Which of the following statements best describes the policy of Non-Alignment?

A. Not joining the military alliances led by the USA or USSR.

B. Isolationism or aloofness from world affairs.

C. Actively intervening in world affairs.

D. Neutrality or a policy of staying out of war.

Choose the correct answer from the options given below:

A, C only

*The correct answer is option (1) - A, C only*

The following statements describe the policy of Non-Alignment:

A. Not joining the military alliances led by the USA or USSR.
C. Actively intervening in world affairs.

About  Non-Alignment Movement (NAM):

The roots of NAM went back to the friendship between three leaders — Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, and Egypt’s leader Gamal Abdel Nasser — who held a meeting in 1956. Indonesia’s Sukarno and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah strongly supported them. These five leaders came to be known as the five founders of NAM. The first non-aligned summit was held in Belgrade in 1961.

The first summit was attended by 25 member states. Over the years, the membership of NAM has expanded. The latest meeting, the 17th summit, was held in Venezuela in 2016. It included 120 member states and 17 observer countries.

As non-alignment grew into a popular international movement, countries of various different political systems and interests joined it. This made the movement less homogeneous and also made it more difficult to define in very neat and precise terms: what did it really stand for? Increasingly, NAM was easier to define in terms of what it was not. It was not about being a member of an alliance (Statement A).

The policy of staying away from alliances should not be considered isolationism or neutrality. Non-alignment is not isolationism since isolationism means remaining aloof from world affairs. Isolationism sums up the foreign policy of the US from the American War of Independence in 1787 up to the beginning of the First World War. In comparison, the non-aligned countries, including India, played an active role in mediating between the two rival alliances in the cause of peace and stability. Their strength was based on their unity and their resolve to remain non-aligned despite the attempt by the two superpowers to bring them into their alliances.

Non-alignment is also not neutrality. Neutrality refers principally to a policy of staying out of war. States practising neutrality are not required to help end a war. They do not get involved in wars and do not take any position on the appropriateness or morality of a war. Non-aligned states, including India, were actually involved in wars for various reasons. They also worked to prevent war between others and tried to end wars that had broken out.

As a leader of NAM, India’s response to the ongoing Cold War was two-fold: At one level, it took particular care in staying away from the two alliances. Second, it raised its voice against the newly decolonised countries becoming part of these alliances. India’s policy was neither negative nor passive. As Nehru reminded the world, non-alignment was not a policy of ‘fleeing away’. On the contrary, India was in favour of actively intervening in world affairs to soften Cold War rivalries (Statement C). India tried to reduce the differences between the alliances and thereby prevent differences from escalating into a full-scale war. Indian diplomats and leaders were often used to communicate and mediate between Cold War rivals such as in the Korean War in the early 1950s.