At the invitation of Sukarno, the charismatic leader of newly independent Indonesia, delegates from twenty-nine Asian and African states converged on the city of Bandung in April of 1955. Its leaders, who included Mao Zedong and Jawaharlal Nehru, hoped to form a new trans-national axis to better serve the needs of developing states (many of whom had only very recently thrown off the shackled of colonialism). The ‘Bandung Spirit’ wasn’t concerned with the communist internationalism of the Soviet Union or the strategic militarism of the United States. Bandung was “the first inter-continental conference of coloured peoples in the history of mankind”, determined to unite against colonialism and shift the international dialogue away from its exclusionary Cold-War construction1 .
Sunil Amrith’s article in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (assigned as further reading from week 8) gives an excellent introduction to the ideological forces at play during this symbolic assertion of post-colonial power on the global stage. The principles of the United Nations, so recently enumerated, explicitly delegitimized race as grounds for political discrimination, and forever placed human rights into the international mainstream. Globalism was a powerful force, but it had become “the almost exclusive province of the dominant, mostly Anglophone, elite of development managed, technocrats, strategists and financiers”2 . The common people of Asia and Africa had rallied around state-centric nationalism, which had largely delivered them from colonial rule. Interestingly, this relationship had been reversed before the war, when aristocrats clung to national glory and the working class expressed their discontent through anarchist and communist internationalism. Ultimately, the state-centric model of national development would prevail, newly clarified through the experiences of ‘third world’ states.
Kita Ikki was active several decades before the Bandung Conference, but his advocacy of a ‘people’s state’ would nonetheless inform and inspire the ‘Bandung Spirit’ of later years. Much like the fathers of postcolonial Asia, Kita was disappointed with what he saw as a reactionary, undemocratic international order. The West had dominated Asia’s development with its singular pursuit of capital, perpetuating inequality not just between classes, but between nations within the international order. Kita understood that “the question of Japan’s relations with its neighbors was inextricably bound with how to secure its position against the Western powers”, and felt a bulwark of Asian states (united under Japan) was essential for their continued survival3 . The sensation of Asian resurgence would resurface in Bandung, whose community of states represented more than half of the world’s population and all its “spiritual, moral, and political strength”4 . In Bandung as in prewar Japan, there was a sense that the West was morally bankrupt, leaving Asia to fill the void with an ambitious new direction for mankind.
For Kita, the salvation of humanity would be achieved through the realization of a people’s state (komin kokka), regulating private wealth while also respecting the democratic principles later enshrined in the United Nations Charter5 . Intended as a manual for the the strengthening of Eastern states, Kita’s Reorganization Plan elucidated several elements of Pan-Asianism which would come to force during the Bandung Conference. Most significant, however, was Kita’s awareness of the “crucial task of overturning the authority of the European theories of revolution… (and) advancing a theory founded on indigenous ideas.”6 Having realized a reformed ‘Asian’ revolution, Kita hoped Japan could aid the independence of China and India and establish a new world order. Kita’s radical proposals ultimately led to his execution in 1937, but, as Bandung proves, his model of leadership survived long beyond his short life.
Bibliography
Amrith, Sunil S. “Asian Internationalism: Bandung’s Echo in a Colonial Metropolis,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6, no. 4 (December 1, 2005): 557-69.
Tankha, Brij. Kita Ikki and the Making of Modern Japan: A Vision of Empire. Kent: Global Oriental, 2006.
- Sunil S. Amrith, “Asian Internationalism: Bandung’s Echo in a Colonial Metropolis,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6, no. 4 (December 1, 2005): 557. [↩]
- Ibid, 567. [↩]
- Brij Tankha, Kita Ikki and the Making of Modern Japan: A Vision of Empire (Kent: Global Oriental, 2006), 18. [↩]
- Amrith, “Asian Internationalism,” 557-58. [↩]
- Tankha, The Making of Modern Japan, 34. [↩]
- Ibid, 129. [↩]