Keith Foulcher, (2000), Sumpah Pemuda - The Making and Meaning of A Symbol of Indonesian Nationhood PDF [PDF]

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Asian Studies Review. ISSN 1035-7823 Volume 24 Number 3 September 2000



S U M PAH PEMUDA: THE MAKING AND MEANING OF A SYMBOL OF INDONESIAN NATIONHOOD K EITH F OULCHER1 University of Sydney



One of the most familiar markers of twentieth-century Indonesian nationalist history is the Sumpah Pemuda, the threefold declaration of unity of nation, homeland and language, made at a congress of nationalist youth organisations in Jakarta at the end of October 1928. The anniversary of this declaration is now observed in Indonesia as a national day, and large-scale commemorations, designed to remind Indonesian youth of their historical destiny, are held each year under government patronage that extends right up to presidential level. The oath has come to be associated in particular with the affirmation of Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) as a national language, and the occasion is regularly marked by special attention to the historical development of the language, its use and standardisation. In both academic and popular writing, variations of the assertion that “Indonesian was declared the national language at a conference of Indonesian youth on 28 October 1928” are widespread (Abas 1987, 38; Herbert and Milner 1989, 125). Again and again, we find the formula “one nation, one homeland, one language” described as the “sacred pledge” sworn by delegates to the 1928 congress, the oath of unity bequeathed to all subsequent generations of Indonesian youth. Addressing a massed crowd of Indonesian youth in the Senayan Sports Stadium in Jakarta, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the declaration in 1978, President Soeharto prefaced his remarks on the historical role of Indonesian youth with the following words: Tepat 50 Tahun yang lalu, di Jakarta ini, lahirlah Sumpah Pemuda yang sangat terkenal: – mengaku berbangsa satu, Bangsa Indonesia; – mengaku bertanah air satu, Tanah Air Indonesia; – mengaku berbahasa satu, Bahasa Indonesia.2 The Congress of Indonesian Youth in October 1928 was indeed a significant occasion, and the declaration that subsequently came to be known as the Sumpah © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.



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Pemuda was most likely the first public appearance of the term Bahasa Indonesia to describe Malay as the language of Indonesian unity. Nevertheless, at a time when the “imagining” of nations and the “inventing” of traditions have become well-established frameworks of understanding, it should come as no surprise that a glance through the historical record suggests that the history of the Sumpah Pemuda as a symbol of Indonesian nationhood is more complex than it might at first appear. A telling indication of this history lies in the fact that in one small but significant detail, President Soeharto’s 50th anniversary speech “got it wrong”. The third part of the 1928 declaration, as a few careful scholars and commentators in recent times have reminded us, actually ran as follows: Kami poetera dan poeteri Indonesia mendjoendjoeng bahasa persatoean, bahasa Indonesia.3 In fact, the historical record suggests that the Sumpah Pemuda as most of us— along with Indonesian presidents—know it today is more a construction of subsequent generations of nation builders and ideologues than the founding moment of nation and national language that popular understanding would have it to be. The construction of the symbol, and the meanings attached to it through different periods of post-independence Indonesian history, are not only a reminder of nationalism’s need for a teleological history of its own origins; they also serve to illustrate how the post-colonial construction of the past is always tied to the exigencies of contemporary political visions and ideologies. A nation must have a history, and its history is a part of the shaping of its present.



OCTOBER 1928 AND THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN PRE-WAR INDONESIAN NATIONALISM The origins of the Sumpah Pemuda lie in the intersection of the pre-1930 regionallybased cultural nationalist youth organisations and the more radical, unitary political nationalism that emanated from the Perhimpunan Indonesia and found the beginnings of a popular base in the Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI) from 1927.4 The youth movements had grown up on the model of Jong Java, formed in 1915 among Dutcheducated Javanese youth to foster an awareness of the Javanese cultural heritage. Jong Java was followed by the Jong Sumatranen Bond (1917), Jong Celebes (1918), Jong Minahassa (1918), Sekar Roekoen (1919) and the Jong Bataks Bond (1925), all of which drew their membership from young men and women of high-status families sent from their ethnic homelands to pursue post-secondary education in Java. As Benedict Anderson has pointed out (Anderson 1991, 121–22), what these young people had in common was their Dutch education and their exposure to © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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western cultural norms, including notions of political independence and nationhood. They spoke Dutch, along with their regional languages, and in many cases some form of Malay as well. They came together perhaps to assuage feelings of loneliness and homesickness, many of them still teenagers, far from home in the big cities of Java. But they were also driven by a proto-nationalist sense of identification with their regions and homelands. Politically, these organisations tended to the conservative end of the spectrum of nationalist politics. They were part of the general awakening to modern forms of organisation and a new way of conceiving place and person that marks the social and cultural roots of nationalism. However, it was not until well into the 1920s that they began to feel the effect of the political agitation that had begun in the 1910s, and its links to a unitary nationalist movement. From the mid-1920s, they began to discuss the question of “fusion” or “federation” in the interests of “Indonesian” unity. But it took the decisive intervention of the PNI’s youth organisation (initially Jong Indonesia but since December 1927 Pemuda Indonesia) to bring about the moves that led to the formation of a single, unitary youth movement, Indonesia Muda, in December 1930. The key figure bridging these two streams of 1920s youth nationalism was Muhammad Yamin, later to be Minister of Education and Culture in a postindependence government, the man described by Herbert Feith as someone “whose stature as a nationalist ideologue was second only to that of the President himself” (Feith 1962, 342). In 1927 Yamin was 24 years of age, the leader of the pan-Sumatran youth movement the Jong Sumatranen Bond and a member of the Perhimpunan Pelajar-Pelajar Indonesia (PPPI), the organisation with PNI links that grew out of the First Indonesian Youth Congress [Eeerste Indonesisch Jeugdcongres] held in Jakarta (Batavia) in April–May of 1926. Even at this young age, Yamin had already established a reputation for the kind of unifying national vision that was being propagated through the PNI and which later would become a hallmark of Sukarnoist nationalism. In 1920, as a youth of 17, Yamin had proposed the adherence to Malay as a language of Sumatran unity, and a recognition of Malay literature as a common cultural heritage of the peoples of Sumatra (Jamin 1920). In 1926, when the youth movements held their first ever joint conference, Yamin delivered—in Dutch— an address that spoke of Malay as the basis for the future development of an “Indonesian” language and literature (Jamin 1926). At the time, he expressed the view that such a development would occur “gradually” [langzamerhand], but within two years, he was actively moving the youth movements in the direction of the Pemuda Indonesia ideal. He was a member of the organising committee of the October 1928 second youth congress (Kerapatan Besar Pemuda Indonesia), the occasion which has been accorded such a primary place in nationalist history, even though at its time and for some years following it was viewed mainly as a step towards a more significant event, the formation of Indonesia Muda in 1930. It was © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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Yamin who composed the resolutions of the congress, the declaration which read, in part: Kami poetera dan poeteri Indonesia mengakoe bertoempah-darah jang satoe, tanah Indonesia. Kami poetera dan poeteri Indonesia mengakoe berbangsa jang satoe, bangsa Indonesia. Kami poetera dan poeteri Indonesia mendjoendjoeng bahasa persatoean, bahasa Indonesia. The very deliberate variation in the wording of the third resolution is an interesting indication of the fluidity that surrounded language use within the Indonesian nationalist movement at this time. It is important to remember that the actual “language of unity” among delegates to the 1928 congress was Dutch, the language of both the thought world and daily interaction among educated Indonesian youth in the 1920s. Just two years earlier, at the first youth congress, proceedings had been conducted almost entirely in Dutch, with “only a few” delegates “seeking leave” to address the meeting in Malay.5 Dutch—sometimes along with regional languages—was the language of the journals published by the respective youth organisations, and there was no apparent anomaly felt in the use of Dutch to discuss, for example, the need for the preservation of Javanese and Sundanese languages (Groeneboer 1993, 414). Nevertheless, the resolutions of 1928 do mark a significant development, which is the symbolic disengagement with the colonial language in the public realm. With its statement of intent to “revere” Bahasa Indonesia as the “language of unity”, the congress took the step of establishing a division between the private and public worlds of nationalism among educated Indonesian youth. In marked contrast to 1926, the main language of the proceedings in October 1928 was Malay/Indonesian, a decision which apparently provoked some confusion on the conference floor. Dutch officials observing the congress noted with scorn that the Malay spoken by the conference chair, the Javanese student Soegondo Djojopoespito, was not in fact up to the task: De leider van het congres, de student Soegondo, was in het geheel niet voor zijn taak berekend en miste eider gezag. Hij trachtte de “Indonesisiche taal” te spreken, waarin hij zich alleen zeer gebrekkig bleek te kunnen uitdrukken. Van der Plas, the author of this report, went so far as to suggest that an unspoken resistance to the use of Malay could be felt among some of the participants: De Javanen, Soendaneezen en anderen, wien de stelling dat men de eigen taal voor het Maleisch (de “Indonesische”) moet opgeven, onaangenaam moet zijn geweest, © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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zwegen en lachtten (sic) nauwelijks, waneer de voorzitter en anders sprekers bewezen, hoever men van de kennis van goed Maleisch verwijdered is.6 Although Malay was used, however imperfectly, as the conference medium, there were indeed still speakers who chose to address the congress in Dutch. The second day of the proceedings, devoted to the theme of “education”, saw one panelist, and several contributors from the floor, speak in Dutch. Nevertheless, after Ny. Poernomowoelan had delivered her address on education and the home environment of children in Dutch, the congress participants were asked whether they wanted her speech to be translated. The reply from the floor was unequivocal: ”Diterdjamahkan!!! (sic) Dimelajoekan!!!” [“Translate!!!” “Into Malay!!!”] (Fadjar Asia 1928a). Yamin, as congress secretary, stepped forward, delivering a Malay version of the speech to what must have been a largely Dutch-educated audience. The symbolic disengagement with the colonial language that distinguishes Indonesian nationalism from nationalist movements elsewhere in the colonial world of the time was now under way. At least one contributor felt it necessary to apologise to the congress for his use of Dutch, regretting, in the words of a contemporaneous report, “bahwa ia sendiri sebagai anak Indonesia tidak bisa berkata dalam bahasa sendiri” [“that he himself, as a child of Indonesia, could not speak in his own language”] (Fadjar Asia 1928b). Prior to 1928, the use of Dutch in a nationalist context had never been a cause for apology; from this time, according to the recollections of another participant in the events of the time, it became standard practice (Sutrisno and Kartadamadja 1970, 57). But it is not only use of the colonial language that is a cause for apology: the Javanese speaker of 1928 could not speak “in his own language” as an Indonesian nationalist, until he knew Indonesian. Language use outside the congress, however, makes it clear that in his formulation of the resolutions, Yamin had no choice but to find a formula that broke the symmetry of the first two resolutions when it came to the language question. Quite unselfconsciously, for example, Jong Batak, the journal of the Jong Bataks Bond, carried the Malay (or “Indonesian”) text of the resolutions as part of a Dutch-language report of the congress proceedings. Its concluding remarks contain no hint that the writer of the report saw the events in the light of the great historical significance that would later be attached to them: “Alles in allen het congres is een stap naar de eenheid van de jeugdvereenigingen het uiteindelijk doel, dat gesteld werd” [“All in all, the congress is a step towards the unity of the youth organisations, the ultimate goal envisaged”], the unnamed writer concluded somewhat unremarkably (Jong Batak 1928). In Java, the Surakarta nationalist daily Darmokondo carried a series of Malay-language congress reports beneath its established masthead, “Soerat harian oemoem dalam basa Indonesia (Djawa dan Melajoe)” [“General daily in Indonesian languages (Javanese and Malay)”]. The idealism of “mendjoendjoeng © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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bahasa persatoean” was still, for a time and for some, not inconsistent with the use of the colonial language and the language of the region in the public world of Indonesian nationalism. In the period leading up to the formation of Indonesia Muda in December 1930, there are indications that both the discomfort with the use of languages other than Malay/Bahasa Indonesia that the 1928 congress initiated, and a general sensitivity to the politics of language marked by the asymmetry of the congress resolutions, played some role in the cultural dimensions of the nationalist youth movement. Just two months after the congress, the young Javanese Indonesian nationalist, Sitti Soendari, prefaced her speech to a nationalist women’s congress with the following words: Sebeloem kami memoelai membitjarakan ini, patoetlah rasanya kalau kami terangkan lebih dahoeloe, mengapa kami tidak memakai bahasa Belanda atau bahasa Djawa: Boekan sekali-kali karena kami hendak merendahkan-rendahkan bahasa ini, atau hendak mengoerang-ngoerangkan harganja. Itoe sekali-kali tidak. Tetapi barang siapa diantara toean jang mengoendjoengi kerapatan pemoeda di kota Djacatra (Betawi), jang diadakan dalam beberapa boelan jang laloe atau setelah membatja poetoesan kerapatan jang terseboet, tentoe masih mengingat akan hasilnja, jaitoe hendak berbangsa jang satoe, bangsa Indonesia, hendak bertoempah darah jang satoe, tanah Indonesia, dan hendak mendjoendjoeng bahasa persatoean, bahasa Indonesia. Oleh karena jang terseboet inilah maka kami, sebagai poetri Indonesia jang lahir dipoelau Djawa jang indah ini, berani memakai bahasa Indonesia dimoeka ra’jat kita ini. Boekankah kerapatan kita kerapatan Indonesia, ditimboelkan oleh poetri Indonesia dan dioentoekkan bagi seloeroeh kaoem istri dan poetri Indonesia, beserta tanah toempah darah dan bangsanja. (Soendari 1981, 179). These words are as significant as they are touching, because Sitti Soendari was one of the speakers who delivered her address to the October congress in Dutch. In the words of a contemporaneous report, she spoke in Dutch because “she did not understand Indonesian” (Darmokondo 1928).7 Now, in the space of just two months, a remarkable transition has taken place: with a note of explanation and a tone of apology, a young Dutch-educated Javanese woman forgoes the language of her birthplace (the “beautiful island of Java”) and the language of her intellectual world (her “second mother tongue” [Groeneboer 1993, 417]) for a language that—presumably—requires her to enlist the help of a translator before she can deliver her address to the women’s congress. She speaks in Indonesian, falteringly perhaps, as a symbol of her commitment to the political ideal enunciated in Yamin’s resolutions, a unitary nationalist youth movement with a vision of an independent Indonesian nation. © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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It was from this time that the absorption of the regionally-identified youth movements into the unitary politics of the PNI began to gather pace. By early 1929, the question of a federation or fusion of the youth movements was resolved in favour of the “fusion” option, as one after another the separate organisations declared themselves in favour of a single body, or simply ceased to exist. Representatives of Jong Java, Pemuda Sumatra and Pemoeda Indonesia came together in October 1929 to form a new organisation, to be called Indonesia Muda. All three of the constituent organisations were to hold conferences at which they would formally disband by the early months of 1930, and these would be followed by an inaugural conference of Indonesia Muda in the same year. The 1929 meeting referred to the resolutions of 1928 as its ideological basis, describing them as “dasar jang tiga dan toedjoean jang satoe” [“three principles and one goal”]. Proudly referring to its own use of language as an illustration that the call to use “Indonesian” was already in operation, the report of this meeting nevertheless echoes something of the sensitivity in the wording of the 1928 resolutions. The first two of the three principles are unproblematic, and required no comment. The third, however, is singled out for special mention: Dasar jang ketiga ini tiadalah sekali-kali merendahkan harga atau tiada memperhatikan keboedajaan (cultuur) tiap-tiap bagian pendoedoek Indonesia, melainkan mendjadi alasan bagi keboedajaan baroe. Dan ketiga-tiganja alasan tadi, jaitoe “dasar jang tiga” semoeanja terhadap kepada toedjoean jang satoe, kesatoe tanah air jang besar, didiami oleh seoatoe bangsa jang berasal satoe dan dapat bertoekar fikiran dalam soeatoe bahasa jang lazim dipakai disini dan masoek kepada roempoen segala bahasa anak negeri (Komisi Besar Indonesia Moeda 1981, 310). A tension between what were to become the “national” and “regional” dimensions of Indonesian culture begins to make itself felt here, as the cultural expression of Indonesian nationalism moves from the fluid possibilities of pre1928 into the more self-conscious generation of a unitary national culture in the 1930s. There is no explicit statement of this tension in the public documents of this time, but it continues to be felt in the absences in the declarations, and the allusions they make to a private exchange of views that lies behind them. Always, it is the third resolution which embodies the problem. When the inaugural conference of Indonesia Muda was held in Surakarta at the beginning of 1931, the new organisation drew up a charter of its beliefs. The opening words of the document built on the 1928 resolutions, but as the charter continued, it chose to sidestep completely the possible sensitivities those resolutions opened up in relation to questions of language and culture: “. . . hendak mempersatoekan poetera dan poeteri Indonesia jang berbangsa satoe, bertoempah darah satoe dan bersemangat jang © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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satoe . . .” [“to unify the sons and daughters of Indonesia who have one nation, one homeland and are of one spirit”] was the formula used in the opening paragraph of the charter. During the conference itself, there may well have been echoes of the communication difficulties noted by the Dutch observers in 1928. One participant recalled in later years that when the conference was asked for its endorsement of the new organisation, with the words “Apakah Saudara-Saudara soedah siap?” [“Are you ready?”], the thunderous reply was made up not only of “Siap!” [“Ready!”], but in many cases a misunderstood “Sikap!” [“Attitude!”] (Sutrisno and Kartadamadja 1970, 54). Organisational unity, which was the motive behind the youth congress of 1928, was thus put into practice by the beginning of 1931. But while the “sons and daughters of Indonesia” carried with them the “three principles” of 1928, declaring themselves to be of “one nation” and “one homeland” at this time, they still largely refrained from asserting that they had “one language”. The steps taken in 1928 had to await the intervention of other, and later, nationalists before Yamin’s words were reconceived in perfect symmetry and the Sumpah Pemuda could begin to take its place among symbols of the Indonesian nation.8



THE “STRUGGLE SLOGAN” OF REVOLUTIONARY YOUTH In August 1949, as the stage was being set for negotiations that would transfer sovereignty to an independent “Republic of the United States of Indonesia”, the envisaged federation of the Republic of Indonesia and the Dutch-sponsored regional states, another all-Indonesia youth congress was held, this time in Yogyakarta. At this point in history, “Indonesian youth” no longer meant the Dutch-speaking young men and women from high-ranking families pursuing their education in the tertiary institutes of 1920s Java. Rather, the term evoked the revolutionary brigades that constituted the radical wing of the Republican fight for independence. In 1949, like the Republican movement more generally, the radical pemuda movement faced the threat posed by the existence of the Dutch-sponsored federal states. The congress was attended by youth from the federal states as well as the Republic, and a certain degree of tension seems to have been the result. According to a near contemporary report of the congress, many of the radical youth groups were not present on this occasion, and while Republican youth spoke “freely and openly”, those who were to return to Dutchcontrolled areas were more cautious and hesitant in their contribution to discussions. A degree of tension and difficulty resulted, with the pemuda leader Supardo, the congress chair, being praised by the author of the report for his success in achieving a degree of consensus between the two groups (Hardjito 1952, 140). Finally, all present at the congress declared their allegiance to a © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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manifesto which contained among its resolutions a “Struggle Slogan” [“Sembojan Perdjuangan”] which read as follows: Satu Bangsa—Bangsa Indonesia Satu bahasa—Bahasa Indonesia Satu Tanah Air—Tanah Air Indonesia Satu Negara—Negara Indonesia (Hardjito 1952, 141). In this declaration, twenty-one years on from 1928, the framing of the Sumpah Pemuda is clearly in sight. The exigencies of the moment, the struggle for a unitary independent state, have produced the additional “Satu negara” to the echoes of Yamin’s 1928 congress resolutions. The hesitancy of “. . . mendjoendjoeng bahasa persatoean . . .” has given way, and the first three components of the “Struggle Slogan” now embody the symmetrical unity of “one nation, one language and one homeland”.9 Nevertheless, it seems that somewhat earlier in the revolution an “interim” formulation, lying between the declaration of 1928 and the emerging Sumpah Pemuda visible in the “Struggle Slogan” of 1949, was also current. In a statement of 1948, the pemuda leader Sumarsono reviewed the history of the nationalist youth movement, not alluding to October 1928, but referring to the formation in 1930 of Indonesia Muda, “with its three famous slogans”: Berbangsa satu = Bangsa Indonesia Berbahasa satu = Bahasa Indonesia Bertanah Air satu ialah Tanah Air Indonesia (Hardjito 1952, 103). Armijn Pane, writer and essayist and key promoter of “Indonesian” language and culture during the period of repression of political nationalism in the late 1930s, referred to the shift from the version quoted by Sumarsono to the shorter “satu bahasa” form in an article in 1949. Writing of a recent conference of Indonesian students [peladjar] held in Bandung, Armijn commented that the spirit of unity evinced by students from both the Dutch states and the Republic indicated a continuation of the “struggle begun in 1926”. This conference too included the threefold declaration of unity in its resolutions, adopting the “Satu Bangsa . . .” formulation. But, remarked Armijn: . . . heran sekali, pemuda jang berkumpul itu mengambil mosi jang sama bunjinja dengan pernjataan kongres pemuda jang kedua dalam tahun 1928: rakjat Indonesia berbangsa satu, bertanah air satu, berbahasa satu. Hanja sekarang lebih tegas bunji: satu Tanah Air, Tanah Air Indonesia, satu Bangsa, Bangsa Indonesia, satu Bahasa, Bahasa Indonesia (Pane 1949). © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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It is interesting to observe the indication here that by 1949 historical memory had faltered. Armijn Pane was an informed commentator, a member of the Jong Bataks Bond at the time of the 1928 youth congress, and a dedicated proponent and perceptive analyst of the emerging unitary modern Indonesian culture throughout the 1930s and beyond.10 That he held the “berbahasa satu” formulation to be the statement made in 1928 suggests that, by this time, a reworking of the historical record was already well under way. An important clue to the circumstances of that “reworking” lies in the records of the 1938 Kongres Bahasa Indonesia, held in Surakarta in June 1938. At first sight, this first-ever Indonesian language congress appears to have been more of a scientific and academic affair than an occasion with political significance. Its organising committee was headed in an honorary capacity by Dr Hoessein Djajadiningrat, with Dr Poerbatjaraka as its active chairperson. Many of the papers presented to the congress dealt with matters of technical significance to the process of standardising and institutionalising the use of a national language.11 Yet alongside its scientific import, the congress also had links to the political nationalist movement. Its paper givers included pergerakan figures like Amir Sjarifuddin, and it drew a high level of interest from the nationalist press, with twenty-one press representatives in attendance. The press clearly viewed the congress as an occasion with nationalist significance, and the fact that it was largely ignored by the Dutch press agency Aneta provoked an interesting “post-colonial” response from one Mas Cloboth, a writer in Soeara Oemoem. Aneta refused to report this event which was of such importance to the Indonesian people as a whole, wrote Mas Cloboth. “But whenever Miss Mientje from a little village in Lutebroek in Holland catches cold, Aneta regards it as important enough to make a news item of” (Soebagijo 1980, 57). Of significance for the story we are pursuing is the fact that one of the paper givers at the 1938 language congress was Moh. Tabrani, a figure not associated with the 1928 youth congress (because he was in Holland at the time), but the chairperson of the Dutch-language First Indonesian Youth Congress in 1926. Tabrani addressed the language congress on the topic ‘Encouraging the Spread of Bahasa Indonesia’, arguing the theme that Indonesian did not stand in opposition to regional languages, but represented a realisation of “our oath”, which he was reported to have formulated as follows: Kita bertoempah tanah (sic) satoe, jaitoe bangsa (sic) Indonesia. Kita berbangsa satoe, jatioe bangsa Indonesia. Kita berbahasa satoe, jaitoe bahasa Indonesia (Kebangoenan 1938). Here, it would seem, is the source of the “interim” formulation, linked back to the 1920s through the person of Tabrani. The forward links are present also, in © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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the form of individuals who took part in the 1938 gathering. For not only was Armijn Pane a member of the congress organising committee, but more significantly, another paper giver was Moh. Yamin. Yamin addressed the congress on the topic ‘Bahasa Indonesia Sebagai Bahasa Persatoean dan Bahasa Keboedajaan’ [‘Indonesian as a Language of Unity and a Language of Culture’], and although he appears not to have mentioned the “oath” of 1928 in his speech, it seems quite likely that it was Yamin and Tabrani who took this 1938 formulation into the revolution and beyond.12 Yamin was closely associated with the political leadership of the pemuda movement during the revolution, being himself a member of the Struggle Union group that moved against Republican Prime Minister Sjahrir in June 1946. (He endured nearly two and a half years’ imprisonment as a result [Anderson 1972, 380].) Although in the final months of the revolution Yamin was a member of the negotiating team at the Round Table Conference in The Hague, Tabrani was certainly present in Indonesia to advance the cause of the emerging “Sumpah Pemuda”. He was, for example, an organiser of an Education Congress of October 1949, whose resolutions once again included the version of the 1928 resolutions that Tabrani had brought to the language congress of 1938 (Antara 1949a). Thus it was that at the end of 1949 Indonesia moved into independence with this particular symbol of nationhood in the process of formation, ready to be incorporated into the ideological apparatus of the independent Indonesian state. By 1950, three forms of the 1928 “oath” were in existence, and the original intention to “revere” Indonesian as a “language of unity” had been obscured by the declaration that “we have one language, Indonesian”, or more directly still, “one language—Indonesian”. At this point, however, neither the words themselves, nor the date 28 October 1928, nor the term “Sumpah Pemuda” had become a part of the symbolic history of the Indonesian nation. This development would occur, not immediately, but as another conjunction of particular personalities and political exigencies made its contribution to the post-colonial history of the nation’s origins.



SUKARNO, YAMIN AND THE BIRTH OF THE “S U M PAH PEMUDA” It would appear that the date 28 October claimed its place as a national day in Indonesia not initially because of its association with the oath of unity, but rather because the youth congress of 1928 was also the first occasion on which Wage Supratman’s anthem Indonesia Raya was performed in public.13 On 28 October 1949 Sukarno presided over a ceremony in the presidential palace in Yogyakarta to commemorate the birth of the song that had become the national anthem of © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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the new Indonesian state. In his capacity as Supreme Commander, Sukarno used the occasion to call on all members of the Armed Forces to surrender personal and sectional interests to the interests of the nation, and expressed his satisfaction at the observance by the Indonesian side of the already negotiated cessation of hostilities (Antara 1949b). In the early years of independence the occasion was similarly marked, with special ceremonies being held in the presidential palace in 1952 and 1953 to commemorate the triwindu and 25 years’ anniversary respectively of the birth of Indonesia Raya.14 In 1953, the PKI daily Harian Rakjat devoted its editorial to reflections on Indonesia Raya, and included an article by party leader Njoto entitled “Sumber inspirasi yang tak kundjung kering (menjambut seperempat abad ‘Indonesia Raja’)” [“An unending source of inspiration (a quarter century of ‘Indonesia Raya’)”]. It included coverage of a ceremony held by thirteen youth organisations in Jakarta, commemorating the 25th anniversary of Indonesia Raya and—as a signal of a development that was soon to occur—of the Sumpah Pemuda, although no actual reference to the “oath” was made (Harian Rakjat 1953). Among the official guests attending the ceremony was Mohammad Yamin, now Minister of Education and Culture in the cabinet led by Ali Sastroamidjojo. On 28 October 1954, President Sukarno opened the second Kongres Bahasa Indonesia in Medan, and Yamin, in his capacity as Minister, gave the opening address. Declaring “Bahasa Indonesia” to be a language of unity “from Sabang to Merauke”, Yamin nevertheless added that some words of explanation were perhaps called for in regard to the choice of Medan as the conference venue and 28 October as its date. In an early preview of a much later standardisation policy, Yamin explained that Medan was chosen because it was the centre of the region where Indonesian was used and pronounced “well” [“dengan baik”]. But to his presumably well-informed audience, Yamin also explained that 28 October 1928 was the date on which Indonesia Raya had been born, and was when the term Bahasa Indonesia was used for the first time in a youth congress held in Jakarta (Merdeka 1954). The symbolism was being constructed, by both Yamin and Sukarno himself, as part of the ideological apparatus of nation and state. The following year—to judge by the media record—the day was designated Hari Sumpah Pemuda for the first time. A large-scale commemoration marked the climax of a two-day presidential visit to Solo, which included a public declamation of the Sumpah Pemuda, “jang berisikan djandji berbahasa satu, bertanah air satu dan berbangsa satu!” [“which contains the promise to have one language, one homeland and one nation”] (Merdeka 1955). Thus, by the mid-1950s, it seems it is possible to speak of the “birth of the Sumpah Pemuda”, not in the way the phrase is being used in official statements of the time, but rather in the sense that a particular historical event is being reconfigured in a way that deems it to be a founding moment of nation and national © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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identity. The date itself acquires a place in the nation’s genealogy, and the words uttered in the resolutions of the Kerapatan Besar Pemoeda Indonesia are adjusted to the form in which they serve the interests of a unitary state ideology. By 1956, Sukarno was using “Sumpah Pemuda” as an ideological weapon. His commemorative address in October that year spoke of “penjimpangan dari sumpah 1928” [“deviations from the oath of 1928”] as a way of sending a warning to those behind the separatist threats that were emerging to challenge the unity of the Indonesian nation. Harian Rakjat’s report of the President’s address on 28 October 1956 sounds a new note, and gives an indication of what was to come. For the meaning of the event is now for the first time rhetoricised, in the language of Sukarnoist exhortation: Presiden menjatakan bahwa diperingatinja hari 28 Oktober kali ini adalah suatu opfressing, suatu freshing up, suatu penjegaran bagi semangat persatuan jang akhir-akhir ini terganggu. Presiden menjatakan bahwa sudah selajaknja Sumpah Pemuda diperingati, bahkan djangan hanja setiap tahun, tetapi tiap2 hari, tiap2 jam, tiap2 menit, tiap2 detik. Persiapan ideologis, jaitu Sumpah Pemuda, memerlukan penjelenggaraan praktis, dan 17 Agustus 1945 adalah permulaan dari penjelenggaraan praktis itu (Harian Rakjat 1956). Yamin, meanwhile, was linking the events of 28 October to the grand vision of Greater Indonesia and its centuries-old history that was to mark him as a key ideologue of the Sukarnoist vision. In 1955, he published his pamphlet Sumpah Indonesia Raja, in which he claimed not only that the 1928 proclamation represented a “reincarnation” of Bahasa Indonesia from an earlier existence in the Indonesian past (rather than the renaming of Malay as the “language of Indonesia”). He also confidently placed the oath of 1928 alongside inscriptions dating from 683 in the Srivijayan empire and 1331 in Majapahit as the three occasions in the history of “Nusantara” that ultimately led to the formation of a state and a community, most recently realised in the Proclamation of 1945 (Yamin [1955], 23; 40–41). As John Hoffman commented, “(Yamin’s) determination that a Greater Indonesia and Bahasa Indonesia (not Malay) were simply inherent thus served to obviate the identifiable historical process of building a nation and its language over the previous 350 years . . .” (Hoffman 1995, 11B).15 In 1957, the Indonesian state was in crisis. As Sukarno moved to replace an increasingly fragile parliamentary democracy with a representational legislature under strong presidential direction, regional rebellions broke out in Sumatra and East Indonesia, and the country was placed under martial law. In the second half of the year, provincial elections strengthened the position of the PKI and its claims to legitimacy in partnership with Sukarno, and a new radicalism began to characterise the expressions of unitary nationalism that emanated from Jakarta. © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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Not coincidentally, media reports indicate that for the first time Hari Sumpah Pemuda was celebrated on a huge scale. Schools in Jakarta held flag-raising and oath-reciting ceremonies before the commencement of classes, and a procession of youth was held in the streets of the capital at night (Harian Rakjat 1957). Building on the theme of the previous year’s celebrations, Sukarno used the occasion for an attack on regionalist sympathies: Siapa jang meng-hidup2kan kedaerahan dan federalisme, maka ia tidak setia kepada proklamasi kemerdekaan Indonesia. Seribu kali ia mengatakan bahwa ia setia kepada proklamasi kemerdekaan, tetapi apabila sebaliknja menghidup2kan kedaerahan dan kesukuan, maka berartilah bahwa ia tidak setia kepada proklamasi kemerdekaan Indonesia. Demikianlah amanat Presiden Sukarno pada malam peringatan hari sumpah pemuda jang diadakan semalam di Istana Negara dengan mendapat perhatian jang luar biasa besarnja (Merdeka 1957). 1958 marked the 30th anniversary of the oath, and the tone and scale of the previous two years’ commemorations took on the added dimension of a sense of history. “Never before has the oath of the Indonesian people, called Sumpah Pemuda at the moment of its birth, been celebrated so joyously as today”, ran the opening to Merdeka’s report of the 30th anniversary celebrations. “Beginning at 8am today, in all government offices, in factories, right down to kelurahan offices, commemorations and celebrations of the Sumpah Pemuda get under way. The climax of the events will be centred on the Presidential Palace tonight” (Merdeka 1958a). In Surabaya, at a ceremony at the Heroes’ Monument, representatives of the youth of seven different regions recited a form of the oath that preserved the emotive “sons and daughters of Indonesia” phrase of 1928 which had been largely absent from the versions of intervening years. Yet added to this “authentic” note was a new and very strident form of symmetry: Kami Pemuda-Pemuda Indonesia dengan ini bersumpah bahwa: 1. Kami Putra-Putri Indonesia mengakui satu tanah air, tanah air Indonesia. 2. Kami putra-putri Indonesia mengakui satu bangsa bangsa Indonesia. 3. Kami putra-putri Indonesia mengakui satu bahasa, bahasa Indonesia (Merdeka 1958b). In this form of the oath, not only has the original asymmetry, occasioned by the reality of linguistic diversity, been adjusted in line with the overriding concern with a symbolic unity. A significant but subtle shift has also occurred alongside the apparent authenticity of “Kami putra-putri Indonesia”. For whereas the “sons © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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and daughters of Indonesia” in 1928 “declared” [mengakoe] that they were one people with one homeland, “upholding” [mendjoendjoeng] a language of unity, these sons and daughters of Sukarno’s Indonesia in 1958 “acknowledge” [mengakui] but one Indonesian homeland, one Indonesian nation and one Indonesian language. In the struggle against separatism and the building of a modern nation, Sumpah Pemuda came to be a symbol which embodied the assertion of a progressivist dedication to the new world of the unitary state, as against backward and outmoded loyalties to region and clan. When President Sukarno took the podium before the assembled crowd of dignatories on the night of 28 October 1958 in Jakarta, Sumpah Pemuda emerged as the “sacred oath” of commitment to the unitary state. The PPRI-Permesta regional rebellion and its significant challenge to Sukarno’s unitary state had by now lost its impetus, and Sumpah Pemuda was the symbol which shone over the movement’s defeat: Hanja penjeleweng2 dan pengchianat2 bangsa jang tidak hadir dan tidak bisa hadir memperingati Sumpah Pemuda ini. Semua kita jang hadir ini, bahkan seluruh lapisan rakjat, merasa bergembira dengan peringatan hari Sumpah Pemuda jang ke-30 ini. Demikian Presiden Sukarno dalam amanatnja jang diutjapkan semalam di Istana Negara pada peringatan sumpah Pemuda jang merupakan puntjak dari peringatan2 jg dilakukan seluruh tanah air kita. Presiden Sukarno menjatakan dengan tegas, bahwa kalau ia seperti Achmad Husein, Simbolon, Somba dan Warouw ia akan merebahkan diri didalam hutan dan minta ampun kepada Allah SWT, karena telah mendurhakai kemerdekaan bangsa Indonesia dan mendurhakai sumpah Pemuda jang kramat itu (Merdeka 1958c). Noteworthy here is how the language of 1956 [“penjimpangan dari Sumpah Pemuda”] is now taking on notions of betrayal [“penchianat2”] and deviancy [“penjeleweng2”], and given a spiritual dimension in the powerfully emotive “mendurhakai (S)umpah Pemuda jang kramat itu”. The “unity” embodied in the Sumpah Pemuda is the unity of the post-colonial nation in the face of external threats. PKI Chairman D. N. Aidit, as reported by Harian Rakjat, expressed this sentiment: . . . hikmah jang dapat kita petik dalam memperingati Sumpah Pemuda jalah, bahwa dalam keadaan bagaimanapun dan diatas segala2nja kita adalah satu nasion, tidak peduli apa agama, kejakinan politik dan golongannja. Nasion kita adalah nasion jang berdjuang, anti-imperialisme, patriotik dan demokratis (Aidit 1958). © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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Yamin, now Minister of State with continuing close links to Sukarno, was at the same time linking Sumpah Pemuda to the final undertaking of his political career, the wresting of West Irian from the clutches of Dutch colonialism. Expressing his satisfaction at the contribution made by the threefold oath to the cause of “nation building” in Indonesia, he nevertheless expressed some disappointment that there was still work to be done: Mengenai kurang puas, menurut Yamin terletak pada bidang belum sempurnanja perpaduan Bangsa Indonesia jang unitaristis dan kenjataan Indonesia belum bersifat Raya, sebelum Irian Barat mendjadi tempat berkibarnja bendera Merah Putih (Yamin 1958). A sub-theme of Sukarno’s Hari Sumpah Pemuda speech in 1958 was Sumpah Pemuda as a call to return to an indigenous identity [kepribadian sendiri], an association that might have surprised some of the Dutch-educated youth of 1928, but one that built on the symbolic rejection of the colonial language embodied in the third principle. In 1959, this association between the oath and an assertion of an “Indonesian” identity became the main focus of the occasion. Addressing a crowd of “hundreds of thousands” in Surabaya, Sukarno issued a “command” to the Indonesian people to “return to our own culture, return to our own personality” (Merdeka 1959a). This was specifically intended as an indication that the authority of the state would be directed at combating the pernicious effects of western popular culture [“kebudajaan asing jang gila-gilaan”]. In line with the politics of culture that had been developed in the world of international socialism, and had been embraced by the proponents of a radical cultural politics in Indonesia, this call to “return to our own culture” explicitly allowed for an accommodation with western “high culture”. On the same occasion that Sukarno made the call for a rejection of the “crazy” forms of foreign culture (advising Indonesian parents to stop using Dutch children’s names and diminutives when naming and addressing their offspring), he added that he had no objection to Indonesian youth taking on the “good” elements of western culture. In the President’s view, it was worrying to see the growth of Indonesian band music, adopting English names and remaining infatuated with the “ngak ngik ngok” music of Elvis Presley. Rather Indonesian youth ought to be studying and learning from the music of Beethoven, Bach, Schubert and (even!) Shostakovitch (Merdeka 1959b).16 Thus it is that as the Sumpah Pemuda becomes a part of the ideological apparatus of state and nation in the late Sukarno period, its annual commemorations start to map out the main ideological and political campaigns of Sukarno’s Indonesia. From the anti-regionalism of 1958 and the rejection of western popular culture in 1959, there is a shift in the 1960s towards using the annual commemorations to remind Indonesian youth—and the wider political public—of their role in © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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the implementation of political campaigns designed to assert the greatness of the nation. Thus in 1960, Sukarno sets out to “me-Manipol-Usdek-kan” Hari Sumpah Pemuda (Bintang Timur 1960); in 1961, the spirit of Sumpah Pemuda is invoked in the struggle for West Irian; and in 1963 Sumpah Pemuda is a reminder that the struggle against imperialism must be directed at destroying “Malaysia” (Merdeka 1963). In the words of Bintang Timur’s editorial of 29 October 1963, the essential message of Sumpah Pemuda, “unity” [persatuan] has been raised to the level of “revolutionary” unity. It is a unity of the will, of intention, that places emphasis on the active participation of citizens in shaping the future of the nation. For all Yamin’s attempts during this period to prove an overriding Indonesian essence bequeathed across history from the empires of Srivijaya and Majapahit, the meanings that cluster around Sumpah Pemuda as a symbol of nationhood during this period indicate that the nation was still to be made. It was to be won in the struggle against outside forces and the threat of disintegration, both of which would deny it a future. Decolonisation, as it is conceived in the meanings attached to the Sumpah Pemuda, is an active process, demanding the involvement of citizens at all levels. In 1962, the “proletarian farmers” [tani Marhaen] made their contribution (Merdeka 1962a); in the same year, people of a sub-district of South Sulawesi made the national press with news of their one week’s symbolic adoption of Indonesian in place of their regional language in every aspect of life (Merdeka 1962b). Sumpah Pemuda lent itself to incorporation among the symbols of nationhood because it looked forward, rather than back, denying essentialised notions of unity of race or religion. As the poet Sitor Situmorang commented, in an address to a meeting of the Jakarta branch of the Ikatan Guru Bahasa Indonesia during the commemorations of 1960: . . . oleh karena dasar kesatuan Indonesia bukanlah terletak dalam kesatuan ras, keturunan atau agama, maka setiap warga negara Indonesia jang berbahasa Indonesia dapat turut serta dalam proses pembinaan bahasa dan kebudajaan (Star Weekly 1960). Language was the element above all that indicated that Indonesian unity was not something inherited, but rather something to be acquired, to be developed in the struggle to give birth to the nation state. In this sense, in this underlying conceptualisation of the making of the nation, an historical link to Yamin’s mendjoendjoeng bahasa persatoean of 1928 still existed, however difficult it may sometimes be to recognise that link amid the ideological rhetoric that surrounded the symbol by the early 1960s. The words had changed, and the symbol had become rhetoricised and attached to successive political goals of the Sukarno regime. But just as the hundreds of “young Indonesians” who crowded the Indonesisch Clubgebouw in Jakarta on 28 October 1928 were looking to an as yet © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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unmade future and expressing their determination to be a part of its realisation, so too was the commemoration of Hari Sumpah Pemuda in Sukarno’s Indonesia part of a struggle to transform post-colonial imaginings into political and cultural realities.



THE CORPORATE STATE AND ITS SUBVERSION: S U M PAH PEMUDA IN THE NEW ORDER AND THE ERA OF REFORMATION If the 30th anniversary celebrations of Sumpah Pemuda in 1958 indicated the way in which the 1928 oath had been reconceived within the ideological framework of Sukarno’s Indonesia, the 60th anniversary in 1988 stands as clear testimony to the way this aspect of the Sukarno legacy was completely transformed by Suharto’s “New Order”. The officially-stated theme of the commemorative events ran as follows: Dengan semangat Sumpah Pemuda kita tingkatkan disiplin dan kualitas Generasi Muda Indonesia untuk memantapkan kerangka landasan pembangunan nasional sebagai pengamalan Pancasila (Sekretariat Meneg [1988]). The key words here are those which define the New Order’s ideological emphasis on discipline, stability and development. Central to the formulation is the verb memantapkan (“strengthen”, in the sense of “make stable”), a word that never appeared in the political vocabulary of Sukarnoism, and one that embodies the conservatism and Javanism that by 1988 had become hallmarks of the New Order regime. While the earliest New Order commemorations of Hari Sumpah Pemuda reflected the early New Order usage of Sukarnoist rhetoric, now turned back on the “Old Order” regime itself “marilah kita memberantas G30S dan neokolonialisme” [“let us crush the 30th September movement and neocolonialism”] (Kompas 1965), “Pancasila” very soon came to be the framework for the dissemination of an ideology of corporatism that subordinated the interests of the group to the state-defined national interest. This was the theme of the commemoration of Sumpah Pemuda in 1967 (Kompas 1967), and it continued to be emphasised throughout the early New Order years, as the Sukarnoist emphasis on separate group identity and interests being part of the strength of the national whole gave way to the notion that group interests should be replaced by group function as a service to the organic whole. A clear illustration of the way in which the inherited ideological symbols of nation like the Sumpah Pemuda were consciously transformed during the early New Order period emerges from a comparison of two political cartoons that mark the transition. Figure 1 reproduces a cartoon from Harian Rakjat which accompanied reports of the commemoration of Hari Sumpah Pemuda in 1960. Here, Sumpah Pemuda has become the spirit of a youthful Indonesia, held high amid © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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Figure 1



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the flames of struggle, while the symbols of national unity inflict a blow on the prominent nose of the (Dutch?) imperialist. The New Order cartoon in Figure 2, reproduced from Kompas on 28 October 1968, directly addresses its predecessor, criminalising the “betrayal” of the Sumpah Pemuda by the demon-like figure that represents the actors in Sukarnoist political campaigns. A caption is added to the cartoon to reinforce the notion of “deviancy” in the politics of the “Old Order”: “Alas, how unfortunate to end up changing one’s character after independence”. Yet unintentionally, the New Order cartoon illustrates as well the elision of the external enemy who was the recipient of the power presided over by Sumpah Pemuda in the Harian Rakjat cartoon. Kompas’s Dutchified and middle-aged proclaimer of the “Oath of Youth” shouts off-stage, as it were, his words directed at Figure 2



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no identifiable audience at all. In him, Sumpah Pemuda awaits the purpose it was to acquire by 1988, “raising the discipline and quality” of the current generation of Indonesian youth, in the interests of “making steady the framework” for national development as an experience of the Pancasila. Revolutionary elan and the defeat of the external enemy were to be replaced by internal security, discipline and development. From early in the New Order period, and especially after the Indonesian publishing industry began its booming growth in the mid-1980s, each October saw an explosion of writing about the significance of the Sumpah Pemuda. Governmentsponsored studies of Sumpah Pemuda and its place in Indonesian nationalist history began to emerge from the early 1970s (Lerissa et al. 1989; Dinas Museum dan Sejarah DKI 1973; Yayasan Gedung-Gedung Bersejarah Jakarta 1974; Sutrisno and Kartadamadja 1970), and lengthy anthologies of writing about the Sumpah Pemuda appeared in 1978 and 1981 (Bunga Rampai Sumpah Pemuda 1978; Bakry 1981). National dailies such as Kompas devoted ever more space to articles ruminating on the oath and its significance as the years went on. Some of this writing indicated that Hari Sumpah Pemuda served as an occasion for serious reflections, especially in relation to issues of language and the reality of language use in Indonesia. Marianne Katoppo, for example, wrote perceptively about issues of language and identity in an article of 1980, arising from her experience of the contrasting reception given to phone enquiries in English and Indonesian by international hotels in Jakarta (Katoppo 1980). It was in this context that Ajip Rosidi drew attention to the subject that this present essay is exploring, in his article ‘Sumpah Pemuda yang Berubah’ [‘The Changing Sumpah Pemuda’] of 1977 (Bunga Rampai Sumpah Pemuda, 521–24). A great deal of this writing, however, endlessly repeated the rhetoric of New Order nationalism or elaborated faithfully on aspects of its language standardisation policies. More lively enactments of New Order ideology were to be found in the publication of fictionalised reconstructions of the events of 1928 that had produced the Sumpah Pemuda and Indonesia Raya. An example is B. Sularto’s Dari Kongres Pemuda Indonesia Pertama Ke Sumpah Pemuda (1986) a purportedly historical account of events between the first and second youth congresses of 1926 and 1928, told in fictional form. No indication of sources appears in the text, although it bears the official imprimatur of a foreword by Balai Pustaka. But all the historical actors are present, acting out events and taking decisions with the speech and demeanour of characters in a New Order historical film. Here are Yamin, Tabrani, Jamaludin and Sanusi Pane, discussing a form of the declaration which according to Sularto’s story would have named “Bahasa Melayu” as “bahasa persatuan” in the resolutions of the 1928 congress: Jamaludin cepat membukakan pintu. Sanusi Pane muncul. Ia membawa tas. Wajahnya berkeringat. Setelah mengusapi keringat di wajah dengan saputangan, © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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ia menyalami ketiga orang rekannya. Atas keterlambatannya hadir Sanusi Pane mohon maaf kepada mereka. “Wah, kukira yang mengetuk pintu tadi Tuan Visbeen,” gumam M. Tabrani. Mendengar gumam M. Tabrani itu rekan-rekannya tertawa. Jamaludin setelah menutup pintu kembali memberitahu kepada Sanusi Pane mengenai perkembangan rapat Panita Perumus. Ujarnya pula, “Nah, sekarang ini Mas Yamin sedang menanti pendapat Mas Tabrani.” Jamaludin lalu menoleh ke arah Muhammad Yamin sambil berkata, “Mohon Mas Yamin memberi kesempatan kepada Mas Pane untuk mempelajari naskah rumusan itu.” Muhammad Yamin mengangguk. . . (Sularto 1986, 28). After a tension-filled final session of the congress, in which the young Indonesian nationalists are shown outwitting the Dutch observers of the proceedings, the Sumpah Pemuda is declared, and indeed, it is in the form of Yamin’s original formulation, including “mendjoendjoeng bahasa persatoean, bahasa Indonesia”. In fact, during the New Order period, all known forms of the oath come to be in circulation, from the historically accurate form adopted by Sularto in an otherwise fanciful narrative, to the variety of forms it assumed in nationalist history after 1928. On the one hand, we find the clear historical revisionism of the President’s 1978 speech repeated also in other official and semi-official contexts during the period. Elsewhere, however, the original formula is present, restored to its place in history after apparently remaining virtually unknown, and never publicly quoted, from 1938 until the later New Order years. Academic historians, their version of Indonesian history unwelcome during the period when Yamin was advancing his historical vision of “greater Indonesia”, regained their influence in the educational institutions of the New Order, and by the 1990s, school textbooks were publishing the oath in its original form.17 By the late New Order period, the oath had in fact become so much a part of popular consciousness that it could also be appropriated by critics of the regime and given a subversive turn. At the same time as the 60th anniversary celebrations were setting out to raise the discipline and quality of Indonesian youth, a section of that young generation itself, in the form of tertiary students from a number of institutions in Java, published a manifesto and screen-printed T-shirts, which both contained the words: Kami Mahasiswa Indonesia mengaku bertanah air satu, tanah air tanpa penindasan © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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Kami Mahasiswa Indonesia mengaku berbangsa satu, bangsa yang gandrung akan keadilan Kami Mahasiswa mengaku berbahasa satu, bahasa kebenaran. After just 60 years, the “language of unity” which resulted in miscommunications and misunderstandings among participants in the 1928 youth congress has come to resonate with a sense of self-referential tradition, and its own confident application to a political struggle. In 1928, however, the use of this language marked its speakers off from the colonial authorities, as they signalled a symbolic disengagement with the language of political domination. In 1988, politically active Indonesian students shared a common language with the authorities they addressed, a mark of the success of the struggle embarked on in the 1928 declaration. But now, the use of the exclusivist pronoun kami marked a confrontation with an independent Indonesian state, a division that would have been unimaginable to the 1928 “sons and daughters” of the nation for whom the exclusivist kami was the marker of “we, who are not Dutch”. In 1998, those “sons and daughters of Indonesia” once again played a role in overturning a seemingly stable regime of truth, helping to usher in a period of political transition which called itself the “Era of Reformation”. “Reform” now stood in place of “stability”, and an uneasy rhetoric of diversity and ethnic pluralism began to open up space for a reconfiguring of the concept of national unity. Sumpah Pemuda, a symbol of nation now thoroughly embedded in popular consciousness, stood ready to be turned towards this changed ideological emphasis. Interestingly, for the story we have been pursuing here, a sense of that change was present as President Habibie led the nation in the 70th anniversary commemoration of Hari Sumpah Pemuda in October 1998. In the tradition of past presidential statements marking the occasion, President Habibie’s speech to a gathering of political and military dignatories in Bandung on 28 October 1998 had the character of a state of the nation address. He called for the orderly management of calls for democracy and openness, and for the maintenance of the doctrine of unity between Armed Forces and society as the basis of the nation’s defence and security. By its nature, Hari Sumpah Pemuda also called for an admonition to Indonesian youth, and in this respect, a somewhat hollow echo of 1988 could be heard in the president’s call for youth to improve their “quality” in the interests of the efficient growth of the national economy. (Elsewhere, of course, the “recovery” of the national economy at this time was being seen as requiring an end to “corruption, collusion and nepotism”.) In his review of the events of the previous 70 years, however, Habibie chose a theme that had never before figured in a presidential address of 28 October. Sumpah Pemuda could not but be a reminder of the efficacy of one-ness in the interests of the © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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nation. In 1998, however, national unity was specifically seen as accommodating a commitment to social pluralism: Persatuan dan kesatuan yang dibangun itu tidak pernah dimaksudkan untuk meniadakan kemajemukan masyarakat. Kemajemukan masyarakat sama sekali bukan merupakan kendala atau hambatan bagi persatuan dan kesatuan (Republika Online 1998a). Kemajemukan [plurality] is a word never found in the political vocabulary of Sukarnoism or Suhartoism. In 1998, it stood alongside the New Order rhetoric of “quality” in the interests of “efficient economic development” in the same way that the vocabulary of corporatism emerged alongside reminders of Sukarno’s anti-imperialism in the earliest Sumpah Pemuda commemorations of the New Order period. Once more, we see how the meanings given to Sumpah Pemuda chart the history of the state, as it responds to movements within public political culture. And in 1998, the call for greater openness was part of a widespread rejection of the New Order’s emphasis on conformity, standardisation and centralisation in the interests of a de-centred and localised social and political pluralism. For the first time since the end of the revolution, a public dialogue on federalism became part of the political culture. In this climate, it seemed that even the long-established corruption of the third resolution of 1928, Sumpah Pemuda’s reference to Bahasa Indonesia, might be up for review. In 1995, Ariel Heryanto had published a reflection on Sumpah Pemuda in his regular column for Kompas newspaper, under the title Sumpah Plesetan (Heryanto 1995). Drawing attention to the changing form of the third resolution, Heryanto had speculated that it was perhaps the will to symmetry, rather than any identifiable political motive, that had brought about the change from a choice of words that marked the plurality of Indonesian nationalism in its early stages of development. But in 1998, these comments were taken up in a regional newspaper in an article by a Balinese historian, entitled ‘Menggugat Dominasi Bahasa Indonesia’ [‘Challenging the Domination by Indonesian’] (Wijaya 1998). Here, in line with the spirit of 1998, Nyoman Wijaya suggested that the corruption of the third principle, innocent though its causes might be, in fact was allowed to stand during the New Order period because it was consistent with the New Order’s “single language” policy, the “language engineering which was a feature of the New Order period” [“perekayasaan bahasa yang mengemuka di zaman Orde Baru”]. In Wijaya’s view, the generation of 1928 emerge as nationalists in favour of a “diversity of language and culture” [kebhinekaan bahasa dan budaya]. This formulation might well have surprised Yamin and Sukarno, but it is an indication that history was on the move. As history moves, so the meanings of words, and words themselves, change in its wake.18 © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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Alongside new meanings, however, stand the old. In this case, of course, the “new” is being constructed by a return to origins, while the “old” stands for the meanings constructed in the corruption of memory by recent historical interventions. In a touching illustration of this paradox, another commemorative ceremony of 28 October 1998, held on the site of the 1928 congress in Jakarta, saw a reciting of the oath by an 87-year old woman, described as the last surviving participant in the original meeting.19 In 1928, Johanna Nanap Tumbuan was the 18-year old daughter of a Menadonese coconut planter, a student at the Christelijke MULO in Batavia. As the child of wealthy parents, sent away to school in the colonial capital with a lavish monthly allowance, Johanna became a member of Jong Celebes, and had her political conscience awakened by fellow members’ tales of the miserable lives of the ordinary people of the time. After a career in theatre and social activism in the last decades of Dutch colonialism, she became an academic psychologist, and was still active in her profession at her advanced age in 1998. Her recital of the oath, at the ceremony on 28 October 1998, brought a tremble to the heart of one of those present, who expressed the feeling as follows: ”Saya benar-benar terharu. Hati saya serasa bergetar mendengar ikrar pemuda itu diucapkan langsung oleh Bu Johanna, satu-satunya pelaku peristiwa Sumpah Pemuda yang kini masih hidup” . . . We can appreciate the speaker’s emotion, and the sense of history that the occasion must have evoked. But moving too is the irony of the occasion, because in the newspaper report of the event, the words we are told were recited by Bu Johanna were not in fact those of 1928, but the “mengaku berbahasa satu, Bahasa Indonesia” of later history. The authenticity of the occasion was flawed, but how could it have been otherwise? Seventy years is too long for words to survive unaided in memory; the accretions of tradition become more “real” than forgotten origins. The story of Sumpah Pemuda is perhaps but a footnote to history. The “grand narrative” of twentieth-century Indonesia remains unchallenged by the changes that a form of words undergoes in the space of seventy years, and its incorporation into the symbology of nationhood. Bigger events and greater humanitarian concerns dominate the landscape, but the ongoing and changing relationship between past and present, of which this is a story, remains worthy of our attention. In November 1928, the Surakarta daily Darmokondo published lengthy reports on the events which had taken place during the Congress of Indonesian Youth just completed in Batavia. In a reflection on the question “How essential is the connection between ‘nation’ and ‘language’?”, published on 8 November 1928, the writer of these reports drew on a knowledge of European history to point to the examples of Holland, Belgium and Switzerland to suggest that perhaps linguistic conformity was not a prerequisite for the establishment of a nation. In © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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1928, even the tentativeness of mendjoendjoeng bahasa persatoean was not invested with any sacral meaning. It could be debated and questioned, and alternatives offered. Yet in the intervening years, the spirit of debate was submerged in the construction of the nation and its past, to the extent that in 1998 hearts could be stirred by words that cast the events of 1928 in terms of a conformity they never possessed at their moment of origin. But new connections with the past can also be made. In October 1998, a Balinese intellectual, writing in a newspaper published in Denpasar, could claim a connection to that original moment in support of a different kind of present. In the process, bequeathed truths are re-examined. “Was this ‘traditionalpatrimonial’, ‘layered’, ‘winged’ and ‘twisting’ language we now call Indonesian really the status-free lingua franca bequeathed by a democratically-minded nationalist movement to an independent Indonesia?” asked Nyoman Wijaya in his Bali Post article. “Was it not time to protect the riches of regional traditions from absorption into the monotone uniformity of the ‘one language community’?” History always offers an alternative perspective, and the men and women who make the grand narrative do well to search its footnotes for the voices that go unheard in its present cacophony.



APPENDIX Translations of passages in Indonesian and Dutch quoted in the text: p. 377 Exactly 50 years ago, here in Jakarta, the famous Sumpah Pemuda [Oath of Youth] was born: —(we) declare we are one nation, the Indonesian nation —(we) declare we have one homeland, the Indonesian homeland —(we) declare we have one language, the Indonesian language. p. 378 We sons and daughters of Indonesia uphold (revere) the language of unity, the Indonesian language. p. 380 We sons and daughters of Indonesia declare that we have one birthplace, the land of Indonesia. We sons and daughters of Indonesia declare that we are one nation, the Indonesian nation. We sons and daughters of Indonesia uphold (revere) the language of unity, the Indonesian language. p. 380 The congress leader, the student Soegondo, was quite unequal to the task, and lacked all authority. He tried to speak “the Indonesian language”, but proved only able to express himself in a very defective manner. © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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p. 380–81 The Javanese, Sundanese and others, who must have felt uncomfortable with the proposition that one should give up one’s own language in favour of Malay (“Indonesian”) kept silent and hardly laughed, when the chairman and other speakers showed how far removed from a knowledge of good Malay they were. p. 382 Before I begin my discussion, it seems proper for me to explain why I am not using Dutch or Javanese: this is not at all because I am disparaging those languages or devaluing their worth. Not at all. But whoever among you attended the youth congress in Djacatra (Batavia) a few months ago, or has read the resolutions of that congress will certainly remember its results, that is the desire to be of one nation, the Indonesian nation, to have one homeland, the land of Indonesia, and to uphold the language of unity, the Indonesian language. For that reason, I, as a daughter of Indonesia who was born on this beautiful island of Java, dare to make use of the Indonesian language in front of our own people here. Is this not an Indonesian conference, brought into being by daughters of Indonesia, and intended for all the women and girls of Indonesia, their homeland and nation? p. 383 This third principle in no way devalues or fails to take note of the “culture” of every section of the Indonesian population. On the contrary, it provides the basis for a new culture. And these three bases, the “three principles” are all directed at the same goal, to one great homeland, inhabited by a nation with one origin, able to exchange thoughts in a language in common use here and a part of the language group of our people. p. 385 One Nation—the Indonesian Nation One language—the Indonesian Language One Homeland—the Indonesian Homeland One State—the Indonesian State p. 385 Being one nation = the Indonesian Nation Having one language = the Indonesian Language Having one homeland, that is, the Indonesian Homeland p. 385 . . . surprisingly, that gathering of youth passed a motion the same as the statement issued by the second youth congress in 1928: the Indonesian people are one nation, with one homeland and one language. Only now, the statement was stronger: one Homeland, the Indonesian Homeland, one Nation, the Indonesian Nation, one Language, the Indonesian Language. p. 386 We have one homeland, that is, the Indonesian nation. (sic) (“homeland”?) We are one nation, that is, the Indonesian nation. We have one language, that is, the Indonesian language. © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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p. 389 The President stated that the commemoration of 28 October this time was an “opfressing”, a “freshing up”, a rejuvenation of the unitary spirit which in recent times had been disturbed. The President stated that it was proper that the Sumpah Pemuda should be commemorated, and moreover it should be not every year, but every day, every hour, every minute, every second. Ideological preparation, which is what Sumpah Pemuda is, requires practical implementation, and 17 August 1945 was the beginning of that practical implementation. p. 390 Anyone who goes about resurrecting regionalism and federalism is disloyal to the proclamation of Indonesian independence. Though a thousand times he might profess loyalty to the proclamation of independence, if he sets about resurrecting regionalism and ethnicism, this means he is disloyal to the proclamation of Indonesian independence. This was President Sukarno’s message on the commemoration of Sumpah Pemuda held last night in the State Palace, which attracted enormous interest. p. 390 We Sons and Daughters of Indonesia herewith swear that 1. We sons and daughters of Indonesia acknowledge one homeland, the Indonesian homeland. 2. We sons and daughters of Indonesia acknowledge one nation, the Indonesian nation. 3. We sons and daughters of Indonesia acknowledge one language, the Indonesian language. p. 391 Only deviationists and betrayers of the nation are not present, and cannot be present in this commemoration of Sumpah Pemuda. All of us here present, and in fact the people at every level of society, feel the excitement of this 30th anniversary of the commemoration of Sumpah Pemuda. So spoke President Sukarno in his address last night at the State Palace, which was the climax of the commemorations of Sumpah Pemuda all over our homeland. President Sukarno stated firmly that if he were like Achmad Husein, Simbolon, Somba and Warouw, he would throw himself down in the jungle and beg the forgiveness of Almighty God for having betrayed the independence of the Indonesian nation and betrayed the sacred Sumpah Pemuda. p. 391 . . . the lesson we can draw from the commemoration of Sumpah Pemuda is that whatever the situation might be, and above all else, we are one nation, regardless of religion, political convictions and social group. Our nation is a nation engaged in struggle, anti-imperialist, patriotic and democratic. p. 392 As for his feelings of dissatisfaction, these related, Yamin said, to the still incomplete integration of the Indonesian people as a unitarist nation, and the fact that Greater Indonesia was still not a reality, until the Red and White flew over West Irian. © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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p. 393 . . . because the basis of Indonesian unity did not lie in race, origins or religion, every citizen of Indonesia who spoke Indonesian could participate in the process of creating a language and culture. p. 394 With the spirit of Sumpah Pemuda we raise the discipline and quality of the young generation of Indonesia to strengthen the basis of national development, in the implementation of the Pancasila. p. 397–98 Jamaludin quickly opened the door. Sanusi Pane appeared. He carried a bag. There was perspiration on his face. After wiping the perspiration with a handkerchief, he greeted his three colleagues. He apologised to them for his lateness. “Hey, I thought it was Tuan Visbeen at the door,” muttered M. Tabrani, raising a laugh among his colleagues. After closing the door, Jamaludin told Sanusi Pane about developments at the meeting of the committee working on the formulations. He went on, “Well, now Mas Yamin is awaiting Mas Tabrani’s opinion”. Jamaludin then turned towards Mohammad Yamin, saying, “Mas Yamin, could I ask you to give Mas Pane the opportunity to study the text of the formulations?” Muhammad Yamin nodded. . . . p. 398–99 We Indonesian students declare that we have one homeland, a homeland free of oppression. We Indonesian students declare that we are one nation, a nation devoted to justice. We Indonesian students declare that we have one language, the language of truth. p. 400 The unity and one-ness we are building is never intended to deny the plurality of our society. Social plurality in no way represents a restriction of or an obstacle to unity and one-ness. p. 401 “I was really moved. I felt my heart tremble when I heard the youth charter spoken directly by Bu Johanna, the only surviving actor from the Sumpah Pemuda events” . . .



NOTES 1



I wish to acknowledge the support provided for this project by the University Research Grants Scheme at the University of Sydney, and the work of Iskandar P. Nugroho, who, as research assistant to the project, contributed an extraordinary level of energy, insight and skill in the collection of much of the primary source material on which this essay is based. 2 Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia 1978, 12. For English translations of quotations used in the text see the Appendix. 3 For reference to the distinction between the original formulation and the later forms of the oath, see Quinn 1992, 273; Rosidi 1978, 520–24 and Heryanto 1995. (The latter two references are discussed below.) It is no accident that all three of these authors are in one way or another © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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champions of the regional or local, as against the hegemonic power of the Indonesian centre. 4 For a good summary of the development of Indonesian nationalism in the 1920s see M. C. Ricklefs 1981, 172–77. 5 Noted in the report by the Adviser for Native Affairs to the Governor-General of the Netherlands Indies, ‘Het eerst Indonesisch Jeugdcongres’ (No. 344 Bijlage 1). 6 Report by the Adviser for Native Affairs to the Governor-General of the Netherlands Indies, Weltevreden, 3 November 1928 No. J/302 (Geheim Eigenhandig). (My thanks to Paul Tickell for raising the question of whether the issue here is the failure of Soegondo (and others) to use “good” (i.e., Balai Poestaka) Malay, rather than another type of Malay, which Van der Plas would have regarded as “inappropriate”. It does appear, however, that a number of miscommunications took place during the congress proceedings, which would suggest that the issue was not the variant of Malay, but communicative competence.) 7 Darmokondo’s full report of the Congress proceedings, the most complete record available, is included in Zainoel and Soeharto 1981, 139–58. 8 It may well be thought that it is the more widespread use of Indonesian, rather than the “interventions of other, and later, nationalists” that makes the transition to “one language” possible. As the next section will indicate, however, the move was primarily ideological, rather than socio-linguistic, and began to be put in place before the end of the colonial period, when the use of Indonesian remained limited to an urban-based nationalist elite. 9 An indication that this unitary formula was not only to be found in conference resolutions by this time lies in the currency of the popular revolutionary song Satu Nusa, Satu Bangsa, which complemented the words of its title by including “satu bahasa” in its opening stanza: Satu nusa satu bangsa/Satu bahasa kita/Tanah air pasti djaja/Untuk selama2nja. For an indication that the song had acquired popular status by the end of the revolution, see Kusbini 1966. 10 As the title of his 1949 essay suggests, Armijn saw the key struggle at this time not as the movement towards a unitary state, but a unitary Indonesian culture, regardless of what form the independent state of Indonesia was to take. 11 Papers presented to the congress included Sanusi Pane, Sedjarah Bahasa Indonesia, Ki Hadjar Dewantara, Bahasa Indonesia di dalam Pergoeroean, Jamaluddin Adi Negoro, Bahasa Indonesia di dalam Persoeratkabaran, S. Takdir Alisjahbana, Pembaharoean Bahasa dan Oesaha Mengatoernja and K. St. Pemoentjak, Dalil-Dalil tentang Hal Edjaan Bahasa Indonesia. 12 Another report of the 1938 language congress also made mention of the oath, in the form used by Tabrani: “Wij marcheeren thans verder, in ons dragende de trilogie: Kita bertanah-toempah darah satoe—tanah toempah darah Indonesia; Kita berbangsa satoe—bangsa Indonesia; Kita berbahasa satoe—bahasa Indonesia!!” (Bangoen 1939). It is interesting to note that the original, 1928 formulation avoided the irony present in this Dutch-language report. 13 Supratman and a companion played the tune of his composition on violin and guitar at the closing session of the congress. After great applause and calls for the words to be sung as well, Supratman sang the anthem to guitar accompaniment. Van der Plas found nothing remarkable about the song, “with its banal European melody and doggerel rhyme, the epitome of degeneration of good taste, yet politically harmless” [“met zijn banale Europeesche melodie en kreupelrijm een toonbeeld van verwording van den smaak doch politiek ongevaarlijk; . . .”]. See Kwantes 1981, 177–78. 14 See for example Harian Rakjat 1952, 1953 and Mimbar Indonesia 1953. 15 John Hoffman himself describes the process by which Malay emerged as the “language of Indonesia” in Hoffman 1979. © Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.



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16



In the published version of the speech, issued by the Department of Information, “Shostakovitch” is replaced by “Iwanovichi”, “Toselli” and “Braga”, obscure names that perhaps reflect Soviet orthodoxy at a time when Shostakovitch had fallen into disfavour with the guardians of Soviet socialist art. (I am grateful to Adrian Vickers, who provided me with a copy of the published speech, and to Michael Bodden, who has drawn attention to the “nativist” tendencies in Sukarno’s thinking about culture at this time. As the references to western “high culture” indicate, the nativist tendencies of this period appear to be tempered—in complicated ways— by a conservative, Leninist-derived approach to the achievements of western art. Out of political considerations, the nativist assertion also, of course, sidesteps any reference to Islam, which restricts its potential to develop a widespread or popular base.) 17 See for example Badrika 1995. This contrasts with a comparable publication from 1965, Sedjarah Perdjuangan Pemuda Indonesia, issued by the Department of Information, Education and Culture through Balai Pustaka, which in the guise of historical accuracy names the third resolution of 1928 as “Kita putera dan puteri Indonesia berbahasa satu, bahasa Indonesia” (55). 18 This essay was completed in early 1999. By the time of the 1999 Sumpah Pemuda commemorations, however, the processes identified here had been accelerated. The 29 October 1999 Kompas cartoon contained a revealing (even if tongue-in-cheek) suggestion that regionalism, rather than the unitary state, was now the proper focus of celebration. (I thank Nick Herriman for drawing this cartoon to my attention.) 19 The following description of the occasion is taken from Republika Online 1998b.



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© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.