Educational Imperialism: Phantom India and The Non-Aligned Movement’s New World Information Order, 1969-1980

Abstract

This article explores how the BBC’s new educational format, the BBC-2 docu-series, became consequential to global politics in the “long” 1970s. While educational television in the U.S. has long been an issue of contention among liberal and conservative political factions, European educational television was often understood by European legislators and media scholars as central to public broadcasting. This paper challenges such assumptions by uncovering 1970s debates over media ownership. In June 1970, the BBC showcased its new documentary series, <em>Phantom India</em> to much disapproval from the Indian state and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). In response to the <em>Phantom India</em> affair, the NAM established its Commission for Broadcasting in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in 1976. And yet, this article shows how ideological inconsistencies between Yugoslav broadcasting and its foreign policy undermined the NAM’s efforts to truly challenge Western media hegemony. Through close textual analysis and archival research, I offer a new understanding of educational television in the 1970s as a battleground for political and cultural dominance in the, then, faltering liberal world-system.