World Radio Day: Remembering Saeeda Bano, India’s First Woman Broadcaster Who Was Truly ‘Dagar se Hat Kar’

Saeeda Bano was the first woman of free India to become a broadcaster. Here is a look at her life where living away from the conventions was her way and how.

One shop, one house, and a few cots surrounded the place that had a radio. One of the earliest forms of broadcast, radio has matched frequencies with all of us. From news to music, it got it covered. Every year February 13 is celebrated as World Radio Day. Today, let us look back to the journey of the first female voice n the radio of an independent India. Saeeda Bano was the first woman of Free India to become a broadcaster. Bano has always associated herself as the one who chose the untrodden paths because convention was not her conviction.

Meet Saeeda Bano, First Women Broadcaster of Free India

Born in Bhopal, she completed her education in Lucknow and reportedly was more interested in playing sports than academic learning. Later, in 1993, she was married off to an affluent Judge ifrom Lucknow against her will. She was just 19, when she wrote a four-page letter desisting the proposal, but to no avail.

Bano, in her memeoir. ‘Dagar se Hat Kar’, recorded how the conventional traditions of Nawab rule in Lucknow suffocated her. Incorporating the line of Ghalib, she expressed,” Phir waza e ahteyat se …. rukne laga hai dum. . “( I am so consumed with the anxiety of being discreet, I feel suffocated.)

One day, Bano gathered the courage to step out from the confined walls of Lucknow and her marriage. She sent her elder son to boarding school and came to Delhi with her younger son. She first addressed the nation via All India Radio as she read the Urud News Bulletin.

After becoming the voice of All India Radio, Bano wrote how the Statesman also published a few words in her praise. Post her debut, her acclaimed voice received several shows. Eventually, she grew. She made the ladder to her success and went on to become the producer of a five-minute show called Deli-Suni.

While Bano was writing history, some people just could not fathom it. On one side she received offers from multiple suitors, on the other hand, people threatened her to go to Pakistan. Being a single Muslim woman just after partition entailed her own misery. Saeeda Bano retired as a news reader in 1965 but that wa snot the end. even in her 70s, she worked a s a producer for AIR’s Urdu service. In 2001, the curtains drew over her skills.

Her memoir was translated by her granddaughter Shahana Raza as ‘Off the Beat Track: The Story of My Unconventional Life.’ It is a documentation of her inspiring story that tells us how she was her own person. She defied odds at a time when women struggled for dignity. It was of brave women like hers that today so many others can live a life without fear.