Maintaining the Faith in Global Decolonization

Extract

Historians of decolonization tend to present the moment of independence as the culmination of nationalist struggles, and the achievement of political sovereignty as a triumph. But for many ethnic, regional, religious, linguistic, and other minority groups, decolonization was a tragedy which foreclosed their political futures, leaving them as perpetual “states-in-waiting.” Lydia Walker’s fine new book seeks to theorize and recover the stories of some of these groups, highlighting “little-known regions, marginalized individuals, hidden or lost archives,” and the loose transnational advocacy networks which connected them (3).

States-in-Waiting centers on the decades-long campaign by representatives of the Nagaland region of northeast India to secure self-determination and possible independence, and the ways in which advocacy networks supporting them connected their campaign to broader currents of decolonization in the Congo, Tanzania, and other places. Walker argues that the marginalization of Naga claim-making in a state-centered international system made them reliant on transnational advocacy networks to achieve representation in international forums. In this case, a handful of international peace activists including Michael Scott, AJ Muste, and Japaprakash Narayan sought to amplify Naga claims as part of their broader efforts to promote nonviolent resistance to colonialism and nonviolent conflict resolution. These commitments led them to organize the World Peace Brigade (WPB), a short-lived effort to create a nonviolent intervention force that could model resistance within struggles for decolonization.