the extent to which foreign affairs, and the Cold War in particular,
impinged on Indian domestic affairs.)
The year 1955, which we might be justified in treating as the highest
point of Nehru’s career, was in many ways the year of Bandung. Here, in
a small town in Indonesia in April and May, the ideal of Afro-Asian
solidarity, of the need for an alternative focus of politics to superpower
rivalries, was finally to be put to the test. Plans for such a conference had
been laid at two conferences among the five prime ministers of Pakistan,
India, Ceylon, Burma and Indonesia, first at Colombo in April 1954 (for
a brief period these five countries were referred to as the ‘Colombo
Powers’), and then at Bogor, Indonesia, in December 1954. These meet-
ings did not necessarily augur well for future solidarity. The middle years
of the 1950s saw the struggle in Asia by the USA to gain adherents to the
South East Asian Treaty Organisation (SEATO); on February 24, 1954,
the ‘Baghdad Pact’ had been signed between Turkey and Iraq, and most
Asian countries were under heavy pressure to align with the Western bloc
on the basis of the ‘communist threat’. Tensions in 1954 were high over
the Indo-China conflict; French planes had been denied transit permission
when carrying reinforcements for the war by India, Burma and Indonesia,
but had been granted permission by Pakistan and Ceylon. Therefore,
Colombo and Bogor, unsurprisingly, reflected these Cold War tensions.
At both meetings, Pakistan and Ceylon wished to make ‘communism’ a
central issue; Nehru was unwilling to condemn the strange beast called
‘international communism’, which he regarded more as an invention of the
USA than as a reality. The Indonesian prime minister, Ali Sastroamidjojo,
also said he had no difficulties in allowing communists of the domestic
variety to operate. Tensions between India and Pakistan manifested
themselves; Nehru was in no doubt that by this time Pakistan was ‘prac-
tically a colony of the United States’.^1 Pakistan was keen on raising the
Kashmir issue (that is, Pakistan wished to stake its claim to Kashmir) and
Nehru was convinced that this assertiveness was a direct consequence of
US military aid to Pakistan. Despite Nehru’s self-conscious avoidance
of anti-Pakistani rhetoric – it would have been too much of a cliché – these
tensions spilled over into his relations with Pakistani representatives at
negotiating tables. At Colombo, Nehru had allegedly said to Muhammad
Ali, the Pakistani prime minister, that he was ‘nothing but an American
stooge’, to which Ali had replied – quite unfairly – that Nehru was
‘nothing better than a Russian stooge’. Nehru also allegedly said he would216 HIGH NEHRUVIANISM AND ITS DECLINE, c. 1955–63