The Lives of Cold War Afro-Asianism

This book moves away from the focus on high diplomacy which has long marked the history of the "Third Worldism" of the Cold War era. The so-called "Bandung Moment" has tracked the leaders of the decolonizing world from the conference halls of Bandung and Belgrade, to those of the United Nations and beyond. This book seeks to place the spotlight on lesser-known gatherings. It highlights exchanges within the Afro-Asian world that speak to a broader participation in the "Bandung moment": the participation of activists, intellectuals, cultural figures, and political leaders. This collection thus disrupts hard divisions between state and non-state spaces, as well as between Cold War blocs. Framing the early Cold War as an era of relatively open international exchange, this collection takes these "blurry lines" as a departure point. Using concrete case studies, it engages the fact that in many Cold War era gatherings, one delegation might consist of government officials, while another delegation might be comprised entirely of activists, dissenters, or outright exiles. These gatherings are further contextualized by chapters highlighting both the intellectual and material underpinnings of these Afro-Asian exchanges, bringing into full view the changing social dynamics of Cold War era internationalism in the Afro-Asian world. From the genealogy of ideas used to strengthen Afro-Asian solidarity to the political economy of institutional finance and Cold War patronage, this book tells an interconnected set of stories of cultural and intellectual traffic in the post-colonial era Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 Introduction: The Lives of Cold War Afro-Asianism CHAPTER 2 Here and There: A Story of Women’s Internationalism, 1948-1953 CHAPTER 3 Résistantes Against the Colonial Order : Women’s Grassroots Diplomacy During the French War in Vietnam (1945-1954) Asian-African Solidarity CHAPTER 4 Asian Socialism and the Forgotten Architects of Post-Colonial Freedom CHAPTER 5 Where was the Afro in Afro-Asian Solidarity? Africa’s ‘Bandung Moment’ CHAPTER 6 Asia as a Third Way? J.C. Kumarappa and the Problem of Development in Asia The Dead Will Live Eternally CHAPTER 7 Delhi versus Bandung: Local Anti-imperialists and the Afro-Asian Stage CHAPTER 8 Building Egypt’s Afro-Asian Hub: Infrastructures of Solidarity in 1950s Cairo CHAPTER 9 Soviet “Afro-Asians” in UNESCO: Reorienting World History and Humanism CHAPTER 10 A Forgotten Bandung : The Afro-Asian Students’ Conference and the Call for Decolonisation Yesterday and Today CHAPTER 11 Dispatches from Havana : The Cold War, Afro-Asian Solidarities, and Culture Wars in Pakistan CHAPTER 12 Microphone Revolution : North Korean Cultural Diplomacy During the Liberation of Southern Africa CHAPTER 13 Eqbal Ahmad: An Affective Reading of Afro-Asianism CHAPTER 14 Passports to the Post-colonial World : Space and Mobility in Francisca Fanggidaej’s Afro-Asian Journeys EPILOGUE Afro-Asianism Revisited About the Authors Index The Afro-Asianism of the early Cold War has long remained buried under the narrative of Bandung, homogenising and subverting the different visions of post-colonial worldmaking that co-existed alongside the Bandung project. This book turns the lens on these other visions, and the transnational interactions which emerged from various other gatherings of the 1950s and 1960s that existed beyond the realm of high diplomacy, while blurring the lines between state and non-state projects. It examines how Afro-Asianism was lived by activists, intellectuals, cultural figures, as well as political leaders in building a post-imperial world -- particularly women. As a whole, this collection of essays examines the diversity of Afro-Asian ideals that emerged through such movements, untangling the personal relationships, political competition, racial hierarchies, and solidarities that shaped them. By visualising political Afro-Asianism and its proponents as a living network, a fuller picture of decolonization and the Cold War is brought into view