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Wildan Sena Utama is a Lecturer at the Department of History, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. A Vision for the Future: An Intellectual History of the 1955 Bandung Conference, was originally published as Konferensi Asia-Afrika 1955: Asal Usul Intelektual dan Warisannya Bagi Gerakan Global Antiimperialisme, Jakarta: Marjin Kiri, 2017.

In issue #132 of The Internationalist, we excerpt from Utama's book. Here he traces Bandung's anti-imperialist legacy, the collapse of efforts for a second summit, and the enduring influence of Bandung’s spirit on both state and grassroots movements across the Global South.

After dominating the second Non-Aligned Conference, the New Emerging Forces were keen to prepare a second Bandung, scheduled in Algiers in March 1965. The Soviet Union and India, however, were concerned about the progress of preparations for the second Afro-Asian Conference. They were not excited to make the conference happen, as ‘they were not sure they could prevail against the radical bloc led by China and Indonesia’. The future of the conference suddenly turned unclear when, on 23 June 1965, a coup took place in Algeria, overthrowing and imprisoning Ben Bella, just six days before the foreign ministers’ meeting to discuss the details of the conference. On 26 June, Ben Bella’s supporters, angered by the coup, detonated small bombs in the conference hall to prevent Boumédienne from gaining the prestige of conducting the conference. After hearing what was happening in Algiers, 13 Afro-Asian members of the British Commonwealth, at a conference in London, called for the postponement of the second Asian-African Conference. It was then agreed to hold the foreign ministers conference in late October 1965 and a second Asian-African Conference in early November 1965.

On 30 October 1965, amid an uncertain situation, fifteen foreign ministers convened in Algiers; they discussed the possibility of holding a second Afro-Asian Conference. Nonetheless, the domestic political situation in Asian and African countries had changed drastically and unpredictably. In Jakarta, an unexpected event took place on 1 October 1965 in which a group of middle-ranking military officers kidnapped and killed six important generals. Soeharto, who took over the vacant military leadership, accused the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) of being the mastermind behind the coup to overthrow the legitimate Sukarno government. After this tragedy, Soeharto and the military purged members and sympathisers of the PKI, the largest party in Indonesia at that time and a significant supporter of Sukarno’s government. Soeharto also staged a gradual coup against Sukarno and his left-wing cabinet. With the collapse of Sukarno’s anti-colonial government, the spirit of Bandung faded from the centre.

Meanwhile, China was defeated on the issue of Soviet admission to the conference at the forthcoming foreign minister preparatory meeting. Thus, China decided not to attend the foreign minister meeting. The changing political winds in Indonesia in early October also had significant implications for China’s pursuit of the second Afro-Asian Conference. Anti-Chinese sentiment grew stronger in Indonesia due to allegations that Beijing had a hand in orchestrating the kidnapping of generals by the PKI. Meanwhile, in China’s domestic affairs, there was a transformation taking place as Mao Zedong prepared the forthcoming Cultural Revolution that later made China’s priorities switch to internal politics. The Chinese and Indonesians, who had previously insisted on holding the conference, were no longer interested in supporting the idea of a second Bandung. As the second Bandung lost its strongest supporters and relations among Asian and African countries were not solid, the Prime Minister’s Conference in Algiers decided: ‘the present moment is not conducive to the holding of a second Afro-Asian conference’.

By the mid-1960s, the world witnessed the winds of change in Third World countries that contributed to the decline of the Bandung era. These winds of change had generally occurred in the domestic politics of countries with national-popular and socialist governments where the majority had taken bold or confrontational attitudes against Western interventions in these countries. In the mid-1960s, the interventions of the Cold War undoubtedly had an effect in heating up the domestic political situation of the Third World. The ideological division in the Cold War, which also occurred on a national scale in Asia, was one of the triggers for the escalating conflict.

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Even though the second Bandung Conference was not held in 1965, the spirit of Bandung was still alive. While Bandung did show political contestations and contradictions within it, Rajagopal notes that at least this conference passed down a legacy in two respects:

"First, it helped forge a common Third World consciousness that laid the basis for collective mobilisation by the Third World at the United Nations, through the Group of 77 (G-77) and the Non-Aligned Movement; second, it underlined the two main cardinal principles that would organise the Third World politics in the coming decades, namely decolonisation and economic development."

Meanwhile, Hilmar Farid argues that the Bandung spirit took two paths of development after 1965. First, Bandung influenced the emergence of non-aligned aspirations that underpinned the Non-Aligned Movement in the early 1960s. In its later development after the 1980s, NAM was not as radical as before, even though it sought to advocate the reordering of a more equitable global economic order in the New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the 1970s. The second development took the form of a path not dissimilar to that of maintaining the anti-imperialist stance where most of the advocates consisted of radical popular movements and national liberation movements where no one could be called the sole representative representing this path. One thing is certain, in its development, the spirit of Bandung was no longer only the domain of the elite projects of state leaders or statesmen but also resonated amongst various groups at the level of non-elite or non-state actors, amongst popular movements from one end of the planet to another.

Excerpted with permission from Vision for the Future: An Intellectual History of the 1955 Bandung Conference by Wildan Sena Utama, published by Leftword Books.

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