The Progressive International lands in India

The 1955 Afro-Asian Conference Conference reflected a seismic process of transformation in the international system. Nations and peoples long shackled by colonial rule were now winning their liberation, and seeking to build institutions capable of containing their common aspirations.

The Bandung spirit would go on to inspire concrete projects of Global South cooperation — from the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77 to enduring political alliances that sought to challenge imperial arrangements and transcend Cold War rivalries. It offered not just a moral stance, but a material strategy for survival, dignity, and shared development.

India, a founding voice of the movement, occuppied a central place in that history of South-South cooperation. Among its many legacies, we find Jawaharlal Nehru’s leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement, Indira Gandhi’s support for the anti-apartheid struggle, India’s early recognition of the Palestinian cause, and its enduring friendship with Cuba. For decades, India stood as a moral compass in a polarized world, insisting on peace over war, self-determination over domination, and justice over extraction.

Today's India stands at a crossroads. As the world’s largest population and a global economic power, it has the potential to lead a renewed front of Southern nations committed to peace, justice, and planetary survival. But this charge will not be led by the government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the largest party in India's ruling coalition — or its leader Narendra Modi. Authoritarianism at home and reaction abroad tug at the country from different directions — and the path ultimately taken will depend on the determination and organisation of India’s progressive forces.

As a new international order once again struggles to emerge from decades of unchallenged imperial domination, the Progressive International returns to the subcontinent: to investigate the tectonic transformations underway, to celebrate the Bandung spirit, and to explore what kind of multipolarity might emerge from the ashes of waning imperial hegemony.

The outcome of the struggle unfolding today will define the century ahead. On one pole, the old imperial world seeks to reassert global dominance through nationalism, militarism, and fossil-fuelled extraction — repackaging colonial logics in the language of “civilisation” and “freedom.” From the halls of Washington to the fever dreams of the far right, this vision casts multipolarity as a new scramble for supremacy. But the true face of that world has been exposed — most forcefully in Gaza. The ongoing genocidal assault has brought the moral and political bankruptcy of the international order into sharp relief, producing a rupture that is already proving irreperable.

On the other pole, a growing convergence of popular movements, communities, and progressive states are advancing an alternative: a world based on cooperation, peace, decolonisation, and shared planetary stewardship. Across the Global South and beyond, popular movements are rising in solidarity with Palestine, and progressive governments are claiming moral and diplomatic leadership. Renewed projects of bilateral and multilateral cooperation reject imperial impunity and affirm principles of equality, sovereignty, peace, and justice. From the university campuses in the West and the shanty towns of the South, to the halls of power in Africa, Asia and Latin America, a new consensus is emerging for a world that carries forward the victories of decolonization into new projects of sovereign development.

That is why the Progressive International has arrived in India. From the villages of Hyderabad where Right to Information laws and participatory 'social audits' hold the government accountability, to legislative halls where gig workers experiment with and win new laws, to gatherings with movement leaders, trade unionists, and anti-imperialists, we come to listen, learn, and make solidarity more than a slogan.

In Hyderabad, the Progressive International delegation — which includes political leaders from across our membership — will participate in the Government of Telangana’s Bharat Summit, alongside public officials and movement leaders from over 100 countries — in a global call for justice in a changing world. In Mucherla, policymakers from distinct sectors learn from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in action — led by Progressive International member Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS). With the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union (TGPWU), the delegation celebrates the architects of groundbreaking new labour laws in Telangana and Karnataka — for pioneering a new labour internationalism amongst the world's largest gig workforce. In Delhi, the "Internationalism Now!" conference with the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) will address the urgent tasks of building and defending the left in a multipolar world.

At a time of catastrophic planetary crisis and rising division, our task is simple: to forge the bonds and strategies that will renew and renovate the Bandung spirit for the 21st century.