CDS (I) 2023 General Knowledge · Question 111 of 120

Correct — D, Fidel Castro. The Non-Aligned Movement was brought into being by five leaders — Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Sukarno of Indonesia — building on the principles agreed at the Bandung conference of 1955, and the first summit met at Belgrade from 1 to 6 September 1961. Nkrumah, Nasser and Nehru are three of those five, so options (a), (b) and (c) are all inside the founding group. Castro is not. Cuba's weight in the movement came later: the sixth summit was held at Havana from 3 to 9 September 1979, and Castro chaired the movement from 1979 to 1983 — a period described as the height of Cuban prestige within it, though Cuba's standing fell away after Castro backed the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan while most members opposed it.

• (a)Kwame Nkrumah — Nkrumah of Ghana is one of the five founding leaders. His presence is also what makes the movement African as well as Asian from the start.
• (b)Gamal Abdel Nasser — Nasser of Egypt is a founder and the host of the second summit at Cairo. He belongs squarely to the formative core.
• (c)Jawaharlal Nehru — Nehru is a founder and the source of much of the movement's early vocabulary of non-alignment. He was at Belgrade in 1961.

Non-alignment was a refusal to join either Cold War bloc while still claiming an active voice in world affairs. Its intellectual base was laid at Bandung in 1955, where Asian and African states agreed a set of principles on sovereignty, non-aggression and peaceful coexistence, and it took organisational shape at Belgrade in 1961. The five leaders who drove that conversion are the ones an examiner means by the formative phase.

The item is a straightforward test of whether you can name the founding five, and the safest way to hold them is by country as much as by person — Yugoslavia, Egypt, India, Ghana and Indonesia. Castro is the odd one out on chronology: Cuba's leadership moment is the Havana summit of 1979 and the chairmanship that followed, which is nearly two decades after the founding. That gap is the whole question. It also helps to keep the two dates apart in memory: 1955 Bandung for the principles, 1961 Belgrade for the first summit. The movement's chair rotates to the host of each summit, which is why leaders who had nothing to do with its founding nonetheless appear at its head in later decades.

• The founding leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement were Tito of Yugoslavia, Nasser of Egypt, Nehru of India, Nkrumah of Ghana and Sukarno of Indonesia.
• The first summit was held at Belgrade from 1 to 6 September 1961.
• The movement drew on the principles agreed at the Bandung conference of 1955.
• The sixth summit met at Havana from 3 to 9 September 1979 and Fidel Castro chaired the movement from 1979 to 1983.
• Cuba's standing in the movement declined after Castro supported the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, which most members opposed.

• Reading later prominence as founding membership; Castro led the movement, but from 1979.
• Merging Bandung 1955 with Belgrade 1961 — principles at one, organisation at the other.
• Forgetting Sukarno and Nkrumah, which leaves the founding group looking like three leaders rather than five.

As an odd-one-out among the founding leaders, as a first-summit venue question, or as a match between a summit and its host city.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The first summit of the Non-Aligned Movement was held in 1961 at

  • (a)Bandung
  • (b)Belgrade
  • (c)Cairo
  • (d)Havana

  Answer(b) Belgrade — the first summit met there from 1 to 6 September 1961, following the principles agreed at Bandung in 1955.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Fidel Castro chaired the Non-Aligned Movement following which summit?

  • (a)Belgrade, 1961
  • (b)Cairo, 1964
  • (c)Havana, 1979
  • (d)Jakarta, 1992

  Answer(c) Havana, 1979 — Cuba hosted the sixth summit and Castro chaired the movement from 1979 to 1983.