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

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, home-
land 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 standard-
isation. 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 con-
gress, 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.
378 Keith Foulcher
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 regionally-
based cultural nationalist youth organisations and the more radical, unitary political
nationalism that emanated from the Perhimpunan Indonesia and found the begin-
nings 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 Dutch-
educated 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.

Sumpah Pemuda: The Making and Meaning of a Symbol of Indonesian Nationhood 379
western cultural norms, including notions of political independence and nation-

hood. 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 identi-
fication 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 con-
ceiving 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 post-
independence 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 move-
ment 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 Indon-
esian 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 nation-
alism. 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

380 Keith Foulcher
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 inter-
esting 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 con-
fusion 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,

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 environ-
ment 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 formu-
lation 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 con-
tain 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 unremark-
ably (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

382 Keith Foulcher
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 terang-
kan 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 Indon-
esia, 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 intel-
lectual world (her “second mother tongue” [Groeneboer 1993, 417]) for a lan-
guage 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 enun-
ciated in Yamin’s resolutions, a unitary nationalist youth movement with a vision
of an independent Indonesian nation.

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. Repre-
sentatives 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 “Indon-
esian” 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 memper-
hatikan keboedajaan (cultuur) tiap-tiap bagian pendoedoek Indonesia, melain-
kan 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 pre-
1928 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

384 Keith Foulcher
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 para-
graph 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, declar-
ing 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 Dutch-
controlled 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

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 uni-
tary 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 Indon-
esia 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).

386 Keith Foulcher
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 propon-
ent and perceptive analyst of the emerging unitary modern Indonesian culture
throughout the 1930s and beyond.10 That he held the “berbahasa satu” formu-
lation 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 con-
gress 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 op-
position 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

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 signifi-
cantly, 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 leader-
ship 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 inten-
tion 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 polit-
ical 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

388 Keith Foulcher
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 satisfac-
tion 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 home-
land 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 recon-
figured in a way that deems it to be a founding moment of nation and national

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 commem-
orative 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, memer-
lukan 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 repre-
sented a “reincarnation” of Bahasa Indonesia from an earlier existence in the
Indonesian past (rather than the renaming of Malay as the “language of Indon-
esia”). 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.

390 Keith Foulcher
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 prokla-
masi 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

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 lan-
guage. 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 pro-
gressivist 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 chal-
lenge 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).

392 Keith Foulcher
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 sempurn-
anja 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 worry-
ing 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

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 con-
tribution (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 nation-
hood 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 sur-
rounded 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

394 Keith Foulcher
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 accom-
panied reports of the commemoration of Hari Sumpah Pemuda in 1960. Here,
Sumpah Pemuda has become the spirit of a youthful Indonesia, held high amid

Figure 1

396 Keith Foulcher
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 pro-
claimer of the “Oath of Youth” shouts off-stage, as it were, his words directed at
Figure 2

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, dis-
cipline and development.
From early in the New Order period, and especially after the Indonesian pub-
lishing industry began its booming growth in the mid-1980s, each October saw an
explosion of writing about the significance of the Sumpah Pemuda. Government-
sponsored 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 rumin-
ating 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 reconstruc-
tions 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,

398 Keith Foulcher
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 other-
wise 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

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 applica-
tion 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 disengage-
ment with the language of political domination. In 1988, politically active Indon-
esian 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 plural-
ism 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 con-
sciousness, 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 com-
memoration 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

400 Keith Foulcher
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, inno-
cent 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

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 inter-
ventions. 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 occas-
ion 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 incorpora-
tion 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 atten-
tion. 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

402 Keith Foulcher
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 ‘traditional-
patrimonial’, ‘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.

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 confer-
ence, 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.

404 Keith Foulcher
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 imple-
mentation, 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 pro-
clamation 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 home-
land.
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 con-
victions 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 inte-
gration 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.

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

406 Keith Foulcher
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 Nether-
lands 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 miscom-
munications 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 move-
ment 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 Indon-
esia 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 formu-
lation 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 remark-
able 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.

16
In the published version of the speech, issued by the Department of Information, “Shosta-
kovitch” 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 pub-
lished 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 polit-
ical 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 commem-
orations, 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 Review.

S U M PAH PEMUDA: THE MAKING

One of the most familiar markers of twentieth-century Indonesian nationalist

Kami poetera dan poeteri Indonesia mendjoendjoeng bahasa persatoean, bahasa

OCTOBER 1928 AND THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

western cultural norms, including notions of political independence and nation-

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

zwegen en lachtten (sic) nauwelijks, waneer de voorzitter en anders sprekers bewezen,

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

A tension between what were to become the “national” and “regional”

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

THE “STRUGGLE SLOGAN” OF REVOLUTIONARY YOUTH

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

manifesto which contained among its resolutions a “Struggle Slogan” [“Sembojan

Satu Bangsa—Bangsa Indonesia

Berbangsa satu = Bangsa Indonesia

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

It is interesting to observe the indication here that by 1949 historical memory

Kita bertoempah tanah (sic) satoe, jaitoe bangsa (sic) Indonesia.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

SUKARNO, YAMIN AND THE BIRTH

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

Siapa jang meng-hidup2kan kedaerahan dan federalisme, maka ia tidak setia

Demikianlah amanat Presiden Sukarno pada malam peringatan hari sumpah

Kami Pemuda-Pemuda Indonesia dengan ini bersumpah bahwa:

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

Demikian Presiden Sukarno dalam amanatnja jang diutjapkan semalam di

Presiden Sukarno menjatakan dengan tegas, bahwa kalau ia seperti Achmad

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

the implementation of political campaigns designed to assert the greatness of

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

unmade future and expressing their determination to be a part of its realisation, so

THE CORPORATE STATE AND ITS SUBVERSION:

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

Jamaludin cepat membukakan pintu. Sanusi Pane muncul. Ia membawa tas.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

ia menyalami ketiga orang rekannya. Atas keterlambatannya hadir Sanusi Pane

Jamaludin setelah menutup pintu kembali memberitahu kepada Sanusi Pane

Jamaludin lalu menoleh ke arah Muhammad Yamin sambil berkata, “Mohon

Muhammad Yamin mengangguk. . . (Sularto 1986, 28).

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

Kami Mahasiswa Indonesia mengaku berbangsa satu, bangsa yang gandrung

Kami Mahasiswa mengaku berbahasa satu, bahasa kebenaran.

After just 60 years, the “language of unity” which resulted in miscommunications

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

nation. In 1998, however, national unity was specifically seen as accommodating

Kemajemukan [plurality] is a word never found in the political vocabulary of

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

Translations of passages in Indonesian and Dutch quoted in the text:

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.

© Asian Studies Association of Australia 2000.