The Bandung Conference of 1955: it’s hard to think of another event on which so much ink has been spilled in exchange for such little knowledge. Ten years after the Conference, the Indian diplomat G.H. Jansen lamented that much of what we know of Bandung is based on what people think happened at this conference rather than what actually happened there. In 2014, the political scientist Robert Vitalis reconfirmed Jansen’s hypothesis in a blistering critique of the Bandung scholarship which, he showed, romanticises the Conference without adequately historicising it. Ironically, the most famous Third World conference (or what is now called the “Global South”) lacks a proper archival history of its own. In fact, the last time someone drew on the full set of conference proceedings to write about it was in 1955, when the American scholar George M. Kahin was given access to them for a mere 12 hours.My aim here is to reveal snippets from the archival traces of this conference and provide a flavor of the goings on through a fleeting glimpse into the mind of one of the chief protagonists of this conference: Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. I rely on an unusual historical artefact: Nehru’s note pad from the conference. The slip pad is preserved in the papers of the Indian diplomat Subimal Dutt in the Prime Minister’s Museum and Library in Delhi. 31 ½ Minutes On April 16, 1955, the Indian delegation had parked their own aircraft in Jakarta (which also brought three other delegations – Afghanistan, Burma and Egypt) and boarded a Garuda airplane, Indonesia’s national carrier, for Bandung. Three days later, on the second official day of the Conference, when Nehru got down to making notes, he used a slip pad from this plane. Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s slip pad from Indonesia’s national carrier, Garuda, ahead of the Bandung conference in 1955, preserved in the papers of Indian diplomat Subimal Dutt in the Prime Minister’s Museum and Memorial Library in Delhi, Photo: Vineet Thakur.A quick scroll immediately reveals a curious habit. Every time a speaker makes an intervention, Nehru meticulously notes down the exact time taken by each speaker. Pakistan’s premier Mohammad Bogra spoke for 19 minutes. The Philippines’ Carlos Romulo starts his speech at 11:06 and a ½ minutes and speaks for exactly 31 ½ minutes. Sudan for 19, Syria for 17, Thailand for 19, and so on. Occasionally, his punctiliousness even bears out in time calculations scribbled on the edge of the folios. Nehru’s notes from the Bandung conference in 1955, recording exact times for each speaker, Photo: Vineet Thakur.Somewhat obsessive, one would think, but in an informal meeting of delegation heads on April 17, Nehru had appealed against making opening speeches. With 29 states present, these speeches alone would exhaust two precious days, leaving less time for actual discussions, he had reasoned. He thought of opening speeches as grandstanding acts wherein leaders usually whipped up controversial issues to curry favour with their target audiences, domestic constituencies, and international allies. Such speeches would undermine any spirit of compromises that a large conference like Bandung would necessarily have to adopt during on camera proceedings. Nehru was received with much deference in this first-of-its-kind gathering of leaders from across Asia and Africa. Several of those present looked up to him as an inspiring anti-colonial nationalist and prominent world leader. They were hesitant to oppose him even if they disagreed, so they nodded swiftly to his suggestion. But later that day, Pakistan’s Mohammad Ali Bogra, who had missed the informal meeting because he arrived late to Bandung and had a history of verbal slugfests with Nehru, became furious that such an important decision had been made in his absence. He torpedoed Nehru’s suggestion the next day, insisting that he would make a speech. He found support from some other delegations, most notably Turkey. But it was Momolu Dukuly, the Liberian leader, who made the clinching argument. Dukuly argued that unlike larger countries like India, who were often vocal and heard on international platforms, smaller countries like his rarely had similar opportunities. Speechifying in international affairs was a legitimate diplomatic flex, and not just a matter of taking public stances. This was a logic hard to refute for even Nehru. Accordingly, opening speeches were reintroduced, with two riders: they were optional and speakers should keep to 15 minutes each. It turned out that most delegations were actually keen on delivering opening speeches – in fact, twenty-one countries immediately registered to speak. Eventually, only India, Burma, and Saudi Arabia decided against making an opening address (Afghanistan, China, North Vietnam, and Yemen preferred to submit only written statements). Refusing to make a speech himself, Nehru sat through the speeches quietly, a tad annoyed, perhaps even silently bristling, as his pen bore through the pages: 19 minutes, 31.5 minutes, 19 minutes. It is clear he was making a point, all were above 15. Nehru, the doodlerAmong other things, the slip pad also reveals Nehru’s unheralded talent for doodling. Doodles are “fascinating byproducts of the tension between work and play.” The word comes from the German word, Dödel, meaning a fool or simpleton, and thus doodling originally signified foolish drawings. One writer calls them “errant and wasteful gestures” which contain in them possibilities of literary subversion. Others think of them as expressions of the subconscious. Still others wonder if they really are anything more than how they appear: random scrawls. In any case, the literature doesn’t scream in favor of any of these perspectives with confidence, although all would agree that doodles are, at least in the moment of their formation, purposeless and products of distraction. Nehru displays a range from squiggly lines – a dot gone dizzy, to a rip on German Swiss artist Paul Klee’s description of a line as “a dot out for a walk” – to mandala-shaped circles to fishy ovals. Nehru’s doodles in notes made during the Bandung conference in 1955, Photo: Vineet Thakur.But several of his doodles are notably of a recurring shape: the top half of these doodles is a version of an inverted teardrop, a spinning top, or a hot air balloon. The bottom is a hull-shaped sketch, as if he could be flying and sinking at the same time (which perhaps best represents his feelings about this gathering?).Nehru’s doodles in notes made during the Bandung conference in 1955, Photo: Vineet Thakur.Nehru’s moments of boredom are also well entrenched. At one point, he scrawls his name in Urdu at the bottom of a page, then adds it in Hindi, and yet again, in English. This aimless scribbling is a reassuring relic that the high and mighty succumb to conference ennui as frequently as the everyday academic.Nehru’s scribbling his own name in notes made during the Bandung conference in 1955, Photo: Vineet Thakur.On PalestineOf more serious nature, however, are the insights one gains about Nehru’s impressions of the main committee discussions. He takes extensive notes from various speeches which reflect the contentious nature of these discussions. Nehru often notes down the names of the speakers, which even the official proceedings of the conference do not do. So, it is through Nehru’s diary, we now know for certain, that the main intervention on the Palestine issue at this conference was made by Ahmed al Shukeiri. Born in Lebanon and tutored in Jerusalem, Shukeiri’s diplomatic career encapsulated the forcefully uprooted and untethered multi-nationality of a Palestinian life. Shukeiri was a “Palestinian of English culture,” as an Arab colleague once defined him, who was sent to Washington to set up the Arab Office in 1945. Sometime later, Shukeiri was brought back to the Arab Office at Jerusalem. From these semi-diplomatic positions, the Palestinian lawyer graduated into a full-fledged diplomatic role when he was made a member of the Syrian delegation to the UN in 1949. He would emerge as one of the strongest advocates for Palestine at the United Nations. In 1951, he was also appointed as the Assistant Secretary General of the Arab League. From 1957 to 1962, he would serve as Saudi Arabia’s Minister for State for UN Affairs and its UN permanent representative. In 1964, Shukeiri would write the Palestinian National Charter and become the founding president of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). At Bandung, as a member of the Syrian delegation, Shukeiri was performing his three roles for Syria, the Arab League, and Palestine, when Khalid Azm, the Syrian foreign minister, turned to Shukeiri to make the Arab case for Palestine. Shukeiri’s forceful intervention, ably supported by other Arab leaders, transformed Palestine from an Arab cause to a wider “third world” issue.Nehru’s notes on the speech by Ahmed al Shukeiri on Palestine at the Bandung Conference in 1955, Photo: Vineet Thakur.Einstein’s ObituaryIn the possession of a New York bookseller are two pages from a Garuda airline slip pad which contain Nehru’s obituary of Albert Einstein. The German physicist had died the very day the Bandung Conference commenced. From Bandung, Nehru wrote a heartfelt tribute addressed to Einstein’s wife. One of Einstein’s last letters had been sent to Nehru on April 6. He had pleaded with Nehru to intervene in the fast deteriorating standoff between the People’s Republic of China and the United States. The American administration had threatened to use nuclear weapons. Einstein had urged the Indian premier to speak with Zhou Enlai at Bandung. To Nehru, the wispy haired genius, “the greatest scientist of the age,” had been a moral beacon as much a scientific one, who epitomised a science that allied itself steadfastly with moral aims, and a morality that was rooted in scientific temper. He “would not compromise with evil or untruth,” Nehru wrote simply in his tribute. Deep down, it was a kind of morality that one assumes spoke to Nehru’s personal commitments. In this, he was much closer to Einstein than to his idol Gandhi whose morality could be suspiciously hollow on science.Nehru’s thoughtful note was written, possibly, in a quiet moment of contemplation in Bandung. But it was hurriedly scribbled across two pages, which were then most likely torn off from the same slip pad. Nehru’s tribute to Albert Einstein, on a slip pad written during the Bandung conference in 1955, Photo: @ShashiTharoor/X.In writing this, one can sense Nehru’s regret that Einstein’s letter had remained unanswered, mostly because the Indian premier had a punishing schedule in the days leading up to Bandung. But the scientist would have been pleased to know that Nehru was working the backchannels to convince Zhou Enlai. Indeed, Bandung’s most dramatic announcement came on April 23, when Zhou Enlai announced that the PRC was ready to negotiate with America.Vineet Thakur is a university lecturer at the Institute for History at Leiden University.This article was first published by the Centre for the Advanced Study of India (CASI).