Comment by SanjayMehta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SanjayMehta | Hacker News Reader

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Nothing unusual.

Since 1947, every Prime Minister has found some way to censor and ban whatever they don't like.

The first PM - Jawahar Lal Nehru - banned a certain musical instrument from state radio as he personally disliked it. He also introduced the 1st amendment to our constitution which ironically is the exact opposite of the US 1st amendment. Ours allows the government to ban any speech!

This was because someone wrote an article critical of him personally.

His daughter, Indira Gandhi (no relation to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi better known as "Mahatma Gandhi"), took this to another level, introducing drastic censorship during an "Emergency" which was triggered by her election being nullified by a court.

So, all this is pretty much par for the course.

> The first PM - Jawahar Lal Nehru - banned a certain musical instrument from state radio as he personally disliked it.

That is false. It was rather yet another colonial endeavour:

"In 1940, the harmonium was banned from All-India Radio, theretofore the largest single employer of harmoniumists in India. John Foulds, a prolific composer and the European music director of All-India Radio, Delhi, was largely responsible for this ban. [...] In 1938 Foulds published an article called “The Harmonium” in which he suggested that it be banned because its tuning was incompatible with Indian classical music. Echoing a term coined by fellow theosophist Margaret Cousins, he called it the “Harm-Onium” in this article. But more significantly, he called it “un-Indian.” Shortly afterward, Lionel Fielden, the Controller of Broadcasting at the time, sent out a circular banning the use of the harmonium as an accompanying or solo instrument in Indian classical music broadcasts." (Matt Rahaim (2011). That Ban(e) of Indian Music: Hearing Politics in The Harmonium. The Journal of Asian Studies, 70, p. 673)

Interesting. I first heard about the ban from a tabla player in the mid 80s and took it at face value. I couldn't remember which instrument.

I see the paper has quotes from Nehru which aren't exactly supportive of the instrument, so I guess that's why most people still associate him with the ban.

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