sutan sjahrir and the failure of indonesian socialism

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Sutan Sjahrir and The Failure of Indonesian Socialism

By: Lindsay Rae

INTRODUCTIONSutan Sjahrir was a leading figure in the struggle for Indonesia‟s independence. By most standards he

achieved eminence and suffered political decline at a remarkably early age. By twenty-five he hadmade sufficient impact in the nationalist movement for the Dutch to cast him into a lengthy exile. Atthirty-six he brilliantly seized an opportunity and became Prime Minister of his country, and for twoyears guided the young republic through some of its most difficult days. His work at this time was tohave the most durable impact, largely determining the character of the Indonesian revolution, as anational rather than a social revolution, and shifting the emphasis of action towards “diplomacy” ratherthan “struggle”. As a young, western-oriented intellectual leader, he was successfully setting the paceof political developments, and with western liberal democracy at the height of its prestige, heappeared to represent the future. But by the time Indonesia‟s independence strugglc ended in 1949,he was 40, and already pushed From the centre of political life; he was never again to hold high officeor exert decisive influence. The years before his death were years of progressively deepening politicalFailure, ending with several years of imprisonment at the hands of the republic he had helped tocreate. Judgments of success and failure in political life often prove difficult, and this is particularly so

in Sjahrir‟s case. In his political career it is easy to point both to outstanding “successes” and todevastating “failures”. He showed great foresight and a capacity for penetrating analysis in his attitudeto the war, and considerable courage in his actions during the Japanese occupation. His success inrecruiting a dynamic and talented following among the young intellectuals of occupation Jakarta hasbeen sympathetically described by Legge. His political skill was evident in his grasping the moment totake power from the “collaborationist” politicians who constituted the Republic of Indonesia‟s firstcabinet in 1945, but the same events also demonstrated his integrity and acuity. The analysiscontained in his pamphlet Perjuangan Kita (Our Struggle) displayed both penetrating honesty and acool perceptiveness. He anticipated the Cold War and its implications for Indonesia at an early stage. And he represented the Republic at the United Nations most impressively, thus playing a major part ingathering international, and especially American, support for the Indonesian cause, which proveddecisive in overcoming Dutch intransigence. These are testaments to his brilliance and highcharacter, and demonstrations of his “success” Sjahrir was a committed nationalist with a deep

abhorrence of colonialism, and hence his role in creating an independent Indonesia marks his careeras one of high achievement. However, in contrast to some who worked for independence, he wasnever merely a nationalist, and he had good reason to be profoundly disappointed with the fruits ofindependence. Nationalism took a place in his political thinking alongside tolerance, democracy,internationalism, socialism and modernity. Moreover these strands in his thinking stood in arelationship of priority to one another, as the tests of political life would show. in the development ofan Indonesian society to match his ideals, his ambitions remained largely unfulfilled. Indeed, from hisloss of the Prime Ministership in 1947, his career followed a path of successively more intense periods of disappointment and remoteness from power. Thus, having been one of the principalarchitects of the Indonesian victory, he was subsequently unable to move the political current of thenew Republic decisively in the ideological direction he favoured. In the brief period of Indonesia‟sexperiment with multi-party parliamentar y democracy, the party which was Sjahrir‟s vehicle, theIndonesian Socialist Party (PSI), proved an electoral failure. The PSI‟s precursor, the undivided

Socialist Party (PS), had been a major force during the revolutionary period, and the PSI itself hadconstituted a significant minority voice in some of the parliamentary cabinets of the early fifties. The party had in fact maintained a degree of influence on government far greater than its true level ofsupport, or even its rather generous representation in the unelected provisional parliament of 1950-55, would have warranted. In the event, the party polled a mere two per cent of the national votewhen elections were finally held in 1955. The party suffered further decline in the late fifties, and wasbanned in 1960 under Sukarno‟s “Guided Democracy”. In 1962 Sjahrir and several other leaders,mostly associated with the PSI or the modernist Islamic party Masjumi, were imprisoned. After the1965 coup attempt the politicians were released but neither party was revived in its original form.Legge argues that despite this apparent failure, the PSI “stream” in Indonesian political thinkingrepresents a distinctive “moral and intellectual strand within Indonesian public life”. Certainlysignificant elements in the political elite and in the wider society have continued to concernthemselves with themes which were important for the PSI, such as modernity, egalitarianism, social

justice and respect for individual rights; but for the most part,national policy has not emphasized thesegoals either before or after 1966. Public policy during the Sukarno period mostly favored "neo -



traditionalist” responses to the challenge of social change and the diversion of political energies intoexternal causes such as the campaign to gain control of West Papua and the confrontation campaignagainst Malaysia. The New Order government has stressed economic growth, the maintenance ofsocial order and cohesion, and the control of such democratic institutions as exist. Nonetheless thereis clearly some link between the success of the regime‟s economic policies and the type of economicthinking developed by those associated with the PSI in the earlier period, and indeed some former

PSI members such as Sumitro have been directly involved in this policy-making. Likewise, some ofthe methods and standpoints which Sjahrir and his circle adopted may have continuing app touniversal or humanistic values: Y.B. Mangunwijaya, a great admirer of Sjahrir, lists humanitarianism,anti-fascism, democracy, clean government, honesty in politics and historical awareness as elementsof Sjahrir‟s thinking and action which he believes to have continuing relevance. Relevance, however,does not mean prevalence. Legge proposes pragmatism and rational policy-making as centralelements in the PSI‟s, and Sjahrir‟s, mode of political action. Certainly these elements have been tothe fore since 1966, and this is no doubt in part due to the enduring impact of Sjahrir and the PSI onIndonesian political culture. But can this limited impact mask the essentially failed nature of Sjahrir‟sendeavour? Rationality was certainly essential to Sjahrir‟s thinking, but it stood alongside anideological standpoint in which democratic values and a pragmatic socialism were indispensableelements, albeit that both of these were complex and qualified. Contrasts as dramatic as that betweenthe politically successful Sjahrir of the forties and the political frustration of the late fifties leave open a

great risk of oversimplification, even caricature. Hence it is important to indicate fine shades ofdifference if possible, highlighting the subtlety of the contrast as well as its significance. In this sense,the recounting of history can and ought to be a matter of “chromatic” technique rather than “dialonics”,as James Boon has proposed. The biographical approach carries a rich potential for fulfilling thisneed, charting the slow and the sudden changes over time, alongside the evolving and the staticqualities of the self in the midst of other individuals and alternative selves. It ought to reach beyondbinarism and typology to convey impressions of textures and tones of a life. For our present purpose,this means appreciating Sjahrir‟s talents and achievements while squarely facing his shor tcomings;one should not cancel the other.

CULTURE AND THE TASK OF BIOGRAPHYIn dealing with biographical subjects who come from cultures different to the biographer‟s own, it isvery easy to misjudge the significance of cultural factors in shaping the subject‟s development, either

by resorting too readily to cultural explanations or by underestimating their value. People live in a webof culture, but they are not entirely its prisoners; they remain individuals with distinct personalities andthey can make choices. They can also work towards new cultural arrangements. Moreover, their livesare played out within a historical context, so that events well beyond their personal, immediate reachcan affect their consciousness and behaviour. Part of the task of biography is to unravel theseinterconnected elements. Examining Sjahrir‟s career, including the later, arguably “failed” phase, froma biographical perspective may make it possible to move closer to delineating the interplay of culture, personality and historical circumstance which determined the texture of his political career and hisultimate frustration. Two aspects of culture arise here: the cultural factors which helped to shapeSjahrir‟s style, outlook and system of meaning, and the socio -cultural environment in whichIndonesian politics of his time was played out. The cultural element of Sjahrir‟s make up is especiallydifficult, in two ways. First, how much did cultural orientation affect his political life? And second, howis one to describe or define the cultural framework of his life, when he was exposed to such a

complex range of cultural intluences as was available to him in colonial Indonesia? He was born atPadang Panjang in the West Sumatran highlands, the heart of Minangkabau culture, but spent mostof his childhood outside the Minangkabau area in the city of Medan. His family were securely meshedinto the Dutch administrative and educational systems. Sjahrir‟s education provided him with a deepgrounding in western ideas and values: before ever setting foot on European soil, Sjahrir had spentyears in a westernized cultural-intellectual milieu, and had thoroughly absorbed western values andtechniques. Little of Minangkabau tradition or subjective self-identification seems to have remainedwith him, and he is the first choice of scholars wishing to illustrate the stereotype of a westernizedIndonesian intellectual. The question of identification is important; it has been called “the mostimportant psychological aspect of culture - the bridge between culture and personality”; hence, themeans by which the private self accommodates the demands and options of life in society. To theextent that evidence of Minangkabau identification on Sjahrir‟s part is wanting, we are entitled toquestion the importance of Minangkabau orientation as a factor in explaining or interpreting his

career. The question arises here of considering adaptability to modernizing influences as adistinctively Minangkabau cultural attribute. A disproportionately large number of I ndonesia‟s twentieth



century nationalist leaders and other intellectuals were drawn from the Minangkabau. This phenomenon reflects the broader success of Minangkabau in economic and administrative spheres.The view that cultural adaptability, influenced by the tradition of merantau (temporary migration bymen beyond the Minangkabau area), played a major part in this is a persuasive one. In this view it is a paradoxical truth that the essence of Minangkabau identity may lie in a readiness to acceptextraneous cultural influences. And yet this fails to explain the great variation in the quality and extent

of “deculturation” which various Minangkabau intellectuals exhibited. Swift points out that importantMinangkabau politicians were to be found at all points on the Indonesian ideological spectrum but thedifferences among them go well beyond ideology in the narrow sense. One need only consider aselection of the more eminent Minangkabau intellectuals of the Indonesian mid-century - Hatta,Sjahrir, Natsir, Haji Agus Salim and Tan Malaka among politicians, and the writers Idrus, Chain! Anwar and Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana - to realize the broad spectrum of responses to cultural options:to Minangkabau identity, understandings of “Indonesianness”, responses to moder nity and attitudes totradition, religious adherence and outlooks, and styles of public action. Again, we are entitled to askhow far the concept of Minangkabau culture can take us in understanding why particular individualsdeveloped the characteristics they did. Swift also convincingly argues that a central feature ofMinangkabau public life is individual competitiveness. Some other ethnic groups, such as the Bataks,have achieved economic and other success in group frameworks but this, he suggests, would notsatisfy Minangkabau ambitions, as they are less prepared to give group advantage priority over, or

even a place alongside, individual accomplishment. If we apply this idea to Sjahrir, complex resultsemerge. His style of thought was certainly individualistic; he was an intellectual with independenthabits of thought, and the PSI attracted and sought to produce self- sufficient thinkers. And yet,conditions permitting, he generally worked through groups, not as an isolated polemicist, and certainlyhe was always concerned to recruit a following, even though he did not extend this to a massmovement. Mrazek puts forward an interesting interpretation of Sjahrir‟s early career in terms of adistinctively Minangkabau response to the outside world. He relates Sjahrir‟s outlook, and especiallyhis “western” rationalism, to the interaction between the pre existing Minangkabau world view and thenew dominance of the Dutch ethici which took hold in the early years of the century, and which had a prevailing influence in his education. This interaction was an effort to integrate or associate thewestern ideals of universalism, dynamism and rationalism with the tradisionals ideals of theMinangkabau. “Minangkabau was their culture but... Dutch-ness was the culture‟s highest quality.”

This argument certainly appears to reflect the education received by Sjahrir‟s generation of theIndonesian elite, but it seems to fall short in explaining Sjahrir‟s particular case, mainly because it failsto explain why Sjahrir‟s response should have differed from those of others who experienced similar processes. As already noted, the products of this background ended up with all kinds of outlooks andattitudes to the conflict of tradition and modernity. Sjahrir‟s rejection of tradition was quitethoroughgoing, and although it may be argued that his strongest objections were to Javanese ratherthan Minangkabau tradition, that surely is a function of the very modernization of the Minangkabauwhich may have brought him to such a position rather than to any active approval of the remaining pre-modern aspects of Minangkabau culture. In other words, he disliked backwardness, regardless ofits ethnic associations, rather than reacting negatively to cultural ways because they were alien to theMinangkabau world view. His antagonism to Javanese tradition was doubtless intensified by theconcrete frustrations represented by political rivals drawing on this tradition. This is not to suggest thataspects of Minangkabau culture have nothing to contribute to understanding Sjahrir‟s development:

where they can be related to his concrete experience, they should certainly be taken into account.Education is a case in point, to which I will return later; however not only the content of his educationneeds to be considered, but also its psychological significance. As well as Minangkabau culturalorientation sits the question of the extent of Sjahrir‟s attachment to a developing Indonesian nationalculture. This is difficult not only because Indonesia‟s national culture is not easily described, but alsobecause national consciousness was still only in a formative stage in Sjahrir‟s youth. Sjahrir himself played a significant role in the development of important symbols of this national culture. As anineteen year old he participated in the youth congress which adopted the national anthem and thefamous slogan “One nation, one country and one language”. The designation of Malay as theIndonesian national language marked an important step in the development of national culture, and amajor move towards cultural independence, legitimizing for nationalistically minded Indonesians amedium for mutual communication which was not the property of the colonisers or of any one ethnicgroup. Twenty months earlier, not yet eighteen, he had been one of the founding members of the

youth group Jong-Indonesie, subsequently Pemuda Indonesia, one of the first such organisations witha national rather than provincial character. This group adopted as its symbol the red and white banner



later to become Indonesia‟s national flag! Of course these outward trappings are mere symbols, butthe rapid succession of new symbolic representations of national identity is indicative of theembryonic nature of Indonesian national culture at the time. It also powerfully underlines the point thatthe culture of nationhood, like all culture, is ever subject to change and reassessment by those whoadhere to it. It offers its adherents options; individuals are to a greater or lesser degree able to choosetheir cultural reference points. Sjahrir worked to re-direct Indonesia‟s cultural practice towards

modernity and rationality; the course of events would show the extent of resistance to theseendeavours.Both by circumstance and by his own efforts, Sjahrir ‟s youth and political career coincided with a timeof momentous choices in the referents of Indonesian culture. It is interesting to note that unlike theimmediately preceding generation of nationalists including soekarno and hatta, Sjahrir was never amember of a parochial or regional organization; from the start his affiliations were with group whichwere national as well as nationalist. but it is difficult to use the characteristics of the emergent nationalculture to explain the kind of of political actor that he became. To the extent that a cultural milieu“produced” him, he was mainly a product of the colonial state, part of a generation who created for thefirst time a new cultural synthesis which could accurately he called “Indonesian”. He was in fa ctdeeply aware of the absence of a single cultural framework within which an intellectual could operatein Indonesia. In Sjahrir‟s view all Indonesian intellectuals were at a great disadvantage where culturewas concerned: they were such a tiny proportion of the country‟s people, and they were “only

beginning to seek a form and a unity” in their outlook and culture! Nonetheless the emergent nationalcultural framework, fragile and fragmented as it was, is important to understanding his career, as it profoundly influenced the environment within which his political career and personal drama were played out. This took on deep significance after independence when the abiding cultural pluralism ofIndonesian society emerged as a major factor in shaping the contours of politics. Cultural difference,or more specifically strong identification among the people with groups divided by culturalantagonisms, was a major element of Indonesia‟s post -independence politics. The parties which proved electorally successful were those which managed to attract the support of a distinct socio-cultural stream in Indonesian society. This was especially so in Java, where society is riven bycleavages of cultural and religious orientation, which partly coincide with economic differences.Briefly, these cleavages produced four socio-cultural streams (aliran), each of which gave substantialsupport to a particular political party in the 1950s. The devout Moslems or santri (a minority at thetime) were split between the religiously purist, modernist, more urbanized and more prosperous

stream known as santri moderen, who mostlysupported the Masjumi party,and the religiously pluralist (i.e., tolerant of Javanese “impurities” inIslamic practice), conservative, and predominantly rural stream, especially strong in East Java, knownas santri kolot who mostly voted for Nahdatul Ulama (NU). Among the non-devout, or syncretist, thearistocratic and bureaucratic elite (priyayi) generally supported the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI),as did members of the lower classes subject to their influence. Many other members of the non-devout peasantry gave their vote to the Communist Party (PKI). To some extent this division was alsoconnected to regionalism. Masjumi derived the majority of its support from the strongly Islamic areasof the outer islands, while the other parties‟ support was concentrated in Java. This difference inelectoral behaviour reflected not only cultural and religious divisions but also growing regionaldisaffection with the central government. The PSI, like the other parties which lacked clear appeal to asingle aifran, performed poorly in the election, and especially so in East and Central Java. There is noquestion about the close connection between socio cultural orientation and electoral behaviour, but

need it have been so? And need this automatically have meant political failure for Sjahrir and thePSI? Hindsight raises some questions of relevance to assessing Sjahrir‟s career: for example, the possibilities for promoting a political culture less tightly linked to aliran loyalties; alternativeorganizational and electoral strategies which the PSI might have pursued; the prospects of acquiringinfluence through better relations with other parties and political forces; and making better use ofopportunities outside the framework of party and electoral politics. Conclusions about these questionsmust necessarily remain tentative but several themes recur in examining Sjahrir‟s career which areuseful in casting light on his character as a political actor, and may go some way to explaining hisultimate failure. His determined belief in rational thought and action, and his consistency in assigninga high value to educational enterprisesare of primary importance, and it is also important to understand his antagonistic relations with manyof his political contemporaries.

EARLY LIFE



Details of Sutan Sjahrir‟s childhood are scarce, but some important factors are clear. He was theeighth son of Muhammad Rasjad gelar Maha Radja Sutan of Kota Gedang, a Minangkabau noble anda lawyer, who rose in the colonial administration to become chief public prosecutor in Medan and alsoan adviser to the Sultan of Deli? Kota Gedang was well known for the success of its sons on therantau, especially in govermnent employment. Though the village‟s population was only about 2500,no less than 165 men of the Kota Gedang lineages were government officials in 1915, about half of

whom held posts outside West Sumatra. As a chief prosecutor, Sjahrir‟s father was am ong the mostsuccessful of these. Competition was intense for access to European education, but the family‟s rankand connections allowed Sjahrir the opportunity to attend Dutch-medium primary (ELS) andsecondary (MULO) schools. He was a successful scholar, and education came to take a central placein his life. At the age of sixteen he travelled to Bandung to attend the more advanced Dutch middleschool (AMS), where he followed the course based on “western classics”. This type of education wasrather a late development in colonial history, and was provided to only a tiny section of society, but itwas an education of great rigour and quality. Sjahrir prospered in this environment. In Bandung bothhis intellectual vigour and his bent towards political activism became apparent. His shyness and slightbuild meant that at first his classmates hardly noticed him, and when they did so it was because of hisintellectual acuity and curiosity. Despite his small size, he was an enthusiastic sportsman, playing fora pan-Indonesian football team, rather than the Minangkabau team which also existed in Bandung atthe time. He also loved music, and played the violin well. But it was as a student of outstanding ability

that he caught his fellows‟ attention. Hamdani remembers that “Compared to the rest of us, no subjectseemed burdensome or difficult to Sjahrir.” Teachers always called on him to tackle difficulttranslations from Latin, German, French or English, but perhaps most significantly, he was unafraid toquestion his teachers about points of history and philosophy. He had an aptitude for asking the rightquestion to bring clarity and understanding to his fellow students. His early political activism alsocentred around educational enterprises. He helped to lead campaigns against illiteracy, whicheventually led to the establishment of the Cahaya “People‟s University”, and he took part in didactic plays? He also joined a debating club, where he made a strong impression. One debate aboutfeudalism and the abuse of outmoded tradition became heated and emotional, as many present werethemselves children of aristocrats and state officials. Hamdani recalls Sjahrir advancing objective andconvincing arguments which restored calm to the situation.

HOLLAND : HOME AWAY FROM HOME

Educational success marked the progressions of Sjahrir‟s early life: from Medan to Bandung, andthen in 1929 from Bandung to the Netherlands to study law, first at Amsterdam and later at Leiden.Two years later he returned home without a degree, but not without an education. His lack ofacademic progress was not due to a deficiency of talent or energy, but to other calls on hisenthusiasm, ultimately leading him home early to fulfil a political duty. The West excited him, and hethrived there? Not all the experience was new: his Dutch education had prepared him so thoroughlythat he felt he was “recollecting things I had already known”. In Holland he became active in leftist political circles, including the Dutch Social Democratic Party, international trade union organization,and most importantly, in the nationalist student group Perhimpunan Indonesia (PI). In thisorganization he first developed a close alliance with Mohammad Hatta, with whom he would maintaina very special personal and political relationship, despite important differences, for the rest of his life.Several of the characteristics of Sjahrir‟s political style which would be demonstrated again and againduring his career were fixed at this time.

But perhaps of greater significance than his formal political involvements was the social atmosphereand the opportunity for advanced intellectual exploration which Holland opened to him. His philosophical rationalism, already evident in Bandung, found its full expression and was given a firmintellectual grounding; and in Marxism he discovered a system of thought which served both his needfor a coherent general philosophy and his need for tools with which to analyze the concrete situationsof contemporary politics: the rise of fascism, and the historical significance of capitalism andcolonialism. Importantly for the later application of his political thinking, Sjahrir was able to integratehis interpretations of the situation of Indonesia with an understanding of global forces anddevelopments.

The other major significance of his sojourn in Holland was that it gave him his first direct experience ofa non-colonial society. His early life, especially his father‟s position in the colonial administration, may

have provided him with a close insight into the more unjust and demeaning aspects of colonialrelationships. Rose suggests that he may also have been affected by witnessing the sufferings of



Javanese labourers who had been brought to the Dutch-owned plantations near Medan. In Bandunghe had suffered the experience of being chased by the Dutch police (while trying to read newspaper posters telling of the PKI revolt in 1927) and subjected to insults and violence from sections of theDutch community. Like Hatta, Sjahrir was profoundly conscious of the psychological abnormalitywhich these unequalrelationships imposed on Indonesian society, and he dwelt at length in his letters on the “inferiority

complex” of the colonized. Colonialism had deeply corrupted Indonesia; but in exile he wrote that he“could never be so happy here as in Holland...where there are no colonial relationships...” Sjahrir‟sdepth of consciousness of the human destructiveness of colonialism was only made possible byexperiencing the relative liberality of conditions in the colonialists‟ homeland, where racial and culturalbarriers were lowered. Thus Sjahrir‟s two short years in Holland turned out to be a deeply liberating period for him, both intellectually and spiritually, amid of immense importance to the development ofhis career.When he first arrived in Amsterdam, Sjahrir shared the home of his much older sister Siti Rohana,who had been living there for sometime. Siti Rohana was herself an activist of considerable note, a journalist and pioneering feminist. Tas recalls that Sjahrir found her dominance something of anirritation and an embarrassment. Remembering that he had left the family home at sixteen, casting offwhatever there may have been of “the puritanism of his Islamic Minangkabau background”, hischafing at having his freedom curtailed, however mildly, is hardly surprising. This minor problem

aside, Sjahrir threw himself into exploration and experimentation with all the exciting possibilities thatthe West held. His thirst for new knowledge never lost its tempo, but his organized coursework quicklygave way to a more wide- ranging and personal search for answers to the myriad problems of life and politics. For a time he lived with a group of anarchists before returning to the mainstream of socialistthought. He also enthusiastically pursued his musical interests, attending the free “people‟s concerts”.

He also developed a relationship with Maria Duchateau Tas, wife of his Dutch socialist comrade SolTas; she and Sjahrir were later married (by proxy) during his exile in Banda, although the colonialauthorities would not let her enter the Indies, and hence they were never re-united. They weredivorced in 1948.

PERHIMPUNAN INDONESIA : A SCHOOL FOR SJAHRIR‟S POLITICS The state of the Indonesian nationalist movement both in Holland and at home at the time of Sjahrir‟s

Dutch sojourn has great bearing on the development of several strands of his thinking. Thedevelopment of the Perhimpunan Indonesia in the 1920s and the rise of the PNI in Indonesia hadbrought to the surface a number of tensions within the movement, which had a common objective inindependence from the Dutch, but was otherwise a motley collection of communists, democrats, reliactivists, aristocratic and bureaucratic elitists. From the time of his involvement with PI in its decline,tensions with communists on the one hand and the elitists on the other would be enduring themes inSjahrir‟s politics. PI had been founded as long ago as 1908, but in the early twenties it underwent a majorreorganization and a shift in its focus. Originally it had been a politically moderate association, largelya social club, for Indonesian students in the Netherlands. As the number of Indonesians proceeding tohigher education in Holland grew after the first world war, the PI increasingly attracted members whohad been active in youth and nationalist organizations at home. Hatta had joined it soon after his ownarrival in Holland in 1921, and had quickly become the dominant force within it. Under his leadership

the PI developed a distinctive nationalist program, whose elements included the supremacy ofnational unity over regional and sectional differences, self-help, solidarity, and most importantly, nonco-operation with the Dutch authorities. Hatta believed genuine co-operation was only possibleamong people sharing the same rights and duties, and having common interests; otherwise, it wouldsimply be a mask for exploitation. Active non co-operation would fulfil the dual purposes of sharpeningthe opposition between colonizer and colonized, and promoting the internal unity of the oppressed.Over the next two decades political leadership of the nationalist movement would be split betweennon co-operating nationalists, including Sukarno, Hatta and Sjahrir, and those who chose to participate in Dutch-sponsored activities, including the advisory body known as the Volksraad.Expediency motivated many co-operating nationalists, but it is worth noting that as the 1930s progressed, many were also moved by their fear of the rising tide of fascism, including the growingaggressiveness of Japan, which they saw as a more serious, or at least more urgent, problem to beovercome than European colonialism. Sjahrir would later come to share this point of view. Hatta and

Sjahrir were both conscious of the domination of the Indonesian movement by elitists, predominantlyJavanese, sincere in their nationalism but not committed to democratic social change or democratic



methods of operation. There was considerable tension between Sjahrir and older, “opportunist” elitistnationalists; some leading figures in this tradition, such as Ali Sastroamidjojo and Subardjo, continuedthis antagonistic relationship right through to the events of the forties and fifties. By the twenties theIndonesian nationalist movement, and PI, included many communists. The Russian Revolution wasstill a recent memory, and Lenin‟s anti -imperialist posture attracted many Indonesian activists to thecommunist cause. The Indonesian Communist Party, Asia‟s oldest, impressed many PI members as

the most vigorous force opposing Dutch power.‟ Even those who would later espouse violent hostilityto communism, like Hatta and Sjahrir, often became deeply interested in Marxist ideas. Apart from thevision and critique of society, both men were impressed by Leninist organizational principles, and bothwould continue to admire the efficiency of tightly disciplined cell-based organizational arrangementsthroughout their careers, despite their otherwise democratic outlook. But this common groundnotwithstanding, there was already in the twenties a clear and growing mistrust between communistsand non-communist nationalists. In the mid-twenties, Hatta had close relations with the communistleaders Semaun and Darsono, both of whom became members of PT for a time. But the relationshipwas never unambiguously friendly. To Hatta the alliance offered substantial organizational and propaganda benefits, but also carried the risk of harming the cause by alienating important elementsin the united nationalist movement he hoped to build. Two such elements were the Sarekat Islam,some of whose leaders, such as Haji Agus Salim, had already crossed swords with the communists,and the nationalists centred around the Bandung Study Club. However, given the urgent need to build

a strong national bloc, Hatta urged nationalists to co-operate more fully with the communists. Thealliance was sealed in an agreement signed by Hatta and Semaun in December 1926 providing forPI/PM co-operation, PI leadership of the nationalist movement and access to the PKI‟s materialresources. But within weeks the PM abandoned the pact on instructions from Moscow, where theSoviet government was growing increasingly intolerant of the refusal of Asian nationalists to submit tocommunist leadership. This sequence of events convinced Hatta of the communists‟ inability to putthe national cause ahead of their sectional (and foreign) interests. The discord intensified in 1928when the Comintern, angered at the failure of both Chinese and Indonesian communists in precedingyears, altered its strategy by eschewing co-operation with “bourgeois” nationalists. Hatta‟s growingdistrust was confirmed at the July 1929 congress of the International League Against Imperialism inFrankfurt, where the communists attempted to dominate proceedings.As higher educationalinstitutions opened in Indonesia, and the Dutch government attempted to curtail student politicalactivities, the number of Indonesians traveffing to Holland slowed dramatically after 1925; also, many

of the leaders who had injected life into the PI completed their studies and went home. Furthermorethe creation in 1927 of a fully-fledged nationalist party in the homeland, the PNI, drew the focus ofnationalist activity away from the PI; only ever attracting minority involvement among Indonesianstudents, by 1928 it had declined numerically and qualitatively. Thus it had lost much of its formersignificance by the time Sjahrir arrived. At the same time, the PI executive had come increasinglyunder communist control, led by Rustam Effendi, who was a secret member of the Dutch CommunistParty. Hatta now openly opposed the communists, and in this he was joined by Sjahrir, who becamevice-chairman and secretaly of the PI, and took on the role, not for the last t ime, of Hatta‟s trusteddeputy. In the last days of 1929 the Dutch authorities in Java arrested hundreds of PNI members,including Sukarno, who a year later was sentenced to four years of imprisonment. Taking his andother convictions as a signal that it would no longer be tolerated, the remaining PNI leadershipdissolved the party in April 1931, after the defendants lost their appeals. In its place they establishedthe Partai Indonesia (Partindo). All this was done without reference to the mass membership. Hatta

and Sjahrir had been uneasy about the mass agitational style of the PM before Sukarno‟s arrest, butthey were highly critical of the dissolution of the party, fearing that it was a capitulation to Dutch pressure which represented a major setback to the momentum of nationalist activity. Also, theundemocratic procedure by which the decision was made stirred their egalitarian distaste for the elitistJavanese leadership. Accordingly, they lent their support to those PNI members who wished tomaintain an active non co-operating movement, difficult though that might be under the increasinglyrepressive conditions which the Dutch were imposing. Those members were now gatheringthemselves into groups known as Golongan Merdeka who hoped to form a new, secular, non cooperating nationalist party which would be more democratic in tone than the PNI had been, and wouldmove towards new organizational methods, heavily centred on education. All of this was closer toHatta‟s original conception of the nationalist movement, which had been at odds with the PNI‟s elitistleadership. The PI executive, now dominated by communists, decided to expel both Sjahrir and Hattafrom the organization, using their criticism of the PNI dissolution as a pretext. Sjahrir, contemptuous of

the communists and appalled by the hypocrisy of their posturing in defence of the PNI leaders,resigned and claimed that he had advised Hatta to do the same. Hatta, however, was less nonchalant



about losing his position, as he valued the PI more highly, and regarded it as important forestablishing his leadership credentials in anticipation of his return to Indonesia. He was also hurt bythe personal betrayal of former close associates.

RETURN TO INDONESIAHatta recognized the urgency of his return to Indonesia if he was to stake his claim to leadership of

the renewed movement, but he did not want to return without completing his studies. So in 1931 itwas agreed that Sjahrir, whose leadership and intellectual qualities Hatta had come to admire, andwith whom he felt close ideological sympathy, should return to Indonesia as his representative. Sjahririntended to return to Holland a year or two later, but for the moment he was needed to fill theleadership gap in the nationalist movement. The trip home i llustrates Sjahrir‟s resourcefulness.Friends organized a passage home for him but the ticket failed to arrive in time. Sjahrir boarded theship anyway, believing that in the event of a ticket inspection, at worst he would be forced to leave theship at its next port of call, Genoa. On board he found himself next to a middle-aged Dutch womanwho was curious that a student should be returning home in the middle of the academic year. Heexplained that his trip was urgently necessary as his parents were ill, and confided that he wastravelling without a ticket. The woman turned out to be an official‟s wife returning from home leave,and she prevailed upon her husband to pretend that Sjahrir was their servant, thus allowing him a free passage. His conscience troubled him, however, because he was afraid that his arrival was being

anticipated by the Dutch secret police; fearful of causing his benefactors trouble, he disembarked atSingapore.The Golongan Merdeka held a conference to form a new party in Yogyakarta in December1931. They chose the name Pendidikan Nasional lndonesia (“Indonesian National Education”). Thisseemingly odd name held three advantages. First, it signalled the group‟s commitment to theeducational strategy for developing the nationalist movement, implying the deep involvement of themasses in political activity, not merely as followers, but as autonomous activists. Second, by avoidingthe word “partai”, there may have been some hope of reducing the hostility of the authorities, since itsaims could conceivably be construed as other than political. This seems improbable in view of thegroup‟s genesis in opposing the weakening of the non co-operation principle, and in any case such atransparent ploy could hardly have fooled the authorities. Finally, the name allowed the continuedexploitation of the goodwill associated with the name “PNI”. In June of the following year the new party held its first congress in Bandung, and elected Sjahrir as its temporary chairman until Hattareturned. The group w as true to the “education” idea contained in its name. Hatta had stated his

intention to engage in “social pedagogy” on his return and he followed through on his promise? Incontrast to the mass agitation favoured by Sukarno and Partindo, the PNI Bans emphasized thedevelopment of a cadre group of intellectual quality. To this end Hatta produced a famous document,a party manifesto called Ke Arah Indonesia Merdeka. This was followed by another document, whichwas a virtual catechism, consisting of 150 questions on subjects ranging from the aims of thePendidikan to complex questions of political theory, together with prescribed answers, which were tobe circulated to PNI Bans branches and to be regarded as required knowledge of members. Thiswork is generally attributed to Hatta, and was published under his name, but both SubadioSastrosatomo and Burhanuddin say that the idea originated with Sjahrir

ARREST AND EXILE : THE END OF YOUTHSukarno was released at the end of 1931, but two years later he was arrested again, and threemonths after that, Sjahrir and Hatta were also detained. Sjahrir had already bought his passage back

to Holland, and had left Bandung for Jakarta to meet his ship. This was the beginning of eight years ofimprisonment and exile, during which the material and psychological freedoms of his youth vanished. At first Sjahrir was held at Jakarta‟s Cipinang prison for ten months. In the first week of 1935, he andHatta, with five others, were sent to the notorious penal settlement at Boven Digul in West NewGuinea. This was a vile place, in an isolated, swampy location over a hundred miles upriver from thenearest town, ravaged by disease and cruelty. If Holland had inspired Sjahrir‟s idealism by giving himan inkling of the heights to which a society might aspire, Boven Digul gave him a contrastingexperience with profoundly negative effects upon him. Firstly and fundamentally, life at Diguldamaged his health. Prisoners were allowed only a very meagre ration unless they agreed to work;for the non co-operating nationalists this was impossible since the authorities made it clear that thosewho volunteered to work would be regarded as showing remorse. After a few months Sjahrir andHatta were re-classified as “non-extremists” and given a somewhat larger allowance. Also, water wasshort. In October, Sjahrir contracted malaria, and then tuberculosis, which would affect him

spasmodically for the rest of his life. In addition this incarceration had grievous psychological effects,as Sjahrir suffered deep depression; but he surprised himself with the reServe of fatalism on which he



could draw for mental strength. He retreated into study to escape from the pressures of this abnormaldaily life, but even this enthusiasm waned; he reflected sadly that he could manage no more thanthree hours of study at a stretch. The close living with others at Digul forced Sjahrir to consider the psychological distance between himself and most of his compatriots; he asked himself, “Am I perhapsestranged from my people?” H e realized that a wide gap separated intellectuals from the mass of the people, yet his understanding of this distance seems rather one-sided. He is concerned with the

vexation that the “underdeveloped” character of the people could provoke among the intel ligentsia,but does not seem concerned with what meaning the intellectuals‟ world might have for the masses. After a year he was moved to an exile in more congenial surroundings at Banda Neira in theMoluccas, where he shared a comfortable villa with Hatta and Tjipto Mangunkusumo. Anothernationalist exile, Iwa Kusuma Sumantri, lived nearby. They were permitted to travel freely within theisland, to have free access to books and to write. Sjahrir was able to enjoy sailing and swimming andhis health improved. Sjahrir‟s relations with Hatta at this time have been the subject of somemisunderstanding. Naturally living so closely for such a long time would be bound to produce someconflict, but although their temperaments differed, they shared enough of a common outlook to makeserious disagreements rare. When Sjahrir‟s letters to his wife were published in Holland after the war,some critical comments about Hatta‟s intellect were included; but it should be noted that Sjahrir didnot authorize publication, and t he letters were edited by Maria Duchateau and Sjahrir‟s brother.

Sjahrir‟s self -image as an intellectual, at a psychological remove from other people, was apparent inhis attitude to some of the local people with whom he interacted. Befriended by the local doctor andschool principal, he was glad when authorities warned them off, relieving him of the need to “makemany concessions to their shallow chatter”. Similarly, he was irritated at the pretensions of a sociallyinept German curate who visited them and endeavoured to show off his own education while belittlingSjahrir‟s. But these instances of drawing himself away from others were largely a reaction against the pretentiousness and triviality of a small-time elite, not a remoteness from the people in general.Indeed, at one time he refused to visit Iwa Kusuma Sumantri‟s home because of Iwa‟s wife‟s haughtyattitude towards the local villagers. One of Sjahrir‟s most valued pursuits in Banda was teaching anumber of children, including Tjipto Mangunkusumo‟ s two foster sons (one of whom had never beento school due to illness) as well as four Arab children whose families were too poor to send them toschool. He also enjoyed the company of children when swimming or sailing, which he did often. Aftera day at the beach with twelve children, he reflected that while the children‟s parents were pleased

that he took care of them, in reality it was the children who took care of him. His other mainoccupation was a daily routine of study. He did not abandon Marxism entirely, but his letters chart thedevelopment of his thought beyond the Marxist orthodoxy of his days in Holland, which would have itsfullest flowering in his social democratic stance in the post-war years. Tas remembers Sjahrir‟sreluctance to part from Marxist “dogma”, though this may be a post hoc rationalization for Tas having published a crude defence of the dialectic which Sjahrir had written some time earlier, whichembarrassed him and misrepresented his current position. In particular Sjahrir was affected by thewritings of Croce (he considered learning Italian in order to read them in the original) and also byOrtega y Gasset , who illumined his view of totalitarianism. Fascism was a manifestation of “theubiquitous supremacy of conscious irrationalism” which elevated the concept of power to a supreme place. Underlying this, Sjahrir now believed, was the very principle of the dialectic, the “opposition offorces based on the conflicting interests and desires of different national or class groups”. Here onecan see developing Sjahrir‟s repugnance towards all totalitarianism, which would become manifest in

anti-fascist and anti-communist thought and action over the coming years. Like so many westernintellectuals he was deeply affected by what might be termed post- totalitarian disappointment. Thisbespeaks a capacity for genuine intellectual development and engagement with events, not merelythe adoption of a fixed posture on the one hand or unbridled pragmatism on the other; this attributewas not widely shared among his nationalist colleagues. As the thirties progressed, Sjahrir was increasingly aware of the looming prospect of a world-widestruggle against fascism, and the likelihood of a Japanese invasion, but he was convinced of theultimate outc ome of the struggle. Moreover, he believed that Indonesia‟s prospects in the post -warenvironment would be closely linked to Allied perceptions of Indonesian opposition to the JapaneseSjahrir‟s hostility to the Japanese was intense and formed early. He ha d no illusions about the fascistcharacter of the Japanese regime, and viewed its rise as utterly inimical to Indonesian aspirations. Bythe late thirties he regarded Japan as a more serious hurdle to Indonesian freedom than the Dutch,and the fascist tide as the fundamental fact of the world situation : he now felt nationalists ought to

make the anti-fascist struggle their priority, even to the point of co-operating with the Dutch. Indeed,he now felt that non-cooperation had become obsolete. This depended, however, on a changed



granted when requested by the Indonesian independence preparation committee. Sjahrir favoured aunilateral declaration, both because of his distaste for the Japanese and in order to signal to the worldthat Indonesia was seizing its independence as an act of defiance towards the defeated Axis powers,not the victorious allies. He argued this course of action to Sukarno and Hatta on the afternoon of 14 August, but fearful of Japanese reaction, the two leaders resisted. Hoping to force their hand, a groupof youth leaders, some of whom were Sjahrir‟s supporters, visited Sukarno. When their pleas failed,

some of the youths kidnapped Sukarno and Hatta. Sjahrir did not support the kidnapping, which didnot in any case succeed in persuading the leaders to change their minds, and he took no further partin the events surrounding the declaration of independence. The two major leaders were finallyreleased, and met with vari ous colleagues at Admiral Maeda‟s house on the night of the 16th. Finally,the next morning, Sukarno and Hatta proclaimed Indonesia‟s independence in a very simpleceremony at Sukarno‟s house. Sjahrir did not attend. The post -Japanese transition period wasextremely confused, even chaotic in some parts of the country. Revolutionary activities of varyingcharacter were taking place in some regions. Despite the nominal continuity of authority from theoccupiers to Sukarno‟s government, an effective power vacuum existed once the Japanese werediscredited. Throughout Java, large numbers of young men, many with little effective leadership, weretaking the revolution into their own hands, seizing weapons from the Japanese. There was anupsurge of violence, some of it well organized, and some more or less arbitrary. Attacks onEuropeans, Eurasians, Chinese, Ambonese and Menadonese were frequent. In places there was

bloody fighting between Japanese and Indonesians. In general, centralized authority wasdisintegrating. Meanwhile, British troops were beginning to land, to be followed by the returningDutch. It was in this atmosphere that Sjahrir published his famous pamphlet Perjuangan Kita. Thisassessment of Indonesia‟s position reflected his concerns both about the prevailing disorder andabout the character of the country‟s new government. He criticized the lawlessness of the youth,anxious as he was about its potential to damage the republic‟s reputation, especially with the Allies,as well as about its potential to promote and maintain fascist attitudes.

Importantly, he also condemned those who had “collaborated” with the Japanese as “men without realcharacter accustomed to kowtow to and run errands for the Dutch and the Japanese”. He wentfurther, calling for the “elimination” from leadership of “traitors to our struggle running dogs andhenchmen of the Japanese fascists”, specifying “those who have worked in the Japanese propagandaorganizations, the secret police, and the Japanese fifth column in general”. The effect was immediate

and profound. Sjahrir allowed people to make sense of an otherwise confusing political situation by putting forward a clear distinction between those responsible for recent sufferings and those whowere not. The pamphlet‟s clarity and its anger captured a growing mood of frustration among largesections of the people, including much of the youth of Jakarta. The pamphlet appeared within days ofSukarno‟s announcement of his cabinet, which contained a preponderance of members who could be tagged as “collaborators”. Of the entire cabinet, only the information minister Amir Sjarifuddin (whowas still a prisoner of the Kenpeitai at the time of his appointment) and the economics minister R.P.Soerachman could claim to be free of Japanese connections. Sjahrir himself had declined Sukarno‟soffer of an appointment. Sjahrir‟s attack on collaborators left a legacy of deep frustration and personalhostility on the part of some of the deposed ministers, not only because of their privatedisappointment but also because of the bitterly accusing tone of Sjahrir‟s polemic. This brought himcontinuing antagonism from the older nationalists who lost out in these events; and even manydecades later, traces of bitterness are to be found in the memoirs of Subardjo, for instance. During

the next few months Sjahrir capitalized on this polemical success to alter the shape of the politicalinstitutions of the embryonic republic. The original constitution had provided for a powerful president,head of both state and government, with the right to form cabinets, rule by decree and veto measuresadopted by the legislature. The committee which had been preparing for independence, the PPM,was enlarged and transformed into the Central Indonesian National Committee (KNIP). In OctoberSjahrir proposed, and Sukarno agreed, to convert this body into the formal legislative one envisagedin the constitution.m A few weeks later he proposed the establishment of political parties, and againSukarno agreed, with reluctance. Then, in a third move, he called for the resignation of Sukarno‟scabinet, to be replaced with a cabinet led by a Prime Minister chosen by the KNIP. Again Sukarnoagreed. Sjahrir favoured these changes both as a matter of democratic principle and also in order torid the state apparatus of its pro-Japanese, totalitarian cast. This related closely to the need as hesaw it to impress on the Allies that the republic was not a Japanese creation, as the Dutch wereclaiming, in an effort to avoid negotiation. Also, of course, all the moves assisted Sjahrir to move

closer to the centre of political power. In October 1945 two separate socialist parties were formed.Sjahrir and his followers established the Partai Rakyat Sosialis (Paras), while Amir Sjarifuddin, freed



from prison, led the Partai Sosialis Indonesia (Parsi), not to be confused with the party of the samename formed by Sjahrir in 1948. Within weeks their similarity of outlook and their common interest insupporting Sjahrir‟s position within the KNIP moved them to merge into a single Partai Sosialis (PS).Masjumi, the PNI, Catholic and Protestant parties also formed, and the Communist Party began toresume its activities openly. Tan Malaka, the veteran communist who had returned to Indonesiasecretly during the war and was now gaining a considerable following, was a major rival, not only for

Sjahrir but also for Sukarno himself. While Sjahrir was working towards a form of government whichwould enable negotiations with the Dutch to commence, Tan Malaka called for a social revolution andarmed struggle, epitomized by his rejection of the “Political Manifesto” which Hatta issued in earlyNovember. This document, while rejecting all Dutch claims, was moderate in its tone.Tan Malakabegan moves to replace Sukarno as president. He approached Sjahrir as early as September proposing that they join forces to overthrow Sukarno, Tan Malaka becoming president and Sjahrirgaining all the major ministerial portfolios. Later he made a second proposal with the positionsreversed. Sjahrir, however, had no presidential ambitions, and despite his lack of enthusiasm forSukarno as a political leader, he recognized the important unifying role that no one but Sukarno couldfill.For his part, Sukarno agreed to Sjahrir‟s proposals partly because he knew that Sjahrir‟s positionwould necessarily depend on his and Hatta‟s retaining their office, while Tan Malaka‟s aim would beto replace him.The fact that these events ended with Sjahrir becoming Prime Minister, and with thetemporary end of the presidential system of government, laid him open to suspicion of acting merely

out of concern for short-term advantage, or of seeking to curry favour with foreigners. But his strategydid carry considerable risks, and his actions were wholly consistent with his democratic and anti-fascist principles. Certainly he was an immediate beneficiary, but in this case opportunism and principle coincided.

PRIME MINISTER AND BEYONDSjahrir began his term as Prime Minister on 14 November 1945, and from the outset he had tocontend not only with the Dutch but also from antagonists within the republic. His strategy ofdiplomacy drew continual opposition, especially as the Dutch proved intransigent in negotiations,insisting in early 1946 that the republic could only be allowed control of Java within the framework of afederal state. Tan Malaka formed a new group, the Persatuan Perjuangan, rejecting any conciliationwith the Dutch and advocating “100% Freedom” based on armed struggle and seizure of foreign property. Sukarno and Hatta headed off this campaign by renewing Sjahrir‟s mandate, while including

the “100% Freedom” slogan in the new cabinet‟s program. As Dutch forces occupied Jakarta early in1946, life in the capital became increasingly difficult for the leaders. Sjahrir narrowly escaped anassassination attempt, and Amir Sjarifuddin was also attacked.‟ Sjahrir, Sukarno and Hatta decidedthe government should be moved to Yogyakarta, but Sjahrir remained behind to continue hisnegotiations. His absence from the centre of nationalist political life gave strength to the resurgence ofthe dwitunggal as the leading force in politics, and gave Sjahrir‟s enemies an opportunity toundermine him. This was easier from Yogyakarta as the dimensions of Dutch physical power, andhence the republic‟s need to negotiate, were not so evident. Sjahrir‟s commitment to democraticmethods came into question when Tan Malaka‟s group organized a congress at which thegovernment‟s position was condemned, thus undermining Sjahrir‟s attempt to present a united front tohis Dutch protagonists. He asked Sukarno and Hatta to arrest Tan Malaka and four other PP leaderstemporarily. But soon Sjahrir would become the victim rather than the agent of imprisonment, as hewas kidnapped in June 1946 while travelling from Jakarta to Yogyakarta. Among the instigators of the

kidnapping were Tan Malaka, Subardjo, Sukarni and Iwa Kusuma Sumantri, with all of whom Sjahrirhad crossed swords on previous occasions. As a result of the kidnapping, Sukarno resumed hisexecutive authority until October, when Sjahrir, released and rested, formed a third government,which finally reached an interim arrangement with the Dutch, the so-called Linggadjati Agreement.This provided for a federal state comprising the Republic (with de facto authority in Java andSumatra) and two Dutch-sponsored states covering the remainder of the archipelago, the whole to beknown as the United States of Indonesia. The KNIP seemed likely to reject the agreement, butSukarno used his powers to appoint enough new members of the pro-Sjahrir SayapKki group, whichincluded the Socialist and Communist Parties, to give the agreement majority support. Nonethelessthere remained much high feeling against what many saw as a humiliating agreement, and Sjahrirfound himself under attack from left and right alike. The so-called Benteng Republik faction, made upof Masjumi and the PNI, denounced the agreement; but more importantly, those ideologically close toSjahrir in the Sayap Kiri withdrew their support. It is important to note that the agreement was a

pretext for this withdrawal rather than its true cause; three months passed between the conclusion ofthe agreement and the withdrawal of support. Left with no basis of support in the KNIP, Sjahrir had no



choice but to resign, and was replaced by his deputy Amir Sjarifuddin, even though Amir had takenthe same position as Sjahrir on the Linggadjati agreement. Notwithstanding the agreement, the Dutchsoon launched a major military offensive on the Republic, and made considerable territorial gains inJava and Sumatra. As we have seen, Sjahrir‟s hostility to communists stretched back to his days inHolland, but according to Subadio Sastrosatomo it was his trip to the Inter-Asian Conference in NewDelhi in March 1947, where he struck up a good relationship with Nehru, which made absolutely clear

to him the emerging divergence between the international communist line in foreign relations, later tobe proclaimed under the aegis of Zhdanov‟s “two camps” doctrine, and the thinking of non-communistnationalists. He made another trip abroad in 1948, when he agreed to represent the Republic at theUnited Nations, then headquartered at Lake Success. He was the first Indonesian to speak there, andhis trip improved the Republic‟s prestige. An interesting sidelight on the trip is that it was paid for bythe sale of opium. Financing activities abroad required hard currency, and the Republic had for sometime used opium smuggling as one source of revenue for this. On leaving J akarta, Sjahrir‟s party tooka quantity of opium and quinine, to be sold by the Indonesian representative in Singapore, the firststop on the trip. In case of detection, a doctor travelled with the group to certify that the goods werefor therapeutic purposes. While Sjahrir was away, Amir‟s government was facing a new crisis. By thistime a second agreement with the Dutch, even less favourable to Indonesian aspirations than theLinggadjati agreement, had been concluded, and was widely opposed. This provoked Amir‟sresignation and the installation of a presidential cabinet led by Hatta. The two wings of the Socialist

Party now split, Sjahrir‟s supporters backing Hatta, while Amir opposed him. Amir refused to call ameeting of the whole party, where upon Sjahr ir‟s associates seceded and formed the new PartaiSosialis Indonesia (PSI). The remaining Amir socialists joined with the Communist Party, the smallLabor Party and the socialist youth organization Pesindo to form the Front Demokrasi Rakyat (FDR).New battle lines were emerging for a struggle within the republic which partly paralleled thosedeveloping globally. On Sjahrir‟s return he tried to heighten awareness among his followers of thedeveloping Cold War. But he now withdrew from the centre of the repub lic‟s struggle; Hatta offeredhim the post of Foreign Minister, but he declined since the continued Dutch aggression in spite ofnegotiated agreements had now destroyed his faith in bilateral negotiation, although he did accept anappointment as a special adviser. Sjahrir played little part in the train of events which led to the Dutchfinally accepting the inevitability of Indonesia‟s independence. But when Dutch forces overwhelmedYogyakarta in December 1948 and captured Sukarno and Hatta, Sjahrir was also detained, althoughhe held no official position. They were taken to places of confinement in Sumatra; Sjahrir and Sukarno

were held together at the holiday resort of Prapat, not a congenial arrangement for either of them.Under American pressure, however, the Dutch were forced to enter a new round of negotiations.Once again, Sjahrir declined an offer to take a leading role, though he consented to give advice.Sukarno reportedly took offence at Sjahrir‟s attitude, feeling it was directed at him, which it may havebeen. The PSI were among the small minority who opposed the final settlement, partly throughbitterness towards the Dutch. In an uncharacteristically critical comment, Hatta later accused Sjahrirof pique because he had not done the negotiating which led to success. On December 27, 1949,ceremonies took place in Jakarta and The Hague to mark the transfer of sovereignty. As with the proclamation of independence four years earlier, Sjahrir was absent from the great event.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY After the transfer of sovereignty, Indonesia embarked on its independent life in a state of some political disorder. Under the Round Table Agreement, the country was for the moment stuck with a

federal system which most politicians did not want, and with a multiplicity of parties whose future wasunclear. The parties were the focus of an experiment in constitutional democracy, but their positionwas not yet sanctioned by a concrete act of the popular will. Elections would be held, but exactlywhen and under what rules was not agreed. Some parties were quite tiny, and none could be certainof future success, although Masjumi was very, confident that the demographic fact of Indonesia‟soverwhelming Moslem majority would ensure its success when elections were held. The extent ofMasjumi support was widely exaggerated ; in 1950, it was even reported to claim a membership aslarge as twenty million. Wild though some of the claims may have been, the superiority of its supportto that of other parties was generally accepted. As an interim arrangement, a parliament wasappointed by the President, in consultation with Hatta and party leaders. The parties were given alevel of representation commensurate with their estimated level of support, taking into account alsothe part they had played in the independence struggle. The PSI was well rewarded for its efforts,being granted sixteen seats, making it the equal third largest party after the PNI and Masjumi. Its

influence was actually even greater than this, however, because of the energy and calibre of its



representatives, and because other parties were willing to make use of the party‟s intellectual strengthas a kind of “brains trust”.

The PSI entered the new era in a state of organizational weakness. Its membership was no more thana few thousand spread throughout the country, loosely organized and in some cases still reeling fromthe confusion of the split with Amir‟s socialists. Thus organization was clearly a major priority. This

was in any case consistent with Sjahrir‟s l ong-held belief in the importance of the organizational task.This issue raises a fundamental dilemma confronting Sjahrir, how to reconcile a democratictemperament with the discipline required of a tight organizational structure. Other parties also turnedtheir attention to organization, and most tried to recruit a large mass membership. The PSI, however,adopted a dual strategy of attempting to maximize its short-term influence by manipulation of the political elite, while basing its long-term development plans on cultivating a cohesive and well-educated membership, reflecting quality rather than quantity. Hence the party at first devotedrelatively little effort to developing a large following among the general public or a local-levelorganizational machine. This reflected Sjahrir‟s preference for taking the long view of events, and hisexperience. In the PNI Baru of the 1930s Hatta and Sjahrir had built a movement which emphasizedquality and political education in its members, and this had given the organization the resilience tocontinue through the thirties, albeit in attenuated form, despite considerable repression. Drawing onhis experiences under the Dutch and Japanese, Sjahrir felt that the most basic protection for the party

against any prospective totalitarian menace was a solid core of politically well-educated cadres. At thesame time, it must be recognized that in this case the protection may contain the seed of the disease.But nonetheless, it was his firm view. In the thirties he had written : A mass party does not mean thatall the tens of millions of Kromos and Marhaens must enter as members of the party to be a real mass party.A party is a mass party if it is based on the importance of the mass and interprets the masses.‟He had reiterated this idea in Perjuangan Kita in 1945 : Its membership need not be large, providedthat it forms a tight disciplined army, efficient and modern in organization and armed with a powerfuland developed ideology and wide general knowledge.

This emphasis on cadre-building and education implied a rather exclusive attitude to recruitment, anda resistance to mass participation, again a retreat from democratic purity. By the time the PSI beganits serious organizational effort, there were additional strong reasons to follow this line. The split withthe Amir socialists had indicated the danger of a party lacking internal coherence, and there was also

a fear of communist infiltration, especially while the party was numerically weak. This exclusivenesswas reflected in the careful screening of recruits; new members had to be nominated by two existingmembers, and in line with Sjahrir‟s pedagogic style, had to pass a test on political theory.‟ Also, the party maintained two categories of membership, full and candidate. Less than twenty per cent of PSImembers attained the more advanced status. The party proclaimed that it was not against having alarge membership in principle, but not until the organizational work necessaiy to ensure the party‟sstrength was completed. Originally it was intended to maintain the barriers to new members only as atemporary measure, to be reviewed in two years : the terms of admission...would be relaxed. It wouldthen be possible to proceed to the second phase in which the party would have to work as a popularorganization, or as a mass party In practice, however, the party was very slow to implement the“second phase”, partly for fear of communist infiltrators, but mainly because the party‟s preferredstrategy simply did not require such a development. Sjahrir was especially concerned that the topleadership of the party should reflect quality in intellect and experience. The PSI‟s leadership was

certainly of a high calibre. Apart from Sjahrir, who held the position of party chairman, the party‟sPolitburo included: Djohan Sjahroezah, Sjahrir‟s nephew and long time political associate, who wasgeneral secretary; L.M. Sitorus, head of the organization section; and Subadio Sastrosatomo, leaderof the PSI‟s parliamentary fraction. Other import ant figures included the financial expert Dr SumitroDjojohadikusumo, and Soedjatmoko, one of Indonesia most highly regarded intellectual figures (andalso Sjahrir‟s brother -in- law), who was an important influence even though he did not formally join the party until returning from overseas travel in 1955. Although the PSI has generally been seen ashostile to Javanese traditionalism it is worth noting that many of its leading figures - Soedjatmoko,Sumitro, Subadio, Wijono - were Javanese. The quality of the leadership group is sufficient todemonstrate that the PSI was not merely a vehicle for Sjahrir, but he was the unquestioned dominantfigure in it. His centrality is even more apparent when one considers that most of the other leaderswere drawn from the group of younger activists whom Sjahrir had nurtured during the occupation.One of Sjahrir‟s deepest concerns was to resist the totalitarian potential he had discerned in the

nationalist movement, and in the Communist Party. As noted earlier, however, he was impressed atan early age with the virtues of Lenin‟s organizational principles. Therefore his democratic, anti -



The Indonesian army of the early fifties was badly affected by disunity, as much of its officer corpshad formed alignments with one or other of the political groups in the country. The Wilopo cabinet,which governed in 1952-53, was a coalition dominated by the PNI (especially its more socialist-inclined wing led by Wilopo himself), Masjumi and the PSI.‟ The cabinet and the army leadershipwished to rationalize the army, and targeted in particular units formed from the Japanese-trainedmilitary organizations of the occupation period, which were strongest in Central Java and had strong

links with Sukarno and the PNI, to whom they now looked for support in opposing the reform. Thearmy reform can in a sense be seen as a PSI project, in that its key proponents were all PSIsympathizers: Major General T.B. Simatupang, chief of staff of the armed forces; the Sultan ofYogyakarta, minister of defence; and All Budiardjo, secretary-general of the ministry of defence.InSeptember there were rumours of a planned military coup, and the PKI alleged PSI connivance. Boththe Sultan and PSI parliamentary leader Subadio denied this, but the party clearly sympathized withthe army leaders and, in an effort to solidify this relationship, it campaigned against the influence of parliament.‟ Democratic principles notwithstanding, the PSI was pleased at the prospect of a coup, asthey hoped to exercise greater influence through, or in co-operation with, the military authorities thanthey could through parliament. Meanwhile, Colonel Nasution, the army chief of staff, had proposedthe dissolution of the parliament, and held discussions to this effect with the president and vice- president, which were inconclusive. On October 16, parliament passed a no confidence motion in thecabinet over the army reform plan, with most PNI members opposing Wilopo, even though he was

from their party. Next morning, troops filled Medan Merdeka and demonstrators demanded that parliament be dissolved. Nasution and other officers met Sukarno to press this demand but herefused to intervene and the attempt to remove the authority of parliament collapsed. The incident hadimportant consequences for the PSI, almost all negative, and in retrospect it can be seen as adisastrous turning point for the party. First, many of its leading sympathizers lost their positions: theSultan had to resign when the cabinet refused to punish army officers who defied their leaders, andNasution was temporarily replaced by a Japanese-trained officer. Over the next few years others,including Simatupang, also lost their positions. Wilopo‟s failure severely damaged his prestige in thePNI, and henceforth that party was much more heavily influenced by its elitist leaders, with whomSjahrir had had mutually antagonistic relations for many years. The incident did nothing to enhancethe prestige of either parliament or the army, and also crystallized the divisions within the army; hencethe position of Sukarno, with whom the PSI had minimal influence, was strengthened. The army‟sdisunity also destroyed the PSI‟s hopes of gaining a position in or close to a prospective military

government. More broadly, the incident made clearer the deepening political hostility between thoseforces based primarily in east and central Java and those based elsewhere. Perhaps most importantlyfor the PSI, the affair reminded parliament of the hollowness of its authority in the absence ofelections; within six months, the desire to overcome this handicap had moved the legislators to passthe electoral act. For Sjahrir and his party, time was running out before they would have to test theirsupport in the public arena. Wilopo‟s government had lost its vitality, but held on until July 1953 when Ali Sastroamidjojo became Prime Minister. His two years in office were catastrophic for Sjahrir and thePSI. The Ali cabinet was made up of PNI, NU, minor party and non party ministers; the PSI andMasjumi now adopted an overtly oppositional stance. The growing polarization of politics wasreflected in the exclusion of Masjumi and PSI representatives from the central electoral committee,which subsequently made many rulings which favoured the other parties. More damaging, however,was the fact that the PSI continued to gather numerical strength only slowly during this period. Manyin the party were privately unenthusiastic about the elections even though the party publicly supported

them. Meanwhile the other major parties worked assiduously to build their membership and support,and the PSI‟s bitterest enemy, the Communist Party, was especially successful in this. For two yearsafter the Madiun disaster, the Communist Party had continued to be racked by internal dissension andby 1951 it could still only boast 10,000 members; within four years they increased this to half a million,and by February 1956, a miIlion. Like the PSI, the PKI was concerned to maintain party coherence,but they achieved outstanding success in avoiding the exclusiveness of the PSI recruiting system byusing a third category of membership, that of the “supporter member".One factor in the PSI‟s half -hearted approach to recruitment was its trust in Masjumi‟s pros pects of success. The Masjumi factionled by Sukiman, which was based in Java and was culturally conservative, did not have goodrelations with the PSI, and the PSI did not participate in Sukiman‟s cabinet. But after the Masjumicongress of 1952, at which Mohammad Natsir became party chairman, the PSI had grownincreasingly close to the Moslem party, which had always been regarded as the likely dominant partyin an elected parliament. The PSI had good grounds for believing that a Masjumi-based government

wi th a solid basis of support in the parliament would prove receptive to the PSI‟s policy direction, aslong as the PSI could at least attain a respectable degree of support. The election demonstrated that



the belief in Masjumi dominance was, however, misplaced; so too was any hope of the PSI itselfachieving a good result without devoting more of its energies to acquiring a mass following. Just a fewmonths before the elections, Ali‟s cabinet fell; once again, trouble in the army sparked thegovernment‟s demise. But this time the army leadership was opposed to the government of the day,and this time the army leaders prevailed. With the retirement of the temporary chief of staff who hadreplaced Nasution in 1952, the government tried to install Bambang Utoyo, a strong PNI supporter.

The army simply refused to accept the appointment and a crisis of authority ensued. Ultimately thearmy leaders won the day, the cabinet was forced to resign, and later Nasution regained his old position. The incident affected the PSI in two ways. Immediately, it now joined Masjumi and otherfriendly forces in a new cabinet under Burhanuddin Harahap. In the long term, the affair signalled thebeginning of a new unity in the military, and increased its capacity to act independently of its dealingswith other political elements, thus creating an important new force in national politics. There wassome feeling in the new government that the opportunity should now be taken to postpone theelections, but it was clear that some elements of the government as well as the opposition would notstand for such a course, so the election date was left unchanged. The central electoral committee‟smembership was adjusted, however, to include Masjumi and PSI members. The PSI held its second party congress in early June 1955 as a central feature of its election campaign. The congressexhibited an optimistic mood and was well-attended. The opening ceremony was held before anoverflow crowd in Jakarta‟s main sports stadium, and President Sukarno was even invited to attend,

which he could not refuse as he was theoretically above party politics, despite being closely identifiedwith the PNI. Sjahrir‟s closing speech in the city‟s main square a week later also attracted one of thebiggest crowds ever seen there. The congress disguised the reality of the PSI‟s weakness in thecountryside; it was one thing to attract a large and enthusiastic crowd in Jakarta, quite another tosecure the votes of millions of peasant farmers whose lives were barely touched by moderncommunications. If the PSI‟s work throughout the early fifties had been a great “game of political bluff‟as Myers believes, then the party congress was certainly its zenith. Through August and SeptemberSjahrir led the campaign with a speaking tour which took him to Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Sumatra, Javaand Bali, but only to major towns; the party still had little contact with rural voters. His main theme was popular dissatisfaction with government and falling living standards; in his home town of Medan,Sjahrir rode from the airport to the city in a becak to contrast with the “limousine lifestyle” of rival politicians. Polling proceeded fairly smoothly on September 29, and the PSI‟s failure was quicklyapparent. Nationwide its vote was only two per cent, eighth in overall terms. Only in Bali, where there

was hostility towards Javanese traditionalism but none of the religious parties had any significantfollowing (there was no Hindu party) did the party figure as a major vote-winner. As expected Masjumiand the PNI polled fairly well, but especially startling was the similar success of Nahdatul Ulama andthe Communist Party. The PSI‟s hopes of wielding influence on a Masjumi government proved vain.Masjumi gathered over 20 per cent of the vote; it was the second largest party, and the only party togain an absolute majority of votes in any province. But its hopes of a clear victory proved unfounded;secular parties proved more attractive to Javanese voters, and other Islamic parties were able toexceed Masj umi‟s vote. The PSI‟s disappointment was profound and various analyses wereconducted, from which several themes emerged. The reaction focused on two areas: the weaknessesof the party and criticism of the parliamentary system. Some of the party‟s shortcom ings werematerial. Organization was weak generally, and especially in the populous provinces of East andCentral Java; it simply lacked the apparatus for village-level vote gathering which the other partiesenjoyed. Its fund-raising had also been poor compared to the large parties. The PNI had corruptly

used government funds during the Ali government‟s term to boost its finances, while the Moslem parties had been able to have donations to their cause regarded as fit payments of the zakat, theobligatory religious contribution. The PSI had employed “honest” methods, and many of itscampaigners had lacked militancy, and had thus been unable to demonstrate the kind of convictionneeded to show the party‟s sense of purpose. Also, Sitorus revealed that the party hadunderestimated the voter turnout in rural areas, and overestimated the level of city participation. InSjahrir‟s opinion, however, the PSI‟s greatest weakness lay in its miscalculation of the politicalmaturity of the electorate, especially the degree to which they could still be dominated by religiousand civil authority. Far from his focus on educational techniques having caused the failure, the problem lay in their insufficient vigour. Education therefore remained the key :

If we were to be successful in our efforts to move the ranks of the people and nation towards progressand welfare we must first implant in them a confidence and a desire for progress and welfare. All

these clearly have a relationship with the level of their understanding and intelligence. His failure hadshown him the faults in his earlier attitude to organization, and he now called for an organization



aimed specifically at winning votes in elections. But still he did not abandon his ideal of a strong andexclusive cadre: the electoral organization should be separate from the party itself.But action to shift the strategic focus of the party followed when the party council met in Jakarta earlythe following year. The council agreed that it was time to “wipe out any impression that our party liferesembles that of an educational organization or study club”. Restrictive membership conditions wererelaxed and the party decided to actively build mass organizations. This belated action saw

membership grow from 55,077 in 1955 to 217,490 in February 1958. The second half of the decadewas dominated by the problem of accommodating regional interests and demands with the unitarystate structure which had been adopted in 1950. Dissatisfaction grew as the central government waswidely seen as inefficient, corrupt and uninterested in the concerns of the islands beyond Java. ThePSI strongly supported decentralization and regional rights, and at one time advocated a senate touphold these rights at parliamentary level. The party‟s policy position had little influence on the actualevents surrounding the regional question, but it profoundly affected the fortunes of the party itself.

The election brought Ali Sastroamidjojo back to the premiership, in an uneasy PNI-Masjumi-NUcoalition. Ali‟s return underlined the failure of the electoral process to produce changes which mightmeet regional concerns. Economic deterioration exacerbated the problem, and the fact that proceedsof Outer Island exports were not being directed to development in those regions heightenedresentment.

An unrealistic exchange rate further compounded the problem. In November 1956 Colonel ZulkifliLubis attempted a coup, which was easily suppressed but which revealed the fragility of thegovernment‟s authority. Hatta‟s resignati on followed, which had a deep psychological effect in theOuter Islands since his continued presence had been a source of reassurance and of hope that therecould be a return to economic and administrative rationality. Outright rebellion erupted throughout1957 and 1958 in Sumatra and Sulawesi. Military commanders seized control of their regions, usingthe legitimizing device of a “state of war and siege”; Sukarno, acting on Nasution‟s advice, extendedthese declarations to have nationwide effect. This move signalled the indisputable arrival of the armyas a central player in Indonesian politics. Although army and regional leaders were keen for Hatta toform a new cabinet, Sukarno announced that he would form one himself, which he did, with Djuanda,not a member of any party though close to the PNI, as Prime Minister. The ministers were partymembers but were chosen as individuals, so that parties were no longer the basis of the

government‟s composition.

Sjahrir was deeply suspicious of Sukarno‟s actions, fearing that he was aiming to create adictatorship, but he though it best not to attack the president too strongly for fear of driving him intothe arms of the Communist Party, and in parliament the PSI voted in favour of the Djuandagovernment.‟ During the following year or two regional problems dominated politics, but by this timethe PSI had ceased to have more than a slight impact on events; increasingly, the party was merelyresponding to the successes of its enemies. As a party, the Socialists did not support the regionalrebellions, although they generally sympathized with regional demands. When the North Sumatranrebels established a “revolutionary government”, the PRRI, Subadio called on Djuanda‟s governmentto resign. When Djuanda refused to do so, the PSI maintained its loyalty to the central authorities. Among the PSI‟s leading members, only Dr Sumitro, who had been overseas since 1956, publiclyidentified with the rebels. Indeed, some PSI members in West Sumatra were arrested and even

executed by the rebels because of the party‟s moderate position. Nonetheless, the Socialists, likeMasjumi, were associated in many minds with the rebel activities whether they liked it or not. Thearmy banned both parties in rebel areas as they were recaptured, and from September 1958,throughout the troubled provinces.The multi- party system had been to some extent Sjahrir‟s creation, when he worked to negateSukarno‟s preference for a single state party and a presidential system in 1945. It is then rather ironicthat after its failure in the 1955 elections, the PSI was willing to go along with the idea of abolishing all political parties, believing that this would give PSI policies a better chance, and would most harm thePKI. As it turned out, however, the parties were not abolished entirely; rather, their activities wereselectively curtailed, and the PSI was among the major casualties. In 1960, Sukarno decreed that the party system should be “simplified”, by eliminating the “opposition” parties, including the PSI.

He called on the leadership of the PSI and Masjumi to show cause why they should not be prohibited.

Sjahrir and Subadio, together with their Masjumi counterparts, were compelled to endure not one, buttwo formal ceremonies where the president. Two parties were dissolved. In 1961 an attempt was



made to assassinate Sukarno while he was visiting Makassar. Sukarno came to believe, wrongly, thatthe attempt was part of a conspiracy against him which he associated with various opposition politicians who had recently gathered in Bali, to attend to funeral of the father of Anak Agung, theformer foreign minister. The group included Sjahrir, Subadio, Mohamad Roem and Sultan Hamid ofPontianak. In January 1962, these leaders, together with Anak Agung himself and Mas jumi‟s Prawoto,were arrested on Sukarno‟s orders.The conditions of their confinement were comparatively

comfortable, but for Sjahrir, this imprisonment was very trying, because of his declining health, butespecially because of the loss of family life. At his funeral Hatta observed that Sjahrir “had trainedhimself to withstand all manner of suffering, but not separation from his wife and children.” For the firsttwo months, Sjahrir was kept in an ordinary house in the suburbs of Jakarta, then under military guardfor nearly a year in the old prison of Madiun, where the six politicians were the sole occupants.Roem‟s account gives the impression of a subdued and somewhat solitary man, a far cry from thegregariousness which had marked most of Sjahrir‟s life. At the end of the year his blood pressure wasso high that he had to be moved to a military hospital in Jakarta for treatment. He remained there foreight months, and was then confined to a house near the centre of Jakarta. In February 1965 he wasmoved without explanation to the Military Detention Centre, an old and unsanitary prison. He was keptin a damp room and was not permitted to receive any food from outside. Within a few weeks hesuffered two strokes. A fellow prisoner curious to see the face of his famous fellow inmate went to hisroom one night and found him lying on the bathroom floor. He was not allowed medical treatment until

the next morning. An operation at the army hospital proved unsuccessful, and his family successfully pressed the government to let him travel, with his wife Poppy and their two children, to Switzerland fortreatment. He never recovered from his illness, and he died far from home on April 9, 1966. After the1965 coup attempt, which ultimately brought General Suharto to power, the PSI leaders were politically rehabilitated, but the party itself did not revive. The positive, rational approach to thenation‟s economic development which the PSI had advocated found favour with the new regime, andsome of the party‟s many talented leaders were given the opportunity to serve in high positions:Soedjatmoko became Ambassador to the United States, and Dr Sumitro entered the cabinet. But as adistinctive ideology and a self-sufficient political movement democratic socialism in Indonesia endedwith the death of the PSI.

UNDERSTANDING SJAHRIRWe have seen that Sjahrir‟s career was a long struggle to achieve a set of ideals which were formed

at an early stage, and which remained constant in their essence throughout his life, but weretempered by experience. Despite his intellectual brilliance and his many achievements the final phases of his career were unsuccessful, and ended in deep personal suffering. The failure of theSocialist Party to find a durable place in Indonesian politics was the central feature of this period of hiscareer. To make sense of this failure in biographical terms, we must examine several aspects of his personality and style of action. Finally, although it is necessarily a rather speculative enterprise, it isworth asking whether alternative strategies might have produced any different result. We havealready seen that education was the medium of Sjahrir‟s personal advancement in his early years,and that he was driven by a strong pedagogical impulse. Indeed, education was to him the essentialtask. In his own words, it was “the greatest work there is”. This preoccupation is apparent in hisrhetoric, in his mode of political action and in his personal relations. Sjahrir‟s rhetoric reveals ateacher rather than an orator. His political utterances reflect his pedagogical preoccupation, as heconstantly employs the language of the schoolroom, both lexical and structural, to make his thinking

clear. The rhetorical style of a politician like Sjahrir could easily be a study in itself, but here only a few points need be noted. Implicit in his recorded thought is the idea that political ends can best be soughtby teaching, convincing, demonstrating the validity of one‟s views. For instance, he often speaks ofideas he believes in, like socialism and democracy, as ajaran, which may be translated as “doctrine”but has the essential meaning of “teaching”. For him political conflict was largely a contest betweenteachings. At the root of this is a belief that consciousness can determine or at least strongly influenceaction. If people can be educated, convinced, made aware, then desirable actions will follow. At thesame time, since rational understanding and planning should link desirable actions with desirableresults, education becomes the key to progress. Thus political action becomes inseparable from theeducational project. Hence for Sjahrir, socialism is “a teaching and a movement seeking justice inhuman life”.The rational approach contained in Sjahrir‟s effort to teach is reflected in the literal qualityof his language. In this he contrasts starkly with many Indonesian politicians, notably Sukarno. Sjahrirrarely uses symbolic techniques to convey meaning, and rarely slips into the use of slogans. He

consciously rejected slogans, seeing them as a poor if superficially attractive substitute forexplanation. His arguments are therefore generally concrete and immediate in their content and



logical in their structure, and resemble nothing so much as thoughtfully constructed lectures, whichindeed they are. Longer pieces are carefully divided into manageable, tightly argued sections. Heoften describes general conditions before moving on to specifics, and he gives his audienceconsiderable help by frequent definitions, use of topic sentences and generous use of introductoryand summary phrases which help the audience keep track of the development of his argument, suchas “We will now consider a number of things which we believe to be important factors...” or “Now that

we have explored and stated frankly what we regard as shortcomings...we may draw the conclusionthat...”

It is easy to see how closely Sjahrir‟s rhetoric resembled the academic discourse in which he had soexcelled as a youth. This was not wholly unconscious; indeed, this kind of political language was asource of some pride to him. Tas remembers Sjahrir‟s pleasure in remarking after his 1955 speakingcampaign that “all my speeches were lessons” to which the people had listened with patience.‟

One possible interpretat ion of Sjahrir‟s preoccupation is to view education as a quasi -reproductiveactivity. This has a psychological as well as a sociological aspect. Education may be considered as asocial process which not only contributes to the development of the individual ‟s knowledge, skills andattitudes but also acts as a conduit for the perpetuation or reproduction of norms and values, ofideology. To the extent that ideology is intimately connected with an individual‟s identity, as Erik

Erikson suggests, the kind of political education which Sjahrir strove to impart involves an attempt toreproduce an aspect of the educator‟s identity. According to such an interpretation, Sjahrir‟seducational work was not only the implementation of a rationally arrived at strategy of political action,but also the fulfilment, perhaps dimly conscious, of a drive towards a quasi-parental nurturingrelationship with his followers.

From a historical angle, this pedagogical concern can also be linked to the educational heritage of theKota Gedang tradition. A major concern of parents in the Kota Gedang lineages was to achieveeducational openings for their children, especially because of the connection between education andgovernment employment. Their patronage of the many private schools which sprang up around theturn of the century, as well as their dominant position in the Dutch schools, even beyond their ownregion, demonstrates this. Thus a strong connection was established between promotion of a child‟sformal educational career and the quality of parental nurture. To such a way of thinking, to leave a

child in unschooled ignorance might be an unconscionable neglect. More generally, a deep concernfor the work of nurturing is discernible in Sjahrir‟s life quite apart from his educatio nal principle. This isreflected in his love of children, his reluctance to cause or allow suffering in others, and broadly in hisattitude towards the Indonesian people. In his letters it is clear that he does not love the peoplebecause of identification or kinship, but because they are “the sufferers and the losers”, the victims ofcolonialism and other avoidable evils. He feels “sympathy for the underdog”, but as a detached person who sees the people as “them”. An endearing aspect of Sjahrir‟s character is his love ofchildren. He had only two children of his own, but was regarded as an adoptive father by manyothers. Even during his brief, youthful sojourn in Holland he adopted a child. During his exile, duringthe years of occupation and revolution, and later after his second marriage he sought out thecompany of children and is said to have always taken an unaffected delight in their company. And hewas not simply with them; rather he invested energy and emotional commitment. Tas calls his way of playing with them “a passion, an act of release”. This may be interpreted as a search for a lost

childhood, though not necessarily for a distinctively Minangkabau childhood as Mrazek suggests. Inthe company of children, Sjahrir could find the psychQlogical strength he needed to manage thecomplexity and hostility of adult life, an emotional framework in which relationships were simple andsupportive. But most of all it bespeaks a simple joy in the creative work of nurture. Sjahrir‟s long -termview of events and his unbending adherence to certain principles inevitably engendered conflict, andsometimes personal animosities, with colleagues more inclined to pragmatismand less concerned with democratic ideals. In particular, he was brought into deep conflict withSukarno and with the elitist politicians concentrated in the PNI. The Sjahrir-Sukarno antagonism was personal, cultural and political, and went back all the way to Sjahrir‟s days in the Pemuda Indonesia inBandung. They clashed in public as early as 1928, when Sukarno addressed a youth gathering whichSjahrir was chairing. In the course of the debate Sukarno entered into a disagreement with a womandelegate, Suwarni; he raised his voice, and swore in Dutch. Sjahrir, a mere nineteen years old,intervened in her defence, scolding Sukarno for speaking Dutch at a nationalist gathering, and for

using coarse language to “a daughter of Indonesia”. Sukarno accepted the younger man‟s reprimandbut cannot have forgotten it. Twenty years later, prisoners of the Dutch at Prapat, the two grated on



each other. Sukarno‟s vanity irked Sjahrir, who was unable to restrain himself and treated the president to a stinging outburst. Ev en Sukarno‟s singing in the bathroom provoked Sjahrir to his ownflurry of coarse Dutch. When Sjahrir received his letter of appointment as adviser to an Indonesiannegotiating team, his first reaction on seeing Sukarno‟s signature was, “Who is he? Why does hehave to appoint me?” Hatta reports that the story got back to Sukarno, who was suitably insulted. Arnold C. Brackman remembers witnessing a heated exchange between the two men when working

as a journalist in Yogyakarta in 1948. Sjahrir repeatedly derided Sukarno, whose anger grew as theconversation went on, especially as Sjahrir deliberately spoke English so that their guest would seethe president‟s discomfort, while Sukarno replied in Dutch. Sukarno needed the approval of othersand his rank and position were vitally important to his sense of self. Sjahrir‟s repeated barbs cannothave failed to engender deep hostility. Hence Sukarno was easily susceptible to suggestions thatSjahrir might be disloyal to the state as well as to himself, not that the distinction was always obvious :“And what actually did Sjahrir do for the Republic? Nothing except criticize me,” he wrote later. Another aspect of the Sjahrir-Sukarno relationship is their relative generational position. Sukarno wasborn in 1901, Sjahrir in 1909. Sukarno‟s generation of tertiary educated politically active Indonesians -those whose college days were in the early and mid 1920s - was somewhat larger than Sjahrir‟s,because of the restrictions on study in Holland after 1925, and the crackdown on political activity inthe early thirties. Only Sjahrir‟s precocity allowed him to achieve a leadership position by the time therepressive wave began in earnest. He was, after all, only twenty-four at the time of his exile. This

created an interesting position for him in terms of his inter-generational relations, since he was juniorto Sukarno and many of the other nationalists (who were rather hierarchically minded) yet in a good position to appeal to the youth of the “Generation of „45”. In a sense he formed a bridge between twogenerations, but did not actually seem part of either. This was a great strength for him in building hisyouthful supporter base, but it must have created some resentment in the minds of many oldernationalists. Certainly ther e was deep antagonism between Sjahrir‟s rationality and Sukamo‟s use ofemotion and symbols in his politics. This antagonism was made into an irreparable breach by the personal hostility which broke out between the two men by 1948. Likewise his distaste for the elitistnationalists of the PNI, and for the communists, which Sjahrir had learned in his student days inHolland grew as the years passed, and ultimately became impossible to repair. His dislike had muchto do with a determined clinging to his principles, but the result was to leave Sjahrir in a rather isolated position which severely damaged his political prospects.

ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES Alternative strategies for the PSI revolve around two basic ideas, both of which the party wasunwilling or unable to carry out, at least until it was too late. The Socialists might have fostered closerrelations with other political forces, not only by improving links with other parties but also by betterhandling of the discontent which existed in key sections of society, especially in the army and outerislands. However, as we have seen, their attempts to develop a closer relationship with the army wereundermined by the divided nature of the army leadership and the misfired October 17 affair. By thetime the army gathered strength as a political force, the PSI had spent much of its own strength, andwas no longer needed as a partner. And rallying support among the discontented outer islandconstituency proved a dangerous business, as the 1957-58 rebellions demonstrated. As for other parties, no one but Masjumi was amenable to the PSI either in policy or tactics; and Masjumi‟ssupposed strength proved exaggerated.

Another strategic option lay in making more serious endeavours to build the PSI‟s mass basis in order to compete more directly with the other parties in the electoral arena. It would have been no easy taskfor the PSI to become a genuine mass party in the same way that the other parties did - that is, a party with a large membership of mostly uninformed followers who would be expected to identify withthe party, vote for it and campaign for it, but not necessarily to develop more than a simple grasp of itsintellectual foundations. But it would not necessarily have been impossible. As mentioned earlier, thesuccessful parties in the election each gathered to themselves substantial support from one or otherof the aliran which constituted Indonesian, and especially Javanese, society. However, this is not tosay that the party-aliran bond was a “natural”, pre-determined one; it had a lot to do with the partiesconsciously striving to attract this support. On a local level, party division had much to do with localrivalries, the exact shape of which varied from one area to another, but outside large towns the party presence was extremely slight before 1953. Only then did the parties make a serious effort to extendtheir influence to village level, usually by seeking to win over the “influentials” in local communities. To

win these social resources, material resources were called for. For the PSI to build a mass partywould have meant competition with one or more of the large parties: Masjumil,NU, the PNI or the PKI.



Also, the party would have had to chase rural as well as urban support. To compete successfullywi thout abandoning the PSI‟s distinctive character - secular, democratic, progressive - would havelimited options here. Religious notables held strong influence over devout Moslems, and these peoplewould have been extremely difficult to win over to a secular party. Approximately half of all voterschose a religious party in 1955, and clearly a large segment of the vote would always remaininaccessible to secular parties; even after the 1971 consolidation of the remaining parties, the vote for

a fairly unappealing but distinctively Islamic party has remained considerable. Clearly, then, if the PSIwere to seriously seek a mass following, it would have to be in competition with the PNI or the PKI.The PNI‟s greatest success was in its ability to attract the su pport of lurah and other villagefunctionaries. Several factors helped here. The lurah were dependent on the patronage of civilservants, who were predominantly PNI supporters; also, they identified with the aristocracy and weregenerally much wealthier than other villagers, hence were attracted to the “elitist” party. The PSI‟ssocially progressive attitude put it profoundly out of sympathy with most of these people, and it was inno position to compete in terms of bureaucratic patronage. However, despite sharing all thesehandicaps and more, the Communist Party was able to attract a following: among the“proletarianized” section of the. rural labour force, i.e., miners and plantation workers, among. thelarge body of youths who in various ways did not fit into the village traditions, and among the poorest peasants in general. In some cases, they were able to work in the opposite direction to the PNI,acquiring the lurah‟s support by impressing him with their strength among the villagers. The point is

that there did exist in Java a constituency which was to some degree free from village authority orwhich was capable of being reached through that authority even by a party which did not support theinterests of the village leaders as a class. In other words, in spite of the power of tradition, there was aleft constituency, which the PKI organized successfully for electoral purposes. As a leftist party, theSocialists might well have been in a good position to compete with the PNI for its constituency, butthis would have called for a less cerebral style of political discourse and the promotion of socialist policies aimed at attracting the poorer elements of society. Most of all, it would have needed a lessdefensive attitude to recruitment and the active cultivation of close relations with mass organizations.The relative speed of the party‟s growth after the belated adoption of the latter measures in the late1950s indicates the potential for success here. The massive growth of the PKI and its relatedorganizations in the early fifties underlines the cost to the PSI of failing to move in this area. By itsrepugnance towards mass political activitybefore 1956 the PSI abandoned the participation of the leftin this area wholly to the PKI.

Soedjatmoko conceded af ter the PSI‟s dismal electoral showing that the PSI, of all parties, ought tohave been in the best position to compete with the PKI for the support of the “detraditionalized”section of society. As things turned out, the PKI was able to achieve a “monopoly” in attracting the“new dynamic forces” which had emerged in Indonesia. The PSI did have some assets which couldhave been employed here. First, its position in relation to mass organizations was reasonably good atone time. After the 1948 split in Socialist ranks, the PSI retained significant positions in the peasantorganization Barisan Tani, which quickly became a PKI front organization; also the PSI enjoyed areal, if limited, following in trade unions. Although Amir‟s followers controlled the youth o rganization,Pesindo, there were some PSI supporters in the leadership, and the former youth minister, Supeno,might have been an influential figure in building up this presence. As was the case with membershipgenerally, the PSI‟s changed tactics in deali ng with mass organizations after the election producedsome good results: a peasant organization, Gerakan Tani Indonesia, a trade union confederation,

Kongres Buruh Seluruh Indonesia, and a socialist youth movement, Gerakan Pemuda Sosialis, allattracted a significant following. They did not rival their counterpart communist organizations in size,but it must be remembered that by the time the PSI began to pay attention to its mass organizations,the party was already in much the weaker position. This had not been the case at the moment ofindependence, however. The PSI might have taken advantage of the weakened state of the PKI in thewake of the Madiun disaster. The affair had badly damaged the communists‟ prestige, deprived it ofmuch of its leadership, and left it divided. PSI action in this direction would have required somespeed, but there were three years between the Madiun affair in 1948 and the resolution of the PKI‟sleadership problem in late 1951, which allowed it to regroup under its new young leaders such as Aidit, Lukman and Njoto. This would also have required a considerable relaxation of the pedagogicaldiscipline of the party, though by no means need it have stripped the party of its educationalenterprise altogether. But it would have meant something of a climbdown from the rarefied tone of thePSI‟s political discourse. Sjahrir himself realized that a major factor in the party‟s electoral failure was

that they had addressed the public on a level “that is far above their actual level”. To su ccessfullycompete as a left-wing party, a left-wing program would have been needed, that is, policies which



offered something tangible to the poorest members of society, those who became the PKI‟s clientele. As a socialist party, the PSI may have been in a position to move in this direction, but Sjahrir‟ssocialism was only part of a much broader ideological complex, which was tempered by a strong philosophical rationality, including a firm faith in rational economics, a deep dislike of inflammatoiyoratory and a global perspective on events, which in the fifties meant a cold war consciousness,deeply concerned with opposing the threat of totalitarianism. On the one hand, as a socialist he

wanted “a radical transformation of the bases of human intercourse, so as to eliminate imperialismand capitalism from the world”. But on the other, he felt it absolutely essential to be in the right “camp”in the cold war, and his considered view of Indonesia‟s material position was that the first priority hadto be the development of the nation‟s productive capacity through rational planning.

Also, his intellectual integrity and political honesty may well have flinched from any large-scale effortto compete electorally by means of simple bribery. That is not to say the PSI would never engage inany electoral stunts: witness the last-minute, ineffective efforts to promote bridge-building and akampung clean-up program just before the 1955 elections. But Sjahrir and his associates wouldhardly be attracted to a politics based on material inducements which subverted their plans fornational economic development. Some PSI members attributed their failure, with some justice, to thefact that they had “played fair”, compared to other parties. Sitorus contrasted the PSI‟s commi tment towinning their arguments by reason with what he saw as the intellectual dishonesty of their rivals,

especially the PKI. There was also the question of electoral abuses and intimidation. Actual electoralfraud was not common, but intimidation was reported to be more widespread. It was most severe inthe insecure areas of Aceh and some parts of West Java where Moslem guerrilla activity was a factor,and above all in many villages in East and Central Java. The principal beneficiaries of intimidationwere Masjumi in the first case, and in the second, the PNI and to some extent the Communist Party.The most common situation was that of a PNI lurah putting pressure on villagers to vote PNI; in moreblatant instances, this involved issuing threats of the consequences of not doing so. These threatsincluded jail, fines, withholding of supplies and expulsion from the village. Communist youth groups practised physical intimidation in many areas. The PSI not only lacked the funds and organizedsupporters to match these efforts, but would on principle have been disinclined to do so. But it wasnot in the main a matter of dirty tricks or abuses of democratic procedure: throughout the PSI‟s workthere is a suggestion of an indisposition towards the energetic activism, the detennination and theruthlessness demanded by the vocation of politics, as it was practised in the time and place in which

the party operated. This is true of Sjahrir, and of most of his followers. By opting out of the competitionto build mass par ties, the PSI showed its distaste for what were at the time the “rules of the game” of politics. From all of this it might seem not only that Sjahrir and his associates were failures as politicians, although successful as intellectuals, but that they were not really politicians at all. Assessing Sjahrir‟s makeup, one can see the intellectual acuity, the trust in rational knowledge, thenurturing warmth, the reluctance to harm, that are the elements of a great teacher; and yet, politics,not teaching, was the path he chose to follow. And while vitally important, education is not the wholeof politics as Max Weber remarked, “politics is made with the head but it is certainly not made with thehead alone”. The experiences of his youth in Bandung and in Holland , his subsequent intellectualdevelopment and the ideological polarization of the cold war had isolated Sjahrir from the emotionalradical nationalism represented by Sukarno, from orthodox Marxism and from the “mere” nationalismof the elitist politicians. And yet his distaste for the dirty work of politics, and his fear of intra-partydiscord, kept him back from building a broad basis of support at a time when circumstances

demanded it. The depth of the party‟s failure was the measure of their error. In choosing the vocationof politics, they staked a claim to a place in national life, and became the major representatives in theIndonesian political spectrum of the democratic left. This was a position of some responsibility. Theirfailure to establish any enduring place left the Communist Party as the sole inheritor of leftist political potential, a potential which events later proved that party incapable of fulfilling, given the irreconcilablehostility between it and many of the most powerful forces in society. Whether a militant and mass-based Socialist Party might have fared differently is impossible to say. In the last analysis it seemsthat Sutan Sjahrir lacked “the calling for politics” in the sense that politics calls for one who has ideals,but is al so willing to take a chance, to “pay the price of using morally dubious means or at leastdangerous ones - and the possibility or even probability of evil ramifications”.

sutan sjahrir and the failure of indonesian socialism

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