Austrian neutrality

Antara's paternal grandmother had never visited Kolkata. It was her one wish, she'd tell her son Ajit, "You'd take me to Kolkata when you grew up, wouldn't you?"

Pratibha passed away when Ajit was quite young but it was obvious she had a case, an argument, that as an adult, Ajit would have to make that case to Kolkata. You couldn't teach Kolkata about the establishment of the State of Israel, so it might have been about military academies in the West, we'd have to find out.

Pratibha and Ajit would argue to Kolkata that "don't make a big deal about the Carnegies and the Rockefellers as global financiers, you should see how they treated people who'd undergone a calamity or suffered trauma, as if they couldn't make up their minds whether the wealthy should show sympathy or not. There was no US foreign intelligence in Germany after WWI, shouldn't they have communicated more frequently with the Germans? Just sending a cheque along meant they'd take American money and then go and listen to Adolf Hitler's speeches. It would be difficult for those tycoons to avoid responsibility for the rise of Adolf Hitler."

One had to remember that it was not enough that WWI had ended for Kolkata in 1916, in so far as its residents were concerned, with Emperor Franz Joseph I's death ('Graf/graphs, Ukraine, TMC', FACSIMILE blogpost, December 7, 2025). It was not enough for Kolkata that Pratibha had passed away in 1946, that the above arguments were being made after her death. 

A decade after Pratibha's death, the Suez Crisis of 1956 had shown that while Israel was Kolkata's friend, the British and the French were Israel's friends. Israeli action, say against places like Sharm el-Sheikh, used the cover of the night, so what constituted a 'western alliance' was clearly defined using the Suez Crisis, it was London-Paris-Tel Aviv-Kolkata.  

Egypt got its weaponry from Czechoslovakia, so the position of neutral advisor had been present in Antara's family for quite a while, passing down from Ajit to Antara.

ii. When a government officer like Ajit sent his daughter Antara to a government institution like Brabourne, given that Kolkata had been adequately briefed on the Carnegies and the Rockefellers, it was expected that Brabourne authorities would summon its students, brief them that Antara didn't represent New York, that she was frightfully isolated because of Austrian neutrality during the Cold War, not because of the Nazi Holocaust. 

Nazi Holocaust survivors and the families of victims often received support and encouragement to share their narrative, there was no club/gathering for the victims of Austrian neutrality during the Cold War.

When such a briefing was not provided within Brabourne, what was the 'principal' and where was the 'interest on interest' headed became Kolkata's discourse, then it seemed deliberate, Kolkata didn't want to take forward any discussion or argument, it wanted to get the college students excited.

Thus, Antara would have to remember that it was British intelligence operating in Washington DC that defined BT and Pratibha as victims of the 1942 Wannsee Conference and the 1944 Normandy landings. The Germans had probably used these two events to end the Soviet occupation of Austria in 1955, they became BT and Pratibha's defining traits, regardless of what was important to them.

What Brabourne wanted of Antara gradually became clear when a roommate at her hostel kept using a club soda bottle for drinking water purposes, and later when Antara was sent to live as a paying guest, during her university days, with a family headed by an elderly gentleman called PC Sarkar. As was known to the NRIs, 'PC' was a brand of Canadian grocery products, which included club soda, so Brabourne and Kolkata wanted Antara to remain limited to the RMS Titanic arguments coming out of Canada.

Brabourne and Kolkata didn't want Antara to engage with Austrian neutrality during the Cold War, for that was the domain of the US Navy, that's where Kolkata's women would go, it meant Antara would be taken to Punjab-dominated New Delhi, no further than that.

"Strange, if Antara followed Kolkata's orders to come to New Delhi, why were HT and Chetla flabbergasted? Why did they take away her employment, why didn't they let her step out, why was she turned into a hostage?"

Chetla and HT had got their arguments wrong about Afghanistan. Austria had very much wanted the US military to become part of the Great Game, it would have allowed the Austrian narrative about WWII to be shared, Austria was blackmailed over WWII but never allowed to share its story. It was the timing of the War on Terror, decided by Washington DC, that seemed so suspicious, it was as if Washington DC didn't want Antara to study abroad. 

"She won't have any contact with the US Navy, she wouldn't even pursue higher studies abroad?" The world collapsed around Austria, no one ever recovered from that.

iii. There were certain things Austria could get done, move the iron and steel production facilities to China, so that it bore the responsibility of any major outbreak of war. The other was to introduce Delhi to as many financiers as possible, so that Delhi didn't lack resources (or steel) if it needed to wage modern-day wars. 

Instead, Delhi went with drones and decided to torture Antara. China's steel production capacity was wasted, Antara got altogether destroyed by the torture. What kind of Great Game play was it? One where immigrants were allowed access to US Navy intelligence such that they could assist Australian Navy in attacking the Royal Navy? Where was Afghanistan in any of it? It was pure vengeance.

Anjali could have said that the Prussians had no need for Antara. That the Prussians had solved their own problems and had understood the WWII Austrian narrative as well, without going through financiers. It was an impossible thing to achieve but if Anjali had convinced Kolkata, the arguments had to be substantial. 

Apparently, Austrian WWII narrative was neither about Tagores nor about Ponzi schemes, it was about Yemen! Were they serious in Kolkata and Bengal? It was coming from Washington DC, that was obvious, Yemen was the only problem in the world?

Austria provided scientific advice to Israel, so technology couldn't have produced such rage in Washington DC. Did Washington DC think that Austria was withholding details of scientific conferences held in Europe through the initial decades of the 20th century? Why wasn't Austria formally approached, who began by torturing a young woman for a decade, or keeping her unemployed for 13 years? 

'Civilisational erasure", that was how Washington DC would negotiate scientific knowhow out of Austria? Because Antara was constantly in the grip of Indian trading communities, she had no escape from them?

iv. Antara should know that the events of WWII were an extremely complicated religious attack on Austria, there was no Yemen in any of it. 

Antara would know how to dissociate herself from the propaganda coming out of Washington DC about WWII and the Nazi Holocaust.

December 11, 2025.