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. This was the culmination of at least three factors 

(i) Cooperation among these five countries,

(ii) Growing Cold War tensions and its widening arenas, and

(iii) The dramatic entry of many newly decolonized African countries into the international arena.

By 1960, there were 16 new African members in the UN. 25 member states attended the first summit. Over the years, the membership of NAM has expanded. The latest meeting, the 14th summit, was held in Havana in 2006. It included 116 member states and 15 observer countries.

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