Unity in Identity - Blog Week 3

From Bandung, Indonesia and Guinea Bissau, echo two voices continents apart that utter the same ideas - unity, culture and liberation, two minds that dream the same dream - the dream of decolonization and liberation from the physical, intellectual and economic control of the colonizers and two hearts seeking to reclaim something that was lost, something that was wounded and something that was changed - a cultural identity. 

Cabral and Sukarno coincide in terms of their diagnosis of colonialism- a form of cultural domination. Sukarno recognizes that while colonialism has gone, imperialism remains through “intellectual control” exerted by colonial masters while Cabral highlights the “negation of its cultural processes” by colonizers as one of the central aspects of colonial rule. In order to break the chains of colonial rule, both Cabral and Sukarno call for unity and collaboration amongst the people of the colonized world, including Africa and Asia. This is where both these leaders differ. While Cabral calls for unity of the African peoples based on a shared African culture, Sukarno advocates for unity based on shared experiences of colonialism. 

Cabral romanticizes a mythical African past; he longs to go back to the pristine African culture that was later subjected to the impurities and alterations of colonialism- “African culture is an undeniable fact”. Nationalist liberation, for Cabral, is “an act of culture” whereby the colonized “recaptures the commanding heights of its own culture, which derives sustenance from the living reality of its environment and equally rejects the harmful influences which any kind of subjection to foreign cultures involves”. Despite encompassing a variety of different cultures within the African continent, Cabral believes that there was a single African culture that predates colonialism. This African culture, which has “survived all storms” is what will unite and bring about the liberation of the Africans.Sukarno differs from this because Sukarno calls upon the unity of the decolonized nations based not on their culture, but the unity of their desires and their experience of colonization. “Unity in diversity” - this slogan by Sukarno encapsulates the idea that the thread that ties the nations in Africa and Asia is the thread of common colonial experiences - the experiences of oppression, of racialism and discrimination. Sukarno dreams of unity based on the identity that has been constructed in light of colonial experiences. This identity, covered within the “Bandung Spirit”, umbrellas nations coming from a plethora of different cultures, religions, races, and traditions. Together, the people of all these different backgrounds unite under the banner of a shared colonial experience and together, strive towards achieving peace.