At midnight August 14, RBC Radio, that reaches about 100,000 families in New York and New Jersey, will start beaming a special 24-hour marathon programme on India's Independence.
Prominent elected officials including governors, senators and Congressmen will greet the Indian community during the course of the day. They will be joined by prominent Indian Americans such as Deepak Chopra and CNN's Dr Sanjay Gupta.
Among the participating officials are Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell, Senators Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, and Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the Democratic nominee for governor of New York, and his opponent, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, will also participate.
Interspersed with the celebrity messages, that are scheduled to last from one minute to 90 seconds, will be patriotic songs by famed playbacks Mukesh, Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar.
The programme will also include a narration of India's freedom struggle, biographies of those who participated in the movement for Independence and a commentary on India's emergence on the world stage.
This is the fourth year of the programme. Previous participants included Eliot Spitzer and Tom Suozzi, as well as Governor George Pataki. This year's show is set to the biggest of all, with about 20 public officials joining in on air, says Varinder K Bhalla, a Long Island businessman and community activist who conceived the project.
"The only other program that I can think of where you have a larger participation of such prominent people is the presidential inaugural on January 20 every four years," he says.
RBC Radio is a subscriber-based service that has been beaming music and news into Indian-American homes for 17 years. Listeners buy a radio embedded with a special chip that receives the signal.
The Independence day programme is being produced by Rohit Jagessar, the founder of RBC Radio; it will be directed by Varinder Bhalla and hosted by his daughter, Riti Sunshine, who hosted the first program in 2002 at age 8. Her brother Vishal will co-host the celebration.
"It is really a great opportunity for Indian-American children to listen to and learn the history of India's freedom struggle and for the elders to remember those who gave up their lives for the cause. So I hope everyone will tune in to RBC Radio on August 15," Riti said in a message.
Bhalla thought of the project as a continuation of the Independence Day celebrations back home. When the immigrant community arrived in the United States, it spent the first few years getting economic stability, he says. "As we settled, we started to focus on celebration of the major events, and August 15 has been a major part of our lives growing up in India."
The impressive parade organized by the Federation of Indian Associations in New York was a big step in this direction.
Having lived in the United States for 37 years and being active in the community, Bhalla had developed a rapport with many of the public officials. "All these officials are great friends of India and the Indian-American community in the United States, and they were all enthusiastic about being a part of our celebration."
Bhalla runs a non-profit, AWB Food Bank, named after his mother, which feeds 2,000 people every day in New Delhi. The organisation will complete 15 years on October 21.
