The genesis of Bengaluru’s soaring success

By 1945, when control reverted to the Indian government, HAL had become one of the most reputed aircraft tinkering shops in the east, and the first batch of aeronautical engineers were readying to make their way out of IISc.

Bengaluru is looking up! Literally. Or will be in a week, when the thrilling flypasts and flying displays of the 14th edition of Asia’s largest air show, Aero India, begin in the skies above the Yelahanka Air Force Station. The piece de resistance at this year’s ‘India Pavilion’? A full-scale LCA-Tejas – the highly agile, fourth-generation supersonic fighter jet that other countries have been eyeing for their own air forces – that was designed and built right here in Bengaluru.

Columnist Roopa Pai (HT Photo)

When it received its Final Operational Clearance in 2019, Tejas propelled India into the very elite club of countries that have developed their own advanced fighter jet. Small wonder, then, that it is Tejas that is at the heart of the Aero India logo.

There is a lot that is meta about that. The reason the Ministry of Defence chose Bengaluru as the venue for Aero India way back in 1996 was because this city had long been the country’s aviation and aerospace hub. The reason Tejas was developed here was for the same reason; both collaborators on the project – the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and the Aircraft Research and Design Centre of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) – are based here. The reason HAL is based here is – ah, thereby hangs a tale.

Cut to the year 1939. 56-year-old Bombay businessman, dreamer and nationalist Seth Walchand Hirachand Doshi, who had built up a huge empire, with interests in construction (HCC, still among India’s largest construction firms), sugar and confectionery (Walchandnagar Industries and Ravalgaon, both still doing brisk business), and shipping (the company he founded is acknowledged as the very first swadeshi shipping company), from scratch, was smarting from the rejection his proposal for an automobile manufacturing firm had received from the government. A chance meeting with American tycoon William D Pawley, who had interests in aviation in China and the US, got him dreaming again. One of Pawley’s companies assembled US Navy fighter-bombers at the Huangzhou Airbase for the Chinese Air Force, to help them carry out raids against Japan – suitably inspired, the Seth asked Pawley if he would help him set up India’s first aircraft factory.

Pawley bit, and scouting began for a suitable location. Many princely states were considered, but in the end, it was Mysore, and its savvy, progressive dewan, Mirza Ismail, who made the Seth an offer he could not refuse – free land, electricity and water at concessional rates, and a generous investment in return for a stake in the company. With Pawley installed as President, Hindustan Aircraft Limited began operations in December 1940.

Things moved very quickly after that. With the threat of Imperial Japan looming over India’s eastern border, the British government bought a 33% stake in HAL in April 1941, seeing it as a strategical imperative. By April 1942, they had bought out the Seth, so that they could exercise full control. Mysore refused to sell her stake, but recognising that trained manpower would be required to keep the factory going, urged the Indian Institute of Science to consider opening an Aeronautical Engineering department, which they did in December 1942, with the pioneering Dr V M Ghatage from HAL as its Head.

In 1943, HAL was handed over to the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) for the duration of the war, and became the centre for major overhaul and repair of every kind of American military aircraft. By 1945, when control reverted to the Indian government, HAL had become one of the most reputed aircraft tinkering shops in the east, and the first batch of aeronautical engineers were readying to make their way out of IISc.

The rest is history.

(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bangalore)