part of the transmitter – the Bliely crystal for the transmitter in question, could not be established and so was acquitted. Vithaldas Jhaveri and NG Motwane were also acquitted, Khekar was sentenced to 5 years rigorous imprisonment, Usha Mehta for four years and Chandrakant Jhaveri for one year. The judge expressed regret that he could not convict Printer, Mirza and RA Mehta, but then again, they had secured a plea deal, so there was nothing he could do.

Although the Secret Congress Radio functioned only for  a short three months, it disseminated news and information otherwise banned by the British-controlled Indian government of India and kept the leaders of the freedom movement in touch with the public.

Printer simply vanished from the scene after the event, the tight Pari community closed their ranks around their man, I suppose. His expired call sign, VU2FU, was re-issued to a different Indian amateur operator after the war.

Bob Tanna VU2LK, the other radio HAM, whose role was so critical in this whole radio case, as it was known then, continued with his radio work and recalled his involvement in the Congress radio affair, but differently. He was imprisoned for 9 months after severe torture, and was officially recognized as a freedom fighter, Tanna passed away in 2011. Some documents mention that Vithalbhai was the person behind the second radio being assembled.

Usha Mehta’s role is particularly heat warming, her father was a judge at that time, and she enjoyed the action and her role in the whole affair even though her incarceration was not good for her poor health.  She remained in the jail till April 1946. After her release in 1946 she took to teaching and later obtained a doctorate on “Social and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi”. Her actions on the day she was arrested is testimony to her determination and courage- That afternoon as Khekar’s office was raided, he implored Usha to shut down and escape. But she rushed to Vithalbhai who was busy recording the day’s program. She decided to continue herself with the broadcast, on schedule. She then went home, informed her mother and brothers about the possibility of a police raid. Despite her protest Chandrakant Jhaveri accompanied her to the transmitting center, also willing to take the risk.

Usha mentioned in a later interview that the fuse was indeed pulled by a technician thus repudiating Fergusson’s testimony – She wryly mentions  - After the Vande Mataram, we were going to announce the raid on the radio when the fuse was pulled off to stop the transmission and there was just darkness, but our friends who were monitoring the broadcast knew of the arrests as they heard the hard knocks on in the transmission. Justice Lokur of Bombay High Court was to compliment Usha Mehta later for her courage of running the radio station from a crowded area of Mumbai for three months and not telling a lie to save herself. Mehta later an acclaimed scholar, continued her commitment to Gandhian activities and Ushaben as she was popularly known, was awarded the Padma Vibhushan and passed away in August 2000.

Vithalbhai K. Jhavari, joined her years later briefly as one of her editors for the birthday volume on Gandhiji. Others such as Khokje and Fergusson continued their work in Bombay police, this was just another case for them. NG Motwane continued to prosper with his Chicago Radio company and became a sole supplier of microphones & loudspeakers to the congress government. His story requires another article which I will get to once I collect some more information. Chicago radio and Blailey electronics still exist and prosper in their respective fields.

The ‘illegal radio’ recordings are available at the Gandhimedia website and those who want to hear some of the transmissions, just need to click on this link. While this story hardly finds a mention in mainstream congress accounts and accounts of Congress leaders at that time, those who possessed a radio receiver in the 40’s would have recalled the voice of that wisp of a woman, a brave voice expressing her rebellion, on the airwaves, softly announcing,

This is Congress radio calling from somewhere in India on 42.34 meters…

And as I wrote all this, I fondly recalled college days in the late 70’s when with the help of a friend Chilprakash, I had built a little AM transmitter to broadcast a bit of this and that, in the campus.

Those were the days…

References

Secret Congress Broadcasts and Storming railway tracks – S Sengupta, G Chatterjee

The Mahatma’s Hams – Owen Williamson

Notes

Some additional information added  for completeness (Source - Quite India Revolution – KK Chaudhari)

Lohia was indeed the person behind the scheme, per his admission after his 1944 arrest. Money for the radios was collected from wealthy businessmen. He and his cohorts tried to install radios in Calcutta, Delhi, Kanpur, Madras, and Nepal, but these projects did not work out. The Calcutta radio could not get activated because they could not find a battery for it, locally!

Usha Mehta apparently tried to set up a radio station on her own, before all this, but it was destroyed in a fire.

Many more radios were being fabricated with parts from Chicago Radio and after the capture of the Congress radio, the second station went on air in Jan 1943 but ceased transmitting in March 43. Another radio appeared in 1944, but also disappeared after a short stint.

The reason why many people listened to these illicit broadcasts was due to the fact that the Colonial radio waves had become quite untrustworthy. Azad Radio from Saigon, Berlin and Tokyo had already started in full strength, but was more aligned to Axis strategy. I will cover the Colonial propaganda efforts in a separate article

Radio pic – courtesy Doordarshan video interview

Listen to the Radio broadcasts