Soekarno

Sukarno). (; born Koesno Sosrodihardjo, ; 6 June 1901 – 21 June 1970) was an Indonesian statesman, orator, revolutionary, and nationalist who was the first president of Indonesia, serving from 1945 to 1967.

Sukarno was the leader of the Indonesian struggle for independence from the Dutch colonialists. He was a prominent leader of Indonesia's nationalist movement during the colonial period and spent over a decade under Dutch detention until released by the invading Japanese forces in World War II. Sukarno and his fellow nationalists collaborated to garner support for the Japanese war effort from the population, in exchange for Japanese aid in spreading nationalist ideas. Upon Japanese surrender, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta declared Indonesian independence on 17 August 1945, and Sukarno was appointed president. He led the Indonesian resistance to Dutch re-colonisation efforts via diplomatic and military means until the Dutch recognition of Indonesian independence in 1949. Author Pramoedya Ananta Toer once wrote, "Sukarno was the only Asian leader of the modern era able to unify people of such differing ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds without shedding a drop of blood."

After a chaotic period of parliamentary democracy, Sukarno established an autocratic system called "Guided Democracy" in 1959 that successfully ended the instability and rebellions which were threatening the survival of the diverse and fractious country. In the early 1960s Sukarno embarked on a series of aggressive foreign policies under the rubric of anti-imperialism and personally championed the Non-Aligned Movement. These developments led to increasing friction with the West and closer relations with the USSR. After the events surrounding the 30 September Movement of 1965, the military general Suharto largely took control of the country in a Western backed military overthrow of the Sukarno-led government. This was followed by repression of real and perceived leftists, including executions of Communist party members and suspected sympathisers in several massacres with support from the CIA and British intelligence services, resulting in an estimated 500,000 to over 1,000,000 deaths.Mark Aarons (2007).
Justice Betrayed: Post-1945 Responses to Genocide
" In David A. Blumenthal and Timothy L. H. McCormack (eds).
The Legacy of Nuremberg: Civilising Influence or Institutionalised Vengeance? (International Humanitarian Law).
'' Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p.&nbs
80
The Memory of Savage Anticommunist Killings Still Haunts Indonesia, 50 Years On
''Time'' In 1967, Suharto officially assumed the presidency, replacing Sukarno, who remained under house arrest until his death in 1970.

Name

The name was derived from a hero in the ''Mahabharata'' Hindu epic, Karna. His father being from Indonesia was inspired by Indian historical heroes and Hindu culture and was deeply influenced by Karna that he named his son as Sukarno. Su(good)+ Karna or "The good Karna". Karna was a main hero of the great epic Mahabharata and Sukarno's father projected him to grow up a brave person like Karna, become Daanveer for his subjects, savior or the messiah for his people and a king like Karna. The spelling Soekarno, based on Dutch orthography, is still in frequent use, mainly because he signed his name in the old spelling. Sukarno himself insisted on a "u" in writing, not "oe", but said that he had been told in school to use the Dutch style, and that after 50 years, it was too difficult to change his signature, so still spelled his signature with "oe". Official Indonesian presidential decrees from the period 1947–1968, however, printed his name using the 1947 spelling. The Soekarno–Hatta International Airport, which serves the area near Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, still uses the Dutch spelling.

Indonesians also remember him as ''Bung'' Karno (Brother/Comrade Karno) or ''Pak'' Karno ("Mr. Karno"). Like many Javanese people, he had only one name.In Search of Achmad Sukarno
Steven Drakeley, University of Western Sydney

He is sometimes referred to in foreign accounts as "Achmed Sukarno", or some variation thereof. The fictitious first name may have been added by Western journalists confused over someone with just a single name, or by Indonesian supporters of independence to attract support from Muslim countries. Source from Ministry of Foreign Affairs later revealed, "Achmed" (later, written as "Ahmad" or "Ahmed" by Arabian states and other foreign state press) was coined by M. Zein Hassan, an Indonesian student at Al-Azhar University and later a member of the staff at the Department of Foreign Affairs, to establish Soekarno's identity as a Muslim to the Egyptian press after a brief controversy at that time in Egypt alleging Sukarno's name was "not Muslim enough". After adopting the name "Achmed" Muslim and Arab states freely supported Sukarno. Thus, in correspondence with the Middle East, Sukarno always signed his name as "Achmed Soekarno."

Early life

Early life and education

Early life

The son of a Javanese primary school teacher, an aristocrat named Raden Soekemi Sosrodihardjo, and his Hindu Balinese wife from the Brahmin family named Ida Ayu Nyoman Rai from Buleleng, Sukarno was born in Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where his father had been sent following an application for a transfer to Java. He was originally named Kusno Sosrodihardjo. Following Javanese custom, he was renamed after surviving a childhood illness.

Education

After graduating from a native primary school in 1912, he was sent to the ''Europeesche Lagere School'' (a Dutch primary school) in Mojokerto. Subsequently, in 1916, Sukarno went to a '' Hogere Burgerschool'' (a Dutch type higher level secondary school) in Surabaya, where he met Tjokroaminoto, a nationalist and founder of Sarekat Islam. In 1920, Sukarno married Tjokroaminoto's daughter Siti Oetari. In 1921, he began to study civil engineering (with a focus on architecture) at the ''Technische Hoogeschool te Bandoeng'' (Bandoeng Institute of Technology), where he obtained an Ingenieur degree (abbreviated as "ir.", a Dutch type engineer's degree) in 1926. During his study in Bandung, Sukarno became romantically involved with Inggit Garnasih, the wife of Sanoesi, the owner of the boarding house where he lived as a student. Inggit was 13 years older than Sukarno. In March 1923, Sukarno divorced Siti Oetari to marry Inggit (who also divorced her husband Sanoesi). Sukarno later divorced Inggit and married Fatmawati.

Atypically even among the country's small educated elite, Sukarno was fluent in several languages. In addition to the Javanese language of his childhood, he was a master of Sundanese, Balinese and Indonesian, and was especially strong in Dutch. He was also quite comfortable in German, English, French, Arabic, and Japanese, all of which were taught at his HBS. He was helped by his photographic memory and precocious mind.

In his studies, Sukarno was "intensely modern", both in architecture and in politics. He despised both the traditional Javanese feudalism, which he considered "backward" and to blame for the fall of the country under Dutch occupation and exploitation, and the imperialism practised by Western countries, which he termed as "exploitation of humans by other humans" (''exploitation de l'homme par l'homme''). He blamed this for the deep poverty and low levels of education of Indonesian people under the Dutch. To promote nationalistic pride amongst Indonesians, Sukarno interpreted these ideas in his dress, in his urban planning for the capital (eventually Jakarta), and in his socialist politics, though he did not extend his taste for modern art to pop music; he had Koes Bersaudara imprisoned for their allegedly decadent lyrics despite his reputation for womanising. For Sukarno, modernity was blind to race, neat and elegant in style, and anti-imperialist.

Architectural career

Sukarno & Anwari firm

After graduation in 1926, Sukarno and his university friend Anwari established the architectural firm Sukarno & Anwari in Bandung, which provided planning and contractor services. Among Sukarno's architectural works are the renovated building of the Preanger Hotel (1929), where he acted as assistant to famous Dutch architect Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker. Sukarno also designed many private houses on today's Jalan Gatot Subroto, Jalan Palasari, and Jalan Dewi Sartika in Bandung. Later on, as president, Sukarno remained engaged in architecture, designing the Proclamation Monument and adjacent ''Gedung Pola'' in Jakarta; the Youth Monument (''Tugu Muda'') in Semarang; the Alun-alun Monument in Malang; the Heroes' Monument in Surabaya; and also the new city of Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan.

Early independence struggle

Sukarno was first exposed to nationalist ideas while living under Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto. Later, while a student in Bandung, he immersed himself in European, American, Nationalist, communist, and religious political philosophy, eventually developing his own political ideology of Indonesian-style socialist self-sufficiency. He began styling his ideas as Marhaenism, named after Marhaen, an Indonesian peasant he met in southern Bandung area, who owned his little plot of land and worked on it himself, producing sufficient income to support his family. In university, Sukarno began organising a study club for Indonesian students, the ''Algemeene Studieclub'', in opposition to the established student clubs dominated by Dutch students.

Involvement in the Indonesian National Party

On 4 July 1927, Sukarno with his friends from the ''Algemeene Studieclub'' established a pro-independence party, the Indonesian National Party (PNI), of which Sukarno was elected the first leader. The party advocated independence for Indonesia, and opposed imperialism and capitalism because it opined that both systems worsened the life of Indonesian people. The party also advocated secularism and unity amongst the many different ethnicities in the Dutch East Indies, to establish a united Indonesia. Sukarno also hoped that Japan would commence a war against the western powers and that Java could then gain its independence with Japan's aid. Coming soon after the disintegration of Sarekat Islam in the early 1920s and the crushing of the Indonesian Communist Party after its failed rebellion of 1926, the PNI began to attract a large number of followers, particularly among the new university-educated youths eager for broader freedoms and opportunities denied to them in the racist and constrictive political system of Dutch colonialism.

Arrest, trial, and imprisonment

Arrest and trial

PNI activities came to the attention of the colonial government, and Sukarno's speeches and meetings were often infiltrated and disrupted by agents of the colonial secret police (''Politieke Inlichtingen Dienst''/PID). Eventually, Sukarno and other key PNI leaders were arrested on 29 December 1929 by Dutch colonial authorities in a series of raids throughout Java. Sukarno himself was arrested while on a visit to Yogyakarta. During his trial at the Bandung ''Landraad'' courthouse from August to December 1930, Sukarno made a series of long political speeches attacking colonialism and imperialism, titled ''Indonesia Menggoegat'' ('' Indonesia Accuses'').

Sentence and imprisonment

In December 1930, Sukarno was sentenced to four years in prison, which were served in Sukamiskin prison in Bandung. His speech, however, received extensive coverage by the press, and due to strong pressure from the liberal elements in both Netherlands and Dutch East Indies, Sukarno was released early on 31 December 1931. By this time, he had become a popular hero widely known throughout Indonesia.

However, during his imprisonment, the PNI had been splintered by the oppression of colonial authorities and internal dissension. The original PNI was disbanded by the Dutch, and its former members formed two different parties; the Indonesia Party (Partindo) under Sukarno's associate Sartono who were promoting mass agitation, and the Indonesian Nationalist Education (New PNI) under Mohammad Hatta and Soetan Sjahrir, two nationalists who recently returned from studies in the Netherlands, and who were promoting a long-term strategy of providing modern education to the uneducated Indonesian populace to develop an intellectual elite able to offer effective resistance to Dutch rule. After attempting to reconcile the two parties to establish one united nationalist front, Sukarno chose to become the head of Partindo on 28 July 1932. Partindo had maintained its alignment with Sukarno's own strategy of immediate mass agitation, and Sukarno disagreed with Hatta's long-term cadre-based struggle. Hatta himself believed Indonesian independence would not occur within his lifetime, while Sukarno believed Hatta's strategy ignored the fact that politics can only make real changes through formation and utilisation of force (''machtsvorming en machtsaanwending'').

During this period, to support himself and the party financially, Sukarno returned to architecture, opening the bureau of Soekarno & Roosseno with his university junior Roosseno. He also wrote articles for the party's newspaper, ''Fikiran Ra'jat''. While based in Bandung, Sukarno travelled extensively throughout Java to establish contacts with other nationalists. His activities attracted further attention by the Dutch PID. In mid-1933, Sukarno published a series of writings titled ''Mentjapai Indonesia Merdeka'' ("To Attain Independent Indonesia"). For this writing, he was arrested by Dutch police while visiting fellow nationalist Mohammad Hoesni Thamrin in Jakarta on 1 August 1933.

Exile

This time, to prevent providing Sukarno with a platform to make political speeches, the hardline governor-general Jonkheer Bonifacius Cornelis de Jonge

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases