Between Bandung, Suez, and Nehru's Feet: Singapore and Global South Solidarities in the Commonwealth

As part of his voyage to London in December 1955, David Marshall, chief minister of the British colony of Singapore, toured the newly independent Commonwealth countries of Ceylon, India, and Pakistan. This article follows his movement across South Asia, foregrounding the dynamics and limits of Global South solidarities within the Commonwealth during the seminal interlude between the Bandung Conference and the Suez Crisis. The Commonwealth was a principal platform for the formerly colonised and still-colonised within the British world system to negotiate problems of imperialism, communist insurgency, and postcolonial governance. Marshall’s devotion to the Commonwealth shaped his vision for Singapore’s postcolonial future, allowing him to manoeuvre Cold War anxieties and Afro-Asian internationalism. Meanwhile, his hosts capitalised on his visit to validate the success of their postcolonial regimes while outcompeting each other as global leaders of decolonisation. Intra-Commonwealth interactions between them and the Singaporean chief minister, however, betrayed inequalities in their solidarities, revealing hierarchies that were not strictly a product of the imperial-era divide between White and non-White nations. Marshall’s journey also drew on longstanding legacies of transregional interactions in the Indian Ocean world and on the interplay of different universalisms. Using ‘pilgrimage’ as a heuristic, this article demonstrates how Marshall invoked not only different strands of universalisms but also centuries-old connections involving religious passage across the Indian Ocean to symbolically legitimise his nationalist mission.