The origins of Indian cinema and the start of Scouting

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes taking us from India to Texas.

Professor Sunny Singh, author of A Bollywood State of Mind, discusses the origins of Indian cinema in 1912. And we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of Bollywood romance Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.

We also head to Paris in 1971, to the launch of what would become one of the world’s best known humanitarian organisations: Médecins Sans Frontières.

And we learn how Lord Robert Baden-Powell laid the foundations for one of the largest international youth organisations.

Finally, we discover how Bette Graham, a single mum from Texas cooked up the first correction fluid in her kitchen.

Contributors: Kajol, Bollywood actress Professor Sunny Singh, author of A Bollywood State of Mind Asmaou Diallo, mother of a protestor who was killed in the 2009 Guinea rally Dr Xavier Emmanuelli, one of the founders of Medecins San Frontieres

(Photo: Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai. Credit: Indranil Mukherjee AFP via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.3	Right, you feeling ready? I'm feeling ready.
0:10.8	I'm Amal Rajin. Join me on my new podcast for in-depth conversations with pioneers and
0:16.0	innovators, talking about the trends and ideas that could help shape and change our future.
0:21.4	We are going to be digital citizens of this AI world, whether we like it or not.
0:26.2	From declining birth rates to disinformation online, can they solve the world's biggest challenges?
0:32.0	What I would love to do is go to the Chancellor and say radically cut the taxes of those with children.
0:37.3	Radical with me, Amal Rajan.
0:39.3	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:45.2	Hello and welcome to The History Hour from the BBC World Service with me, Max Pearson,
0:50.4	the past brought to life by those who are there.
0:53.3	Our witness history stories this week take us around the world.
0:57.1	From Guinea in West Africa, the 2009 massacre at a political rally.
1:03.7	I called my brothers and sisters to try and get some news because when I was calling
1:09.0	Ali, he wasn't answering.
1:11.5	He knew I wouldn't approve of him being there.
1:14.4	Also, how French doctors came together in the 1970s to form the aid agency MSF,
1:20.6	a 1950s invention which took some of the anxiety out of typing.
1:25.8	And from 1910, the birth of the scouting movement.
1:29.3	After being met by enthusiastic Indian scouts, BP is of course promptly garlanded,
1:33.3	for India invariably says it with flowers. Is there any public figure more sure of a magnificent welcome
1:39.3	wherever he may go than Lord Baden Poe?
	...

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