Background to Bandoeng
BY THOMAS HODGKIN
Last December the five Colombo Powers issued a joint invitation to twenty-five Asian and African countries to attend an Afro-Asian conference, to be field in Indonesia, to discuss problems of special interest to Asian and African peoples. The conference opens at Bandoeng on April 18.
THIS will definitely be a meeting of the Lower School at Bandoeng. No sixth-formers admitted. The. Asian and African Powers represented, if they had nothing else in Fommon, could at least share the sense of freedom that the young enjoy in the absence of their elders and betters. The fact that some elders and betters have expressed alarm lest the morals of the innocent, young should be corrupted by bad company on this unsupervised outing—this, naturally increases the enjoyment. Once the vimerican press began to dwell on the terrifying prospect of leaving the representatives of 1,250 million Asians and Africans—half the world—alone together for a few days, without a single White Man to tell them what to agree, or disagree, about—and pointed out that this had never previously been permitted in the world's history—the whole project began to appear much more interesting. It had become a Dangerous Precedent. In practice, apart from the rare opportunity to meet some of the leaders of the Chinese People's Republic, one of the main attractions of Bandoeng is that it will give the newest of the new boys— such as the Sudan and the Gold Coast—a chance to learn how those a little their senior are coping, or failing to cope, with the problems of decolonisation. Where to find technical experts. How to prevent official incompetence and corruption. How to strike a balance between the need for centralisation and the demands of national minorities. What is a sensible policy in regard to a national language.
When the Prime Ministers of the Colombo Powers, meeting at Bogor last December, decided to take up the Indonesian proposal for an Afro-Asian conference which should 'con- sider problems of ' special interest to Asian and African peoples, for example, problems affecting national sovereignty and of racialism and colonialism,' they were not simply show- ing the natural interest of recently emancipated Asian colonies in the process of decolonisation which has begun in Africa; nor simply planning a bumper demonstration against racial discrimination in southern Africa. Bandoeng is also a logical consequence of the opening up of communications between Asia and Africa since the last war—an event in its way as important as the opening up of communications between Europe and Airica a hundred years ago. Through youth con- ferences, students' conferences, women's conferences, trade union conferences, the airborne hajj, Moral Rearmament rallies, the United Nations and its agencies, opportunities of quite a new kind have been created for Asian and African leaders, and embryo leaders, to meet and get to know one another. The appointment of an Indian High Commissioner in Nairobi and an "Indian Commissioner in Accra, the pilgrimages to Delhi of African nationalist leaders, the award of scholarships to young Africans to study in Indian univer- sities, such developments have made possible a new intimacy between those in a position to influence Indian and African opinion. Bandoeng is partly 'a means of carrying these some- what casual relationships a stage further.
Naturally the moral basis for this growth of Afro-Asian sympathy is a common sentiment of disapproval towards 'racialism and colonialism.' As a bright and beardless young Sikh engineer, on his way to Mauretania to help in the salvaging of a wrecked Hermes, once explained to me : 'I am interested in Africa, because it is the last continent to be liberated.' He had no doubts about either the rightness or the inevitability of the process. This fairly typical 'Asian attitude—that the doom of the European ascendancy in Africa is, already decided, and the only interesting African problems are those which relate to the transfer of power and the ensuing reconstruction—tends, understandably, to irritate Europeans, particularly old colonials. Governor-General Ryckmans, Belgium's representative on the UN Trusteeship Council, has worked out a counter-thesis: that indigenous and backward peoples are on the whole much better treated in the colonial territories than in most non-European sovereign states, and have therefore no wish to be liberated. So, when- ever an Asian delegate at the United Nations begins to talk about the liberation of the Belgian Congo or Ruanda-Urundi, M. Ryckmans offers to liberate the Andaman Islands. In fact the Prime Ministers of the Colombo Powers, while they took a strong line on the independence of Tunisia and Morocco, did their best to make clear that Bandoeng was not intended as a point of departure for an anti-European or anti-White bloc by keeping their invitation list catholic. The Union of South Africa was not invited 'because we have been blackballed by them,' as Sir John Kotelawala is reported to have explained to an Indian journalist : 'You cannot go there. I cannot go there. So why the hell should we invite them?' The Rhodesian Federation on the other hand, in spite of its" recent legislation severely restricting Indian immigration, was invited. It seems a pity that the Rhodesian Government, with its professions of multi-racialism, should have decided to keep out of this thoroughly multi-racial gathering.
In any case many factors enter into, and complicate, relations between Africans and Asians, in addition to this common dislike of 'racialism and colonialism.' Antipathy is a fact as well as sympathy. It is true that, for politically- minded Africans in most parts of Africa south of the Sahara, India has become a kind of symbol—of a people which has experienced its time of troubles, has suffered contempt, like us, but now stands on its own in the world. Hence there) is strong fellow-feeling (which local Europeans tend to play down), and a tendency to imitation. Africans create their own con- gresses; wear white Nehru-style 'prison graduate' caps in the Gold Coast; carry Gandhi badges in Nyasaland; read up the history of passive resistance movements. No non-African politician is as widely known among Africans as Pandit Nehru, or enjoys anything approaching the same prestige. Historically-minded Africans can remind themselves that India was trading peacefully with the African kingdoms of Axum and Cush at a time when the British were a backward colonial people, being slowly civilised by the Romans. But there is a distinction for Africans between India as a symbol and the Indians in our midst. The first is venerated; the second tend to be suspect, as a semi-privileged, enclosed and alien group.
The Indians have their own difficulties. Throughout the towns of East Africa, as far west as Bukavu in the Belgian, Congo, there are these relatively prosperous Indian business communities, which—like minorities of successful middlemen anywhere else in the world—tend to be interested principally in law and order and respect for the rights of property; for whom freedom means above all freedom to buy and sell. In southern Africa common experience of oppression seems to have driven Asians and Africans into alliance—at least at the top. But further north for many Indians African nationalism appears as a disturbing force—and bad for trade. If the Uganda National Congress calls a boycott, it is the Indian shopkeepers who suffer first and worst. The kindly Indian official who gave me a lift from Entebbe to Kampala clearly regarcred Nehru as a dangerous enthusiast, putting all sorts of wild ideas into innocent African heads. It is under- standable that the economically powerful, but politically frag- mented, Indian communities in East Africa should feel them- selves in a vulnerable position—ground uncomfortably between the imperial and nationalist millstones. It is not their fault that they have come to play this dominant part in commerce, building, banking, cotton-ginning and the like. Like Lebanese,'Armenians, Jews and Dissenters, they have been pushed in this direction by circumstances and their own abilities. They have been encouraged to cut their roots with India and assimilate themselves—but assimilate themselves to what? Until ten years ago it looked as though assimilation to a European-controlled colonial society was what was required. And this is what some Indian communities—notably the Isma'ilis—have achieved almost perfectly. The typical prosperous Ismaili father of a family in Uganda has developed all the virtues of the British upper-middle class of a generation or so back. He speaks English at home, not Gujarati; sends his children to English public and preparatory schools; shows an admirable social conscience in endowing schools and hos- pitals for the less-favoured members of his community; can discuss cricket and the Royal Family with the best informed; gives magnificent sherry parties; and dreams of retiring to Hove. Now it seems that this will not do. There are signs that he must prepare to adjust himself to a totally different kind of Africa, in which power is likely to pass into pre- dominantly African hands. Some Indians are well aware of the changes taking place, and are showing remarkable powers of adaptation. But there are also many for whom Hove is still a more excellent prospect than Bandoeng.
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