This is a picture of Willingdon Airport (known as Safdarjung Airport today) from 1936. It’s an official photo, released by the Government of India and publicises the airport (Delhi’s First) as a crowning achievement of ‘New’ Delhi which was inaugurated just a few years earlier in 1931. Lord Willingdon was also the Viceroy of India at the time and so the christening (the famous Lodi Gardens was also named after the Viceroy’s wife so we have a process of the Willingdon-ization of Delhi in the 1930s). You can just about see the boundary wall of the 18th century Safdarjung’s tomb in the top of the left of the photograph.
Before Willingdon’s name was attached to it, the area operated as an airfield and we have evidence that postal aeroplanes (airmail) landed here as early as 1918. Rapid communication was of the utmost importance in the governance of Imperial territories and Delhi became another hub in the expansion of the Cairo-Baghdad air route from the late 1920s. This was serviced by aircraft like the De Havilland Hercules which could carry 7 colonial officials and the much-desired airmail. Passenger traffic remained small, the railways being preferred in the 1930s for example, to cater to the former. With the Second World War, air traffic in Delhi increased and Willingdon airport became important in the India-Burma theatre.
While the above gives some indication of the relationship between the development of airways and the maintenance of Empire (and Delhi, of course!), I sometimes wonder if we read too much into this. For example, did the absence of ‘frontiers’ in the skies increase anxieties around policing and sovereignty? Did this ever match the fear of land-based policing? I suppose aviation historians can help out here.
To return to our story, Willingdon airport became Safdarjung Airport after the independence of India in 1947. It was overtaken by the Palam Airport (Indira Gandhi International Airport today) after the 1960s as Delhi’s premier airport. The much smaller Safdarjung now serves as an airport for the Indian Prime minister and foreign dignitaries.
I also intend to post something on the Indian National Airways, a commercial liner based in Delhi in due course so watch this space.
See you next Friday.
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