Godly radio at ungodly hours in Delhi

India is a Hindu country. Either that or only Hindus in India wake up early – take your pick.  

If you are not a Hindu, and you are living in the National Capital Region, and you wake up at 6am and tune into an FM Radio station, the chances are that all you would hear would be paeans to Hari, Ram, Kishen, Gopal and a few other names from the Hindu pantheon. Though, I must confess, I did hear one Western music only channel sticking to their brand of music, but that might be because not many paeans to Hindu deities have probably been recorded in that particular genre. Once or twice I also did hear a Sikh devotional song being played out.

Channel after FM channel, that you swop; it is the same in the morning. The radio bosses must have decided that this is the formula to follow because what can be more soothing than to hear bhajans as you make breakfast or go jogging or have an early morning shift or you are simply getting the kids ready for school.

There is no consideration in these times for the non-majority. If you are part of the mob that's good for you, if you are an aberration, there is no place to fit in. It is no longer the lowest common denominator, however un-cool that might have been, but the largest common denominator that calls the shots. You cannot go wrong, if you pander to the likes and dislikes of the maximum number of people.  My guess would be that some 60 to 70 per cent of the population in the NCR region would be Hindu, so play Hindu devotional songs in the morning. I see the logic to that - why alienate 70 out of every 100 people when you can get by, by running the risk of alienating every 30.

But I do have few contentions to this fine line of logic. Firstly why is All India Radio, with FM Gold and FM Rainbow, towing this line of religious programming? Last heard India was still a secular country, though that might just be a smokescreen, so how come a Public Broadcaster is propagating Religion? The private channels are privately funded and may reflect their owner's biases but what bias does AIR have? I was speaking to friend in radio of mine who did say that their licence had a clause that said not to air anything which would hurt religious sentiments. Hmmm! Need to think about that a bit - does it hurt ones religious sentiments to hear devotional songs about someone else's gods? (Though I know what the answer will be to that one - if one is not bad mouthing your god and good mouthing another god that is not hurtful to someone whose gods are being ignored.)

Secondly, and this concerns all the FM Radio channels, if through out the day you play "love songs", as we tend to call romantic numbers, why don't we get to hear them early in the morning? Is romance banned in the morning or does it go against Indian sensibilities? Is it that Indians are allowed to hear songs about wispy hair covering eyes and throbbing hearts beating in unison, short skirts and sexy figures making muscled hunks swoon or six bottles of vodka sung in a honeyed tone, only during the day but if you hear them early in the morning it would be profane? Is there a fixed time for romance then? Or is it like downing a peg... there is a certain start time after which it may be considered respectable?

Thirdly, and this is particularly relevant to AIR's FM Gold channel broadcast on 106.4 MHz, in my experience, a larger percentage of those who send in their views and comments via SMS do not have Hindu names. There are some names, from places as diverse as Bazaar Sitaram and Upper Kote Bulandshahar, who are so regular that their names are read out on almost every show. If we take this as a fair sampling then the majority of the more interactive listeners are not Hindu. What do they do early in the morning? Do they too tune in to listen to Hindu devotional music or is it to be understood, that since they are not Hindu FM Radio listeners, they would be asleep at that time anyways?

This brings me back to my first premise (based entirely on experiences gathered in the National Capital Region) that despite what I have always been led to believe - India is a Hindu country. Either that or only Hindus in India wake up early - take your pick.