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Indonesia-Sukarno and the Nationalist Movement

The late 1920s witnessed the rise of Sukarno to a position of prominence amongpolitical leaders. He became the country's first truly national figure and served aspresident from independence until his forced retirement from political life in 1966.

The son of a lower  priyayi schoolteacher and a Balinese mother, Sukarno associatedwith leaders of the Indies Party and Sarekat Islam in his youth and was especiallyclose to Cokroaminoto until his divorce from Cokroaminoto's daughter in 1922. Agraduate of the technical college at Bandung in July 1927, he, along with membersof the General Study Club (Algemene Studieclub) established the IndonesianNationalist Union (PNI) the following year. Known after May 1928 as the IndonesianNationalist Party (PNI), the party stressed mass organization, noncooperation withthe colonial authorities, and the ultimate goal of independence.

Unlike most earlier nationalist leaders, Sukarno had a talent for bringing together Javanese tradition (especially the lore of wayang theater with its depictions of the

battle between good and evil), Islam, and his own version of Marxism to gain a hugemass following. An important theme was what he called "Marhaenism." Marhaen(meaning farmer in Sundanese) was the name given by Sukarno to a man heclaimed to have met in 1930 while cycling through the countryside near Bandung.The mythical Marhaen was made to embody the predicament of the Indonesianmasses: not proletarians in the Marxist sense, they suffered from poverty as theresult of colonial exploitation and the islands' dependence on European and American markets. Beyond the goal of independence, Sukarno envisioned a futureIndonesian society freed from dependence on foreign capital: a community of classless but happy Marhaens, rather than greedy (Western-style) individualists, thatwould reflect the idealized values of the traditional village, the notion of gotong-royong or mutual self-help. Marhaenism, despite its convenient vagueness, wasdeveloped enough that by 1933 nine theses on Marhaenism were developed inwhich the concept was synonymous with socio-nationalism and the struggle for independence. Mutual self-help in diverse contexts became a centerpiece of Sukarno's ideology after independence and was not abandoned by his successor,Suharto, when the latter established his New Order regime in 1966. Consideringhimself a Muslim of modernist persuasion, like Ataturk in Turkey, Sukarno advocatedthe establishment of a secular rather than Islamic state. This understandablydiminished his appeal among Islamic conservatives in Java and elsewhere.

The Minangkabau Sutan Syahrir (1909-66) and Mohammad Hatta becameSukarno's most important political rivals. Graduates of Dutch universities, they weresocial democrats in outlook and more rational in their political style than Sukarno,whom they criticized for his romanticism and preoccupation with rousing the masses.In December 1931 they established a group officially called Indonesian NationalEducation (PNI-Baru) but often taken to mean New PNI. The use of the term"education" reflected Hatta's gradualist, cadre-driven education process to expandpolitical consciousness.

By the late 1920s, the colonial government seemed to have moved a long way fromthe idealistic commitments of the Ethical Policy. Attitudes hardened in the face of 

growing Indonesian demands for independence. Sukarno was arrested in December 1929 and put on trial for sedition in 1930. Although he made an eloquent speech in

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his own defense, he was found guilty and sentenced to four years in prison. Hissentence was commuted after two years, but he was arrested again and exiled to theisland of Flores, later being transferred to the town of Bengkulu in Sumatra. In April1931, what remained of the PNI was dissolved. To replace the PNI, the IndonesiaParty (Partindo) was soon established and, in 1932, Sukarno and thousands of 

others joined it. Partindo called for independence but was repressed by the Dutchand it dissolved itself in 1934. After Japanese forces occupied the NetherlandsIndies in March 1942, however, Sukarno was allowed to reenter the political arena toplay a central role in the struggle for independence.

Data as of November 1992