Chapter 1 - Introduction: The Lives of Cold War Afro-Asianism

Summary

Abstract

The Afro-Asianism of the early Cold War can be conceptualised as a living network, nourished by connections created through political activism at both the local and the international level. The “lives” in The Lives of Cold War Afro-Asianism refer both to the many different incarnations of Afro-Asianism itself, and to the lives of the women and men who lived Afro-Asianism through their politics, their travels, and their relationships. Afro-Asianist engagement spanned a wide political spectrum, but its solidarities were not without limitations, constraints, and tensions. This introduction shows that, rather than a unified movement, Afro-Asianism functioned as both an affective and an effective banner for rallying a range of anti-imperialist agendas.

Keywords: decolonisation, Cold War, Afro-Asianism, biography, networks

Eighteen months after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez canal, Rameshwari Nehru, a veteran of Indian social and political activism, rose to a lectern in the spacious auditorium of the University of Cairo to open the first official conference of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO). She was seventy-three years of age, and it is easy to imagine that the journey to Cairo had not been an easy one. But it was a journey on familiar terrain. Rameshwari Nehru had first visited Egypt in 1932 and spent time in Cairo and the surrounding countryside on her way to a tour of Europe which included a speech at the League of Nations in Geneva. On this second visit, there was much she recognised, but she found the “climate and colour” to be different now. It was “refreshing to be able to breathe the fresh air of freedom” now that the Egyptian people had “accepted the challenge of their time” and won independence.

At the conference, Rameshwari Nehru was also surrounded by familiar people. The Indian delegation in Cairo consisted chiefly of her own activist network, despite the fact that it counted different generations among its members. Perin Chandra for instance, was her junior by several decades, but had been her partner in an effort to join the communist and non-communist women’s movements in the Punjab during the Second World War. In a similar vein, Tehminabai Dhage and Rameshwari were some twenty-five years apart in age, but they were connected through their social work with children’s institutions.