Sukarno

Kusno Sosrodihardjo (June 6, 1901, Surabaya - June 21, 1970, Jakarta) mostly known as Sukarno ( /suːˈkɑrn oʊ/), was an Indonesian politician, nationalist and revolutionary and the first president of the Republic of Indonesia (1945-1967) after the independence of the archipelago.

Sukarno was the leader of the Indonesian struggle for independence from Dutch colonialism. He was a prominent leader of the Indonesian nationalist movement during the colonial period and spent more than a decade in Dutch detention until he was liberated by invading Japanese forces in World War II. Sukarno and his fellow nationalists collaborated to rally public support for the Japanese war effort, in exchange for Japanese help in spreading his nationalist ideas. Following the Japanese surrender, Sukarno and Muhammad Hatta declared Indonesian independence on August 17, 1945, and Sukarno was named president. He led Indonesians in resisting Dutch recolonization efforts by diplomatic and military means until the Dutch recognition of Indonesian independence in 1949. Author Pramoedya Ananta Toer once wrote: 'Sukarno was the only Asian leader of the modern age capable of unifying people of such different ethnic, cultural and religious origins without spilling a drop of blood".

After a chaotic period of parliamentary democracy, Sukarno established in 1959 an autocratic system called "Guided Democracy" that successfully ended the instability and rebellions that threatened the survival of the diverse and wayward country. In the early 1960s, Sukarno turned Indonesia to the left by providing support and protection for the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), much to the irritation of the military and Islamists. He also embarked on a series of aggressive foreign policies under the rubric of anti-imperialism, with help from the Soviet Union and China. The failure of the September 30 Movement in 1965 led to the destruction of the PKI by the Army and allied militias, supported from Western nations, including the United States and the United Kingdom, with executions of its members and sympathizers in several massacres, with an estimated number of 500,000 to 1,000,000 dead. He was replaced in 1967 by one of his generals, Suharto, and remained under house arrest until his death in 1970.

Name

The name derives from a hero of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, Karna. His father being from Indonesia drew inspiration from Indian historical heroes and Hindu culture and was deeply influenced by Karna who he named his son as Sukarno. His(good)+ Karna or "The good Karna". Karna was a main hero of the great epic Mahabharata and Sukarno's father projected him to grow up as a brave person like Karna, become Daanveer to his subjects, savior or messiah to his people and a king like Karna. The spelling Soekarno, based on Dutch orthography, is still in frequent use, mainly because it signed with the old spelling. Sukarno himself insisted on writing with "u", not "oe," but said that he had been told at school to use the Dutch style and that, after 50 years, it was too difficult to change his signature, so he continued to write his signature with "oe". However, official Indonesian presidential decrees from the period 1947-1968 printed his name in the 1947 spelling. Soekarno International Airport -Hatta, which serves the area near the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, continues to use the Dutch spelling.

Indonesians also remember him as Bung Karno (Brother/Comrade Karno) or Pak Karno (& #34;Mr. Karno"). Like many Javanese, he had only one name.

He is sometimes known abroad as "Achmed Sukarno", or some variant thereof. The fictitious name may have been added by Western journalists mistaken for someone with only one name, or by Indonesian independence supporters to garner support from Muslim countries. Foreign Ministry source later revealed, " Achmed" (later, spelled as "Ahmad" or "Ahmed" by Arab states and other foreign states press) was coined by M. Zein Hassan, an Indonesian student at the University of Al -Azhar and later a staff member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to establish Soekarno's identity as a Muslim to the Egyptian press, following a brief controversy at the time in Egypt claiming that Sukarno's name was 'not Muslim enough' #3. 4;. After adopting the name 'Achmed', Muslim and Arab states freely supported Sukarno. Thus, in correspondence with the Middle East, Sukarno always signed himself as "Achmed Soekarno"."

Early Years

Early years and education

Early Years

Sukarno with his father, Raden Soekemi Sosrodihardjo

Sukarno with her mother, Ida Ayu Nyoman Rai

The son of a Javanese elementary school teacher, an aristocrat named Raden Soekemi Sosrodihardjo, and his Balinese Hindu wife of Brahmin family named Ida Ayu Nyoman Rai of Buleleng, Sukarno was born in Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia), where his father had been sent following a transfer request to Java. He was originally called Kusno Sosrodihardjo' Following Javanese custom, he was renamed after surviving a childhood illness.

Education

After graduating from a native primary school in 1912, he was sent to the Europeesche Lagere School (a Dutch primary school) in Mojokerto. Later, in 1916, Sukarno went to a Hogere Burgerschool (a Dutch-type upper secondary school) in Surabaya, where he met Tjokroaminoto , a nationalist and founder of Sarekat Islam. In 1920, Sukarno married Tjokroaminoto's daughter, Siti Oetari. In 1921, he began studying civil engineering (with a specialization in architecture) at the Technische Hoogeschool te Bandoeng (Bandoeng Institute of Technology), where he obtained the title of Ingenieur (abbreviated as "ir. ", a Dutch-type engineering degree) in 1926. During his studies in Bandung, Sukarno was romantically involved with Inggit Garnasih, the wife of Sanoesi, the owner of the boardinghouse where he lived as a student. Inggit was thirteen years older than Sukarno. In March 1923, Sukarno divorced Siti Oetari to marry Inggit (who also divorced her husband Sanoesi). Subsequently, Sukarno divorced Inggit and married Fatmawati.

Sukarno was fluent in several languages, a rarity even among the country's small educated elite. In addition to his childhood Javanese, he was fluent in Sundanese, Balinese, and Indonesian, and was especially proficient in Dutch. He was also fluent in German, English, French, Arabic and Japanese, all of which were taught at his HBS. He was helped by his photographic memory and precocious mind.

In his studies, Sukarno was "intensely modern," both in architecture and politics. He so despised traditional Javanese feudalism, which he considered "backward"; and guilty of the country's fall under Dutch occupation and exploitation, like the imperialism practiced by Western countries, which he described as "exploitation of humans by other humans"; (exploitation de l'homme par l'homme). He blamed this on the deep poverty and low levels of education of Indonesians under the Dutch. To foster nationalist pride among Indonesians, Sukarno interpreted these ideas in his dress, in his urban planning of the capital (eventually Jakarta), and in his socialist politics, though he did not extend his taste for modern art to pop music; he had Koes Bersaudara imprisoned for his supposedly decadent lyrics despite his reputation as a womanizer. For Sukarno, modernity was race-blind, neat and elegant in style, and anti-imperialist.

Architecture Career

Sukarno & Anwari

After graduating in 1926, Sukarno and his college friend Anwari founded the architectural firm Sukarno & Anwari in Bandung, which offered planning and contracting services. Notable among Sukarno's architectural works is the renovated building of the Preanger Hotel (1929), where he acted as an assistant to the famous Dutch architect Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker. Sukarno also designed many private houses at present-day Jalan Gatot Subroto, Jalan Palasari, and Jalan Dewi Sartika in Bandung. Later, as president, Sukarno continued to pursue architecture, designing the Proclamation Monument and the adjacent Gedung Pola in Jakarta; the Youth Monument (Tugu Muda) in Semarang; the Alun-alun Monument in Malang; the Heroes Monument in Surabaya; and also the new city of Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan.

Biography

Sukarno was the son of a Javanese schoolteacher and his Balinese wife from Buleleng. He was born in Surabaya, a city in East Java, in the former Dutch East Indies, although he spent his childhood in different places like Mojokerto, Tulungagung and Blitar. When his father took him back to Surabaya in 1916 to attend a secondary school, he met Tjokroaminoto, a future independentista. In 1921 he began studying at the Technische Hogeschool (Bandung Higher Technical School), graduating in 1925. He studied civil engineering and focused on architecture, with which he guided his life.

In 1927 he founded the Indonesian National Party. He was arrested in 1929 by the colonial authorities of the Netherlands and in 1931 he was released. In 1939 he was exiled to the island of Sumatra, from which he was liberated by the Japanese after the island was invaded in 1942 during World War II. At the end of this, on August 17, 1945, he proclaimed the independence of Indonesia. He led the war against the Netherlands until they recognized the country's independence in 1949. In addition, he was the one who devised the philosophy and ideology of the new state with pancasila.

Sukarno established an authoritarian system in which, through extravagant measures, he tried to find a balance between the various political and social forces with a presence (army, extreme right, communist party, etc). He instituted managed democracy in 1959. His nationalist stance led him to oppose the creation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 and withdraw Indonesia from the UN in 1965.

He visited Yugoslavia, France, the Soviet Union, Mexico, Cuba, the United States, Italy, China, and Japan.

General Suharto faced with the progressive growth of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), which had the tactical support of Sukarno; and after the failed coup attempt on September 30, 1965 by the PKI, he was the main architect of the massacre in Indonesia of 1965-1966, which killed more than 500,000 sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party, as well as as well as other groups such as Hindus, Christians, some moderate Muslims or the Chinese minority. Following this massacre, the PKI, the world's third largest communist party in the 1960s, was virtually eradicated; Suharto forced Sukarno to hand over power to him in March 1966; and finally succeeded him as president in 1967. Killings of communists continued in some parts of the country until 1967, and Suharto's repression continued in the years after. Sukarno lived in isolation and under house arrest until his death in Jakarta on June 21, 1970.