The History of the Jodhpur Flying Club is the remarkable story of an Indian Maharaja's passion for flight, and his contributions to the early commercial air routes to southeast Asia. His Highness Maharajah Umaid Singh was instrumental in establishing one of the first air bases in India. During the 1920's and 1930's this visionary member of one of India's most distinguished families created the Jodhpur Flying Club near to Jodhpur's giant Chittar Palace. Today that small air field is now one of the Indian Air Force's premier military bases. From the 1920's until the 1950's the royal family of Jodhpur pushed the frontiers of Indian aviation and in doing so assisted the Allied war effort during World War 2. Peter Vacher, noted author of Hurricane R4118, takes the reader on a trip to meet some of the intrepid long-distance aviators of the 1930s, and from there to the establishment of the Royal Air Force base which provided the training of Indian pilots and facilities for 'Over the Hump'. The book contains detailed information about the many aircraft to have passed through Jodhpur and the mavericks who flew them. From Tiger Moths to Lockheed Electras, the story is supported by many rare photographs from this previously untold arena of pioneer aviators. The History of the Jodhpur Flying Club is a richly illustrated kaleidoscope of aviation in India prior to, and during, the Second World War, and the story of how the friendship between an Indian Prince and an RAF officer contributed to the Allied war effort in Asia.

Tracing the Indian state's engagement with aviation, both civil and military, from the Second World War to the nationalization of airlines in 1953, this book argues that aviation played a critical role in state formation in modern South Asia.

Pioneer aviatrix Jessie "Chubbie" Miller made a significant contribution to aviation history. The first woman to fly from England to her native Australia (as co-pilot with her close friend Captain Bill Lancaster), she was also the first woman to fly more than 8000 miles, to cross the equator in the air and to traverse the Australian continent north to south. Moving to America, Miller was a popular member of a group of female aviators that included Amelia Earhart, Bobby Trout, Pancho Barnes and Louise Thaden. As a competitor in international air races and a charter member of the first organization for women flyers, the Ninety-Nines, she quickly became famous. Her career was interrupted by her involvement in Lancaster's sensational Miami trial for the murder of her lover, Haden Clarke, and by Lancaster's disappearance a few years later while flying across the Sahara desert.

This book explores the localisation of modernity in late colonial India. As a case study, it focuses on the hitherto untold colonial history of Khalsa College, Amritsar, a pioneering and highly influential educational institution founded in the British Indian province of Punjab in 1892 by the religious minority community of the Sikhs. Addressing topics such as politics, religion, rural development, militarism or physical education, the study shows how Sikh educationalists and activists made use of and ‘localised’ communal, imperial, national and transnational discourses and knowledge. Their modernist visions and schemes transcended both imperialist and mainstream nationalist frameworks and networks. In its quest to educate the modern Sikh – scientific, practical, disciplined and physically fit – the college navigated between very local and global claims, opportunities and contingencies, mirroring modernity’s ambivalent simultaneity of universalism and particularism.