BBC South Asian Broadcasts Help Leeds Migrants Settle

In the late 1960s the BBC launched a series of radio and television programmes aimed at the new South Asian community in Britain. Early shows such as ‘Apna Hi Ghar Samajhiye’, ‘Look, Listen and Speak’ and the weekend magazine ‘Nai Zindagi Naya Jeevan’ offered English lessons, practical advice and popular Hindi music. Migrants in West Yorkshire – including 17‑year‑old Nirmala Rani, who arrived in Leeds’s Hyde Park in 1979, and Krishna Devi, who settled in Harehills in 1967 – say the broadcasts reduced loneliness, helped them learn the language and created family rituals around Sunday television. Sixty years on, three generations recall how the programmes shaped their integration into British life.