India, Dec. 22 -- The earliest radio station in Asia, Radio Ceylon, turned 100 last week. Nearly a decade older than All India Radio (AIR), the Sri Lankan radio service was once the Indian Subcontinent's ears to the world of entertainment as it broadcast in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu besides Sinhala, and found listeners in faraway places. It came to symbolise the soft power of Ceylon/Sri Lanka, but also the commercial genius that recognised the radio's potential as a transnational popular communications platform. In the process, Radio Ceylon mostly managed to sidestep the treacherous political fault lines in the subcontinent and win listeners across languages and nationalities.

For Indians, Radio Ceylon is identified mostly with Binaca Gee...