Vijay Prashad: Historic 1955 Anti-Colonial Bandung Conference Inspired New Era in Global South

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

As President Trump moves to upend the global trade system, we look back at a critical moment 70 years ago, when 29 nations from Asia and Africa gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, for a historic anti-colonial conference. The 1955 Bandung Conference marked a critical moment that the peoples of colonial nations of the Global South made their collective presence felt on the world stage. It marked the birth of what would later become the Non-Aligned Movement in the midst of the Cold War. Key nations participating included India, China, Indonesia, Egypt, Burma, Pakistan, Vietnam and Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka. This is the Indonesian president at the time, Sukarno, speaking at Bandung.

PRESIDENT SUKARNO: This is the first intercontinental conference of colored peoples, so-called colored peoples, in the history of mankind. I am proud that my country is your host. It is a new departure in the history of the world that leaders of Asian and African peoples can meet together in their own countries to discuss and deliberate upon matters of common concern.

AMY GOODMAN: Malcolm X would later talk about the historic importance of the Bandung Conference.

MALCOLM X: At Bandung, all the nations came together. There were dark nations from Africa and Asia. Some of them were Buddhists. Some of them were Muslim. Some of them were Christian. Some of them were Confucian — Confucianists. Some were atheists. Despite their religious differences, they came together. Some were communists. Some were socialists. Some were capitalists. Despite their economic and political differences, they came together. All of them were Black, Brown, red or yellow. The number one thing that was not allowed to attend the Bandung Conference was the white man. He couldn’t come. Once they excluded the white man, they found that they could get together. Once they kept him out, everybody else fell right in and fell in line. This is the thing that you and I have to understand. And these people who came together didn’t have nuclear weapons. They didn’t have jet planes. They didn’t have all of the heavy armaments that the white man has. But they had unity.

AMY GOODMAN: Malcolm X. The hundredth anniversary of his birth will be in May.

We’re joined now by Vijay Prashad, the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His latest newsletter is titled Waiting for a New Bandung Spirit. Vijay Prashad has written more than 40 books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, which was just published in Indonesia this week. His latest piece for Globetrotter is on ”BRICS & Industrial Development.” He’s joining us from Santiago, Chile.

Vijay, welcome back to Democracy Now! Let’s go back 70 years. Talk about the significance of the Bandung Conference, how it came together, and what this meant for the world today.

VIJAY PRASHAD: You know, it’s very interesting, Amy, that right after World War II, there was an enormous upsurge of political unrest in the former colonies in Asia and Africa. This unrest, led by anti-colonial movements, was taking place not only for freedom in their countries, but for freedom in each other’s countries. So, in India, even before India won its independence in August of 1947, they convened a conference called the Asian Relations Conference, which was for solidarity with the people of Indonesia fighting against the Dutch. That was the spirit of the age, hundreds of millions of people across Africa, across Asia, fighting against colonialism, fighting brutal colonial wars in Malaya, in Kenya, the so-called Mau Mau rebellion.

At this moment, they gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, a beautiful city in Indonesia, under the leadership of President Sukarno, who had won a really courageous fight, first against Japanese imperialism and then the Dutch. They came together. And what’s really remarkable is, as Malcolm X says, they came — communists like Zhou Enlai came, few years after the Chinese Revolution, but also Sir John Kotelawala of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, a absolute anti-communist. I mean, they all gathered together, because they understood that their unity was very important, not only to create a new trade and development order — that was not the only part — but also to fight for peace, because they understood what it meant to live on the other side of a rifle. They understood that if the Cold War was allowed to metastasize, it would just not allow them to develop. So, the watchwords from Bandung were “peace” and “development.”

And these people who came there — Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno, Zhou Enlai — they represented vast movements from around the world. They were not afraid of the people. They walked from their hotel to the conference venue. There were no armed guards. They met the people. They were greeted with cheers. And they gave powerful speeches, not only of unity, as Malcolm X points out, but also to say that, “Look, we don’t have nuclear weapons, but we have the moral force of the anti-colonial movement, and that’s what we’re putting before the world. We want to change the world, make it a better place. We don’t want the force of guns to rule over us any longer.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Vijay, I wanted to ask you — you mentioned some of the leaders who were there, but, interestingly, many of those leaders, within a few years, were either overthrown — for instance, Sukarno in 1965, Nkrumah and Nasser — and even on the way to the conference, there was an assassination attempt against Zhou Enlai. The plane that he was scheduled to take to the conference was bombed and out of the air. And luckily, Zhou Enlai supposedly had had to postpone taking that plane because of an illness. But could you talk about how much the Western powers were in fear of what was developing as a result of Bandung?

VIJAY PRASHAD: It’s very important to know that when you read the U.S. government documents, John Foster Dulles and others were quite furious with what was happening at Bandung. They refused to call this a non-aligned process. They insisted on calling them neutralists, saying that these people are in fact pro-communist — completely mischaracterizing the difference of political opinion at Bandung.

And this attack at Bandung, you know, really takes on a vicious form when it comes to the coups in the early to mid-1960s. It’s important for people to remember that there was a trinity of coups d’états in the 1960s against progressive governments in the largest countries in Africa, South America and in Asia. First, the coup against Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba was, in a very real sense, you know, the descendant of Nkrumahism, of the belief in pan-Africanism of Kwame Nkrumah, comes to power in the largest country in Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is overthrown in a brutal coup led by the United States, the Belgians, the British intelligence services and so on. That’s in 1961. It destabilizes the national liberation movement in Africa, followed three years later by a coup d’état against the liberal president, elected president of Brazil, João Goulart, in 1964, a coup that lasts 21 years, where the military in Brazil is then authorized, through Operation Condor, to effectively utilize military services across Latin America to cut down the impact of the Cuban Revolution of 1959. And that’s a process that leads to the coup in Chile in ’73, in Argentina in ’76, and so on. Again, the largest country in Latin America, a coup pushed by the United States. And finally, 10 years after Bandung, as you rightly said, the coup d’état against Sukarno, a million communists killed, often with faxes, telexes sent by the Australian intelligence services, British and United States, names of people that they wanted the military in Indonesia to execute, a million people killed, the progressive government of Sukarno overthrown. This has a huge impact in Asia.

Bandung represented hope for the hundreds of millions of people around the planet in 1955. It was to crush that hope that the United States and its allies conducted these coups against Lumumba, Goulart and then Sukarno.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what is your sense? You’ve written now in terms of the spirit of Bandung and what the situation is for the countries of the Global South. Now you’ve talked also about BRICS quite a bit in the last few years.

VIJAY PRASHAD: I mean, you know, it’s interesting, Juan, because at the time of Bandung, the subjective or the consciousness of the need for a new change, for unity, for this moral force called the Third World, this was extremely high. But this sense, this consciousness of the need for change was far greater than the ability of these states. You know, these states were outclassed when it came to military power. These states simply didn’t have the kind of wealth, technological capacity. In fact, they couldn’t produce most things by themselves. You know, Walter Rodney will write later in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa that most African countries at the time of their independence were not able to produce toothpaste, because they had to import it from Lever Brothers, from a British multinational corporation. These countries were at an objective disadvantage.

Well, you know, the debt crisis of the 1980s really collapsed the political unities, the hope from the Third World. But something new has emerged, particularly since the world financial crisis of 2007, 2008. The large countries of the South, particularly in Asia, led by China, have developed their manufacturing. They’ve developed their technological capacity. In terms of the objective changes taking place, we can see that before our eyes. The center of gravity of the world economy is no longer the Atlantic Ocean. It’s definitely now in Asia, somewhere between China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia. These countries are growing at a very fast clip.

But the sense of political unity is still not fully visible, despite the BRICS. The BRICS is a trade body. It’s not really a political body. It shouldn’t be exaggerated. So, that sense of Bandung, which was there in 1955, is not there now. We are sort of waiting on the revival of the Bandung spirit. We’ve got the structures for a new world relatively in place, but we don’t really have the consciousness, the confidence that a new world can be built. And by the way —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds, Vijay.

VIJAY PRASHAD: — the consciousness in the North is not there, either.

AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.

VIJAY PRASHAD: Yeah, I’m just saying the consciousness in the North, Northern countries, not there, either, as of yet. Trump’s tariffs trying to reverse this trend, not going to work. [inaudible]

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there, Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.