Panchsheel and the Non-Aligned Movement

Panchsheel: The Five Principles and the Treaty They Came From

The word comes from Sanskrit and Pali: panch (five) and sheel (virtuous conduct), echoing the five precepts of Buddhist ethics. The principles were first written into a treaty on 29 April 1954, at Peking (Beijing). Its full title was the Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet Region of China and India, and the five principles sit in its preamble, not in the operative articles. The agreement was to run for eight years.

The treaty itself was practical. India gave up the special rights it had inherited from British rule in Tibet, including military escorts at trade posts and its postal and telegraph services, and accepted that Tibet was a "Tibet Region of China". In return, both countries set up trade agencies (Indian agencies at Yatung, Gyantse and Gartok) and opened six Himalayan passes for traders and pilgrims: Shipki La, Lipulekh, Mana, Niti, Kungri Bingri and Darma. Zhou Enlai came to Delhi in June 1954 and repeated the five principles in a joint statement with Nehru. Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai became a popular slogan.

Bandung 1955 and Brioni 1956: Building the Third Path

By 1954 the Cold War had hardened into rival alliances: NATO (1949), then SEATO and the Baghdad Pact, and in 1955 the Warsaw Pact. Nehru argued that newly free Asian and African nations would lose their independence if they joined any of them. He first used the word "non-alignment" in a speech at Colombo in 1954, although V.K. Krishna Menon had put the idea to the United Nations a year earlier.

The next step came from five Asian leaders known as the Colombo Powers: Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. They sponsored the Asian-African Conference at Bandung, Indonesia, from 18 to 24 April 1955. 29 countries came, including China, Egypt, Japan and the Gold Coast (the future Ghana). Much of Asia and Africa was still under colonial rule or newly free. The Soviet Union and the Western powers were not invited, though a few US allies such as Turkey, Thailand and the Philippines came. Its final communiqué set out ten principles: the Panchsheel ideas widened to include the UN Charter, human rights, racial equality, the right of self-defence, peaceful settlement of disputes and abstention from collective defence pacts that serve great powers.

The movement's founding circle formed in July 1956 at the Brioni islands in Yugoslavia, where Tito, Nehru and Nasser met and signed a declaration against bloc politics. CDS 2019-I asked who began Afro-Asian solidarity as a core idea of foreign policy: Nehru.

Belgrade 1961: The Five Founders and the Rules of Entry

A preparatory meeting at Cairo in June 1961 fixed who could attend. The First Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement followed at Belgrade, 1 to 6 September 1961, with 25 member countries and three observers. A first membership test was agreed at Cairo: an independent policy based on coexistence and non-alignment; support for national independence movements; no membership of a multilateral military alliance formed in the context of great-power rivalry; no bilateral military pact with a great power in that context; and no foreign military bases on the member's soil at the great power's request.

The Summit Trail, 1961 to 2024

NAM has no charter and no permanent secretariat. The summit is its highest body, the chair rotates, and a Coordinating Bureau sits at the UN in New York. Summits are held roughly every three years, though the gaps have been long. Today it has about 120 member states and more than fifteen observers.

The early summits fought colonialism, the middle ones demanded fairer trade, and after 1989 the movement lost its obvious enemy: with the Cold War over, critics asked what NAM was for.

1962: The War That Tested Both Ideas

Nehru had been among the first non-communist leaders to recognise the People's Republic of China (1949-50) and had backed its place at the United Nations. The friendship cooled quickly. China built a road across Aksai Chin, a region India claimed. The Dalai Lama fled to India in March 1959 and was given asylum. India adopted a "forward policy" of setting up border posts, and talks between Zhou Enlai and Nehru in April 1960 failed. China attacked on 20 October 1962 in the western sector (Ladakh) and the east (NEFA, now Arunachal Pradesh).

The fighting ended on 21 November 1962, when China announced a unilateral ceasefire and withdrew from most of the territory it had taken in the east, while keeping Aksai Chin. India's defining stand was at Rezang La (18 November), where the 13 Kumaon under Major Shaitan Singh held out against overwhelming numbers and he received the Param Vir Chakra. The 1954 treaty expired in June 1962 and was never renewed.

Panchsheel had not failed because its words were wrong. It failed because China and India disagreed about where the border lay, and the principle of "mutual respect for territorial integrity" cannot work when each side believes the same land is its own. In the next decades India stayed non-aligned in name but leaned towards the Soviet Union for arms, and in August 1971 signed the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation.

Non-Aligned in 2026: Strategic Autonomy and the Global South

India's present phrase is strategic autonomy: decide each issue on India's interest, take defence equipment from several suppliers and join groupings that cut across blocs. Delhi sits in the Quad, BRICS and the SCO. Prime Minister Modi has not attended a NAM summit in person; India has sent a Vice-President or a minister. Instead, India leads a newer idea, the Global South, hosting the Voice of Global South Summit (January 2023) and securing the African Union's entry into the G20 at New Delhi in 2023.

Our recent explainers show the same old principles at work. India's chairship of BRICS is covered in the 18th BRICS summit report. The China question returned in the Modi-Xi meeting and its "three mutuals" formula, nearly seventy years after Zhou Enlai's visit. The roots of this thinking lie in the Gandhian phase of the national movement.

How UPSC Has Asked It: Past Papers Solved

Seven genuine questions from 2019 to 2026.

Practice MCQs (with answers)

1. The five principles of Panchsheel were first set out in the preamble of the 1954 agreement between India and
   1. Pakistan
   2. China
   3. Burma
   4. Indonesia
2. Which of these countries attended the Bandung Conference of 1955 but was NOT among its five sponsors, the Colombo Powers?
   1. Burma
   2. Ceylon
   3. Indonesia
   4. Egypt
3. The first summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, in September 1961, was held at
   1. Belgrade
   2. Cairo
   3. Bandung
   4. Colombo
4. Which of the following founders is matched with the correct country?
   1. Nkrumah: Nigeria
   2. Sukarno: Malaysia
   3. Nasser: Egypt
   4. Tito: Czechoslovakia
5. India chaired NAM after hosting its summit at New Delhi in
   1. 1979
   2. 1983
   3. 1986
   4. 1992
6. For how many years was the 1954 India-China agreement on Tibet to remain in force?
   1. 5
   2. 10
   3. 12
   4. 8
7. Which of the following was one of the tests for NAM membership agreed at Cairo in 1961?
   1. An independent policy based on coexistence and non-alignment
   2. Membership of NATO
   3. Hosting a foreign military base
   4. A bilateral military treaty with a great power
8. The Bandung Conference of 1955 announced how many principles?
   1. Five
   2. Seven
   3. Ten
   4. Twelve

Quick Revision