My friend Harry has been raving about Indonesian Destinies. The other day I spotted it at the Reading Room in Kemang. It's a history book by Theodore Friend.
I've never read anything so critical of Sukarno. I thought his big shortcoming was his lust for power. I knew he suspended democracy and made himself president for life. But Friend describes Sukarno's additional demerits: He was guilty of pimping for the Japanese. He was guilty of "shipping to their deaths" tens of thousands of Indonesian workers whom the Japanese enrolled as labor conscripts. He was guilty of failing to endure his time in gaol with the grace he was later accredited for. (I only read as far a the Japanese period.)
On the pimping, Friend writes: "Sukarno's first administrative act, he acknowledges, was to gather up 120 prostitutes as 'volunteers' to be penned in a special camp for service to Japanese soldiers. He congratulated himself on simultaneously enhancing the women's income, sating the lust of the invaders, an thereby protecting virtuous Minangkabau maidens."
On the labor conscripts, Friend provides an excerpt from Sukarno's autobiography: "They died in foreign lands. Often they were treated as inhumanely as the prisoners of war with whom they were shackled side by side to build the notorious Burma Road. ... Yes, yes, yes, I knew they'd travel in airless boxcars packed in thousands at a time. I knew they were down to skin and bone. And I couldn't help them.
"In fact it was I -- Sukarno -- who sent them to work ... I shipped them to their deaths. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I am the one. ... It was horrible. Hopeless.
"And it was I who gave them to the Japanese. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? ... Nobody likes the ugly truth."
Sukarno justified this because it bought political gains: the right for Indonesians to sing their national anthem, to wave their national flag, to form a civilian advisory body to the Japanese Military Government. But it was a misguided strategy informed by ignorance, Friend argues. Sukarno "knew only vaguely of the progress of the war [in the Pacific], relying far too heavily on Japanese intentions and information. He need not have traded a huge number of lives ... for the flag and anthem. These concessions would have come anyway during the imperial military retreat. The Philippines received them much earlier, despite their guerrilla resistance to the Japanese in many provinces."
The third point relates to Sukarno's time in prison and internal exile under the Dutch colonial regime. Friend: "Sukarno could not endure it. In 1934 he wrote the governor general promising cooperative behavior if he were released. Satisfied that Sukarno's spirit was broken, the Dutchman denied the request. The plea was pathetic, its denial ruthless. Sukarno in his autobiography makes no mention of his cry of supplication. Nor, given his customary tone of aggressive bravado, would one expect him to. But there it is: a whining correspondence that suggests a streak of weakness. Did Nehru in his eleven imprisonments, or Gandhi in all his own, ever yield to such a tone? Did Nelson Mandela ever compromise his dignity with the white Afrikaans? Sukarno, who later enjoyed the title Bearer of the Message of the People's Suffering, was not superlative at enduring suffering himself."
Friend is ruthless. But he makes a point. (And, compassionately, adds: "The redeeming side of this characteristic was that [Sukarno] did not like to inflict [suffering] either. Unlike Suharto, who would not hesitate to kill.")
Interesting. There is much for which I admire Sukarno. He had balls. He loved beauty. He had vision. But what did Noam Chomsky say about Julian Assange? I can't find the quote, but it was about how we shouldn't honor or condemn people. Only their actions
Meanwhile it looks like they're going to name one of Jakarta's central avenues after the guy. Personally I don't really have a problem with Jalan Soekarno. But they're also talking about Jalan Soeharto. If I was Indonesian, I'd have a big problem with that.
Regarding Sukarno, I'm also reminded of the Speaker for the Dead, a concept from Orson Scott Card's eponymous novel (the sequel to Ender's Game). The Speaker is summoned by a relative of the deceased, researches the person's life and makes a speech about their life as they tried to live it. The speech is not a eulogy: the aim is not to praise, but rather to understand, through recognition of a person's flaws and misdeeds as well as their virtues.
But that's not always how it goes down when it comes to figures like Sukarno. Or Suharto.
It isn't only Sukarno's faults that Friend discusses. The circumstances of his birth and early life are just as compelling. They prove history can work out any which way. It was only someone like Sukarno who could have risen to the topmost heights of power in Indonesia, one country that could have been five. But just as important to Sukarno's character as his personality were the unique facts of his birth and upbringing.
With a Javanese father and a Balinese mother, people from the center of the archipelago as well as those from its peripheries could identify with him. His Muslim-theosophist credentials (dad) and his Hindu-Buddhist-animist ones (mom) had a similar effect. He had royal Javanese blood and a mother from Bali's priestly class, yet he grew up in poverty. This dualism was key to his appeal. Friend: "Sukarno could fairly claim both an elevated birth, for presumed natural leadership, and experience of mass poverty, for presumed democratic fellowship."
Sukarno wasn't just a product of forces beyond his control. He had charisma, ambition, energy. He educated himself, he spoke Dutch, he read widely. Surely he was not the only half-Javanese with royal blood who knew poverty. To a great extent he made himself.
But only a figure designed like Sukarno could have risen as he did. In him one could imagine all of Indonesia.
Today he is a National Hero. (Meanwhile Suharto has been nominated.)
