The Darker Nations, page 43
44. Shabnam Virmani’s 1996 documentary, When Women Unite: The Story of an Uprising, is about women in Andhra Pradesh who are organized in a literacy circle and then begin a statewide campaign against cheap liquor. It is an excellent document on the power of contemporary literacy campaigns linked to political-social reform movements. Equally impressive is the “total literacy campaign” in Kerala’s Ernakulam district. See P.K. Michael Tharakan, The Ernakulam District Total Literacy Programme: Report of the Evaluation (Trivandrum, India: Centre for Development Studies, 1990); Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, Lead Kindly Light: Operation Illiteracy Eradication. A Report on the Intensive Campaign for Eradication of Illiteracy in Ernakulam (Trivandrum, India: KSSP, 1991).
45. For a terrific account, see Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
46. The best empirical alarm against this trend is in Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science (London: Zed Books, 1991). The best philosophical rejection is in Meera Nanda, Prophets Facing Backwards: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003).
47. This is from his Dar Khedmat va Khianat Rushanfekran, a work that draws from the framework and concepts of Antonio Gramsci’s work on organic intellectuals. See Vahdat, God and Juggernaut, 119–20. One contemporary Iranian continues Al-e Ahmad’s quest, even if his direction is far more suffused with a reverence toward canonical Islam than Al-e Ahmad (who was more keen on esoteric Islam and its folkloric roots). See AbdolKarim Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of AbdolKarim Soroush (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
48. Al-e Ahmad, Occidentosis, 30.
49. Ibid., 79.
50. Quoted in Darius M. Rejali, Torture and Modernity: Self, Society, and State in Modern Iran (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), 140.
51. “A Change of Ideas,” Time, September 27, 1963, 79.
52. He suffered the fate of being associated, after his death, with the Iranian Revolution, and then began to be seen by some as one of the intellectual progenitors of the Islamic regime. See Val Moghadam, The Revolution and the Regime: Populism, Islam, and the State in Iran,” Social Compass 36, no. 4 (1989): 429; Mehrzad Boroujerdi, “Gharbzadegi: The Dominant Intellectual Discourse of Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Iran,” in Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic, ed. Samih Farsoun and Mehrdad Mashayekhi (London: Routledge, 1992).
53. Simin Daneshvar, Savushun (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 1990). An alternative translation is A Persian Requiem (London: Halban, 1991).
54. Forugh Farrokhzad, “Kasi Keh Mesi-e Hichkas Nist,” Arash 10 (Summer 1966), in Hillmann, A Lonely Woman, 65–68.
Belgrade
1. Fernando Claudín, The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform, Part 2 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 390–91.
2. Quoted in Franrsois Fejtö, Histoire des démocraties populaires (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1969), 85–86.
3. The Italian Communist Party’s general secretary Palmiro Togliatti laid out his party’s position in 1956 as “polycentrism,” or the “national roads to socialism.” VII Congresso del PCI (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1956), 45. Moscow remained an important center of the movement, but as Togliatti affirmed, each national Communist Party would develop its strategy and tactics based on its analysis, and not on that of Moscow itself. This is a far cry from the Eurocommunist manifesto of 1976, where the Western European parties announced, “Once Moscow was our Rome, but no more. Now we acknowledge no guiding center, no international discipline.” Fernando Claudín, Eurocommunism and Socialism (London: New Left Books, 1978), 54.
4. The Yugoslavs did accept investment capital and foreign aid from the Western European states and the United States. In July 1949, Tito justified this infusion: “When we sell our copper to buy machines, we are not selling our consciences, but only our copper.” Quoted in Claudín, The Communist Movement, 509.
5. Because Bandung was a conference of Africa and Asia, Yugoslavia could not attend, but the Brijuni summit allowed Nasser and Nehru to join Tito in the creation of a framework that exceeded the continents and included those with a Third World vision. From the standpoint of Europe, additionally, the region that became Yugoslavia was treated as savage and lesser, somewhat in a similar manner to the rest of the Third World. Perhaps this legacy had something to do with the sympathetic welcome accorded to Yugoslavia into the ranks of the Third World. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994).
6. Indeed, when Algeria’s first president, Ahmed Ben Bella, traveled to Belgrade in 1964, he thanked Tito’s government because “as a small country [it] nevertheless, contributes towards the settlement of world problems,” and because its version of socialism is “the best of all, since it pays attention to democracy and harmonizes socialism and democracy.” Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Yugoslavia and the Nonaligned World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 88.
7. The USSR’s hasty recognition of Israel in 1948 and its temerity over India’s claims in Kashmir isolated it further from the ruling class in Egypt and India.
8. The details are in Robert J. McMohan, The Cold War on the Periphery: The United States, India, and Pakistan, 1947–1965 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Dennis Kux, India and the United States: Estranged Democracies (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1992).
9. Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 166–67.
10. Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy, 1945–1980 (New York: Random House, 1988), 62. U.S. establishment literature consistently missed the point of non-alignment, always ready to impute the worst motivations to the states that assembled for peace. Arthur Holcombe, Peaceful Coexistence: A New Challenge to the United Nations (New York: Twelfth Report of the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, Research Affiliate of the American Association for the United Nations, 1960); Richard V. Allen, Peace or Peaceful Coexistence? (Chicago: American Bar Association, 1966).
11. Sukarno’s opening address to the 1961 NAM Conference took on this point directly, “Non-alignment is not neutrality. Let there be no confusion on that score. No, nonalignment is not neutrality. It is not the sanctimonious attitude of the man who holds himself aloof—’a plague on both your houses.’ Non-aligned policy is not a policy of seeking for a neutral position in case of war; non-aligned policy is not a policy of neutrality without its own colour; being non-aligned does not mean becoming a buffer state between the two giant blocs. Non-alignment is active devotion to the lofty cause of independence, abiding peace, social justice, and the freedom to be free. It is the determination to serve this cause; it runs congruent with the social conscience of man.” Quoted in The Conference of Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned Countries (Belgrade: Editions Jugoslavija, 1961), 27. The idea of non-aligned or noncommitted had been well laid out in the 1950 5th Session of the United Nations by Yugoslavia’s Foreign Minister Edvard Kardelj: “The peoples of Yugoslavia cannot accept the assumption that mankind must today choose between the domination of one great power or another. We consider that there is another path, the difficult but necessary path of democratic struggle for a world of free and equal nations, for democratic relations among nations, against foreign interference in the domestic affairs of the people and for the all around peaceful cooperation of nations on a basis of equality.” Rubinstein, Yugoslavia, 29. Non-alignment for the NAM group was not a legal concept but a political and moral space. Lars Nord, Nonalignment and Socialism (Stockholm: Raben and Sjögren, 1974), 58–59.
12. For the dam itself, Nasser toyed with the various powers for finances, but he settled for the earnest offers from the United States and the World Bank. British Foreign Secretary Harold MacMillan saw that Nasser wanted to “induce both the West and the Soviets to bid up each other’s price.” Harold MacMillan, Tides of Fortune, 1945–1955 (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 635.
13. Quoted in Little, American Orientalism, 171. For more on this, see Geoffrey Aronson, From Sideshow to Center-Stage: U.S. Policy toward Egypt, 1946–1956 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1986), 256; Townsend Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973).
14. Quoted in Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 18–19.
15. Quoted in H.W. Brands, The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947–1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 273.
16. “The Brioni Document. Joint Communiqué by President Tito, President Nasser, and Premier Nehru,” Review of International Affairs 7, nos. 152–53 (1956).
17. As prelude to the Belgrade meeting, Tito went on an extended tour of liberated Africa in 1961. Before Ghana’s parliament, Tito honored the delegates as being the antithesis of the fascists and colonial rulers who had dominated the world. “Millions of ordinary people have entered the stage of history,” he said, and “they will not allow a handful of irresponsible belligerent people to gamble with their destiny.” Josef Broz Tito, “Speech in the Parliament of the Republic of Ghana,” in Selected Articles and Speeches, 1941–1961 (Zagreb: Naprijed, 1963), 345. There are two more useful documents on Tito’s trip: President Tito’s Visit to Friendly African Countries (Belgrade: Edition Jugoslavija, 1961); Obren Milicevic, With Friends in Africa (Belgrade: Edition Jugoslavija, 1961).
18. After Belgrade, the NAM Head of State Conferences have been held in the following cities: Cairo (1964), Lusaka (1970), Algiers (1973), Colombo (1976), Havana (1979), New Delhi (1983), Harare (1986), Belgrade (1989), Jakarta (1992), Cartagena de Indias (1995), Durban (1998), and Kuala Lumpur (2003). There have also been other conferences of foreign ministers and lesser representatives over the years.
19. There are a lot of warts in the life of the three giants, and much has been written of Tito’s authoritarian tendency and distortion of internal democracy in the party. For an analytic account by Tito’s sometime ally and then vehement critic, see Milovan Djilas, Tito: The Story from Inside (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980). Much the same has been said of Nehru and Nasser (see Saïd K. Aburish, The Last Arab: A Biography [New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2004]).
20. This political diversity made it impossible for NAM to become a bloc in the conventional sense. In an assessment of the history of NAM in anticipation of the Second NAM Conference at Cairo, the former Yugoslavian representative to the United Nations Miso Pavicevic wrote, “It has been repeated many times that the Belgrade Conference was not held with the intention of forming a third bloc or still less an exclusive club. The object of the Belgrade Conference and of the policy of the non-aligned countries has always been to narrow the area of bloc conflict and build a world of peaceful and active co-existence. The fact that an increasing number of countries are adopting the policy formulated at the Belgrade Conference is both an outstanding result and a forceful proof of the vitality and rightness of this policy. Bloc arguing is alien to the very nature of the policy of the non-aligned countries, and so is any attempt to enclose it within narrow limits, which must be surpassed by life.” Miso Pavicevic, “Why a New Conference of Non-Aligned Countries?” Review of International Affairs 15, no. 333 (1964): 5.
21. Quoted in The Conference of Heads of State or Government, 69.
22. It was not until this concerted pressure from the Third World and the tension of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that the two countries began to seriously entertain inspections, a confidence builder that led in great part to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The treaty provided the scaffolding for the bulk of the nuclear disarmament agreements that followed. To many in the Third World, the U.S. obduracy on the nuclear question did everything to sour their sense of the superpower. The 1946 Baruch Plan appeared to be a ruse to allow the United States to preserve its technological and military dominance. Further, when the USSR voted in the 15th Session of the United Nations (1960) against nuclear tests, and when it declared a unilateral moratorium on tests in 1985, the United States did not respond in kind. Indeed, on September 18, 1959, when the USSR submitted a memorandum to the 14th Session of the United Nations in favor of total disarmament, the rest of the nuclear elite read it silently.
23. The Conference of Heads of State or Government, 87 (Haile Selassie), 99 (Nkrumah), 254–55 (final resolution).
24. Ibid., 264.
25. The permanent seats and veto had nothing to do with nuclear weapons. In 1945, only the United States had nuclear capability, but soon thereafter the USSR, England, and France joined it. When the People’s Republic of China replaced Taiwan in the United Nations (and on the Security Council) in 1971, it had a nuclear bomb (having tested it in 1964). As it turned out, then, the five Security Council members are nuclear powers, although when the Third World demanded the expansion of the council, this was not the case. After India tested nuclear weapons in 1974, it was not invited into the club. Historical advantage, not nuclear capability, gave the Security Council members veto power over the world’s affairs.
26. In late 1954, Tito told the Indian Parliament, “Up to now the United Nations has failed to settle many questions of international significance mainly because of organizational faults, such as the right to veto in the Security Council, and so on, and then again because of the tendency to divide into blocs has been apparent in the Organisation from the very beginning, and this has hampered the proper functioning of this international institution.” Josef Broz Tito, “Speech in the Indian Parliament,” in Selected Speeches and Articles, 1941–1961 (Zagreb: Naprijed, 1963), 162.
27. Quoted in The Conference of Heads of State or Government, 70.
28. Rubinstein, Yugoslavia, 10. In 1964, the Yugoslavian Foreign Ministry’s Josip Djerdja offered a sympathetic and critical analysis of the role of the United Nations for NAM: “[Regular meetings of NAM representatives at the United Nations] should be seen as the embryo of a necessary and constant consultative procedure which would make it possible for the non-aligned countries to cooperate more effectively in constantly expanding the field of activity toward peace and progress. The non-aligned countries have again identified their activity with the efforts of the United Nations which in a more peaceful and just world should act as a regulator of equitable cooperation and an instrument of general development in a world which is diverse but which should be freed from the danger of the existing differences and diversities serving as a motive or cause of friction and antagonism. Democratization of the United Nations and a course toward some necessary corrections in the mechanism of the world organization and in its Charter, which are given prominence in the Cairo program, are nothing but an indication that the non-aligned countries are looking forward with sober confidence to the days when the UNO will assume this important role.” Josip Djerdja, “The Cairo Programme of Action,” Review of International Affairs 15, no. 350 (1964): 2–3.
29. Cuba’s President Osvaldo Dorticós, who had attended the 1961 and 1964 meetings of NAM, expressed his joy that with this plank, NAM “made clear that non-alignment is not the same as neutrality but that it only means not participating in some military bloc.” Quoted in Jorge I. Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution: Cuba’s Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 222.
30. Amilcar Cabral, “National Liberation and Peace, Cornerstones of Non-Alignment,” in Revolution in Guinea: Selected Texts by Amilcar Cabral, ed. Richard Handyside (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), 55.
31. Edvard Kardelj, Socialism and War: A Survey of Chinese Criticism of the Policy of Peaceful Coexistence (London: Methuen, 1960), 148. Kardelj’s defense of the Soviet intervention in Hungary draws from this theory, but it does not follow his own presumptions to the end. While his book questions the intervention by a stronger power into a weaker one when other solutions offer themselves, in his address to the Federal People’s Assembly, he defends the intervention on the grounds that any delay would have increased the suffering of the Hungarian working class. He did, however, call the intervention the “lesser evil,” and not the greater good. Edvard Kardelj, Review of International Affairs 12, no. 161, special supplement (1956).
32. Cabral, “National Liberation and Peace,” 53. Cabral was not alone. Here are some others on the same point: “Today, in the entire continent of Africa, from Algiers to Cape Town, from Lobito to Lusaka, Africa’s Freedom Fighters are up in arms and will lay down their lives rather than their arms in the struggle for the total liquidation of colonialism. Protracted constitutional devices designed to defeat the attainment of freedom and independence will no longer be tolerated.” Nkrumah, quoted in The Conference of Heads of State or Government, 103. “I am sure that, like the Cuban people, all other peoples represented here who have been the victims of imperialist and colonialist aggression, wish to live in peace with the aggressor countries. It is not a mere whim which prompts us to oppose them. We are being forced into taking up arms and giving battle, and no Government which wishes to maintain the dignity and sovereignty of its nation can refuse the challenge.” Dortícos, quoted in The Conference of Heads of State or Government, 128. “The elimination of colonial relationships and of neo-colonialistic attempts at preserving the substance of colonialism in changed circumstances is today equally to the advantage of colonial peoples and the peoples of metropolitan countries. Full support to peoples and countries struggling against colonial domination for their fundamental rights is, at the same time, one of the basic prerequisites for an effective eradication of sources of war and of dangers threatening world peace.” Tito, quoted in The Conference of Heads of State or Government, 161.
