Andrea Benvenuti's book Nehru's Bandung covers India's post-1947 foreign policy, Cold War history, and Afro-Asian decolonization by examining Jawaharlal Nehru's motivation for supporting the Bandung Conference, convened in April 1955. Benvenuti cogently explains Nehru's Cold War strategy and vision for Asia. By examining a multiplicity of archival sources from India, Great Britain, the United States, and Australia, he challenges the orthodox perspective wedded to Nehru's backing of the Bandung conference.The conference, as it has often been understood, offered a “transformative vision” of world politics, anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialism that would foster Afro-Asian solidarity and yield an alternative Third Way against the binary choices of the Cold War. The implication is that Nehru's advocacy for postcolonial elements is what prompted him to endorse the Bandung Conference. Taking issue with this view, Benvenuti argues that Cold War geopolitics elevated the potency of such a conference in Nehru's mind to embed the “five principles of peaceful coexistence” as a governing structure for a neutralist Asian order and to seek China's adherence to such principles, bolstering India's own influence.Benvenuti points out that at various forums, gatherings, and high-level engagements, such as India's meeting with four other South Asian countries in Colombo in April 1954, Nehru maintained that a Bandung Conference of Asian and African countries would allow for broader solutions to the problems of Indochina, thereby endorsing his neutralist vision. Even though deliberations about this proposed gathering caused Nehru to worry that the “diverse” and “disparate” governments that would attend might end up just espousing platitudes rather than fulfilling a common agenda, his concerns about Cold War divisions prompted his eagerness to convene the conference.What further drove Nehru's shifting perception in favor of the conference, as Benvenuti shows, was the deteriorating Asian security environment in 1954. U.S. containment strategy, including the defense alliance formed between the United States and Pakistan and the promulgation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), spurred Nehru to try to de-securitize Asia. The proposed inclusion of China in Nehru's regional strategy as a significant “stakeholder” in Asian security was a further catalyst that that changed Nehru's perception.Benvenuti convincingly maintains that one of Nehru's goals for the conference was to bolster China's international recognition and undercut U.S. efforts to isolate the Chinese. Nehru probed Chinese intentions—during Zhou Enlai's visit to India in April 1954 and later Nehru's visit to Beijing in September 1954—regarding the sponsorship of revolutionary Communist movements in Southeast Asia with the help of Chinese diaspora communities in the region. Chinese leaders attempted to reassure Nehru about their adherence to “peaceful coexistence.” The Indian prime minister reciprocated by urging Beijing to sign “bilateral declarations” of peaceful coexistence with Burma and Indonesia to alleviate their fears of Chinese interference in their domestic politics. Ultimately, Nehru also secured the consent of the other Colombo powers—Ceylon, Pakistan, Burma, and Indonesia—in late 1954 to accept China's participation in a Bandung Conference the next year.The more substantial contribution from Benvenuti is his success in uncovering India's strategy under the ambit of the nonalignment policy it pursued during the Cold War. Nehru's regional diplomatic strategy was tailored to achieve his vision of an “Area of Peace”—that is, a “neutralized Asia” devoid of competitive tendencies that could be exacerbated by great-power rivalries. Through multilateral sessions with high-level delegations from Asian countries and numerous high-level one-on-one meetings, Nehru sought to propagate an alternative vision for governing interstate relations by regionalizing the “five principles of peaceful coexistence” as the “ordering principles” for Asia.These developments crystallized and climaxed during the Bandung Conference in May 1955. Zhou emerged as the “star” performer embracing Afro-Asian solidarity, espousing directives against coalition-building in Asia, reassuring Southeast Asia of Beijing's benign intentions, and resolving the political status of the ethnic Chinese communities in Burma (before the conference) and Indonesia by signing dual-nationality agreements. But even though Nehru was perceived as authoritative, he fell short of his aims. Only four out of his five principles made it into the China-India Agreement on Tibet and into the Bandung Conference's communiqué. Moreover, the communiqué mentioned the Southeast Asian states’ right to collective defense, even though Nehru preferred to omit it.Benvenuti does an admirable job of analyzing Nehru's “area of peace” strategy during the tumultuous phase of 1954–1955 and the Indian leader's efforts to forge Afro-Asian solidarity. The book also fills a notable gap in the literature on India's foreign policy by positioning Delhi's response in the context of the Cold War structure. In exploring the “area of peace” strategy, Benvenuti underscores exciting theoretical avenues for scholars of International Relations to pursue—a structural explanation predicated on balance-of-power theory bounded with reassurance strategy for entrenching the status quo by subtracting great-power intervention. This line of inquiry will surely bridge theoretical deficiencies in the literature on Indian foreign policy. Benvenuti's approach can be followed to understand the “area of peace” thinking as a strategy in multiple other cases. A comparative analysis investigating similar patterns on the part of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in Southwest Asia and other such alliances should be undertaken in the future to break additional new ground in the historiography of the Cold War.
Rahul Jaybhay (Thu,) studied this question.