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A lot has changed since 1974.
Richard Nixon resigned as president. The US adopted the 55 mile an hour speed limit. The Sears Tower in Chicago was brand new.
But some things remain the same. To wit, Dev Joshi is still on the air at WRSU, hosting “Glimpses of India,” a look at news and music shaped by Indian culture.
As WRSU transitioned in 1974 from an AM carrier current station – heard only on campus – to an FM signal that could be heard in a 30-mile radius from New Brunswick, programming included a Sunday block of “ethnic programs” hosted by community members like Joshi. Many, like “Voice of Ireland,” “The Israel Hour” and Joshi’s own show, remain, though many hosts have come in and out of the doors over the years.
Joshi, though, remains.
On that very first show, he read news he gathered from the New York Times about what was going on in India. There were few other outlets that featured such news, and of course, there was no social media, nor any websites with news from back home.
There also was not the large Indian population in Central Jersey that exists today. “Piscataway was the big thing,” Joshi says, adding “it was the students coming in from India.” Many of them stayed, had families, and spread throughout Middlesex County and beyond.
In addition to the news, Joshi asked people their favorite songs on that first show, and played them; he got “a few calls,” but he also had some Rutgers students working with him at the time. Word spread, and the Indian community, which had no place else to hear about their country, started tuning their radios to 88.7 FM in droves.
Fast forward 50 years, and Joshi is a bit older, of course, and his show is no longer on at 7 am. Now, it’s heard Sundays from 3-5 pm not only on the FM dial, but also streaming online, so people can hear “Glimpses of India” around the world.
On Friday, September 27th, Joshi will be celebrating with an invitation-only dinner and event at Crown of India in Plainsboro. And they’ll be spinning some of the tunes that were popular on his debut show in 1974.
Click below to hear “Glimpses of India” host Dev Joshi talk with WRSU General Manager Johannes Stoeber about his 50-year run on WRSU, including the show’s humble beginnings, and how it’s grown in popularity with students and the larger Indian community in Central Jersey:
