Biography of Sukarno, Indonesia's First
President
Sukarno (June 6, 1901–June 21, 1970) was the first leader of
independent Indonesia. Born in Java when the island was part of the Dutch
East Indies, Sukarno rose to power in 1949. Rather than supporting
Indonesia's original parliamentary system, he created a "guided democracy"
over which he held control. Sukarno was deposed by a military coup in 1965
and died under house arrest in 1970. Young Sukarno went to a local
elementary school until 1912. He then attended a Dutch middle school in
Mojokerto, followed in 1916 by a Dutch high school in Surabaya. The young
man was gifted with a photographic memory and a talent for languages, including
Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese, Dutch, English, French, Arabic, Bahasa
Indonesia, German, and Japanese.
While in Surabaya for high school, Sukarno lived with the Indonesian
nationalist leader Tjokroaminoto. He fell in love with his landlord's daughter
Siti Oetari, who he married in 1920. The following year, however, Sukarno
went to study civil engineering at the Technical Institute in Bandung and fell
in love again. This time, his partner was the boarding-house owner's wife
Inggit, who was 13 years older than Sukarno. They each divorced their spouses
and married each other in 1923. Inggit and Sukarno remained married for 20
years but never had children. Sukarno divorced her in 1943 and married a
teenager named Fatmawati. She would bear Sukarno five children, including
Indonesia's first female president, Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Sukarno began to think about independence for the Dutch East Indies
while he was in high school. During college, he read deeply on different
political philosophies, including communism, capitalist democracy, and
Islamism, developing his own syncretic ideology of Indonesian socialist self-
sufficiency. He also established the Algameene Studieclub for like-minded
Indonesian students. In 1927, Sukarno and the other members of the
Algameene Studieclub reorganized themselves as the Partai Nasional
Indonesia (PNI), an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist independence party.
Sukarno became the first leader of the PNI. Sukarno hoped to enlist Japanese
help in overcoming Dutch colonialism and unite the different peoples of the
Dutch East Indies into a single nation.
In February 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army invaded the Dutch East
Indies. Cut off from help by the German occupation of the Netherlands, the
colonial Dutch quickly surrendered to the Japanese. The Dutch forced-marched
Sukarno to Padang, Sumatra, intending to send him to Australia as a prisoner,
but had to leave him in order to save themselves as Japanese forces
approached. The Japanese commander, Gen. Hitoshi Imamura, recruited
Sukarno to lead the Indonesians under Japan's rule. Sukarno was happy to
collaborate with them at first, in hopes of keeping the Dutch out of the East
Indies.
In June 1945, Sukarno introduced his five-point Pancasila, or principles
of an independent Indonesia. On August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered to the
Allied Powers. Sukarno's young supporters urged him to immediately declare
independence, but he feared retribution from the Japanese troops still
present. On August 16, the impatient youth leaders kidnapped Sukarno and
then convinced him to declare independence the following day. On August 18
at 10 a.m., Sukarno spoke to a crowd of 500 in front of his home and declared
the Republic of Indonesia independent, with himself serving as president and
his friend Mohammad Hatta as vice president. He also promulgated the 1945
Indonesian Constitution, which included the Pancasila.
