I think you meant to type “unlike in the US”, but otherwise yes.

There was also UA transiting DEL to connect LHR with HKG. Wasn’t that a route which was picked up from PanAm but routed that way for reasons beside aircraft range?

Either way, India sort of squandered an opportunity, an opportunity which it not only left to the GCC but which it fed like no other. In some ways the Partition of India could be blamed for this, as the consequences of that meant neither India nor Pakistan would be able and willing to consolidate South Asian traffic. India didn’t even want to consolidate with Bangladeshi traffic after delivering Bengalis in East Pakistan independence from Pakistan. And Nepal wasn’t going to cut it with population figures to make India a major international transit hub. Into even the late 1960s and maybe early 1970s, wasn’t there even India-Europe traffic going via BEY? Of the earliest wave of Indian-American doctors, many used to take their exams in Beirut. Not sure how they got to BEY, but the test results were coming from those administered in Lebanon.