How Mulk Raj Anand and WEB Du Bois found common ground at a moment of anti-imperialist solidarity
· Scroll
One of the most enduring photographs from the first Afro-Asian Writers Conference in Tashkent in 1958 shows two men standing side by side, both in suits and carrying walking sticks. One is the Indian novelist Mulk Raj Anand. The other is 90-year-old WEB Du Bois, whose passport had been confiscated by the US government just three years earlier, preventing him from attending the Bandung Conference that inspired this gathering.
Visit betsport.cv for more information.
The photograph captures a moment that would have seemed unlikely only a few years earlier. Du Bois, one of the most influential American intellectuals of the 20th century, had spent decades challenging colonialism and racism. As the Cold War intensified, his views increasingly brought him into conflict with the US government, and in 1951, it indicted him as an “unregistered agent” of a foreign power. Although he was eventually acquitted, his passport was not restored in time for him to travel to Indonesia for the 1955 Bandung Conference.
Bandung brought together leaders and representatives from nations across Asia and Africa, including Indonesian President Sukarno, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The conference became a defining moment in the rise of developing nations, with participants calling for...