Lessons from Indiaâs long journey to gaining the right to fly
30 April 2021
Dum Dum Airport workshop in Calcutta, circa 1940-1970. Archival records hint at a rich history, marked by all sorts of players, from air exhibitions to those offering aerial rides, including at the flying club in Dum Dum.
Pictorial Parade / Archive Photos / Getty Images
Dum Dum Airport workshop in Calcutta, circa 1940-1970. Archival records hint at a rich history, marked by all sorts of players, from air exhibitions to those offering aerial rides, including at the flying club in Dum Dum.
Pictorial Parade / Archive Photos / Getty Images
When British rule of south Asia ended in 1947, a patchwork of 565 princely states representing about 40 percent of the regionâs land area remained out of India and Pakistanâs fold. The fledgling Indian state had less than three years to incorporate this vast region into a unitary post-colonial nation while simultaneously managing the brutality of partition, ensuring the handing over of governance from British and writing a constitution. Without the use of aviation it would have been impossible for the civil servant VP Menon and the first deputy prime minister, Vallabhbhai Patel, to get instruments of accession signed by nearly every princely state. Jawaharlal Nehru, Patel and Menon, flew the length of the sub-continent countless times, negotiating feverishly with the British in Shimla and in princely states as far flung as Travancore and Jammu and Kashmir, knitting together the state territorially, at a speed permissible only by air.