Commonwealth and the Third World

What is the Commonwealth? Is it the continuation of the British Empire by other means? Does it constitute a form of neo-colonialism? Is it a trap laid by the old colonialists to lure the newly freed countries into newer forms of dependence? The answer to questions like these used to be in the affirmative in 1948, by a wide variety of perceptive analysts of international politics. Thirty-five years later and wiser today in 1983, except the ignorant, the naive or the hardcore text-book dogmatist, indeed none with an understanding of the new and complex international situation and an awareness of the logic of an interdependent world, would be prone to give a straight-cut answer. The international context in which the Commonwealth took its shape and form in the fifties of this century was basicaliy different in terms of political power-equation; the situation of world finance, trade and commerce; the far-reaching effects of the revolution in technology, electronics, communication, aeronautics, defence technology and in the many critical fields with an impact on human life and group relations. Together with this the phenomenal proliferation of human population and explosion of democratic human consciousness and the surging passion for national identity, freedom and equality, had brought into being a global situation that was qualitatively different from any epoch in human history. It was a new world, a radically different world, but an amazing world of contrasts and of opportunities. On the collapse of the European imposed global order around 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged on the world scene (to borrow the current jargon) as Super-Powers. The global spread of the United States and the US dominated TNC's created a situation of new challenges even to the old world. The formation of the socialist commity of nations in eastern Europe and Asia, and the spread of socialist ideas and perceptions the world over, provided sustenance and support to the struggling people and established an alternative focus in the balance of power. The ferment in the colonies was such that with the breaking of the chains in India, one by one new states in Asia, Africa, Central America and Oceania appeared on the horizon of the expanding international community. Since the Commonwealth was not born in an age of imperialism but in the age of the winding-up of imperialism, its roots can be traced not in British constitutional practices and institutions — part of it as the starting point are undoubtedly there — but in their “distuption†mutation and transformation by the triumphant liberation movements which congregated in the commanwealth.