WE play the grand keyboard of history with this Special Issue remembering the Bandung Conference of 1955, a gathering of the leaders of newly decolonized, or decolonizing, countries that were shrugging off their colonial past and building a future where their citizens could breathe the pure air of freedom, but then the noxious fumes of the Cold War intervened to divide the world into spheres of superpower influence. This special Bandung issue, Guest Edited by our Consulting Editor, Gurjit Singh, a veteran Indian diplomat, scholar, and thinker, offers a series of articles by scholars and diplomats that specialize in the topic of the Bandung Conference.
There are nine keys in this large historical symphony—Bandung, Northeast India, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Tibet, Chile, Russia, and Cuba—each represented in the articles in this bumper issue.
In his introductory article, Gurjit Singh sets the tone with his observation that the Bandung Conference of 1955 marked a seminal moment in international relations and decolonization, where, one of the most prominent voices at the conference, India, shaped the agenda, voiced the aspirations of newly independent nations, and championed the emerging principle of non-alignment. This article examines India’s motivations, strategies, and contributions at Bandung, situating its participation within the broader context of postcolonial internationalism, Cold War geopolitics, and the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement.
In his important article, Christopher J. Lee, Lead Editor of Safundi journal, sees Bandung as a moment of postcolonial spectacle, inhabiting an historic intersection of the end of empires and new postcolonial possibilities. Yet, Lee argues that the symbolism of Bandung slipped after 1965 when postcolonial optimism was dampened as the politics of Africa and Asia came to be defined by Cold War intervention, underdevelopment, coup d’etats, and one-party states. Lee explains that since the end of the Cold War, the Bandung moment has re-emerged as a historical locus for re-chronologizing the past and reframing the present. As the author sees it, the refashioning of Bandung appears less like mythmaking and more like a hijacking, providing a gloss of Afro-Asianism that emphasizes economic solidarity geared toward global capital from, and for, the Global South. Lee argues that returning to Bandung after seventy years requires critical judiciousness that dispels the notion of romanticism while not resorting to outright dismissiveness.
In the next article, Andrea Benvenuti, Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales, a leading scholar on Bandung, examines the role of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in organizing the Bandung conference, and explains how his support for this Afro-Asian gathering was motivated by concerns about American containment policy in Asia. The author argues, first, that Bandung was crucial to Nehru’s strategy of promoting a non-aligned “third way” and, therefore, lessening the appeal of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) among Asian nations, a U.S.-led alliance that Washington was actively promoting to contain communism. Secondly, while this strategy helped reduce the alliance’s appeal, it was neither the sole nor the primary reason for its lack of attractiveness among Asian nations. There were other factors that exerted a more substantial influence.
We present the view from Indonesia in an article by Yayan G.H. Mulyana (Ambassador of Indonesia to Sweden), and Cut Nury H. Sabry (Attaché at the Center for Policy Strategy for the America and Europe Region, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia). They explain that the desire to create a new Bandung is not merely symbolic: it is a strategic proposal that demands the re-shaping of a world order rooted in justice, mutual respect, and pluralism. Yet, the authors clarify that a future “Bandung 2.0” is unlikely to manifest as a unified political bloc or a formal international organization. Instead, it may take the form of a networked movement, a constellation of flexible, issue-based coalitions aligned around shared interests and interrelated challenges such as digital sovereignty, economic justice, ecological survival, and democratic multilateralism. A renewed Bandung ethos could serve as a unifying moral and strategic compass to align these disparate efforts into a more cohesive agenda with practical, action-oriented goals that reflect the interests of the Global South.
In an article that shares the same impetus, Hebatallah Adam, Professor of Economics, School of Business, Horizon University College, United Arab Emirates, critically examines the early strategies adopted by the newly independent countries, such as Import Substitution Industrialization and state-led growth, evaluating them as manifestations of their economic aspirations, but a policy that eventually failed. The study demonstrates historical continuity between past and contemporary forms of economic dependency, particularly in the areas of sovereign debt, digital colonialism, and the impact of multinational corporations. The primary findings show that contemporary methods of economic regulation, particularly in the digital realm, create power disparities that undermine the autonomy of countries in the Global South. The study concludes that the Bandung values of non-alignment, solidarity, and self-determination remain significant, and that these ideas can help countries in the Global South to work together for a more equitable world.
In his “viewpoint,” A. Sooklal, South Africa’s High Commissioner to India, Bangladesh and Nepal, provocatively states that the ten guiding principles adopted at the Bandung Summit are more relevant today than ever before. The author explains that although the world of 1955 is vastly different from that of 2025, the pressing challenges confronting countries of the Global South remain the same, i.e. poverty, underdevelopment, rising inequality, the erosion of the rules-based global order and multilateralism, and the search for solutions to the devastation caused by climate change.
I CONGRATULATE our regular commentator, Dr. Vimal Khawas for receiving the Professor S.R. Basu Memorial Award in November 2025 for his work on water-related issues, at the 4th International River Conference of the South Asian Institute for Advanced Research and Development in New Delhi. In his commentary, Professor Khawas, who works at the Special Centre for the Study of North-East India, Jawaharlal Nehru University, recommends a raft of measures to improve resilience in the event of a flood in the high Himalayas. The measures are: creating a Disaster Risk Reduction framework; integrating disaster management into India’s Concurrent List, and reforming the National Disaster Management Authority to include regional expertise; halting additional mega dam projects in the Upper Tista River Basin; framing a regional hydropower policy; and exploring the concept of “Payment for Ecosystem Destruction” to ensure accountability for upstream degradation impacting downstream communities.
We are introducing a new column, “Southeast Asia 360,” in which Anirban Lahiri, a Regional Specialist, explains that Vietnam has been a poster child of economic development over the past two decades, rising from the ashes of war to become a global manufacturing hub and lifting millions of its citizens out of abject poverty. However, Vietnam’s continued rise is far from certain in view of a fast-aging population and given the ongoing fracturing of the global trade system, momentous technological disruption and the rising threat of climate change. The author states that the country will need to reinvent its growth model and invest strategically in order to continue along the path from rags-to-riches.
We are introducing another new column, “Road to Malaya,” by Philip George, Malayan-born English Writer, Lawyer, Traveller and Sportsman, who reflects on his early life in Malaya in the 1960s and his arrival in Britain in 1970, when London seemed the world’s capital, and China a mess. From his perch in Lancashire, he has witnessed the unforeseen decline of the West and the Rise of the East.
WE present a series of excellent investigative pieces in our regular Research Articles’ section. Ruthi Hmingchungnungi, Guest Faculty, and Jangkhongam Doungel, Professor at Mizoram University, track the entry of women in politics, and find that they still face barriers at both the national and provincial level in India. Women are often not given party tickets to represent their political party. In a hopeful sign, women have begun to appear in local governance in the state of Mizoram because seats are reserved for them. However, in other areas of governance, state or central, women’s participation as candidates is still very low. Their participation in politics in the Autonomous District Council area of Mizoram has also lagged behind. Women hardly have a chance to become legislators if they are not chosen for the nominated seats. They are not given much encouragement to contest the three Autonomous District Councils, even by political parties that function within the Autonomous District Councils.
We present a pathbreaking survey article by four scholars specializing in the Northeast (Leishilembi Terem, Delhi Public School; Artha Mishra, Awadh Prabha Vidyapeeth; Shlok Goenka, Narayana E-tecno; and Nzano Elise Humtsoe, Patkai Christian College, Nagaland). Their study investigates the motivation and inter-ethnic empathy of participants in the Wesean High School Students Forum (WHSF), a Northeast Indian student organization aimed at fostering regional solidarity. The results indicate that adolescent-led initiatives such as the WHSF have the capacity to promote cross-ethnic solidarity in conflict-ridden regions. This localized study demonstrates that the trends observed might reflect broader dynamics in Northeast India, and therefore similar forums in other places could assist adolescent-led social cohesion and peacebuilding.
In a remarkable polemical article, the scholar Kelvin Ke Jinde, Assistant Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, argues that art cinema exerts a form of “disciplinary power” through the discourses and practices of film festivals, film criticism, and media institutions. The author examines how these institutions deploy a discourse of “divinity” to construct social, cultural, and stylistic hierarchies. The significance of this article lies not only in problematizing the use of divinity in art cinema to enact disciplinary power, it also lies in opening up a space to discuss and consider cinematic epistemologies beyond those authorized by dominant cultural institutions.
Next, we focus on Japan in three research articles. Erick Raven, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Baylor University, explores the use of a mixture of Japanese and African American blues or burusu to communicate an Afro-Asian rhetoric of Japanese women’s liberation. The author argues that Afro-Asian rhetorical films, such as Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (1970), can be an avenue through which counternarratives of, and by, marginalized people can be expressed. It also represents a call for greater attention to the study of “fusion” rhetorics in the quest for a greater and more holistic understanding of human interaction and rhetorical production.
Anwitha Kandula, a scholar from Southside, Greenville, South Carolina, interrogates how Hayao Miyazaki’s film, Howl’s Moving Castle, is a critique of authoritarianism. The author selected this movie for research due to its magical façades and how they conceal a direct political message consistent with real-world regimes, such as Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union. Its characters illustrate war as an instrument of coercion and manipulation. The article concludes that real power in the world of Miyazaki stems from self-sacrifice, moral conscience, and compassion, and not domination. Finally, the film challenges audiences to observe the mechanisms of dictatorship and to believe that defiance, even in small and personal ways, can be transformative.
In the third article on Japan and East Asia, Aitor Debbarma and Urmi Sengupta of The ICFAI University, Tripura, argue that Chinese auteur Wong Kar-wai is a beneficiary of the “Haruki Phenomenon”—an overwhelming adulation and eventual reception of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami by his younger cultural contemporaries across East Asia. The authors explore the resonance of the “Murakami mood” within the cinematic oeuvre of Wong—and map the shift in the idea of East-Asian Masculinity from the traditional Wen-Wu model (toughness, dominance, cultural refinement, and civil success) in vogue till the 1970s, to some more evolved ‘alternative’ models (sensitivity, passivity, detachment, and a keen interest towards domestic activities hitherto associated with women), within the late-twentieth century urban milieu of Japan and Greater China.
THE Rising Asia Review of Books carries four significant reviews. Salikyu Sangtam of Logdrum Foundation reviews Stephen M. Streeter’s “Uncool and Incorrect” in Chile: The Nixon Administration and the Downfall of Salvador Allende. The reviewer writes that this is an apt volume and perhaps a premonition of the challenges to idealism in politics. The book’s strength is its extensive use of newly declassified records that were previously unavailable about the 1973 coup against the democratically elected Chilean government and its president, Salvador Allende. The reviewer notes that what makes this book particularly unique is the utilization of newly declassified records and transcripts that provide a more nuanced interpretation of events leading up to the fateful last days of Allende. What follows in the book is a digression from the usual black or white narrative, with Streeter presenting a more complex set of events involving numerous state and private actors working covertly and overtly, quite independently of each other, in the plotting and the eventual collapse of Allende’s Unidad Popular government.
The scholar Aurko Chakrabarti, an Applied Geopolitical Researcher at the Advanced Study Institute of Asia in New Delhi, reviews Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit’s A History of Thailand (fourth edition). The reviewer explains that the book continues the streamlined focus of the authors in analyzing history in an unsanitized manner and breaking from conventionally rooted perspectives often sanctioned by the State. The fourth edition contains an additional chapter, helping readers to contextualise the tumultuous nature of modern Thai politics from the 2006 coup until the 2019 elections. Despite the book being heavily grounded and supported by academic materials and research, the style of the book caters to both specialist and general readers. Baker and Phongpaichit’s work does not conform to the dominant narratives which prevailed in the State sanctioned literature of the twentieth century.
Priyanka Garodia, Assistant Professor and Research Analyst at the Advanced Study Institute of Asia, reviews Simon Hall’s Three Revolutions: Russia, China, Cuba and the Epic Journeys That Changed the World. The reviewer finds that Hall adopts a dual lens of revolutionary leaders and Western journalists to recount some of the cornerstone events of the twentieth century. He pairs Lenin with John Reed, Mao with Edgar Snow, and Castro with Herbert Matthews, offering an intertwined story of mediation and agency. The three arcs in the book—Vladimir Lenin’s journey to Petrograd, Mao Zedong’s Long March, and Fidel Castro’s voyage on the Granma—are historical events that are presented as symbols for ideological communication. For Hall, movement itself creates momentum: when the revolutionary returns from a place of displacement it signifies the re-entry of radical possibility and not simply personal redemption.
The scholar Manashjyoti Karjee, a Researcher in Security and Society at the Advanced Study Institute of Asia, reviews His Holiness The Dalai Lama’s Voice for the Voiceless Over Seven Decades of Struggle with China for My Land and My People. The reviewer explains that this book is a record of a lifetime of diplomacy—or its failure. Karjee writes Voice for the Voiceless feels wider than Tibet; it is meant as a manifesto for the oppressed. The book reads like a political memoir built around a rolling set of negotiations with every generation of Chinese leadership from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping. The book makes a headline-making clarification that changes the near future. For years, the Dalai Lama had left open the possibility that his lineage might end with him. Now, the Dalai Lama declares that his next incarnation will be born “in the free world,” i.e. outside the People’s Republic of China. This assertion preempts Beijing’s plan to appoint its own Dalai Lama, and places the book squarely in strategic debates.
