JNA Wireless Association

Lore & Background

The JNA Wireless Association was formed in 1988 after the death of Jamshed N. Anklesaria, who suffered a heart attack in 1987. Anklesaria, a bachelor, had invested much of his time in amateur radio and radio equipment. Following his death, his brother requested that the equipment not be sold off but instead be used to perpetuate Jamshed's memory. Sudhir Shah, along with P Venkatraman and a few others, then started the JNA Wireless Association using the donated equipment.

The organization has conducted amateur radio classes in Mumbai for over ten years. After a brief lull, classes restarted in 2008 with two batches held at Malabar Hill and Vile Parle. JNA also maintains its own dedicated 70-member scrambler team with a long history in disaster management. In 1993, JNA set up the first communication station at Killari, the epicenter of the 1993 Latur earthquake that killed 8,000 people. Headed by Sudhir Shah, JNA provided live communication between Killari and the state headquarters at Mantralaya in Mumbai, broadcasting messages about the extent of damage and other life-saving information.

In 2008, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) included JNA as part of its disaster management operations to provide emergency communication support during the monsoons. Five stations were set up at Nana Chowk, Milan Subway, Kalina, Santacruz, and Chembur, linked to the main control centre at the BMC headquarters at Fort. An additional station, staffed by Shah, was set up at Malabar Hill with the help of the Malabar Hill Residents Association.

Reader's Guide

The JNA Wireless Association's significance lies in its dual role as an educational body and a practical emergency communications resource. By conducting amateur radio classes in Mumbai for over a decade, it has trained new operators and sustained interest in the hobby. Its restart of classes in 2008 at Malabar Hill and Vile Parle demonstrates ongoing commitment to education. More notably, the organization's disaster management work has had tangible impact. During the 1993 Latur earthquake, JNA established the first communication station at the epicenter, providing a vital link between the devastated area and state authorities in Mumbai. This allowed for the relay of damage assessments and life-saving messages when other infrastructure was compromised. The inclusion of JNA by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in 2008 for monsoon emergency communications formalized its role in urban disaster preparedness. The network of five stations across Mumbai, plus an additional station at Malabar Hill, created a dedicated communication system for real-time flood updates. The organization's legacy is thus one of combining amateur radio enthusiasm with civic responsibility, using donated equipment to build a lasting capability that serves both the amateur radio community and the broader public in times of crisis.

Did You Know?

• JNA Wireless Association was founded in 1988 using radio equipment donated by the brother of Jamshed N. Anklesaria.
• In 2008, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation included JNA in its disaster management operations for monsoon flooding.
• JNA's dedicated scrambler team has 70 members.

Pioneers of the Airwaves: India's First Ham Operators

The story of amateur radio in India begins in 1921, when Amarendra Chandra Gooptu received the country's very first licence under the callsign 2JK. Within the same year, Mukul Bose (2HQ) earned his certification, and together they established the first two-way ham radio link on Indian soil. By 1923, roughly twenty British operators were active in the subcontinent, and the community remained small and largely colonial in character well into the 1930s. A notable milestone came in 1929, when the three-letter call-sign system was retired in favour of the VU prefix that still identifies Indian stations today. In 1935, E P Metcalfe, then vice-chancellor of Mysore University, erected VU6AH, the nation's first short-wave entertainment and public broadcasting station. Yet the total pool of licensed operators never exceeded fifty in the mid-1930s, and the majority were British army officers rather than Indian citizens, underscoring how nascent and exclusive the hobby still was at that stage of its development.

Congress Radio and the Fight for Freedom

World War II transformed amateur radio in India from a leisure pursuit into a tool of resistance. In 1939 the British authorities halted all new licence issuances and ordered every operator to hand over transmitting gear to the police, citing wartime security and the threat of Axis espionage. Despite these restrictions, ham operator Nariman Abarbad Printer (VU2FU) clandestinely launched the Azad Hind Radio, broadcasting Gandhian protest music and uncensored news before being swiftly arrested and stripped of his equipment. The situation escalated in August 1942 when Mahatma Gandhi called for the Quit India Movement. Indian National Congress leaders, including Usha Mehta, turned to Mumbai-based hams Bob Tanna (VU2LK) and Printer to build a covert broadcast network. The resulting Congress Radio went on air on 2 September 1942 at 7.12 MHz, relaying messages to grassroots workers nationwide and even reaching listeners in Japanese-occupied Myanmar. By November of that year, Tanna was betrayed by an unidentified radio officer, and the station was forced to go dark.

From Valve Sets to a National Community

After the war, temporary licences resumed in 1946, and by 1948 India counted fifty operators, though only about a dozen were truly active. That same year the Amateur Radio Club of India was founded at the School of Signals in Mhow, later relocating to New Delhi and rebranding as the Amateur Radio Society of India in 1954, becoming the country's representative to the International Amateur Radio Union. Growth remained glacial for two decades; by 1970 fewer than a thousand hams held licences, relying on valve-based gear scavenged from army surplus and communicating primarily in Morse code and amplitude modulation. A gradual shift to single sideband arrived in the mid-1960s. The true inflection point came in 1984, when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, himself a licensed operator (VU2RG), eliminated the import duty on wireless equipment. The effect was immediate: the operator count climbed from roughly 1,500 in 1980 to ten thousand by 2000 and beyond seventeen thousand by 2007, all regulated by the Wireless and Planning and Coordination Wing, which handles licensing, examinations, call-sign assignment, and spectrum monitoring.

When the Grid Fails: Hams in Crisis and the HAMSAT Era

Amateur radio operators in India have repeatedly become the last functioning communication link when infrastructure collapses. During the 1991 Gulf War, a single Indian ham stationed in Kuwait served as the sole channel connecting stranded compatriots with their families back home. In the aftermath of both the 1993 Latur and 2001 Gujarat earthquakes, the central government dispatched teams of hams to the epicentres to restore vital communication links. Perhaps the most dramatic episode came in December 2004, when a group of operators on a DX-pedition in the Andaman Islands watched the Indian Ocean tsunami destroy every conventional line; they then relayed live updates and messages to stations worldwide, becoming the only working voice from the islands. In 2005, India entered a new chapter by launching HAMSAT, an amateur radio microsatellite carried as an auxiliary payload on ISRO's PSLV-6 rocket, making the nation one of a select few to place a ham satellite in orbit. Beyond emergencies, the community sustains itself through daily ham nets, the annual Hamfest India, and regular DX contests that keep operators connected across the globe.