South Asia
A selection of interviews and recordings conducted across South Asia which supplement the separate categories of Partition Voices and Communist Voices and separately posted radio features and documentaries..
The TULF leader Appapillai Amirthalingam, Colombo, 1986
I interviewed Appapillai Amirthalingam, the leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front, in Colombo in July 1986, at the conclusion of two weeks of talks between his party - then based in Madras - and the Sri Lankan government. The main issue was the prospect of devolving power to the Tamil-dominated north and east of the island.
Mr Amirthalingam was assassinated in Colombo three years later by the Tamil Tigers.
RSS activists celebrating the unbanning of the organisation, 1993
In June 1993, six months almost to the day after the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya, the ban on the RSS - the parent organisation of the Hindutva movement - was lifted. I went round to the RSS's Delhi HQ and managed to record activists chanting in celebration of the lifting of the restrictions. It's a short clip - about thirty seconds - but powerful.
Chants during ritual washing at Pir Dastgir shrine Srinagar, 1993
I recorded this very powerful and resonant chanting on my first visit to the Kashmir Valley in, I think, June 1993. The floor of the mosque was being ritually washed and cleansed after the killing of three young Kashmiris. They were being pursued by Indian security forces and ran into the shrine where - I was told - they were killed.
Naxalite songs in Bihar
I recorded these songs in the village of Nadiawiani in the Jahanabad district of Bihar. The photograph below was taken in the same village at the same time.
George Fernandes speaking admiringly of Naxalites in Bihar
George Fernandes (1930-2019) was at the time of this interview a leader of the Janata Dal, which was the governing party in the North Indian state of Bihar. He was a prominent socialist and trade unionist and opponent of Indira Gandhi's Emergency. Later he became India's defence minister in a BJP-led government. In this interview he describes Naxalites as 'the salt of the earth, the 'bravest of the brave and 'the best human material' that India has - though he makes clear his disapproval of violence.
The BJP's Atal Bihari Vajpayee, 1994 and 1996
Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924-2018) was India's first BJP prime minister and - with L.K. Advani - presided over the the BJP's development from a fringe movement to a party of government. I first interviewed him in Baroda in 1994 when he was attending a meeting of the BJP's national council. I also interviewed him during his very brief first term as prime minister in May 1996. I haven't found that audio but I have come across a recording of Vajpayee's address to the nation as prime minister on 19th May 1996. It's in English - he spoke earlier in the same broadcast in Hindi - and the audio was dubbed from a feed and is slightly distorted though it's clear what he's saying.