Costs and Benefits (11): A way to Europe

Did you notice that the blogposts on Gulab Singh of Rewa and the American tycoons boarding the RMS Titanic didn't elicit much of a response?

Or that explanations about why Antara was educated and specialised in certain matters (CLASS ACT), so that she could appreciate the sovereignty of a nation, was largely ignored?

You thought the Palace instructed its loyalists to ignore the blogposts? Oh no, it was because from Gulab Singh to American tycoons to Antara, not one was a STEM professional. Hence, they were all somehow inadequate, less profound than the smartly-attired Indian professionals inside scientific laboratories or staring at laptops at their workplaces.

Back in the 1990s, Antara and some of her friends (the latter would remain unnamed) would wait within the premises of Brabourne hostel around 4.30 pm, every day, to see the Science students returning from college. The last couple of classes were scheduled for Science Practicals (Physics or Chemistry, Botany or Zoology), and how these Science students strode into the hostel premises, their lab coats stained with various chemicals and reagents, animatedly talking among themselves, barely noticing the lesser mortals.

"Why did they stride like that, as if they've just invented radioactivity?" Antara's friends would ask her. When Antara kept quiet, they'd insist, "Weren't all these experiments conducted in Britain or Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and they were just repeating them?"

So STEM was a problem not for Antara, but for Bengalis and Indians, even in Communist Bengal. What happened in STEM courses, were the students not reminded enough that what they were doing was derived and copied, that they contributed nothing to Science? If it was used as a weapon against non-STEM Indians, then the Science professors would have to take the blame for not being humble enough.

The obvious explanation was that STEM courses in India were sold as a route to exclusive Fortress Europe. While other Indian citizens would try to keep alive historical ties with Europe or depend on the vagaries of Thurn und Taxis, "I have successfully repeated all European experiments" allowed Indians cushy jobs at the universities and laboratories of Europe. 

It was important to note that such European laboratories neither cared for European recent history (Nazi Holocaust) nor European collapse (WWI) nor European medieval history (Hanseatic League) nor the crisis among European physicists (Solvay).  

If they were not bothered with Europe at all, who 'ran' these scientific laboratories within Europe? Did the name China suggest itself?

And if India had collected centuries of its own intelligence, put it in a House, entrusted it to BT and that House was 'given away' to the Windsors in 1985, which country benefitted vis-a-vis India? Seemed like China, no?

When a country like India faced such traumatic insult as in 1985, when its collected intelligence was given away, then operatives would quickly fill the vacuum. Some would be called Indian tycoons, some would be called Kolkata's IPS cadre, all dispensing their wisdom to Indians. An order would emerge that would think anything was possible, from shutting down democratic govts to going at the Treasury. 

Its most ferocious assertion was 2007, the so-called Wolfowitz-Dershowitz lease, when Antara became a stranger, merely a 'reject', to all her family members.

May 15, 2025.