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Tag: decolonization

Singapore Airlines planes at Changi Airport.

A nation without monuments

Every country has its monuments, which glorify great men of the past (and less frequently, great women), commemorate battles won and lost, and represent the nation’s ideals. Even colonies have monuments, erected on behalf of the colonial power and often paid for by the subjects. When a colony declares independence, the monuments of the colonial power are often the first to be torn down. In 1776, American colonists toppled statues of King George III. After 1947, when India parted ways with the British Empire, statues of British monarchs were moved to museums or shipped off to Canada.

The now-empty pedestals in roundabouts and parks were soon occupied by statues of the new heroes of the independent nation: Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji Subhash, Pandit Nehru. Buildings and streets likewise received new identities: Kingsway in New Delhi became Rajpath, the Prince of Wales Museum in Bombay became Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya. For that matter, Bombay itself was rechristened, becoming Mumbai. Just about the only thing that wasn’t renamed was the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata. A larger-than-life statue of the elderly sovereign remains in place in front of the wedding-cake building, but the interior now features a museum commemorating the independence struggle.

The example of India is not unique. Around the world, political changes usually lead to a flurry of renaming of streets and dismantling and rebuilding of monuments.

By comparison, the example of Singapore is unusual. Singapore has been an independent, sovereign nation for more than fifty years, but there has been little of the renaming and reinventing of the city-state that has happened in most other former colonies. A statue of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who founded Singapore in 1819, still stands cockily over the waterfront. Most streets retain their colonial names. While there are plenty of historical markers for the colonial period and the Japanese occupation during World War II, there are no statues for Lee Kuan Yew, the country’s first prime minister—even though he served for more than thirty years and was a central figure in the modernization of the city-state.1

Statue of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles in Singapore.

Statue of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles in Singapore.

On first blush, it might seem that modern Singapore is lacking in a sense of identity, which other former colonies have gone to great lengths to cultivate. I certainly felt that way when I visited two years ago. But on further reflection, not having statues of modern heroes all over the place is a part of Singapore’s identity. It shows that the country is open to the world—or at least the modern, prosperous parts of it. With its gleaming high-rises and booming economy, Singapore itself is a monument to Lee Kuan Yew.

Singapore's monument to the Great War, which is inscribed in honor of the fallen of World War II on the back side.

Singapore’s monument to the fallen soldiers of the World Wars.

A sign on Connaught Drive, pointing to a historical marker about World War II. (The marker is located on the site of a memorial for the Japanese-affiliated Indian National Army, which was dynamited by Mountbatten’s troops after they retook Singapore in 1945.)

A sign on Connaught Drive, pointing to a historical marker about World War II. (The marker is located on the site of a memorial for the Japanese-affiliated Indian National Army, which was dynamited by Mountbatten’s troops after they retook Singapore in 1945.)

  1. C.M. Turnbull, A History of Singapore (Oxford, 1988), 320-21. []

A new airline for a new nation

While reading through six-decade-old issues of The Lockheed Star, the fortnightly newspaper of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, for a research project, I came across an article that had nothing to do with my topic of research, but I found it intriguing and got distracted reading it. (This is an occupational hazard for historians.)

The article, which appeared on the front page of the February 4, 1954 issue, is about the official handover of the first Lockheed Super Constellation airliner to Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), the national airline of Pakistan. The handover ceremony took place at Lockheed Air Terminal (now Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, California). On hand to receive the Super Constellation—a sleek, attractive airliner produced by Lockheed at its Burbank factory—was Ambassador Syed Amjad Ali.

A Pakistan International Airlines Lockheed Super Constellation at London-Heathrow. (Source: RuthAS on Wikimedia Commons.)

A Pakistan International Airlines Lockheed Super Constellation at London-Heathrow. (Source: RuthAS on Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.)

The Pakistani ambassador was greeted by the daughter of a Lockheed design engineer, attired in a Shirley Temple-esque stewardess (flight attendant) outfit. The Lockheed Star reported: “Six-and-one-half year-old Sharon Owen—who is exactly the same age as Pakistan, born on Aug. 14, 1947—was on hand to dramatize what a young country the dominion is.” (A picture of little Sharon shaking hands with the ambassador appears on the PIA history webpage.)

The article goes on to note that Pakistan International Airlines would start service around mid-April 1954.

In fact, at this point, Pakistan International Airlines did not exist just yet. The airline was officially established by the Pakistani government on January 10, 1955, eleven months after the handover of the first Super Constellation. On its establishment, PIA absorbed Orient Airways, a quasi-national private airline that had been founded in 1946.

National airlines played an important, if largely symbolic, role in nation-building for many countries that gained independence in the decade or two after World War II. As Jeffrey Engel notes in his book Cold War at 30,000 Feet (2007):

It is little exaggeration to say that countries established during this period [the early Cold War] required three things before they could claim true sovereignty: an army, a flag, and an airline.

Pakistan certainly needed to prove itself in the early years after independence. A nation in two parts, with the enemy India in between, Pakistan looked to its new national airline as a way to link the two wings of the country and promote connections with friendly nations in the West. PIA’s first international destination was London, by way of Cairo and Rome. The Lockheed Constellations, of course, were from the United States—a country that also began supporting the Pakistani armed forces with large amounts of military aid at this time.

The Lockheed Star reported that the deputy general manager of PIA claimed that flexible seating arrangements in the Super Constellation cabin would allow the airline to offer low-cost coach class for the country’s masses. But air travel—international or domestic—remained out of the reach of the majority of Pakistani citizens. PIA was a luxury enjoyed by the prosperous, educated, English-speaking elite. The airline’s official name is “Pakistan International Airlines” in English. The logo is simply “P-I-A” spelled out in Perso-Arabic script.

By the way, just as Pakistan established an airline after independence, Bangladesh wasted no time in setting up its own national airline after seceding from Pakistan in 1971. Biman Bangladesh Airlines began operating less than three months after independence.

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Two kilometers on Rajpath

Almost without exception, first-time visitors to India from the West can’t help but comment on the unfathomable diversity and complexity of the country. When I first set foot in India five years ago, I claimed that I could have written an entire book on the sights along the road from Guwahati to the Garo Hills. Although this was clearly hyperbole, it is true that Indian society is heterogeneous linguistically, culturally, ethnically, and religiously. India is, after all, a country with close to a hundred literary languages.

Units of measurement in India tend to attract less attention than language and ethnicity, but I think that they are an essential part of India’s mixed cultural heritage, and they are indicative of the country’s modernity. India, like almost every other country in the world, officially uses the metric or SI system of measurement. As part of the country’s modernization, the Government of India introduced metric during the early-independence period. Converting to metric entailed abandoning the British Imperial units previously in use, so the process was also a way to move beyond India’s colonial past. As a result of metrication, Indian highways were re-marked and train route charts reprinted in kilometers, weather reports were issued in degrees Celsius, petrol (gasoline) was sold in liters rather than gallons, and grocers were required to sell their produce by kilogram rather than pounds.

The conversion to metric was slow and even now, more than fifty years after it began, is still incomplete. One does not have to look hard to find remnants of British Imperial units still in use. During my work, study, and travels in India, I have bought a ruler marked in inches at a stationery shop; had my fevers measured in degrees Fahrenheit; and seen carpenters measuring out wood in feet and inches. The result of this incomplete conversion is that Indians—like Americans—will schizophrenically mix English and metric units. An example of this is a cookbook that came with a pressure-cooker I bought in the Garo Hills. The pressure-cooker models are rated by liters of capacity (I bought the three-liter version), but any volumes in the recipes themselves are given in teaspoons, tablespoons, and cups.

(The title of this post is the distance between the India Gate and the central secretariat buildings in New Delhi.)

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