The other day, an allusion came up in the course of Antara's research work. "Antara would now have to accept that her school, Asansol AG Church, was the product of the Truman administration and influenced by Kim Philby".
What did the above mean? Who was Kim Philby, apart from being a complicated espionage character who might have defected to the Soviet Union as part of some 'scripted game' by British intelligence? Some of his compatriots, also spying for the Soviet Union, managed to stay back in England, why did Philby have to defect?
Given the Soviet Union was a WWII ally ('Did you know there was a United Nations since 1942?' October 11), spying (even what Cairncross was accused of) implied lack of professional ethics, not knowing what was meant for the British workplace and what had to be forwarded or shared with the Soviet Union. If it was not meant to be shared, it became 'spying'.
Yet Antara had noticed that the 'Kim Philby phenomenon' got Indian women excited, merely because these British men were sloppy employees? (It got Indian men excited as well but they hid their excitement better.)
ii. In order to accept/come to terms with the fact that Asansol AG Church may have been a Truman-Philby institution, Antara would have to know about Truman's and Philby's educational policies. Philby didn't bode well, he frequently married, including a supposed Jewish woman in Vienna, then abandoned his wife, such individuals wouldn't want women to do well in their ICSE or CBSE high school exams or establish themselves as professionals or contribute to India's GDP growth rate. (What happened to that 'growth rate politics', with so much focus on the US?)
That left Harry Truman, which turned out to be a challenge of an altogether different proportion.
Truman had established the 'President's Committee on Civil Rights' in 1946, to investigate racial discrimination, Antara had tried analysing the Commission's report (around 2022-23) but Washington DC went berserk, trying to disrupt her work. It seemed Truman meant other things, apart from a society based on equal advantages for African Americans, Antara was forced to discontinue her work.
The other time Antara tried to inform herself of the Truman administration was about Truman supporting Holocaust restitution, returning Jewish property from US zones in Germany.
Why merely US zones? The White House was such a powerful entity, it could take away an individual's livelihood in India, stop her from earning a living, prevent her from getting an Aadhaar. Why couldn't Truman order restitution of Jewish property wherever it had been grabbed? Or was it the same as above, it had other meanings, "not all Jewish property needed to be restored"?
In such a case, Antara accepting that her school Asansol AG Church was a "Truman-Philby institution" meant knowing that Asansol AG Church supported African American Civil Rights with an ulterior motive, that it didn't believe all Jewish property needed to be restored and it would be supportive if like in Philby's marriage, certain Jewish-Viennese wives were abandoned.
Why should Antara accept such unjust regulations, merely because Trump was friends with Travancore?
iii. At morning prayer assembly, Asansol AG students stood all through, no matter how long it lasted, they were not allowed to sit down. It was apparently because of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, where Abyssinian/Ethiopian sailors had staged a walk-out in 1809, protesting racial segregation. That was merely two decades after the 1790 lease, the Ethiopians were otherwise well-treated everywhere?
If Asansol AG Church had such furious sympathies for Harry Truman, Kim Philby and Ethiopian sailors, so that Antara was now diagnosed with at least half a dozen illnesses from "chronic malnutrition and constantly being indoors as a hostage", shouldn't there had been a sign in front of the school, proclaiming these loyalties?
Antara could have stayed at home, rather than being part of such elaborate anti-Semitism.
October 12, 2025.
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