“This is the Congress Radio calling on 42.34 meters from somewhere in India,' Usha Mehta's voice rang bold and clear to the entire country on a ghost transmitter. These words would come to echo across in 1942 during the Quit India struggle. It was August 1942. The Quit India Movement had just been launched at the Bombay session of the All-India Congress Committee by Mahatma Gandhi. Inspired by his rallying cry, the twenty-two-year-old student of Wilson College Usha Mehta stumbled upon the idea to start an underground radio station to cut through the imperial din of the government's mouthpiece, the All India Radio. Nanik Motwane, the owner of Chicago Radio who was providing the PA system in the INC meetings helped to set up the radio station.
Dr. Usha Mehta, popularly known as Ushaben, is well known for organizing the Congress Radio. It was on 14 August 1942, that Usha and some of her close associates began the Secret Congress Radio, a clandestine radio station that went on air on 27 August 1942. The radio broadcasted recorded messages from Gandhiji, nationalistic songs, and stirring speeches by revolutionaries and other eminent leaders from across India. It also broadcasted news in English and Hindi. To the credit of Congress Radio, it was the first one to break in news on the Chittagong bomb raid, Jamshedpur strike, the parallel government in Ballia, atrocities in Nagpur, Monghyr, Ashti, Chimur, Cuttack, Dhenkanal, brutalities in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and repression of Khudai Khidmatgars. In addition, it exhorted the people to stop working in factories and railways. Always it used to commence with the song “Hindustan Hamara” and close with “ Vande Mataram”.
The nationalist workers, volunteers, and special messengers would collect the news from all over India and pass them on to leaders like Ram Manohar Lohia, and Sucheta Kripalani. The Records were carried from the Recording Station by Bipin Inamdar and Ravindra Mehta.
To avoid being detected by the authorities the organizers kept shifting the station’s location at least 7-8 times. Though the underground radio station functioned only for two and half months, it raised awareness about the 1942 Quit India Movement by spreading uncensored news and other information banned by the British authorities.
However, things did not go according to plan, and the police traced them on 12 November 1942. The organizers, including Usha Mehta and Nanik Motwane, were arrested. Though the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Indian Police interrogated her relentlessly for six months, she did not speak a word during her trial, not even to save herself. She was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and jailed at the Yeravda Jail in Pune. While in jail, her health deteriorated, and she was admitted to the J J Hospital. She was kept under guard while in the hospital, as the authorities felt she would attempt to escape from there.
In March 1946, she became the first political prisoner to be released in Bombay on the orders of Morarji Desai, who was the Home Minister in the interim government.
Source: Book Congress Radio, Usha Mehta and the Underground Radio Station of 1942 by Usha Thakkar, 2022.