Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
154. Indonesia – Struggle for Independence - 7
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945. The draft constitution of Indonesia was not yet ready. The news of Japan’s surrender had not reached the Indonesian masses. The political situation appeared confused and muddy. But the youth in Jakarta were impatient. There was the possibility that the Dutch would return in force after the cessation of hostilities. There was a historic sense of urgency.
On the night of August 17, a group of nationalists met at the house of Sukarno, hoisted the national flag and declared the independence of Indonesia. The moment had come that Sukarno had dreamed of. The long servitude was over. The nightmare was dispelled, and the Indonesians cried out, “we are free at last”. Sukarno became the Father of the Nation and Hatta became a Proclamation Hero. Indonesia became a Republic.
The Dutch had no intention of relinquishing their colonies. For the European colonists, the war was a struggle to preserve their colonial empires for which the colonized people themselves were to shed their blood. On September 1, Dutch governor Van Mook requested the British commander in the Pacific, Mountbatten to occupy and hold the islands until Dutch forces arrive. On September 19, a contingent of British Indian troops landed in Jakarta and, after a fierce fight, occupied the city. Dutch prisoner of war, recently released from prison, formed the vanguard of Dutch troops and attacked Indonesian civilians. Facing the Dutch was the newly formed Republican army assembled from the cadets trained by the Japanese. The Republicans enjoyed broad mass support. For instance, early during the war the Nahdatul Ulama declared the independence struggle to be a national duty and proclaimed it a Jihad. The sultans of Yogya, Solo, Bone and the rajas of Bali declared their support for the Republic.
At the behest of the British, negotiations were held between Sukarno and the Dutch but they quickly broke down. On October 30 the British bombarded and occupied Surabaya. British led Indian troops arrived in November. Nehru strongly protested the use of Indian troops against the Indonesian Republic. As hostilities ensued, a large number of these troops defected to the Indonesian side. The unreliability of the Indian troops and the strong protests from the Indian nationalists was one reason the British withdrew from the islands.
The Dutch took over from the British. At the beginning of 1946 there were as many as 20,000 Dutch troops on the island, a number that increased to more than 200,000 by July 1949. On July 4, 1946 the Philippines obtained its independence from the United States providing further impetus to the Indonesian struggle. In November 1946, by an agreement termed the Lingajatti agreement, the Dutch transferred Java, Sumatra and Madura to the Republic while setting up a Dutch ruled government in the eastern islands. This was totally unacceptable to the nationalists. The Dutch never implemented the Lingajatti agreement and in the summer of 1947, initiated hostilities against the republic and occupied Java and Madura and bombed the principal cities. A ceasefire was called and negotiations were held aboard the USS Renville under American auspices.
The Renville agreement was favorable to the Dutch and recognized their control over forward positions occupied during their military thrust at the Republic. The major political parties in Indonesia rejected the agreement. Hostilities broke out again later that year and the Dutch made further advances. The United States was concerned that a prolonged colonial war may drive Indonesia into the Soviet orbit. The US Senate passed a resolution to withhold funds allocated to the Netherlands under the Marshall Plan. The Dutch caved in under relentless diplomatic and economic pressure.
The war came to a negotiated end on December 27, 1949 and the Netherlands recognized the independence of Indonesia.
Sukarno was not only the father of Indonesian independence but was also the architect of political reconciliation between the Islamic, communist and secular modernist elements in Indonesia. Independence had been declared but there were competing visions for the future of Indonesia. The Islamic political parties pressed for an Islamic state with the Shariah as the basis for jurisprudence in the country. The communists were more concerned with the rights of the workers and the exploited peasants. The modernists sought a compromise between the secularism of the West and the religious leanings of the Islamic parties, focusing on development using Western technology. Sukarno was a master compromiser. He was a democrat but a democrat with a difference. He felt that the one-man vote democracy of the West would not be suitable for the vast and diverse population of Indonesia. Instead, he sought compromise and consensus between the various stakeholders including the Islamic ulema, the merchant community, the minority Christians, Chinese and Hindus, the army and the worker unions. He placated the religious elements by incorporating “belief in one God” in the constitution. He enlisted the support of the workers and peasants by emphasizing welfare programs for the poor and development programs for villages. His method of consensus building was dubbed “guided democracy”. Political parties were tolerated but without the paradigm of a national consensus.
Sukarno was equally innovative in foreign affairs. He realized that Indonesia, as a large but a newly emerging country, had a role to play in world affairs but not as part of a power bloc. The cold war took off just as Indonesia emerged from colonial domination.
The principles on which he based his foreign policy were based on “Panch Sheela” (the five principles): (a) Mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity, (b) Non-aggression, (c) Non-interference in each other’s affairs, (d) Equality and mutual benefit, and (e) Peaceful co-existence. These principles were accepted as the basis of international relations by China, India, Egypt, Yugoslavia and a host of other countries. They formed the foundation of the so called “non-aligned movement” of which India’s Nehru, Egypt’s Nasser and Yugoslavia’s Tito were principal architects. Sukarno’s finest moment in foreign affairs came in 1955 when he played host to the non-aligned leaders at the Bandung Conference. The non-aligned bloc played a significant part in the cold war preventing a total polarization of the world into two hostile blocs.
The communist party had its own checkered history in Indonesia and its involvement in the political process was not insignificant. The ruthless exploitation of the Indonesian peasants and workers by the Dutch spawned the communist movement on the islands. The peasants in Java worked as bonded labor, forced work in slimy conditions, subject to the whip or worse if they tried to escape, cowering before the merciless plantation owners and henchmen. The farmers were forced to cultivate cash crops at the expense of food and sell the cash crops to a Dutch monopoly. The Netherlands grew rich at the backs of the Indonesian peasants.
In 1912, Sarekat Islam was formed to protect the interests of the Muslim batik merchants. It was an all-inclusive organization that provided an umbrella for the nationalists, the socialists, the Islamists and the labor leaders. However, the tensions inherent in such a composite organization led to its gradual fragmentation. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 encouraged the labor movement in Indonesia and in 1920 the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) was formed. Attempts to organize the peasants and the workers alarmed the Dutch who banned the party and expelled its leaders. In response, the communist movement went partially underground and local.
In 1925-26 some units of the communist party staged minor rebellions in Metan, Jakarta and Surabaya. These insurrections were crushed and the party was disbanded.
It was not until the Second World War that the party made a serious attempt to reorganize. The Germans invaded Russia in June 1941 and Stalin formed an alliance with Great Britain and France. The Netherlands was a part of this alliance. This placed the communist party of Indonesia in a quandary. They had to choose between supporting their colonial masters or the nationalists who were opposed to them. The choice was made even more difficult when Japan entered the war and occupied Indonesia in March 1942. Many Indonesians welcomed the Japanese as liberators and offered to cooperate with them in return for a promise of independence. The KPI chose the path of resistance to the Japanese occupation. It cooperated with the Dutch to wage a sporadic guerrilla war against Japanese forces. For instance, Sjarifuddin, one of the leaders of the independence movement, worked covertly with the Dutch against the popular will of the people, and provided intelligence and other help to the allies.
After the declaration of independence in August 1945, a leftist organization, Barisan Tani Indonesia, was organized to help the farmers. Later, the same year, Sjarifuddin and others formed the Patai Socialis. The communists were slowly coming into their own. However, their leadership, Sjarifuddin and others, were not popular with the Indonesian army officers who had Islamic sympathies. The communists did not succeed in forming a strong central structure. In September ’48, local elements of the PKI attempted a coup in Madiun. The rebellion was crushed by the Republican army. The communist leaders either fled or were executed. The decisiveness with which the Republicans crushed the communist uprising paid off its dividends. It reinforced the perception in Washington that the independence movement in Indonesia was anti-communist, not communist inspired as Dutch propaganda was trying to portray. Ultimately it was the strong jawboning from Washington that compelled the Dutch to give up their Indonesian colonies.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
