4 - Afro-Asian Networks and the Cold War: Mapping Local Practices of Solidarity in India

The idea of Afro-Asian solidarity during the Cold War manifested through the Non-Alignment movement as well as many other non-state Afro-Asian networks built by writers, activists, artists and other actors. This paper will map the various practices of Afro-Asian solidarity emerging from India, focussing on the All India Peace Council which also called themselves the Indian Association for Afro-Asian Solidarity. The paper will study their monthly journal— Peace and Solidarity (1969-1988), published from New Delhi, India which reported on the various meetings, conferences, campaigns and events organized by them. Through these meetings or public events occurring in different parts of India, local Indian actors expressed solidarity with political issues in African countries— the Apartheid in South Africa, anticolonial liberation movements in other African nations as well as discussed, debated and celebrated victories of similar other global anti-imperialist struggles like Vietnam or Bangladesh. They regularly organized events inviting delegates from many of these nations in the Global South while discussing issues of education and culture in India. Tracing the network of these practices of Afro-Asian solidarity and the emerging Global South imaginary, this paper will investigate how culture became an arena through which postcolonial nations as well as individual actors were self-fashioning themselves. Using the lens of ‘translocality’, it will study how local actors in their everyday lives engaged in global politics and imagined a South-South solidarity while also negotiating their own positions and crafting international networks.