The Storm of Independence — The Birth of Postwar Asia

In the previous chapter, we watched the course of modern Japan. Learning from the West, it became a modern state; defeating the great power Russia, it astonished Asia; and then it too expanded into an empire — a history in which light and shadow coexisted.

The two world wars brought that age of empires to an end. When the war was over, the map of the world was about to be greatly redrawn. Across the lands of Asia long under colonial rule, the people at last rose up to build their own countries with their own hands.

This chapter deals with the storm of independence that swept across Asia after the Second World War. It was a great story of hope — of liberation from oppression — and at the same time a story attended by the deep pain of division and bloodshed. I would like to trace both the light and the shadow as neutrally as I can.

The Price of Freedom — India’s Independence and Partition

For the people long under British India, the aftermath of the Second World War was the time when independence would at last become real. After a long resistance movement led by Gandhi, Nehru, and others, in August 1947 India achieved its independence from Britain. It was the moment when one of the most populous regions of Asia was released from the yoke of colonial rule.

But that independence was also one attended by pain. Independence came in the form of partition into two countries: an India centered on Hindus, and a Pakistan centered on Muslims. The division drawn along the axis of religious difference traced a new border between people who had until then lived in the same land.

The independent India, under its first prime minister Nehru, set out on its path as one of the world’s largest democracies. It was an unprecedented attempt to bind a vast country holding many languages and religions under a single democracy. Pakistan, too, for its part, set out on the road of a new state under the leadership of Jinnah and others. To have won freedom, and as its price to bear a deep division — the postwar of South Asia began carrying both of these at once.

The depth of the wound that this partition brought cast a long shadow over the history that followed. India and Pakistan came into conflict over the Kashmir region soon after independence, and the tension between the two countries continues to this day. When a single independence movement split into two states, the border born there did not stay a line on a map but came to be carved deeply into the lives and the memory of the people. When we speak of the joy of independence, let us not forget this pain, too, as part of the same history.

Asia Rising — China, Indonesia, Vietnam

The storm of independence was not South Asia’s alone. Across the lands of Asia, at nearly the same time, new countries were born one after another.

In China, after a long civil war, on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China at Tiananmen in Beijing. Roughly forty years after the collapse of the Qing dynasty, a great country that had been shaken without cease by the interference of the powers and by warfare was unified under a single new order. This was an event that greatly altered the balance of power in the world, and it would shape the course of Asia thereafter.

In Southeast Asia, too, the movements toward independence were fierce. In Indonesia, on August 17, 1945, Sukarno and others proclaimed independence. But a long war of independence began against the Dutch, who would not recognize it and sought to restore colonial rule once more. After more than four years of fighting, at the end of 1949, the Netherlands at last recognized Indonesia’s independence. Independence was not gained by proclamation alone but won through a struggle of bloodshed.

In Vietnam, too, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed independence in Hanoi in September 1945, announcing the founding of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Yet here as well, a long war continued against the former suzerain, France. The independence of Southeast Asia was not a peaceful transition but often came attended by fierce armed struggle. The peoples of Asia still had to pay a great price to win their freedom.

And so, in just a few years, the map of Asia was redrawn. Across vast regions once colored by the hues of suzerain powers, the names of independent countries came to stand side by side.

A New Asia, Gathered at Bandung

The countries that had achieved independence soon began to seek a voice of their own within the world. In April 1955, a conference that became its symbol was held at Bandung, Indonesia. This was the Asian-African Conference, the so-called Bandung Conference.

To this conference came the representatives of twenty-nine countries, including such leaders as Nehru of India, Sukarno of Indonesia, Zhou Enlai of China, and Nasser of Egypt. Many of them were countries that had only just achieved independence after the Second World War. For the first time, countries that had experienced colonial rule gathered together under one roof.

At the conference, the ‘Ten Principles of Peace’ were adopted, proclaiming the abolition of racial discrimination and colonialism, the independence of peoples, and peaceful coexistence. It was a declaration of the will of independent countries to face the world from their own standpoint, neither submitting to the two great powers of America and the Soviet Union nor being drawn into their confrontation. It would become a great wellspring of the movement later called ‘non-alignment’ and the ‘Third World.’

The decade after the Second World War was, for Asia, an age of liberation and hope. But at the same time, it was a difficult age attended by division and bloodshed. Independence was a joy, and at the same time the beginning of new challenges.

And the newborn countries of Asia would soon be exposed to yet another great wave. It was the wave of the Cold War, in which America and the Soviet Union divided the world into two in their confrontation. The Asia that had won its independence would be made to stand at its very front line. In the next chapter, I would like to gaze upon the pain of a divided Asia.