Espionage, Intrigue, and Politics: Kalimpong Chung Hwa School as International Playhouse

This article examines the ways in which Kalimpong, living up to its moniker as a "nest of spies," was a site where local and international intrigues played out, especially at the local Chinese Chung Hwa School. It examines the period between the 194os and early 196os, when Kalimpong, on account of its strategic location, was home to "foreign Kautilyas" of different intelligence services. The Chung Hwa School came to play a part in this game as it provided cover/camouflage for Chinese secret agents. The secret services run by the British colonial state-and later the Indian state-suspected it to be a platform for intelligence gathering. A close reading of the archives uncovers the circuit of suspicion and misgiving surrounding the school. This article analyses these narratives and the ways in which, through the enmeshment of espionage, the Indian Intelligence Bureau, the local Chinese, and "China" were constituted in Kalimpong's (under)world. The school also emerges as tangled in transnational and international machinations epitomizing People's Republic of China-Republic of India relations and Guomindang-Chinese Communist Party rivalry.