The Bandung conference was convened in April, 1955, after preliminary conferences at Colombo and Bogor. It was meant to be a meeting point for leaders of countries emerging out of colonialism. It was not meant to discuss contentious points in the conference and therefore things took an unexpected turn when the Ceylonese Prime Minister blasted Communism.
The Main Purposes
Five nations (Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia and Pakistan) met in Bogor on December 28-29, 1954, and acting as the conveners of the larger conference, agreed on the agenda and the invitees for Bandung. On April 18, 1955, 29 states represented at the Indonesian city for the largest Asia-Africa conference to date. They included Communist countries such as China, pro-Western nations such as Pakistan and ‘neutralists’ such as India. The main purposes were to promote goodwill and cooperation among Afro-Asian states, to consider the socio-economic and cultural problems, to consider problems of special interest to the relevant countries and to discuss on the role of Asian-African people in the world.
Sir John Kotelawala Attacks Communism
On April 21, speaking at the conference, Sir John Kotelawala, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka attacked Communism point blank. He described another form of colonialism, that of the Communist colonialism. He brought up the central and East European states under Soviet domination as an example and argued that this colonialism also should be opposed while opposing the Western imperialism. The fact that Sir John was an anti-Communist was common knowledge. But it was surprising that he was to be the out spoken critic of Communism out of all the leaders gathered. He was not the only pro-Western leader present and some other countries even had military agreements with countries like the United States.
The Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai played his diplomatic role so well and won the sympathy of even the pro-Western Asian leaders including Sir John Kotelawala himself. Nehru, ever the ‘neutralist’, refused to take sides on the issue. Together, they managed to return the conference to normalcy.
Kotelawala had suggestions to resolve the Formosa issue by placing the island under a trusteeship, probably of the U.N. This elicited some strong condemnation even from Nehru, who asked reporters, “why under the United Nations? I should have thought Ceylon would be enough”
Reaction to Kotelawala’s Speech
Western and pro-Western media lauded Sir John as a great crusader against Communism. Many headlines were written about the event in U.S., British and other Western European newspapers. In Ceylon also he generated some support. His supporters called him ‘hero of Bandung’ and gave a hero’s welcome on his return to the island. However, his opponents dubbed him as the ‘donkey of Bandung’.