Bandung to Colombo: Non-Aligned Movement and our Times

Recently, a student asked me what I would consider to be Sri Lanka's proudest moment. I could think of four events. The Great Hartal of August 1953 when people shutdown the country against cuts to the rice subsidy and mid-day school meal, and changed the course of our politics as well as the state's commitment to agriculture and the food system.

- By Ahilan Kadirgamar

The excitement around Sri Lanka's World Cup victory in March 1996 that created overwhelming interest in cricket. The great Aragalaya protests in July 2022, when hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of Colombo chased away an authoritarian president.

Speaking of Sri Lanka's international relevance, I can't think of a more important moment than when Sri Lanka hosted the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Conference in August 1976. The excitement of so many Third World leaders arriving in Colombo are still etched as one of my early childhood memories. My father, a history lecturer and avid follower of international developments, would be glued to his shortwave radio late into the night, and narrated stories of faraway places and peoples. Palestine, Vietnam and Cuba suddenly became closer, and eclipsed my world in the weeks surrounding the NAM Conference.

We then lived in a flat in Colombo, where kids played all day on the friendly lane of mixed communities: I was nicknamed Andy Roberts after the West Indian fast bowler because of my curly hair. The talk of NAM with its great leaders led me to ask a challenging question, which some of my former neighbours laughingly remind me to this day. Much to the horror of my mother, a devout Christian, I ran up and down the street and asked, if Jesus and Castro had a fight, who would win?

Back then in Colombo and in the broader Third World, we knew much more about each other. I also realise now that those were ideologically potent and hopeful times. But it was also the twilight of an era that began with the Bandung Conference in 1955 and ended with the NAM Conference in Colombo. Numerous assassinations and regime changes by the CIA and other Western agencies had already by then crippled many Third World Countries.