The Algiers Conference

Abstract

The Algiers Conference is a subject which should not be taken in isolation. The episode that was the Algiers Conference—I fear we have to talk about that Conference in that way—was itself the culmination of political forces and developments affecting Asia and Africa in the post-war era. Ŝo far as Asia and Africa are concertfed, it might very well prove to be a water-shed of history. To understand the true significance of the Algiers Conference and what happened at Algiers, I hope you will bear with me if I go rather briefly into the^background of the developments which culminated^ in the-Hdea of holding the Second Afro-Asian Conference. /The victorious European Powers at the end of last war gained a victory of exhaustion. The attrition of over five years of very severe war had left them exhausted and weak and correspondingly it gave courage and .power to the freedom movements in the colonial territories. 'The war had also generated a whole range of liberal and progressive forces all over the world. A ferment had been created among the subject peoples, typified, perhaps most significantly, by the freedom movement of India led by Mahatma Gandhi./ And here, if I might say parenthetically, the noble words and clarion call for freedom uttered during the war by that master-builder of empire, the great Winston Churchill, had also inspired the subject peoples to seek freedom; and paradoxically, the words of the greatest exponent and champion of empire really helped in the break-up of the empire. "The picture in 1945 was that, barring a few countries in Africa, the whole of the African continent was under subjugation. Colonialism ran rampant and large parts of Asia, including. India, were dependencies or colonies of European Powers-.-̂ -'There was one very striking development that took place during these very important years, namely, the forging of a common bond of unity between the peoples of Africa and Asia struggling to be free.vEach sympathised with the other. The leaders of the freedom movements sometimes