Who is Giachand Motwane?

This article originally appeared on my blog http://lifeofpradeep.wordpress.com. I recovered the post using Wayback Machine.

I usually link to Wikipedia articles when I mention things that many people outside of a certain region/religion/group might not know about. Yesterday, while writing the article about my listening to the radio, I tried to connect to the article on All India Radio 107.1 FM channel. However, the article was not helpful and did not make any sense connecting to.

It did not make any sense because the page was for AIR FM Rainbow which is what AIR has named its FM stations that are broadcast to 12 metros in India and did not have anything unique on the Mumbai transmission.

Being a Wikipedian, I wanted to fix this. I hence went back to the page on All India Radio and read it up. That seemed in much better shape. Most of the information seemed link to a bunch of documents that All India Radio had put up on its website – interestingly, in Hindi and English. Reading up on history, I found out that Radio Club of Bombay was credited with the broadcast of the first programme in India in June 1923. Being from Mumbai, my interest was piqued.

There is no Wikipedia page on the Radio Club, nor is there much scholarly work written about this broadcast except by one Dr. Alisdair Pinkerton from the Department of Geography of the Royal Holloway from the University of London. The paper (found here), titled, “Radio and the Raj: broadcasting in British India (1920-1940)”, credits Giachand Motwane as the first person who made a recorded radio transmission in India in June 1923. These were apparently made under the call sign, “2-KC”. Unfortunately, Pinkerton states this solely on the basis (or has referenced it so) of the website of a company that Motwane later founded.

I later looked for more information on Radio Club and wondered if it is the same as the social club in South Mumbai called Radio Club. It seems it is. Currently called the Bombay Presidency Radio Club Ltd, it seems to be the same club that did some pioneering work in broadcasting in British India. So, I am still looking for more sourced information on who was Giachand Motwane.