Jolita Zabarskaitė: Bandung, Greater India, Indonesia: Incompatible Visions of (Afro-)Asia?

Описание: Lecture at the conference "Bandung Spirits", 24.05.25

When the Bandung Conference was held, in 1955, ideas of Afro-Asian solidarity were placed in direct competition with a long-standing Indian nationalist fantasy that had shaped the history of South-East Asia for over several hundred years: the idea of Greater India. Indian nationalist ideologues explicitly compared this civilizing process to a Roman idea of empire, which had colonized its possessions by virtue of possessing a superior civilization. This Indocentric and expansionist imaginary was not conducive to an idea of a collaboration of Afro-Asian equals, and consequently had to be muted in the interests of solidarity. Indonesian public interventions at the time were uncomfortable with the inferior status of South-East Asia generated by the Greater India lens, as the new republic was building its own conceptions of state and nation. Competing ideas of Asian solidarity attempting to incorporate African and other ex-colonial or soon-to-be-independent countries were thus placed in conflict and conversation.