Window that changed the world

When the United Nations General Assembly declared November 21 as World Television Day in 1996, it was acknowledging a simple truth: no invention in the 20th century altered human perception, politics, culture, and consciousness as profoundly as television.

- SANTHOSH MATHEW

Today, long after its birth, the debate continues - is television an idiot box that numbs us or a magic box that enlightens us? Perhaps it is both, as Marshall McLuhan foresaw when he declared that "the medium is the message."

Television did not merely transmit information; it transformed societies by its very existence. McLuhan famously argued that television is an extension of the human senses, especially sight and hearing, turning viewers into participants in a shared cultural experience. He classified it as a "cool medium," one that demands emotional involvement and interpretation. Unlike the printed word, which is analytical and detached, television immerses. It pulls people in, forms communities of viewers, and creates the global village - a world where distances shrink, cultures converge, and information flows instantly.

India witnessed this firsthand when Ramanand Sagar's Ramayana aired in the late 1980s. It became the world's largest communication experiment. Streets emptied, families gathered, neighbours sat together, and for 45 minutes every Sunday morning, a country of a billion people shared a single emotional universe. It was the arrival of mass-line communication in its purest form, long before social media existed. Television became India's biggest informal education tool, teaching values, icons, and national identity through collective viewing.

Television did something else: it turned geopolitics into a living-room experience. The 1991 Gulf War, broadcast live by CNN, was a turning point. For the first time in world history, war unfolded in real time before global audiences. Missiles streaking across Baghdad were not military secrets; they were prime-time visuals. A tea shop owner in Kerala or a bus conductor in Jaipur suddenly understood international alliances, oil politics, and the American military machine. Television shrank the globe and democratized access to world affairs.