Evolution Of Non Aligned Movement

Evolution Of Non Aligned drivingThe Non-Aligned Movement has historically maintained a clear and unequivocal principled position against all forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and both kind of religious intolerance.In the latest Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, held in Havana in September 2006i, the heads of State or Government of the segment states reaffirmed once again their condemnation of all forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, including the platforms and activities related thereto, which constitute serious violations of forgiving rights and fundamental freedoms and impede equal opportunity.At the same time, they expressed dismay at instances of religious and cultural prejudices, misunderstanding, intolerance and discrimination on the basis of organized religion or beliefs, and called for the full respect of cultural and religious diversity.If we flip back and ruminate on the pages of history, the Movements opposition to all these manifestations cigargontte be clearly recalled. The Non-Aligned Movement also has incessantly stressed its serious concern on the resurgence of contemporary forms of much(prenominal) abhorrent crimes in various take leaves of the world.The World meeting against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, 2001iibecame a milest 1 in the shin for equal human rights among all human beingnesss. The effective implementation of the Durbans agreements poses a major challenge now byout the world furthermore, it is a debt owed to millions of victims of these abominable practices throughout history.In the era that we live in, being witness to the worrisome re-emergence and integration of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in various parts of the world has become a pedestrian affair.The establishment of associations and political parties, with a racist platform, the br some otherly exclusion and margina lisation of the indigenous peoples, minorities and migrantsiii, the proliferation of discriminatory migration laws and policiesiv, and the passing of anti-terrorist legislation that provide broad spaces to arbitrariness and the exercise of public authority on discriminatory and afraid(predicate) basis, continue to be a matter of concern.CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCEThe Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) being an international organisation of states considering themselves non formally aligned with or against either major power bloc. The motility was largely the brainchild of Indias first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, president of Egypt Gamal Abdul Nasser and Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito. It was founded in Belgrade (1961) as of 2009, it has 118 members and 17 observer countries.vThe purpose of the organisation as stated in the Havana Declaration of 1979 is to ensure the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries in their jumble again st imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against large(p) power and bloc politicsvi.They represent nearly 2-thirds of the United Nationss members and lay out 55% of the world population, specially countries considered to be exploitation or part of the third worldvii.Since the end of the common cold War and the formal end of colonialism, the Non-aligned private road has been forced to redefine itself and reinvent its purpose in the current world system. A major question has been whether more of its foundational ideologies, principally national independence, territorial integrity, and the struggle against colonialism and imperialism, fuck be applied to contemporary issues.The movement has emphasised its principles of multilateralism, equality, and mutual non-aggression in attempting to become a stronger voice for the global Southviii, and an instrument that can be util ised to promote the needs of member nations at the international level and strengthen their political leverage when negotiating with developed nations. In its efforts to advance Confederate interestsix, the movement has stressed the importance of cooperation and unity amongst member statesx, but as in the past, cohesion remains a problem since the size of the organisation and the discrepancy of agendas and allegiances present the ongoing potential for fragmentation.While agreement on basic principles has been smooth, taking definitive action vis--vis particular international issues has been rare, with the movement preferring to assert its condemnation or support rather than pass hard-line resolutionsxi.The movement continues to see a role for itself, as in its view, the worlds poorest nations remain exploited and marginalised, no protracted by opposing superpowers, but rather in a uni-polar worldxii, and it is Western hegemony and neo-colonialism that that the movement has curre ntly re-aligned itself against.It opposes foreign occupation, interference in internal affairs, and vulturous unilateral measures, but it has also shifted to focus on the socio- sparing challenges facing member states, especially the inequalities manifested by globalisation and the implications of neo-liberal policies. The non-aligned movement has identified economic under suppuration, poverty, and social in retributoryices as growing threats to peace and security.It is in this context, that it would be apt to launch oneself onto a provocative and entertaining meditation on what can be called xenophilia- an affinity for strangers, a really mystifying but rarely bonkd aspect in human psychology.It was at the heart of the Non-Aligned Movement, with whole nations taking pride in the trans-national friendships of their leaders, such as Nehru, Sukarno, and Nasser. It would be safe to add Mao Tse-tung to the list as well. Roads were named after leaders from other continents, a gesture not without meaning, as one can clearly argue the paucity of such a consideration in the naming of streets in London or New York. perverted to popular acceptance, the real cosmopolitanism is to be found in the Third World, not the sophisticated West, despite its gamut of globe-trotting businessmen and tourists, touring the Holy Land or Pyramids, oblivious to the real lives of the localsxiii.The Non-Aligned Movement has had been quite successful at serving the cause of East-West understanding. Over the years, with the holding of meetings of leaders from all over the world, the deliberations and ministrations have seen the development of a wareness of the aspirations, defeats and disappointments of colonized peoples as they figure out their place in the world.The Movement has set itself the task these days of fighting the escalation of words and arms between East and West, particularly between Islam and West.The maturation of the Movement in the recent past has been so profound, that the summit in Havana made headlines in the international media as a revived forum for nations that want to take an independent position in a one superpower world, even though it was subject to much nauseate and ignorance by U.S. commentators.The tone was set when two leading adversaries of the United States, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, had embraced each other.xivFor a country like India, one of the founding nations of the movement, we would be reluctant to embrace anti-Americanism, but still it would be understandable to endorse the impulse to stand independent of the United States.xvWhat the Non-Aligned Movement now, and always has, expected of its member nations is to withdraw them from hanging onto the coattails of Washington, neither does it demand of them to spew invectives at the US. However some NAM countries have clearly disregarded that and have afforded themselves to be anti-American.Thus one can argue that some member nati ons with their strong anti-American rhetoric, have bared their fangs out, throwing all winds of logic out of the window.They have thus, consciously disregarded the binding principles and values embodied in the agreement towards creation of the Movement, as such a rising appeal for an anti-US front is self -defeating age being reconciled with the core-principle of staying independent or non-aligned.If we were to just sample some of the sound bytes emerging from Havana. Cubas acting president Raul Castro, brother of the ailing Fidel Castro, give tongue to in his inaugural address to the NAM summit When there is no longer a Cold War, the United States spends one billion dollars a year in weapons and soldiers and it squanders a similar amount in commercial publicity. To think that a social and economic order that has proven unsustainable could be maintained by force is scarce an absurd idea. He was enthusiastically backed by Irans Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Venezuelas Hugo Chavez.FOREGR OUNDIf we are to delve into the inspiration behind the ascent of such a Movement, where disparate cultures and civilizations garbled by thousands of miles, was successful, the one aspect that stands out was the general impression that the East had lost out to the West.In the Cold War environment of the 1950s and 60s the freshly independent countries of Asia and Africa found themselves facing a decision about alignment with one or the other of the two camps, a process vigorously further by the superpowers and their allies. Non-alignment provided an alternative, an instrument for non-involvementThe concept of no-alignment as envisaged by the founders- Nehru, Nasser and Tito-was to serve the purpose of a safety valve for the smaller nations against pressures from the big powers and as a profilaxis against being drawn into the politics of Cold War.xviIndeed for India, and a majority of Afro-Asian nations emerging from years of colonialism, the idea of remaining outside the influence of two super-powers through non-alignment was seen as the best option a message from the Third World of their wish to remain free and immune from superpower Cold War rivalry. alone it held more than that for Nehru for whom non-alignment was not conceived merely as a response to the military blocs or the Cold War, but as a global egalitarian movement to restructure the existing inequitable world in all its aspects political, social and economic.xviiThe choice of non-alignment in the wake of freedom, was an obvious one, even an unavoidable one. The two men most responsible for Indias external relations, Nehru and Krishna Menon, moulded the doctrine into a global weapon to protect itself and others against past injustice and inequitable practices.Ramachandran defines the multi-dimensional thrust of their policy fulcrumNehru and Menon unitedly turned non-alignment into an effective world movement against colonialism, imperialism, racialism and the governing menace of military alliance sxviii.POLICIES, TERMS AND MEANINGSAs useful to a better understanding of Indias policy, arctic to its external relations, the use of the terms neutrality and neutralism to mean the same thing as non alignment, demands clarification, because, from Indias perspective, the differences in meaning between neutralism and non-alignment is an important one. Besides, the Western political commentators very much used the word neutral to mean non-aligned.While the concept of Indias non-alignment may have defied a precise interpretation, neutrality it certainly was not. Nehru, for one, was at pains to proper the misunderstanding in the West that Indias foreign policy was synonymous with neutrality. He explains the distinction with this interpretation of neutrality..it means a person who sits on the fence and who cannot learn between right and wrong. India is certainly not neutral.She believes in non-alignment because she feels that the only way to achieve peace is to extend the climate of peace and to prevent the Cold War form spreading into other parts of the world.xixAuthor R Thakur extends the Nehru metaphor with his comment that, they saw themselves not so much as fence-sitters as believers in the need to uproot the fence.xxObviously non-alignment was more than a mere moral compass, it was an active foreign policy that involved India in international involvement resolution and the attainment of peace. It was a multi-faceted foreign policy instrument which gave India freedom to choose when, where and how it would involve itself in international questions while protecting its have got security.During the weigh in the Lok Sabha on Korea, Nehru referred to neutrality..when you say you are neutral that is a policy of not doing boththingThe whole essence of our policy s independence of any action, that is to say that at any moment we decide for ourselves what is best in our interests and in the interest of world peacexxiBANDUNG A THIRD WORLD goNAM, which effective ly represents the Third World giving it an Afro-Asian charcter, can be traced to the 1955 Bandung Conference which brought together leaders from Asia and Africa representing twenty-five countries prominent among them were Nehru of India, Chou En Lai of China, Tito of Yougoslavia, Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia, and U Nu of Burma.Given the heterogeneous nature of the Bandung grouping, finding a single unifying criterion for determining membership of NAM, on which to formulate objectives was no mean task. wiz writer describes this dilemma for the Bandung Conference organizers, (an informal group comprising India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Burma, referred to as the Colombo Powers) Ideologies and military alliances have now so cut across frontiers of geography and clamber that even to agree on Agenda was no easy undertakingxxii.The relevance of non-alignment to Indias relationship with the West in the 1950s, the bloc seen by India as preoccupy with the containment of Communism, and as a consequence, actively involved in drawing Asias newly independent states to support the strategic goals of the Western camp, becomes more apparent when the aims of the Bandung conference are examined.To promote goodwill and cooperation among the nations of Asia and Africa..to consider social, economic, and cultural problems,to consider problems of special interest.(such as) racialism, colonialism.to view the position of Asia and Africa ad their peoples in the world today and the contribution they can make to the promotion of world peace and co-operationxxiii.The Bandung Conference crysallised Nehrus plea for political and economic equity to generate a Third World Voice. It created an awareness in the Third World of their entitlement to a greater say in, and a fairer share of, the world system, an augur of a future protest against the subordinate status of the developing countries in the international systemxxiv.Indian writer C.S. Jha saw the Bandung declaration as having affected global interaction, providing the newly independent countries with a model to extend their post-colonial futures. He describes the historic Bandung affirmation as having powerfully influenced the subsequent course of international relations and became the code of the nations that emerged from colonial domination after 1955xxv.For India, it was as provoke as 1947 and independence. The stature of Prime Minister Nehruxxvi, who played an initiatory role in bringing the non-aligned philosophy to fruition, rose in the Third World in the aftermath of this preliminary gathering of Afro-Asian states. Nehrus modest post-conference assessment of the Bandung gathering was that it may develop into something which holds together. In the Lok Sabha however, he was more expansiveWhile the achievements and the significance of the meeting at Bandung have been great and epoch-making, it would be a misreading of history to regard Bandung as though it was an isolated occurrence an d not part of a greater movement of human historyxxvii.This all helps demonstrate Nehrus unflinching commitment to world peace, the process of decolonisation, racial equality and fairer global economic equity, none of which figured in the Wests security driven, alliance diplomacy. This also helps to explain the Wests failure to persuade many of the newly independent countries, (which sought refuge in NAM after the rigours of colonialism), to align themselves with the Western camp.Furthermore, to add to their woes, the West, spearheaded by South Africa and supported by the likes of Australia, Spain, relentlessly add uped the state policy of racialism in the form of Apartheid.Thus, India finally became not only the pioneer of modern Asian nationalismxxviii, through its success in winning independence from Britain, but also, by remaining in the Commonwealth as a Republic, it established the bona fides of the new Commonwealth, based less on blood than on willxxix, it enabled many oth er Afro-Asian states to follow suit, undeterred by the experience of racialism and colonialism.The Apartheid policies were not only at odds with the Commonwealth ideal of equality of its members, but also strenuously inappropriate by Indias Nehru who was constrained to comment that if there is no solution to this problem very soon, the whole of Africa may be ablazexxx.The declaration of Commonwealth principles, to which member nations were signatories at the Singapore Conference, was an important starting point. It states, inter aliaWe recognise racial prejudice as a dangerous sickness threatening the healthy development of the human race and racial discrimination as an unmitigated evil of society. Each of us will vigorously combat this evil within our own nation. No country will afford to regimes which practice racial discrimination assistance which in its own judgement directly contributes to the pursuit or consolidation of this evil policyxxxi.CONCLUSIONProbably, the most horrif ying event following 9/11 is the extraordinary resurgence of imperialism as witnessed in the unfolding cataclysm in Iraq. Relations are being broken off, with the empire of the West splitting from the Third World, inciting xenophobia.European imperialism presented the choice between resistance and submission cooperation was not an option. Europe unleashed violence on a scale unprecedented on those shores of Asia, Africa, as it did in the Americas. The peaceful trade of Muslims, Jews and Hindus in the Indian Ocean, the Arabian ocean and the Persian Gulf that lasted 500 years was ended overnight, and Portuguese hegemony lasted until the arrival of the Dutch and then the British and then the Americans.The fall of the Berlin Wall was no conclusion of the vindication of capitalism as conventional wisdom would have it today, but rather the last 15 years show that untrammelled capitalism leads to war and empire. The uncontested reign of one system should bring peace, but we see the oppos ite, with dozens of wars. There was more agreement when the UN was founded.xxxiiWe are at a very different moment in history now, when the words Non-Aligned seem somehow empty and discredited today the movement is often dismissed not just as a political failure, but as a minor footnote to the great power rivalries of the Cold War. It is true of course, that the movement had many shortcomings and met with many failures. Yet it is also worth remembering that the Non-Aligned Movement as such was merely the institutional aspect of something that was much broader, wider and more powerful this, as has been said before, was the post-war ethos of decolonization, which was a political impulse that had deep historical roots and powerful cultural resonances.In the field of culture, among other things, it represented an attempt to restore and begin the exchanges and conversations that had been interrupted by the long centuries of European imperial dominance. It was, in this sense, the necessar y and vital counterpart of the nationalist idiom of anti-colonial resistance.In the West, Third World nationalism is often presented as an ideology of xenophobia and parochialism. But the truth is that many of these movements of resistance tried very hard, within their limited means, to create a universalism of their own. In that period, any citizen of the Third World will recall how powerfully they were animated by an emotion that is rarely named xenophilia, the love of the other, the affinity for strangers a feeling that lives very deep in the human heart, but whose very existence is rarely acknowledged.Even in the 19th century, the high noon of Empire, people from Africa, Asia and elsewhere, sought each other out, wrote letters to each other, and stayed in each others homes while travelling. Lately, a great number of memoirs and autobiographies have been published that attest to the depth and strength of these ties. It was no fortuity therefore that Mahatma Gandhi chose to stop in Egypt, in order to see Saad Zaghloul before proceeding to the Round Table Conference in London.Yet it would be short to pretend that solutions could be found by looking backwards in time. That was a certain historical moment and it has passed.Except that this time we must castigate the mistake that lay at the heart of that older anti-colonial impulse which is that we must not only include the West within this spectrum of desire, we must also acknowledge that both the West and we ourselves have been irreversibly changed by our encounter with each other. We must recognize that in the West, as in Asia, Africa and elsewhere, there are great numbers of people who, by force of circumstance, have become xenophiles, in the deepest sense, of acknowledging that in matters of language, culture and civilization, their heritage, like ours, is fragmented, fissured and incomplete.