The Third World Project

A stimulating book about a political path now disappeared

K. NATWAR SINGH

IN SPITE of its tenebrous title I agreed to review this absorbing book as the subject — the history and idea of the nonaligned “Third World”— interests me. The book, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, invites comparison to Edward Said’s Orientalism but can’t sustain it. Vijay Prashad’s passionate commitment, his intellectual brio, his literary style, are all immensely impressive. This does not mean I have no reservations. Yet they do not detract from the value of this quite original work.

In the 1960s the United Nations was an exciting place to be. The decolonisation process was gathering pace. I distinctly remember President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania telling me that he was only expecting the independence of Tanganyika in the mid 80s. It happened in 1962. From 1962 to 1966 I was rapporteur of the UN committee on decolonisation. To this committee came Kenneth Kaunda of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Joshua Nkomo of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Sam Nujoma of South West Africa (Namibia) and Lee Kuan Yew of Malaya. All except Nkomo became heads of state. The number of countries joining the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) increased by the month. But the phrase “Third World” was never used by Nehru, Nasser, Tito, Nkrumah or Sukarno. This first generation from the “dark” countries were towering leaders. Their successors, by and large, were lesser men.

Prashad’s chapter on Belgian atrocities in the Congo, I read with anguish and rage. “To supply the emergent tire industry, Leopold II’s free state, sucked the life out of the rubber vines and murdered half the Congo’s population in the process.” A phenomenon of such malignancy and murder has no parallel in colonial history.

In his chapter on the NAM summit held in New Delhi in 1983, Prashad makes a few astounding statements. “Castro’s main antagonist in New Delhi was Deputy

THE DARKER NATIONS Vijay Prashad The New Press 384pp;$25.96

Prime Minister Sinnathamby Rajaratnam.” I was Secretary General at the summit. Rajaratnam made no impact whatsoever. He may have been a big frog in the Singapore pond but was an insignificant one in the NAM ocean. Here’s another outrage. “While the Cubans worked the conference rooms, the Soviets worked the halls.” The Cubans and the Soviets worked neither the rooms nor the halls. India ran the summit. Period. Indira Gandhi, who called NAM the greatest peace movement in history, got a standing ovation which overshadowed Castro’s. What the Cuban achieved was to ensure that the summit was held in Delhi. The original venue was Baghdad, later jettisoned due to the Iraq-Iran war.

Unfortunately, the Lusaka and Sri Lanka summits don’t even get a glance in the book. Nor the 1987 one in Belgrade. No mention of Kenyatta or Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel laureate. But he does talk about the 1927 Anti-Imperialist Conference in Brussels attended by Nehru. However, as Nehru later pointed out, the movement which the conference spawned died a natural death in the 1930s. Prashad gives it too much emphasis, overstating its impact.

Non-alignment is a state of mind and remains as relevant today as two decades ago. The international agenda has changed from apartheid, colonialism and imperialism to terrorism, drugs, globalisation, HIV-AIDS, mass migration and climate change. The NAM house is in need of a political blood transfusion. Most of the NAM countries are ill-governed and ill served. They have to put their houses in order if they are to be taken seriously. I’m often asked about the need or relevance of NAM now that the Soviet Union has disappeared and the Cold War is history. My answer is: the Cold War is over, the Soviet Union history, the Warsaw Pact disbanded. Then what is the need for NATO? Who and where is the enemy? This stimulating work does not provide an answer.