The Bandung Conference: Precursor to Non-Alignment

Before the Non-Aligned Movement had a name, newly independent Asian and African nations gathered in Indonesia to chart their own path. Nehru was one of the meeting’s central figures. This article covers what happened at Bandung, a sabotage plot that nearly changed its outcome, and why it still matters today.

1.Who organised the Bandung Conference?

A conference of this scale needed organisers willing to bring very different nations to the same table.

• The Bandung Conference was held from 18 to 24 April 1955, in Bandung, Indonesia.
• It was organised by five nations known as the Colombo Powers: India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon.
• Also called the Asian-African Conference, it aimed to promote cooperation among nations that had recently emerged from colonial rule.
• Jawaharlal Nehru was one of its central figures, alongside Indonesia’s Sukarno, Egypt’s Nasser, and China’s Zhou Enlai.

2.What happened to the plane called Kashmir Princess?

Days before the conference opened, an act of sabotage nearly removed one of its central figures.

• On 11 April 1955, an Air India plane called the “Kashmir Princess” was sabotaged mid-flight.
• It had been chartered to fly China’s delegation to Indonesia, and crashed into the sea, killing all 11 people aboard.
• The real target was believed to be China’s Premier, Zhou Enlai, who narrowly escaped by changing his own travel plans at the last minute.
• Investigators traced the explosion to a time-delay bomb, reportedly planted by an agent linked to Taiwanese intelligence.
• The surviving co-pilot later received the Ashoka Chakra, India’s highest peacetime gallantry award, for his role in the crew’s rescue efforts.

3.How large a gathering was Bandung?

The conference brought together countries that agreed on little besides their shared recent history.

• 29 countries took part, together representing about 1.5 billion people, roughly 54% of the world’s population at the time.
• African representation included Egypt, Ethiopia, the Gold Coast, Liberia, Libya, and Sudan — several not yet fully independent.
• What united such different political systems was their shared recent experience of colonial rule and a desire for an independent voice.
• Nehru’s prominent role reflected India’s early leadership ambitions among newly independent nations, well before the formal Non-Aligned Movement existed.

4.How was Nehru actually received at Bandung?

The conference didn’t go entirely the way India’s delegation might have expected.

• Nehru did not get the warm welcome he may have expected.
• Some senior diplomats found him arrogant, and his push for non-alignment did not land as well as he had hoped.
• Zhou Enlai, still shaken from surviving the sabotage days earlier, arrived showing calm, moderate diplomacy instead.
• He even said national governments could keep capitalism if they chose to, surprising delegates who expected a hardline communist stance.
• This contrast strengthened China’s standing at the conference and cooled Zhou’s relationship with Nehru.

5.How did Bandung’s sentiment become an institution?

A one-time gathering gradually hardened into something more lasting.

• Bandung was one of the first major international gatherings organised entirely by and for newly independent Asian and African nations.
• The established Cold War powers had no direct involvement, symbolically asserting these countries’ independent voice.
• Bandung is widely seen as a key precursor to the Non-Aligned Movement, which formally launched at the 1961 Belgrade summit.
• Its broad, loosely defined anti-colonial solidarity gradually crystallised into that more formal structure.

6.What were the Ten Principles of Bandung?

The conference closed with a formal statement of shared values.

• The conference closed with the Ten Principles of Bandung (Dasasila Bandung), covering human rights, sovereignty, and peaceful coexistence.
• It was issued in the final communique on 24 April 1955.
• These nations were later sometimes grouped together as the “Third World.”

7.What is Bandung’s long afterlife?

The conference’s influence outlasted the week itself, in both writing and commemoration.

• African-American writer Richard Wright attended as an observer and wrote about it in his book “The Color Curtain” (1956).
• His account remains one of the earliest outside reflections on Bandung’s world-historical significance.
• Asian and African governments marked the conference’s 50th anniversary with a commemorative summit in Indonesia in 2005.
• That summit is often cited as evidence of Bandung’s lasting symbolic pull on South-South cooperation.

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