Shattering the ‘looking-glass world’: the Congress for Cultural Freedom in South Asia, 1951–55

ABSTRACT

This paper assesses the thought and philosophy of South Asian intellectuals affiliated to the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). The CCF’s founders – anti-communist European and American scholars – encouraged allies across several continents to establish magazines and organise conferences warning of the threats posed by ‘totalitarianism’ to free cultural expression. But South Asian members, more interested in postcolonial politics, used its resources to initiate transnational conversations about social change. Probing neglected local CCF magazines and seminar transcripts, the paper also constitutes an early intervention on intersections between the cultural Cold War and decolonisation among non-state actors in the region.

KEYWORDS:

• Congress for Cultural Freedom
• India
• South Asia
• cultural cold war
• decolonisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Report of the Rangoon Conference on Cultural Freedom in Asia (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1956), 20.

² Report of the Rangoon Conference, 21, 27, 81.

³ Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 149–52; and Frances Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta Books, 1999), 169–80.

⁴ Sarah Miller Harris, The CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom in the Early Cold War: the Limits of Making Common Cause (London: Routledge, 2016).

⁵ The CCF leadership sought, at least until Stalin’s death in 1953, to encourage a kind of cultural criticism straightforwardly anti-communist in emphasis. From 1955, it encouraged a more positive liberalism interventionist in the social and economic spheres. See Giles Scott-Smith, “The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the End of Ideology and the 1955 Milan Conference: ‘Defining the Parameters of Discourse’,” Journal of Contemporary History 37, no. 3 (2002): 437–55.

⁶ Coleman, Congress for Cultural Freedom.

⁷ Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); and Walter Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War, 1945–1961 (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1997).

⁸ Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?

⁹ Giles Scott-Smith, “‘A Radical Democratic Political Offensive’: Melvin J. Lasky, Der Monat, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom,” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 2 (2000): 263–79; and Giles Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Political Economy of American Hegemony 1945–1955 (London: Routledge, 2002).

¹⁰ Hugh Wilford, The New York Intellectuals: From Vanguard to Institution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 163–236; Hugh Wilford, The CIA, The British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2003), 193–225; and Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 70–122.

¹¹ Coleman, Congress for Cultural Freedom, 91–3, 150–2; Scott-Smith, Politics of Apolitical Culture, 155; and Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, 215–16.

¹² Matthew Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

¹³ Patrick Iber, Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 1–116.

¹⁴ Giles Scott-Smith and Charlotte Lerg, eds., Campaigning Culture and the Global Cold War: The Journals of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

¹⁵ Kris Manjapra, “Transnational Approaches to Global History: A View from the Study of German-Indian Entanglement,” German History 32, no. 2 (2014); Jeremy Adelman, “What is Global History Now,” Aeon, 2 March 2017 https://aeon.co/essays/is-global-history-still-possible-or-has-it-had-its-moment accessed 3 May 2019; and Richard Drayton and David Motadel, “Discussion: The Futures of Global History,” Journal of Global History 13, no. 1 (2018): 1–21.

¹⁶ Eric Pullin, “Money Does Not Make Any Difference to the Opinions That We Hold: India, the CIA, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1951–58,” Intelligence and National Security 26, nos. 2–3 (2011): 377–98.

¹⁷ Roland Burke, “‘Real Problems to Discuss’: The Congress for Cultural Freedom’s Asian and African Expeditions, 1951–1959,” Journal of World History 27, no. 1 (2016): 57–72.

¹⁸ Martin Shipway, Decolonization and Its Impact: A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008); Roland Burke, Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010); Elizabeth Buettner, Europe after Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Jan Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel, Decolonization: A Short History, trans. Jeremiah Riemer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019); and Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).

¹⁹ Nataša Misković, Harald Fischer-Tiné, and Nada Boškovska, eds., The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War: Delhi – Bandung – Belgrade (London: Routledge, 2014); and Leslie James and Elisabeth Leake, eds., Decolonization and the Cold War: Negotiating Independence (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

²⁰ Christopher Lee, ed., Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2010); Els Bogaerts and Remco Raben, eds., Beyond Empire and Nation: The Decolonization of African and Asian Societies, 1930s–1970s (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2012); Ruth Craggs and Claire Wintle, eds., Cultures of Decolonisation: Transnational Productions and Practices, 1945–70 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016); and Lydia Walker, “Decolonization in the 1960s: On Legitimate and Illegitimate Nationalist Claims-Making,” Past & Present 242, no. 1 (2019): 227–64.

²¹ Introduction to Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives, ed. Christopher Lee (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2010), 7–8.

²² Bipan Chandra, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India: Economic Policies of Indian National Leadership, 1880–1905 (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1966); and Judith Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (London: Yale University Press, 1989).

²³ Jayabrata Sarkar, “Power, Hegemony and Politics: Leadership Struggle in the Congress in the 1930s,” Modern Asian Studies 40, no. 2 (2006): 333–4.

²⁴ Sarkar, “Power, Hegemony and Politics,” 334–46.

²⁵ Benjamin Zachariah, Developing India: An Intellectual and Social History, c. 1930–50 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005).

²⁶ Talat Ahmed, Literature and Politics in the Age of Nationalism: The Progressive Writers’ Movement in South Asia, 1932–1956 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 11; and Priyamvada Gopal, Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence (New York: Routledge, 2005).

²⁷ Ahmed, Progressive Writers’ Movement; and Gopal, Literary Radicalism in India.

²⁸ Singanallur Raju, Minoo Masani (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2007), 2–3.

²⁹ Raju, Masani, 17–24. For an instructive discussion of the social phenomenon of ‘returned students’ in early twentieth-century India, see Sumita Mukherjee, Nationalism, Education, and Migrant Identities: The England-Returned (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010).

³⁰ Ratan Das, Jayaprakash Narayan: His Life and Mission (New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2007), 5–53; and Jayaprakash Narayan, Why Socialism? (Benares: The All India Congress Socialist Party, 1936).

³¹ Minoo Masani, Socialism Reconsidered (Bombay: Padma Publications, 1944), 35–51.

³² Jayaprakash Narayan, Towards Struggle: Selected Manifestoes, Speeches & Writings, ed. Yusuf Meherally (Bombay: Padma Publications Ltd, 1946), 157–240.

³³ Narayan, Why Socialism?, 100.

³⁴ Narayan, Towards Struggle, 227–8.

³⁵ Ibid., 238–9.

³⁶ Ibid., 238.

³⁷ Sukeshi Kamra, Bearing Witness: Partition, Independence, End of the Raj (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2002), 333; and Masani, Socialism Reconsidered, 51–5.

³⁸ Masani, Socialism Reconsidered, 44.

³⁹ Ibid., 55.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 55.

⁴¹ Pullin, “Money Does Not Make Any Difference,” 388.

⁴² K.D. Sethna, “Sri Aurobindo and Man’s Future,” Freedom First (September 1952): 4.

⁴³ Sethna, “Man’s Future,” 5.

⁴⁴ M.R. Masani, “The Universality of Human Values,” Freedom First (November 1952): 5–11.

⁴⁵ Freedom First (December 1952), 1–12.

⁴⁶ S.R. Mohan Das, “Principles and Incidentals,” Freedom First (December 1952): 7.

⁴⁷ Mohan Das, “Principles and Incidentals,” 7.

⁴⁸ Sampurnanand’s membership of the INC did not denote a fealty to Nehru’s developmentalism; the INC remained a broad church in the 1950s with a strong ‘Congress Left’ pushing socialist ideas distinct from Nehru’s technocratic agenda. See Taylor Sherman, “‘A New Type of Revolution’: Socialist Thought in India, 1940s–1960s,” Postcolonial Studies 21, no. 4 (2018).

⁴⁹ Sampurnanand, “The Tasks of Our Leadership,” Freedom First (February 1953): 6–7.

⁵⁰ Sampurnanand, “The Tasks of Our Leadership,” 7.

⁵¹ Christopher Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

⁵² Taylor Sherman, “A Gandhian Answer to the Threat of Communism? Sarvodaya and Postcolonial Nationalism in India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 53, no. 2 (2016): 250.

⁵³ Sherman, “A Gandhian Answer,” 250–1.

⁵⁴ Margery Sabin, Dissenters and Mavericks: Writings about India in English, 1765–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 148–50.

⁵⁵ Sabin, Dissenters and Mavericks, 148–51.

⁵⁶ Prabhakar Padhye, “The Role of Social Reform,” Freedom First (June 1953): 7.

⁵⁷ Padhye, “Role of Social Reform,” 7.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 7.

⁵⁹ “Second Annual Conference,” Freedom First (October 1953): 4.

⁶⁰ Jason Harding, “‘Our Greatest Asset’: Encounter Magazine and the Congress for Cultural Freedom,” in Campaigning Culture and the Global Cold War: The Journals of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, ed. Giles Scott-Smith and Charlotte Lerg (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 107.

⁶¹ Hallam Tennyson, “Land Through Love,” Encounter (December 1954): 4.

⁶² Tennyson, “Land Through Love,” 7–8.

⁶³ Masani’s article likely appeared in Encounter because the British CCF magazine struggled to attract prominent Indian writers in the 1950s and was consciously striving to expand its reach in the subcontinent at this time. The format of the edition, with Masani’s piece appearing directly after Tennyson’s as if to belatedly introduce an Indian voice on the topic, indicates this. Other pieces moderately – sometimes severely – critical of Western civilisation and politics were often published there for the sake of getting Indian writers into the magazine; see, for example, F.N. Souza, “Nirvana of a Maggot,” Encounter (February 1955): 42–8.

⁶⁴ Minoo Masani, “Land Through Love,” Encounter (December 1954): 9–11.

⁶⁵ Masani, “Land Through Love,” 11.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 13.

⁶⁷ Eric Pullin, “Quest: Twenty Years of Cultural Politics,” in Campaigning Culture and the Global Cold War: The Journals of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, ed. Giles Scott-Smith and Charlotte Lerg (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 288.

⁶⁸ Coleman, Congress for Cultural Freedom, 92.

⁶⁹ Sabin, Dissenters and Mavericks, 150.

⁷⁰ M.G. Bailur, “Bhoodan and Sarvodaya: A Critique of an Ideology,” Quest (August 1955): 6.

⁷¹ Prabhakar Padhye, “The Intellectual in Modern Asia,” Quest (October–November 1955): 3–8.

⁷² Edward Shils, The Intellectual Between Tradition and Modernity: The Indian Situation (The Hague: Mouton & Co., Printers, 1961).

⁷³ Padhye, “The Intellectual in Modern Asia,” 9.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 15.

⁷⁵ Sadhan Kumar Ghosh, “The Cold Class War: Some Are More Equal Than Others,” Quest 1, no. 2 (October–November 1955): 24.

⁷⁶ Burke, “Asian and African Expeditions,” 62.

⁷⁷ Report of the Rangoon Conference, 7.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 3.

⁷⁹ Ibid., 3–4.

⁸⁰ Ibid., 13.

⁸¹ Ibid., 16.

⁸² Ibid., 16–7.

⁸³ Ibid., 20.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 21.

⁸⁵ Laurens van der Post, “The Dark Eye in Africa,” Encounter (October 1955): 5–12.

⁸⁶ Report of the Rangoon Conference, 148–50.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 151–2.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 152.

⁸⁹ Manu Bhagavan, “A New Hope: India, the United Nations and the Making of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Modern Asian Studies 44, no. 2 (2010); Manu Bhagavan, India and the Quest for One World: The Peacemakers (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

⁹⁰ Report of the Rangoon Conference, 173.

⁹¹ Ibid., 173.

⁹² Ibid., 173–5.

⁹³ Ibid., 175–9.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 197.

⁹⁵ Ibid., 198.

⁹⁶ Ibid., 198.

⁹⁷ Ibid., 204.

⁹⁸ Report of the Rangoon Conference, 8.

⁹⁹ Ibid., 6–7.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., 26.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 32–3.

¹⁰² Ibid., 36.

¹⁰³ Ibid., 36–7.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., 68–78.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., 80–1.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., 128.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., 128.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., 136.

¹⁰⁹ Leslie James, George Padmore and Decolonization from Below: Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and the End of Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Gary Wilder, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015); and Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire.

¹¹⁰ Afro-Asian Networks Research Collective, “Manifesto: Networks of Decolonization in Asia and Africa,” Radical History Review 131 (2018): 176–81. See also vol. 30, nos. 1–2 of the Journal of World History (2019), in particular Gerard McCann, “Where was the Afro in Afro-Asian Solidarity? Africa’s ‘Bandung Moment’ in 1950s Asia,” 89–123, for an excellent example of how this approach might work.

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Notes on contributors

Thomas William Shillam

Thomas William Shillam is a PhD student in the History Department at the University of York, looking into the cultural Cold War and decolonisation in 1950s and 1960s South Asia. He previously studied at the University of Leicester and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (BA), and the University of York (MA).