Sukarno and Indonesian Independence (1945–1967)

Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, dominated the country for the first two decades of its existence. He was a brilliant orator, a populist, an autocrat, an architect of non-aligned foreign policy, a womaniser, a flamboyant dresser, and ultimately a tragic figure who lost power and died under house arrest. Whatever else, he is the central political figure in Indonesia's modern history.

Before independence

Sukarno was born in 1901 in Surabaya, East Java, to a Javanese schoolteacher father and a Balinese Hindu mother. He trained as a civil engineer at the Technische Hoogeschool in Bandung (now ITB) and earned an Indonesian-language degree in 1926 — already a politicised figure by the time he graduated.

In 1927 he co-founded the PNI (Partai Nasional Indonesia, the Indonesian National Party), advocating immediate independence from Dutch rule on a secular nationalist platform. The Dutch responded by arresting him repeatedly. Between 1929 and 1942 he spent most of his time either in prison or in internal exile on Flores and Bengkulu — far from Java's political centre.

The Japanese occupation (1942–1945)

When Japan invaded the Dutch East Indies in early 1942, it brought Sukarno back to Java and used him as a propaganda figurehead. The Japanese needed Indonesian cooperation for the war effort and were happy to encourage anti-Dutch sentiment that would otherwise be suppressed. Sukarno and his political partner Mohammad Hatta cooperated, calculating — correctly — that an eventual Japanese defeat would leave them positioned to seize independence.

In the final months of the war the Japanese established preparatory committees for Indonesian independence. The Pancasila — the five principles that became the philosophical foundation of the Indonesian state — was Sukarno's contribution to those discussions, delivered as a speech on 1 June 1945.

When Japan surrendered to the Allies on 15 August 1945, Sukarno and Hatta hesitated, fearing both the Japanese authorities and the returning Dutch. A group of younger nationalists effectively kidnapped them to force their hand. On 17 August 1945 — two days after Japan's surrender — Sukarno read the brief Proklamasi declaration of Indonesian independence from his front porch in Jakarta.

The war of independence (1945–1949)

The new Republic of Indonesia controlled little more than central Java at first. Dutch and British forces gradually returned. What followed was a confused four-year war that combined conventional military campaigns (the so-called Dutch "police actions" of 1947 and 1948), guerrilla resistance, international diplomacy, and intermittent ceasefires.

Militarily the Dutch had the upper hand by 1948–49. Politically they had lost. International opinion, especially in the United States — which threatened to cut Marshall Plan aid — turned decisively against Dutch attempts to reimpose colonial rule. In December 1949 the Netherlands formally transferred sovereignty to the new Republic of the United States of Indonesia. Sukarno became its first president.

The 1950s: parliamentary democracy and its discontents

For roughly seven years after independence, Indonesia ran on a parliamentary democratic model with multiple coalition governments. The system produced political instability: seven cabinets between 1949 and 1957, none lasting more than a couple of years. Economic conditions deteriorated. Regional rebellions, particularly the PRRI-Permesta uprising of 1958, threatened the unity of the country.

Sukarno's response, announced in 1959, was Demokrasi Terpimpin — Guided Democracy. Parliament was reduced in power, the unelected Sukarno took a much larger executive role, and the political system was reorganised around three forces meant to balance each other: nationalism, religion (mainly Islam), and communism, captured in his slogan NASAKOM.

Foreign policy and the Non-Aligned Movement

Sukarno's signature international contribution was the 1955 Bandung Conference, which brought together 29 newly independent Asian and African states. It was the moment when Asian and African nationalism organised itself collectively for the first time outside the framework of either Cold War bloc. The Non-Aligned Movement, formally established in 1961, grew directly out of Bandung.

Domestically Sukarno was theatrically anti-Western. He confiscated remaining Dutch businesses in 1957, took Indonesia out of the United Nations in 1965 after Malaysia joined the Security Council, and launched the Konfrontasi campaign of low-level military hostility against Malaysia from 1963 to 1966.

The 1965 crisis

By the mid-1960s Sukarno was managing an increasingly precarious balance. The PKI — the Indonesian Communist Party — had grown to about three million members, the largest non-governing communist party in the world. The army, broadly anti-communist, watched it with alarm. Sukarno's own health was failing.

On the night of 30 September 1965, a group of army officers calling themselves the September 30th Movement (G30S) kidnapped and killed six anti-communist generals in Jakarta. Within hours, Major General Suharto had assumed command of the army's strategic reserve and begun moving against the plotters. Within days the PKI was being blamed for the entire affair. Within weeks an army-led, religiously-supported purge of suspected communists had begun across the country.

The killings of 1965–66 are now estimated at between 500,000 and a million people — the worst mass political violence in Indonesian history. The PKI was outlawed. Sukarno's political base collapsed.

Removal and death

By March 1966, with student protests in the streets and the army aligned against him, Sukarno was forced to sign the Supersemar — an executive order transferring effective authority to Suharto. He was formally stripped of the presidency in March 1967. Suharto would rule for the next 31 years.

Sukarno spent his last years under house arrest, in poor health, allowed only limited visitors. He died in June 1970 in Jakarta and was buried in his birthplace of Blitar, East Java. His grave is now a national monument.

Legacy

Sukarno's legacy is contested but enormous. He is the founder of the Indonesian state, the author of Pancasila, the orator who held the country's many factions and ethnicities together when nothing else did, and the architect of non-alignment. He is also responsible — depending on how one assigns blame — for the political and economic dysfunction that opened the door to the 1965 catastrophe.

His daughter Megawati Sukarnoputri later served as Indonesia's fifth president (2001–2004) and remains a central figure in the PDI-P party. The Sukarno name still moves voters.

Most central Indonesian cities have a Jalan Sukarno-Hatta — Sukarno-Hatta Street — named for the two co-signatories of the 1945 Proklamasi.