A century of Pashto, Hindku music lost

Torching Radio Pakistan building reduced historic records to ashes

PESHAWAR:

The historic building of the Radio Pakistan Peshawar has been left completely destroyed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) rioters and with it nearly a century of Pashto music and rare audio records are also gone forever. Radio Pakistan Peshawar station was the oldest in Pakistan, opening in 1935.

When Abdul Qayyum Khan, the former chief minister of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) [now named KhyberPakhtunkhwa], went to London to attend the Round Table Conference of 1930-1932, he met Marconi, the inventor of the wireless telegraph, and requested him to donate a radio transmitter for NWFP. Soon after the gift from Marconi company arrived, the transmitter, personally engineered by Marconi, was installed in Peshawar and inaugurated by Sir Ralph Edwin Hotchkin Griffith, the Governor of NWFP in 1935. The PTI protesters on Wednesday entered the main building of the Radio Pakistan Peshawar after breaking the main gate of the station.

The violent mob torched everything coming their way, including the invaluable archives containing the voices of the many popular leaders of Pakistan, poets and singers. Talking to The Express Tribune, the station director said nearly a century of Pashto, Hindku and other regional music, drama and speeches as well shows had been destroyed by the PTI mob which is an irreparable loss for the Pashto and Hindku speaking community living across the globe. I never saw such an extreme violence and protest as nothing is left behind, he said. “ R a d i o P a k i s t a n Peshawar was like our home as it was historical building and it was the first radio station which aired the announcement of Pakistan’s coming into being,” he added. He further said that not only the building but the vehicles and other precious equipment were also torched, reducing them to ashes.