&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Who is Ho Chi Minh? Why the US consulate in Kolkata stands on a street named after him")
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio landed in Kolkata to kick off his maiden four-day official state visit to India. He is accompanied by his wife, Jeanette, and US Ambassador Sergio Gor. He is visiting the US Consulate in Kolkata while standing on Ho Chi Minh Sarani; the symbolism is hard to miss. He is one of the most vocal and hardline anti-communists of Trump 2.0. His political identity is closely linked with the Cuban exile community in Florida, and he built his foreign policy reputation around opposing socialism and communism in Latin America.
Ho Chi Minh Sarani: A Cold War irony frozen in Kolkata
One of the oldest US consulates in the world is located at Ho Chi Minh Sarani, while India hosts many such antecedents, this is one of the most cruel irony. Ho Chi Minh was a Vietnamese revolutionary, nationalist, and communist statesman who led the long anti-colonial struggle against the French and opposed the US-backed war in Vietnam. He is one of the most famous adversaries of the US and defied US imperial might for years.
At the height of the Cold War, “trolling” the West Bengal communist government led by Jyoti Basu, renamed Harrington Street as a tribute to Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam’s anti-colonial struggle to Ho Chi Minh Sarani. Kolkata’s Left politics celebrated him as a liberation icon and mocked the US with rallying cries like “Amar Naam, Tomar Naam, Vietnam” (My name, your name, Vietnam). Despite political changes, the subsequent governments in West Bengal over the years kept the name unchanged, as a cultural and historical legacy.
For decades, American diplomats, officials, military officers, and even anti-communist politicians had to officially write and receive correspondence addressed to the US Consulate General, 5/1 Ho Chi Minh Sarani, Kolkata. A painful remembrance of the crushing defeat to a relatively weaker military power, anti-war protests, Pentagon papers, Watergate scandal and the resignation of Richard Nixon, the only US President to ever step down. Now that irony becomes even sharper with figures like Marco Rubio, whose entire political brand has been built around anti-communism.
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