India and the path to Bandung

Great Powers

Traditionally those states that were held capable of shared responsibility for the management of the international order by virtue of their military and economic influence.

The emergence of neutralism outside Europe followed a very different trajectory to that which existed in Europe. Strictly speaking, the tendency among states in Asia and Africa was not to be neutral but to be non-aligned. Non-alignment meant that states did not necessarily have to be rigidly neutral (they could, for example, be members of alliances in order to preserve their national security), but that they should avoid involvement in Great Power conflicts. The fundamental starting point of what became ‘Third World' non-alignment was that the states that espoused this position had only recently shaken off the shackles of colonialism. They were therefore deeply protective of their newly won independence and believed that involvement in Great Power politics and alignments would necessarily compromise their sovereignty and freedom of action. Moreover, they felt that the Cold War was an unwanted distraction from concentration on what they saw as the key moral issue affecting international politics, namely the eradication of imperialism.

see Chapter 10

People's Republic of China (PRC)

The official name of communist or mainland China. The PRC came into existence in 1949 under the leadership of Mao Zedong.

The first state that clearly set out the tenets of non-alignment was India under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru. Even before independence was granted in 1947, Nehru made it clear in a number of speeches that India would ‘follow an independent policy, keeping away from the power politics of groups aligned one against another'. Moreover, from the first, he argued that the other newly independent states in South and South-East Asia should live by this creed, so that these regions would never again become fields for Great Power competition.

In order to further this line, in April 1947 Nehru organized an Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi, and followed this in January 1949 by convening a second conference specifically to protest against the recent Dutch attack on the Indonesian Republic. That non-alignment rather than Asian solidarity was Nehru's chief concern is demonstrated by his attitude towards another meeting held at this time. In May 1950, concerned about the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Elpidio Quirino, the president of the Philippines, organized a conference of Asian states at Baguio to call for defence collaboration against the communist bloc. Nehru, however, rejected any arrangement that would align the region with the American side in the Cold War, and thus Quirino's initiative came to nothing.

The independent policy followed by Nehru and his dismissal of the Cold War as the key paradigm in international affairs naturally led to problems with the two superpowers, for neither cherished the idea that their ideological conflict was not the supreme moral and political struggle of the day, which was the implicit subtext of Indian rhetoric. The Soviet Union saw Nehru's position as bourgeois posturing, and dismissed India as being in reality within the Western camp. Relations were also not helped by the Communist Party of India's agitation against the government in New Delhi and the latter's attempt to suppress this dissent. The relationship between India and the United States was more complex, for both parties found it difficult to understand each other. Perceiving Nehru as a morally driven figure, American officials could not understand why he failed to appreciate

Defining the Third World

Identifying the terminology to use when one groups together the states of Asia,Africa and Latin America is a difficult problem. The common shorthand has been to refer to these areas as the 'Third World', but this is a loaded expression that requires explanation as its meaning has changed over time.

The term was coined in the early 1950s by the French demographer Alfred Sauvy who used it to describe the poor Afro- Asian countries and peoples who belonged to neither the Western capitalist bloc, the 'First World', nor the communist bloc, the 'Second World', and which he saw, in an allusion to ancien regime France, as being equivalent to a disenfranchised global 'third estate'. Sauvy argued that, in time, it would, like the 'third estate', demand that its voice be heard. With the attempt to move towards Afro-Asian solidarity in the mid- 1950s, it appeared that this prediction had come true. However, with the emergence of a common economic agenda on the part of Asia, Africa and Latin America in the 1960s, the term came to refer not just to the neutralist states but to all countries struggling with the issues of dependency and underdevelopment, and its meaning began to broaden to include all of the post-colonial nations, no matter what their political stance. If anything, it is this economically derived definition that has lasted longest. However,even in this field its vague inclusiveness has proved problematical, for the states that made up the 'Third World' have had widely differing economic trajectories. For example, from the 1970s a number of countries in East and SouthEast Asia, such as Taiwan, the Republic of Korea and Singapore, saw rapid economic growth, while at the same time some of the states in Africa, such as Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic, experienced negative growth. To put all of these states under the same label naturally seemed incongruous, and there was some talk of applying the term 'Fourth World'to the very poorest states. The expression has also become less useful since the end of the Cold War for the very good reason that much of the so-called 'Second World' became extinct. Moreover, those communist states that remained, such as the PRC and Vietnam, were the very ones that had already identified themselves with 'Third World'concerns.

To a degree this problem has been addressed by the wider usage of a practice that had appeared in the 1970s, namely to refer to the 'Third World'as the 'South', in contradistinction to the advanced economies of the 'North', but like 'Third World', this construction does little justice to the diversity of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The expression 'Third World'has therefore continued to be more widely used,for,although ill-defined and often abused, it nevertheless serves a useful purpose.

Republic of Korea (ROK)

The official name of South Korea. The ROK came into existence in 1948 under the leadership of Syngman Rhee.

Kashmir

Province in the north-west of the Indian subcontinent. Although mainly Muslim in population, the Hindu ruler in 1947 declared his allegiance to India. Pakistan reacted by seizing control of some of the province. Divided ever since by what is known as the Line of Control, Kashmir has been a perpetual sore in IndoPakistani relations. Terrorist campaigns by Islamic militants in the 1990s led the two countries to the brink of war on a number of occasions.

United Nations (UN)

An international organization established after the Second World War to replace the League of Nations. Since its establishment in 1945, its membership has grown to 192 countries.

peaceful co-existence

An expression coined originally by Trotsky to describe the condition when there are pacific relations between states with differing social systems and competition takes place in fields other than war. The idea was vital to Soviet diplomacy particularly after the death of Stalin.

see Chapter 12

the moral core of the Cold War. Moreover, they believed that India's bellicosity over the issue of Kashmir contradicted Nehru's claim of high-mindedness. Meanwhile, Indians were disturbed that the Truman administration's singleminded concentration on the Cold War was leading it to compromise on what had been one of the central tenets of American political beliefs, namely its resolute abhorrence of colonialism.

Reinforcing this, as Andrew Rotter has recently argued, was a pervasive sense of mutual cultural incomprehension brought about by different religious and social values. Thus, Americans tended to patronize the Indians as being hopelessly idealistic and childish, while the Indians characterized the Americans as arrogant, racist capitalists.

Relations between the United States and India worsened as the Cold War in Asia heightened. During the Korean War, India agreed to the initial United Nations (UN) effort to support the Republic of Korea, but voted against the resolution declaring the PRC an aggressor state and called for the Beijing regime to be allowed to take up China's seat in the Security Council. Furthermore, in September 1951 India refused to sign the San Francisco peace treaty ending the state of hostilities with Japan on the grounds that the United States had forced the former to sign a security treaty committing it to America's side in the Cold War. Neither stance endeared India to the United States government, which saw it as an increasingly unreliable presence on the world stage.

American criticism did not, however, deter Nehru from following his path of preaching non-alignment, working to achieve an Asia free of Great Power influence and attempting to integrate the PRC into the Asian international political system. Indeed, following the end of the Korean War, India became more active than ever. In April 1954, in a move symbolic of Nehru's aims, India and China signed a border treaty which stated that relations between the two states would be regulated by reference to the ‘five principles of peaceful coexistence'. These principles included mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-aggression, non-interference in the internal affairs of the other country, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence. Then, in line with Chinese policy, Nehru emerged during the period of the Geneva Conference as a significant and vociferous supporter of the idea of the neutralization of Indochina as the best way to bring stability to that troubled region.

The prospect of Great Power intervention in Indochina in 1954, and of the United States and Britain attempting to form a Cold War alliance in Asia, led Nehru and the like-minded leaders of Ceylon, Burma and Indonesia to seek to generate a sense of non-aligned solidarity in Asia. In April 1954 they, along with representatives from Pakistan, met in Colombo in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to decide how to further this interest. The result was a decision to convene a conference of African and Asian states at Bandung in Indonesia with the aim of promoting goodwill and providing a forum within which issues of common interest, such as opposition to colonialism, could be investigated. This was, however, not to be a conference of non-aligned countries, for it was decided that states that had ties with the superpowers could attend. In part, this came about for pragmatic reasons, for India wished to invite the PRC, while Pakistan was on the verge of signing a mutual defence pact with the United States. In addition, however, there was a genuine desire on the part of the convenors to foster a sense of solidarity and mission between the newly independent states.

Accordingly, the Bandung Afro-Asian Conference opened in April 1955 with representatives from twenty-nine states. Most of these came from Asia, for this meeting took place prior to the collapse of the European empires in Africa; the latter was only represented by delegations from Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Liberia, and two states that were at least on their way to independence, Ghana and Algeria. Of the Asian countries, most were not committed to either side in the Cold War, but there were representatives from front-line states, such as the PRC, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and Turkey. It is also worth noting that, despite the claims about being inclusive, a number of countries were excluded as their presence would have been divisive; thus there were no representatives from Israel, South Africa and Taiwan, or from either of the Korean regimes.

Bandung Afro-Asian Conference

The conference of Asian and African states held in Bandung in Indonesia in 1955. Commonly seen as the first move towards the establishment of a Third World lobby in international politics.

Measured by the resolutions passed at the conference, Bandung did not have the substantial impact that many had anticipated and, indeed, that the West had feared. Restricted by the presence of the Philippines and Pakistan, criticism of the Cold War was fairly muted, and even the expected denunciation of colonialism was not as violent as expected. However, some issues that would later become central to the Non-Aligned Movement’s agenda were raised, such as the need for the prohibition of weapons of mass destruction and, in the economic sphere, for commodity prices to be fixed. Moreover, those present voted to endorse the general application of the ‘five principles of peaceful co-existence’. Thus, even though the presence of Cold War participants compromised some of the conference’s intended results, the meeting should be judged a qualified success.

One sign that the development of an Afro-Asian group had raised the profile of the newly independent states, and particularly those that practised nonalignment, was that from 1954 onwards the superpowers became more forthcoming in terms of aid and assistance. The transformation was most apparent on the part of the Soviet Union, which, in the period following Stalin’s death in 1953, turned its back on the ‘two camps’ paradigm that had been used since 1948 and adopted a more flexible policy towards the non-aligned states. While the Soviet Union could not outbid the West in the amount of aid it could provide, it attempted to win favour by offering assistance without ostensibly demanding anything in return. This contrasted with the United States, which generated the impression that its aid was always tied in some way to the recipient’s backing for Washington in the Cold War. Soviet money thus flowed to states such as India and Indonesia to fund the building of steel mills and other industrial complexes. Moreover, in the case of Egypt’s Aswan High Dam, the Soviet Union achieved a considerable propaganda coup when, following the American and British withdrawal of funds in the summer of 1956, it stepped into the breach.

The Soviet interest in the non-aligned countries led in turn to a change in the American viewpoint. On taking office, the Eisenhower administration, and particularly the secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, had shown little tolerance of non-alignment. Indeed, in one notorious speech Dulles had denounced neutralism as a morally bankrupt concept. However, as the Soviets began to display interest in independent Asia and Africa, and it became clear that states such as India were serious in their adherence to non-alignment, the United States was forced to become more forthcoming. For example, in 1958 the United States responded to an economic crisis in India by providing two tranches of aid: first, a series of unilateral loans worth $225 million, and then a contribution to a multilateral aid package under the auspices of the World Bank. American largess increased even further under the Kennedy administration, as the new president was convinced that the United States had to do more to win the sympathy of the non-aligned countries.

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Source: Best Antony. International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond. Routledge,2008. — 638 p.. 2008

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