“Let Baigans be Baigans...”
From The Brinjalnama by Bachchoo
In my youth my father constantly told me that I wouldn’t realise it then, but as I matured, experience and the world would bear upon me and I would turn away from the Left-wing, socialistic, even communistic views I held and spouted. This happened, he said, to everyone.
“

I wonder how old Mao Zedong is?” would be my reply.
“You think you are so damned smart, don’t you...” would be the line of his dismissal.
I admit now that there was something in what he said — but not in the political field. I may have digested the fact that there is precious little I can do to translate conviction into political action; that those who have purported to put Left-wing and communistic views into practice have been not only mistaken but have been some of the worst tyrants, despots and murderers of the last century. Who would want to identify with Pol Pot? Was the Cultural Revolution of China really an admirable phase in human history? Are the Indian Communists in power free of the corrupt practices and goonda-gardi of other Indian political parties? Very many apples in the barrel are contaminated and rotten but that doesn’t invalidate “appleness” properly applied. Jai Karl Marx!
What does change as one grows is taste. I can still listen to Elvis, Bob Dylan or Bob Marley on my CD player (No, I haven’t got an iPod!) but have moved on to very different sort of music and it doesn’t include the very popular BBC’s Radio 1 which is “DJed” by jocks with annoying voices and jokes who play music that the juveniles of Britain adore and I can’t seem to find the tunes in.
While driving or at home, wanting to listen to the news, I turn on BBC’s Radio 4. “Turn on” is right because all the radios I use are tuned to the station anyway. Radio 4 has a distinctly upmarket flavour. It doesn’t play music, it’s a talk station and the talk, apart from the news, is comment on current affairs with my favourite programme of the genre being Question Time in which a self-selected cross-sectional audience puts questions to a panel representing all shades of political opinion plus one maverick (Yes, I’ve been invited onto the programme a few times!).
It also reviews the arts every day and runs the extremely enlightening and often challenging Woman’s Hour. It has book extracts and studio contests, comedy and drama.
From this, albeit selective, description you may have gathered that Radio 4 is not the sort of station that would appeal to all ages, classes and levels of engagement.
Now David Liddiment, a member of the BBC Trustees’ Board, urges Radio 4 to become what he sees as more representative, to widen its appeal to include people of a different class and even of the different “races” or cultures that inhabit these islands.
On the face of it this is a solid democratic proposal but actually an absurd and unnecessary one. Radio in the digital age has evolved in a fragmented way. There are hundreds of radio stations in Britain and probably thousands if not millions in the world. The availability of frequencies has spawned a welcome diversity. BBC Radio 1 does pop music. BBC Radio 2 does slightly more middlebrow pop music and might appeal to an older age range. Radio 3 is classical and its programming is often challenging in that it doesn’t give you a limited diet of Tchaikovsky and the pop romantics, but delves into more recondite archive and features experimental and innovative modern stuff. Radio 5 Live does a lot of sport and discussion.
There was a BBC Asian network which has now, through the vaunted need for austerity, been axed. It used to feature among interesting interviews and forums for business chat and political discussion, Bollywood songs, news, reviews and interviews. It also sponsored concerts by South Asian stars such as Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.
None of this list of programmes and categories would sit easily in the schedule of Radio 4. The station would confuse and perhaps even lose its core audience which would be quite bewildered by a review of a Bollywood film following Woman’s Hour or the weekly dramatic episode of The Archers, Radio 4’s long running soap about country folk.
I absolutely understand David Liddiment’s plea for broadening the spectrum. It is the politically correct idea that the man in Dewsbury, who arrived 30 years ago from Mirpur and still speaks no English, because he never needs to, can share the same radio station with the 50-year-old feminist in Bristol, the 70-year-old retired judge who lives in rural Shropshire and the 15-year-old black rap-addict gang-member from Brixton who can speak colloquial English but prefers to spout pseudo-Jamaican. Can’t be done, boss. They each have their own radio stations.
One may go further. Our Dewsbury man will never tune in to “Radio Desidews” (made up name) which plays non-stop Bollywood hits and exchanges anonymous, parent-dodging Valentine’s messages on its public-phone-in hour. The Bristol feminist may be inclined to listen to Radio 3 if she is classically minded, but will probably never listen to “Radio Fantasyjihad” (another fictitious name to protect the innocent) which features religious speeches about women having and knowing their “special” divinely-allocated place in society. The 15-year-old black gang member from Brixton has 300 London pirate stations to choose from. A critical appraisal of the lyrics of “Jhooky Badman” (another made up name) by Solomon Rushperson (err… yet another made up name) wouldn’t induce him to tune in to Radio 4.
As for our retired judge, he probably finds Radio 4 disgustingly infiltrated by Communists and anarchists and can’t handle the technology of the digital radio his grandson bought him anyway.
Very recently Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a speech which was reported as saying, as Nietzsche had done with God, that multiculturalism was dead. Reading his speech, what he and his multiculturally-naive speechwriters actually want to say is that the government shouldn’t fund jihadi groups and individuals who preach hatred against Britain and British values. That’s okay, fine, dandy. Take away my taxpayer money from the namak harams!
If he was indeed saying that multiculturalism was dead, he was grievously mistaken. In evidence, Your Honour, I submit Exhibit A: The thousand radio stations in Britain that have very select audiences. Vive la difference!