WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.259 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are 00:00:02.259 --> 00:00:05.259 opening up a file that honestly reads less like 00:00:05.259 --> 00:00:07.580 a political biography and more like a national 00:00:07.580 --> 00:00:09.460 myth. It really does. We're looking at a man 00:00:09.460 --> 00:00:12.039 who didn't just, you know, lead a country. He 00:00:12.039 --> 00:00:14.359 essentially conjured one into existence. Right. 00:00:14.439 --> 00:00:17.079 Out of sheer will, a whole lot of speeches and 00:00:17.079 --> 00:00:20.179 just thin air, it feels like. It sounds like 00:00:20.179 --> 00:00:22.239 an exaggeration, but it's almost literally true. 00:00:22.460 --> 00:00:24.219 I mean, think about it. You've got an archipelago 00:00:24.219 --> 00:00:28.739 with over 17 ,000 islands. 17 ,000. Hundreds 00:00:28.739 --> 00:00:31.500 of different ethnic groups, languages that have 00:00:31.500 --> 00:00:34.460 almost nothing in common. And this one figure 00:00:34.460 --> 00:00:37.219 somehow welds them all into a single identity. 00:00:37.500 --> 00:00:40.179 We are, of course, talking about Sukarno, the 00:00:40.179 --> 00:00:42.799 founding father of Indonesia. And looking at 00:00:42.799 --> 00:00:45.859 this massive stack of documents you've pulled 00:00:45.859 --> 00:00:48.399 together, intelligence reports, personal diaries, 00:00:48.420 --> 00:00:50.939 speech. transcripts, even architectural blueprints. 00:00:51.060 --> 00:00:53.340 It's clear this wasn't just a politician. Oh, 00:00:53.359 --> 00:00:56.100 not at all. He was a civil engineer, a revolutionary, 00:00:56.619 --> 00:01:00.259 a well, a notorious playboy, a political prisoner 00:01:00.259 --> 00:01:03.439 and eventually a president for life. A president 00:01:03.439 --> 00:01:06.659 for life who then dies under house arrest. That 00:01:06.659 --> 00:01:09.019 whole trajectory is just unbelievable. And that 00:01:09.019 --> 00:01:11.060 arc from the palace right back to the prison. 00:01:11.239 --> 00:01:13.560 That's the heart of this story. He's often called 00:01:13.560 --> 00:01:17.379 the father of Indonesia or. Bung Karno. Brother 00:01:17.379 --> 00:01:20.120 Karno. Exactly. And that nickname is so important. 00:01:20.200 --> 00:01:23.640 It suggests this intimacy. He wasn't some distant 00:01:23.640 --> 00:01:26.579 king on a throne. He was the people's brother. 00:01:27.340 --> 00:01:31.079 But as we're going to see, being a brother and 00:01:31.079 --> 00:01:34.239 being a competent head of state are two very, 00:01:34.239 --> 00:01:36.159 very different things. So the mission for this 00:01:36.159 --> 00:01:39.040 deep dive is, I think, pretty specific. We want 00:01:39.040 --> 00:01:41.579 to understand how he did it. How does one person 00:01:41.579 --> 00:01:43.900 use theater, language, and even architecture 00:01:43.900 --> 00:01:46.519 to build the Republic of Indonesia? And then 00:01:46.519 --> 00:01:48.980 the flip side of that coin, why did this incredible 00:01:48.980 --> 00:01:52.000 house he built eventually just collapse on top 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:53.739 of him? To understand the collapse, you have 00:01:53.739 --> 00:01:55.900 to look at the foundation. Yeah. And with Sukarno, 00:01:55.900 --> 00:01:57.819 the foundation is all about identity. He was 00:01:57.819 --> 00:01:59.799 obsessed with it. Completely, starting with his 00:01:59.799 --> 00:02:01.640 own. Let's start right there, because even his 00:02:01.640 --> 00:02:03.560 name is a construction. Yeah. I was looking through 00:02:03.560 --> 00:02:06.239 the early biographical notes. He wasn't actually 00:02:06.239 --> 00:02:09.400 born Sukarno, was he? No, not at all. He was 00:02:09.400 --> 00:02:12.400 born in 1901 in East Java, and his given name 00:02:12.400 --> 00:02:16.780 was Quesno Sosro de Harjo. Quesno. Right. But 00:02:16.780 --> 00:02:19.620 he was an incredibly sickly child. I mean, he 00:02:19.620 --> 00:02:23.000 was constantly suffering from malaria, dysentery, 00:02:23.159 --> 00:02:25.719 fevers. And you have to understand the Javanese 00:02:25.719 --> 00:02:28.300 cultural context here. Okay. In Javanese mysticism, 00:02:28.500 --> 00:02:32.240 there's this deeply held belief that a name carries. 00:02:33.039 --> 00:02:35.039 Well, it carries weight. Spiritual weight. Exactly. 00:02:35.219 --> 00:02:37.840 And if a name is too heavy for a child's spirit 00:02:37.840 --> 00:02:40.620 to carry, the child gets sick. The name is literally 00:02:40.620 --> 00:02:43.780 crushing them. So his parents performed a ritual. 00:02:43.979 --> 00:02:46.199 A renaming ceremony. To save his life. They called 00:02:46.199 --> 00:02:48.819 him Sukano, naming him after Karna, who is a 00:02:48.819 --> 00:02:51.139 major warrior hero from the Mahabharata epic. 00:02:51.259 --> 00:02:53.740 Wow. I mean, that's not a small choice. The Mahabharata 00:02:53.740 --> 00:02:55.740 is a cornerstone of the culture in that part 00:02:55.740 --> 00:02:58.020 of the world. It's huge. And Karna is a very 00:02:58.020 --> 00:03:00.599 complex, very tragic figure in that story. He's 00:03:00.599 --> 00:03:03.669 powerful. He's loyal. But he's also fated to 00:03:03.669 --> 00:03:06.610 be on the losing side. He fights for the antagonists 00:03:06.610 --> 00:03:08.750 out of a sense of duty, even knowing it's a lost 00:03:08.750 --> 00:03:11.150 cause. It's almost like a self -fulfilling prophecy 00:03:11.150 --> 00:03:13.810 for Sukarno's own life. You can absolutely read 00:03:13.810 --> 00:03:16.110 it that way. It's uncanny. Something else I noticed 00:03:16.110 --> 00:03:18.610 in the Dutch intelligence files you included. 00:03:18.810 --> 00:03:23.289 His name is spelled S -O -E -K -A -R -N -O. But 00:03:23.289 --> 00:03:26.389 later on, it's the modern U. Ah, right. That's 00:03:26.389 --> 00:03:29.490 just the old Dutch orthography. The O makes a 00:03:29.490 --> 00:03:33.000 U sound in Dutch. Later in his life as president, 00:03:33.219 --> 00:03:36.439 Sukarno actually pushed to modernize the spelling 00:03:36.439 --> 00:03:38.599 of the entire Indonesian language to sort of 00:03:38.599 --> 00:03:41.599 decolonize it. So he changed the spelling for 00:03:41.599 --> 00:03:44.139 everyone else. Yes, but, and this is a fantastic 00:03:44.139 --> 00:03:46.659 little character detail, he kept the depth spelling 00:03:46.659 --> 00:03:49.960 for his own signature. No way. Why? He just claimed 00:03:49.960 --> 00:03:51.900 he was too old and too used to it to change how 00:03:51.900 --> 00:03:54.419 he signed his name. So he's literally the embodiment 00:03:54.419 --> 00:03:57.759 of that transition. A modern nation, but he's 00:03:57.759 --> 00:04:00.000 signing his documents with a colonial pen. It's 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:01.879 a perfect metaphor. Speaking of names, I have 00:04:01.879 --> 00:04:04.300 to ask about Ahmed. I saw it in several Western 00:04:04.300 --> 00:04:07.840 diplomatic cables. Ahmed Sukarno. But that's 00:04:07.840 --> 00:04:10.259 not his name at all. It's a pure invention, a 00:04:10.259 --> 00:04:12.979 total fabrication. See, Javanese people often 00:04:12.979 --> 00:04:15.240 just have one name. There's no first name, last 00:04:15.240 --> 00:04:16.939 name system like we have in the West. And that 00:04:16.939 --> 00:04:19.360 just broke the brains of Western bureaucrats. 00:04:19.480 --> 00:04:21.839 It absolutely did. They couldn't handle a blank 00:04:21.839 --> 00:04:24.790 space on a form. It just it didn't compute. So 00:04:24.790 --> 00:04:26.290 they just gave him one? Pretty much. And the 00:04:26.290 --> 00:04:27.709 story goes that when he was visiting the Middle 00:04:27.709 --> 00:04:30.910 East, an Indonesian student just added Ahmed 00:04:30.910 --> 00:04:33.629 to his press materials to make him sound more 00:04:33.629 --> 00:04:36.509 authentically Muslim to the Arab world, you know, 00:04:36.509 --> 00:04:38.889 to build support for the new republic. And Sukarno 00:04:38.889 --> 00:04:42.040 just... Went with it. He leaned into it. It shows 00:04:42.040 --> 00:04:44.560 you how adaptable he was. If the Middle East 00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:46.779 needed a Muslim brother, fine, he was Ahmed. 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:50.079 If the West needed a refined, Dutch -educated 00:04:50.079 --> 00:04:52.600 intellectual, he could be that too. He was a 00:04:52.600 --> 00:04:54.959 chameleon. He became whatever the audience needed 00:04:54.959 --> 00:04:57.459 him to be. Let's talk about that education. Because 00:04:57.459 --> 00:05:00.079 for a native, as the Dutch would have called 00:05:00.079 --> 00:05:03.920 him, in the 1920s, his background was incredibly 00:05:03.920 --> 00:05:07.139 rare. It was statistically improbable. His father 00:05:07.139 --> 00:05:10.269 was a Javanese aristocrat. a muslim and his mother 00:05:10.269 --> 00:05:13.250 was from a balinese noble family and she was 00:05:13.250 --> 00:05:16.610 hindu so right there in his own dna he's a living 00:05:16.610 --> 00:05:18.949 bridge between the two dominant cultures of the 00:05:18.949 --> 00:05:21.970 archipelago exactly but his education was thoroughly 00:05:21.970 --> 00:05:24.589 western he somehow managed to get into the hosier 00:05:24.589 --> 00:05:27.410 burger school a dutch high school which was effectively 00:05:27.410 --> 00:05:30.209 segregated highly he was one of just a handful 00:05:30.209 --> 00:05:32.750 of non -europeans and this is where he masters 00:05:32.750 --> 00:05:35.649 the tools of his oppressor he becomes a polyglot 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:38.220 We're talking Japanese, Sundanese, Balinese, 00:05:38.399 --> 00:05:41.540 Indonesian, Dutch, German, English, French, Arabic 00:05:41.540 --> 00:05:44.699 and later Japanese. I'm looking at a note here 00:05:44.699 --> 00:05:47.480 from one of the reports. It says he had a photographic 00:05:47.480 --> 00:05:51.139 memory. He had a truly precocious mind and he 00:05:51.139 --> 00:05:53.079 didn't just learn the languages. He devoured 00:05:53.079 --> 00:05:55.420 Western political theory. He's reading Marx, 00:05:55.680 --> 00:05:59.050 Jefferson, Rousseau, Lincoln. all in their original 00:05:59.050 --> 00:06:01.589 languages. Wow. So he could quote the American 00:06:01.589 --> 00:06:03.610 Declaration of Independence and then turn around 00:06:03.610 --> 00:06:06.310 and quote Das Kapital in the same breath. This 00:06:06.310 --> 00:06:08.449 gave him a massive psychological advantage later 00:06:08.449 --> 00:06:11.870 on because he often knew the Dutch colonial administrators 00:06:11.870 --> 00:06:14.709 own history and laws better than they did. And 00:06:14.709 --> 00:06:17.050 all this time, he's not studying political science. 00:06:17.209 --> 00:06:20.009 He's studying to be an engineer. A civil engineer 00:06:20.009 --> 00:06:23.329 and an architect at the Bandum Institute of Technology. 00:06:23.629 --> 00:06:25.889 And this is the key metaphor for his entire life. 00:06:26.509 --> 00:06:28.910 Sukarno approached nation building as an architect. 00:06:29.189 --> 00:06:31.930 He wasn't just managing a country. He was designing 00:06:31.930 --> 00:06:34.350 it. He actually ran an architecture firm for 00:06:34.350 --> 00:06:37.129 a while. He did before politics completely took 00:06:37.129 --> 00:06:39.850 over. He helped renovate the famous Preanger 00:06:39.850 --> 00:06:43.649 Hotel in Bandung, designed private houses. And 00:06:43.649 --> 00:06:46.129 you can see that obsession. later when he's president, 00:06:46.290 --> 00:06:49.569 the National Monument, that massive Jalora Bung 00:06:49.569 --> 00:06:53.370 Karno Stadium, the Istiql Mosque. Yeah. He literally 00:06:53.370 --> 00:06:56.350 wanted to construct the skyline of modern Indonesia. 00:06:56.610 --> 00:06:59.449 He believed a great nation needed great stages 00:06:59.449 --> 00:07:02.089 to perform its greatness on. He saw the nation 00:07:02.089 --> 00:07:04.449 as a physical structure. It needed a foundation. 00:07:04.509 --> 00:07:07.449 It needed pillars, a roof. But before he could 00:07:07.449 --> 00:07:10.009 build the physical monuments, he had to build 00:07:10.009 --> 00:07:12.649 the ideological blueprint. And this is where 00:07:12.649 --> 00:07:15.319 he really starts to diverge. from the traditional 00:07:15.319 --> 00:07:17.680 Marxists of the time. Absolutely. This is the 00:07:17.680 --> 00:07:20.480 famous Marhan story. Right. So traditional European 00:07:20.480 --> 00:07:22.899 communism is all about the proletariat, right? 00:07:23.019 --> 00:07:25.620 The industrial factory worker who sells their 00:07:25.620 --> 00:07:28.980 labor to a capitalist boss. But Indonesia in 00:07:28.980 --> 00:07:31.100 the 1920s didn't really have a lot of factories. 00:07:31.459 --> 00:07:34.600 Exactly. It was a farming society. So the Marxist 00:07:34.600 --> 00:07:36.959 model didn't quite fit the reality on the ground. 00:07:37.399 --> 00:07:40.279 So one day, Sukarno is out cycling near Bandung, 00:07:40.379 --> 00:07:42.740 and he stops to talk to a peasant farmer named 00:07:42.740 --> 00:07:46.079 Marhane. Okay. Now, Marhane owns his own small 00:07:46.079 --> 00:07:48.660 plot of land. He owns his own hoe. He owns his 00:07:48.660 --> 00:07:52.779 seeds. So technically, by a strict Marxist definition, 00:07:53.100 --> 00:07:55.399 he is not a proletariat because he owns the means 00:07:55.399 --> 00:07:57.600 of production. But he's still incredibly poor. 00:07:57.800 --> 00:08:00.500 Dirt poor. He has no power in the system. He's 00:08:00.500 --> 00:08:02.579 just barely surviving. He's self -sufficient, 00:08:02.699 --> 00:08:05.480 but he's destitute. And Sukarno has a lightbulb 00:08:05.480 --> 00:08:08.160 moment. A huge one. He realizes he needs an ideology 00:08:08.160 --> 00:08:10.980 for that guy. So he coins the term Marhainism. 00:08:11.100 --> 00:08:13.379 It's a form of socialism that's tailored for 00:08:13.379 --> 00:08:16.139 the agrarian, colonized little person. It was 00:08:16.139 --> 00:08:18.660 anti -imperialist, anti -feudal, but it wasn't 00:08:18.660 --> 00:08:21.399 strictly Soviet -style communism. It was distinctly 00:08:21.399 --> 00:08:23.459 Indonesian. So he's really threading a needle 00:08:23.459 --> 00:08:26.139 here. He hates the Dutch for their imperialism, 00:08:26.160 --> 00:08:29.220 but he also rejects the old Javanese feudal lords 00:08:29.220 --> 00:08:31.439 who kept people like Marhain down for centuries. 00:08:31.839 --> 00:08:34.600 He wanted something totally new. He wanted modernity, 00:08:34.639 --> 00:08:37.960 but on Indonesian terms, not Western ones. And 00:08:37.960 --> 00:08:40.379 that was an incredibly powerful message. Which 00:08:40.379 --> 00:08:43.259 the Dutch obviously did not appreciate. Not in 00:08:43.259 --> 00:08:46.080 the slightest. From the late 1920s to the early 00:08:46.080 --> 00:08:48.700 40s, Sukarno spent most of his life either in 00:08:48.700 --> 00:08:51.779 prison or in exile. They sent him to the remote 00:08:51.779 --> 00:08:54.899 island of Flores, then to Bengkulu in Sumatra. 00:08:55.179 --> 00:08:57.799 He was isolated. For all intents and purposes, 00:08:57.980 --> 00:09:00.100 he was neutralized. Until the whole world broke. 00:09:00.509 --> 00:09:02.710 World War II. The Japanese invasion of 1942. 00:09:03.210 --> 00:09:05.889 And this changes everything. This is a part of 00:09:05.889 --> 00:09:07.970 the file that gets really, really murky. I think 00:09:07.970 --> 00:09:11.190 for a lot of people, the idea of a revered independence 00:09:11.190 --> 00:09:13.590 hero collaborating with the Japanese Empire, 00:09:13.809 --> 00:09:16.570 which was absolutely brutal, is shocking. It 00:09:16.570 --> 00:09:18.889 is. But the sources suggest that Sukarno and 00:09:18.889 --> 00:09:21.029 his partner, Muhammad Hadda, actually saw this 00:09:21.029 --> 00:09:23.399 coming. They predicted it. In a way. There's 00:09:23.399 --> 00:09:26.179 an ancient Javanese prophecy, the Joyoboyo prophecy, 00:09:26.399 --> 00:09:28.840 which predicted that yellow people from the north 00:09:28.840 --> 00:09:31.419 would come and rule Java for the lifetime of 00:09:31.419 --> 00:09:33.840 the maize plant, a very short time. And after 00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:36.240 they left, Java would be free. So they saw the 00:09:36.240 --> 00:09:39.779 Pacific War through this almost mystical lens. 00:09:40.019 --> 00:09:42.460 A very pragmatic one, too. They believed the 00:09:42.460 --> 00:09:44.639 Dutch were just too strong to be defeated from 00:09:44.639 --> 00:09:47.700 the inside. They needed an outside force, a sledgehammer, 00:09:47.840 --> 00:09:51.320 to crack the colonial shell. And for them, Japan 00:09:51.320 --> 00:09:53.830 was that sledgehammer. So when the Japanese arrive, 00:09:54.090 --> 00:09:56.450 kick the Dutch out in a matter of weeks and occupy 00:09:56.450 --> 00:09:59.389 the islands, Sukarno doesn't fight them. He joins 00:09:59.389 --> 00:10:01.610 them. He makes a deal with the devil. There's 00:10:01.610 --> 00:10:03.629 just no other way to put it. We have a famous 00:10:03.629 --> 00:10:05.990 quote from him from this period where he says, 00:10:06.169 --> 00:10:09.870 The Lord be praised, independent Indonesia can 00:10:09.870 --> 00:10:13.190 only be achieved with day nippon. With day nippon. 00:10:13.330 --> 00:10:16.409 With Japan. That implies a partnership. What 00:10:16.409 --> 00:10:18.970 did he get out of this deal? Access. The Japanese 00:10:18.970 --> 00:10:21.330 needed to control millions of people to support 00:10:21.330 --> 00:10:23.269 their war effort. They didn't speak the languages. 00:10:23.389 --> 00:10:25.850 They didn't know the culture. They needed a mouthpiece. 00:10:25.970 --> 00:10:28.429 And Sukarno became that mouthpiece. In exchange, 00:10:28.669 --> 00:10:30.830 they gave him a radio, a microphone, and the 00:10:30.830 --> 00:10:33.629 freedom to travel the entire archipelago, spreading 00:10:33.629 --> 00:10:36.830 the idea of Indonesia. He was using their resources 00:10:36.830 --> 00:10:39.769 to build his nation. So he was basically spreading 00:10:39.769 --> 00:10:42.269 nationalist ideas under the guise of Japanese 00:10:42.269 --> 00:10:44.659 propaganda. It was a double game, absolutely. 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:47.039 He'd give these speeches that, on the surface, 00:10:47.179 --> 00:10:49.980 praised Japan's war effort, but the subtext was 00:10:49.980 --> 00:10:52.340 always about Indonesian unity, Indonesian pride, 00:10:52.639 --> 00:10:56.019 but the cost. My God, the cost was horrific. 00:10:56.340 --> 00:10:58.879 You have to talk about the Romusha. We do. These 00:10:58.879 --> 00:11:01.259 were the forced laborers. The Japanese needed 00:11:01.259 --> 00:11:03.960 millions of men to build airfields, railways, 00:11:04.039 --> 00:11:06.879 defenses across Southeast Asia to fight the Allies. 00:11:07.379 --> 00:11:10.200 And Sukarno, he was the chief recruiter. So he 00:11:10.200 --> 00:11:12.759 was on the radio telling young men that this 00:11:12.759 --> 00:11:15.419 was their patriotic duty. Yes. He gave speeches 00:11:15.419 --> 00:11:17.320 telling them it was an honor to work for the 00:11:17.320 --> 00:11:20.600 greater East Asia co -prosperity sphere. Millions 00:11:20.600 --> 00:11:22.889 were recruited. And the conditions were... What? 00:11:22.929 --> 00:11:25.570 Basically slavery. Worse in many cases. Starvation, 00:11:25.610 --> 00:11:28.970 disease, brutal beatings. Thousands upon thousands 00:11:28.970 --> 00:11:31.070 die. They were treated as disposable biological 00:11:31.070 --> 00:11:33.870 machinery. And Sukarno knew this was happening. 00:11:34.049 --> 00:11:36.250 Did he ever? Did he ever reckon with that role? 00:11:36.389 --> 00:11:39.730 In his autobiography. written much later he admitted 00:11:39.730 --> 00:11:43.129 to the deep shame of it he tried to frame them 00:11:43.129 --> 00:11:46.389 as necessary sacrifices for the greater goal 00:11:46.389 --> 00:11:49.789 of independence he coined slogans like let's 00:11:49.789 --> 00:11:52.090 iron america and bludgeon the british i mean 00:11:52.090 --> 00:11:54.289 he was fully integrated into their war machine 00:11:54.289 --> 00:11:57.450 it's the darkest stain on his entire legacy without 00:11:57.450 --> 00:12:00.929 a doubt it's something his critics rightly never 00:12:00.929 --> 00:12:03.279 let him forget It brings us back to that architect 00:12:03.279 --> 00:12:05.259 metaphor again. You know, if you're building 00:12:05.259 --> 00:12:07.480 a skyscraper, you account for a certain number 00:12:07.480 --> 00:12:10.059 of workplace accidents. These weren't accidents. 00:12:10.559 --> 00:12:12.919 These were millions of human lives sacrificed 00:12:12.919 --> 00:12:15.299 for the structure of the nation. It's a ruthless, 00:12:15.419 --> 00:12:18.940 chilling calculus. And yet, amidst all this darkness, 00:12:19.120 --> 00:12:21.639 he lays what becomes the philosophical cornerstone 00:12:21.639 --> 00:12:25.840 of the country. June 1st, 1945. The Pancasila. 00:12:26.019 --> 00:12:27.879 The Five Principles. This is still the official 00:12:27.879 --> 00:12:30.940 state ideology of Indonesia today. But looking 00:12:30.940 --> 00:12:32.799 at the early drafts in our source stack, this 00:12:32.799 --> 00:12:34.460 almost caused the country to fracture before 00:12:34.460 --> 00:12:37.019 it was even born. It was the ultimate high wire 00:12:37.019 --> 00:12:39.720 act. The Japanese had set up this investigative 00:12:39.720 --> 00:12:44.059 committee for independence, the BPUPK. And Sukarno 00:12:44.059 --> 00:12:47.320 gets up and proposes five founding principles, 00:12:47.519 --> 00:12:50.700 the five pillars for his national house, nationalism, 00:12:51.419 --> 00:12:53.399 internationalism, or you could say human rights, 00:12:53.419 --> 00:12:56.840 democracy, social justice and belief in God. 00:12:57.179 --> 00:12:59.379 And it's that last one, belief in God, that caused 00:12:59.379 --> 00:13:02.259 all the friction, right? Precisely. Because Indonesia 00:13:02.259 --> 00:13:05.500 is a majority Muslim country, but it also has 00:13:05.500 --> 00:13:08.629 very significant... Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist 00:13:08.629 --> 00:13:11.029 populations, especially in the eastern islands, 00:13:11.269 --> 00:13:13.590 the hardline Islamists on the committee wanted 00:13:13.590 --> 00:13:16.230 the first principle to explicitly state an obligation 00:13:16.230 --> 00:13:18.929 for Muslims to follow Sharia law. And that was 00:13:18.929 --> 00:13:20.789 actually written into the draft, the Jakarta 00:13:20.789 --> 00:13:23.129 Charter? It was. And if that had stayed in the 00:13:23.129 --> 00:13:25.710 final constitution, Indonesia would have effectively 00:13:25.710 --> 00:13:28.169 become an Islamic state. And the eastern islands, 00:13:28.389 --> 00:13:31.649 which are largely Christian, would have almost 00:13:31.649 --> 00:13:33.669 certainly refused to join the republic. They 00:13:33.669 --> 00:13:35.450 would have split off. The nation would have been 00:13:35.450 --> 00:13:38.379 stillborn. Sukarno and Hadda realized this at 00:13:38.379 --> 00:13:41.419 the absolute 11th hour. The day after they declare 00:13:41.419 --> 00:13:44.539 independence, August 18th, they meet and they 00:13:44.539 --> 00:13:47.679 scrub that Sharia clause. They changed it to 00:13:47.679 --> 00:13:50.159 the much more inclusive belief in one supreme 00:13:50.159 --> 00:13:54.179 God. Wow. That is a massive pivot. He chose national 00:13:54.179 --> 00:13:57.350 unity over religious dogma. He did. And it saved 00:13:57.350 --> 00:13:59.629 the nation from fracturing, but it also created 00:13:59.629 --> 00:14:02.470 a permanent enemy in the radical Islamist factions. 00:14:02.629 --> 00:14:05.450 They felt betrayed. And that tension, that betrayal 00:14:05.450 --> 00:14:07.269 never really went away. It just simmered under 00:14:07.269 --> 00:14:10.090 the surface for decades. OK, so let's fast forward 00:14:10.090 --> 00:14:13.370 a bit. August 1945, the atomic bombs have been 00:14:13.370 --> 00:14:16.029 dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrenders, 00:14:16.029 --> 00:14:18.110 and suddenly there's a complete power vacuum. 00:14:18.269 --> 00:14:20.669 The perfect moment. The Dutch are gone, the Japanese 00:14:20.669 --> 00:14:22.330 are defeated, and the Allies haven't arrived 00:14:22.330 --> 00:14:24.230 yet. It's the window of opportunity he's been 00:14:24.230 --> 00:14:27.769 waiting for his entire life. But Sukarno? He 00:14:27.769 --> 00:14:30.549 hesitates. Why? Why would he hesitate now? Fear. 00:14:30.750 --> 00:14:35.039 Or maybe pragmatism. He's in Jakarta. The Japanese 00:14:35.039 --> 00:14:37.500 army is still there, still fully armed, just 00:14:37.500 --> 00:14:39.820 waiting for the Allied handover. He's terrified 00:14:39.820 --> 00:14:41.960 that if he declares independence without their 00:14:41.960 --> 00:14:44.779 permission, the Japanese will just massacre the 00:14:44.779 --> 00:14:47.320 nationalists to maintain order. He wants to go 00:14:47.320 --> 00:14:49.940 through the official channels. But the Pemuda? 00:14:50.379 --> 00:14:52.279 They're not having it. They want revolution, 00:14:52.480 --> 00:14:54.919 and they want it now. Which leads to one of the 00:14:54.919 --> 00:14:58.279 most dramatic episodes of the entire story, the 00:14:58.279 --> 00:15:00.750 Rengis -Denglok incident. It's like something 00:15:00.750 --> 00:15:04.210 out of a crime thriller. At 3 .0 a .m. on August 00:15:04.210 --> 00:15:07.690 16th, a group of young, radical nationalists 00:15:07.690 --> 00:15:11.029 basically break into Sukarno's house. They kidnap 00:15:11.029 --> 00:15:13.450 him and Hada at gunpoint. They kidnap their own 00:15:13.450 --> 00:15:16.129 leader. Yep. Threw them in cars, drove them to 00:15:16.129 --> 00:15:18.549 a military garrison outside the city in a place 00:15:18.549 --> 00:15:21.129 called Rengizdenklok. They sat him down and said 00:15:21.129 --> 00:15:23.330 essentially, We are not going back to Jakarta 00:15:23.330 --> 00:15:25.629 until you promise to declare independence right 00:15:25.629 --> 00:15:28.549 now. We are done waiting for the Japanese. They 00:15:28.549 --> 00:15:30.889 completely forced his hand. Talk about revolutionary 00:15:30.889 --> 00:15:33.649 peer pressure. And it worked. Sukarno realized 00:15:33.649 --> 00:15:36.269 the momentum was just unstoppable. He goes back 00:15:36.269 --> 00:15:39.169 to Jakarta that night. They all go to the house 00:15:39.169 --> 00:15:42.529 of a sympathetic Japanese admiral, Admiral Maeda, 00:15:42.649 --> 00:15:44.529 because it was one of the few safe places in 00:15:44.529 --> 00:15:47.480 the city. And they pull an all -nighter. Literally 00:15:47.480 --> 00:15:50.100 drafting the proclamation of independence on 00:15:50.100 --> 00:15:51.940 his dining room table. And the next morning. 00:15:52.220 --> 00:15:56.779 August 17th, 1945. At 10 .00 a .m., Sukarno stands 00:15:56.779 --> 00:15:59.620 on his own front porch. There's a small crowd. 00:15:59.899 --> 00:16:02.019 He reads the proclamation. It was incredibly 00:16:02.019 --> 00:16:06.120 simple, short, hasty. We, the people of Indonesia, 00:16:06.360 --> 00:16:08.539 hereby declare the independence of Indonesia. 00:16:09.080 --> 00:16:11.259 And that was it. And then the real war began. 00:16:11.820 --> 00:16:13.539 Because the Dutch didn't just say, OK, our mistake. 00:16:13.620 --> 00:16:15.759 Good luck with the new country. No, the Dutch 00:16:15.759 --> 00:16:18.019 treated it as a joke. They came back, backed 00:16:18.019 --> 00:16:20.139 by the British, fully expecting to just resume 00:16:20.139 --> 00:16:22.779 colonial rule as if the last four years hadn't 00:16:22.779 --> 00:16:25.320 happened. What followed was four years of absolutely 00:16:25.320 --> 00:16:28.240 brutal warfare and intense diplomatic chess. 00:16:28.460 --> 00:16:30.860 The sources really highlight a division of labor 00:16:30.860 --> 00:16:32.860 here. You've got General Suderman in the jungle 00:16:32.860 --> 00:16:35.649 leading a guerrilla war. And you have Sukarno 00:16:35.649 --> 00:16:37.950 in the cities fighting the diplomatic war. He 00:16:37.950 --> 00:16:39.769 knew they couldn't beat the Dutch military head 00:16:39.769 --> 00:16:41.669 to head. They were better armed, better trained. 00:16:41.809 --> 00:16:44.429 So he used the international press. He charmed 00:16:44.429 --> 00:16:46.509 foreign journalists. He charmed the Americans. 00:16:46.909 --> 00:16:50.769 He framed Indonesia as the underdog, as a victim 00:16:50.769 --> 00:16:54.750 of old world imperialism. He made the Dutch look 00:16:54.750 --> 00:16:56.950 like bullies on the world stage. And it was the 00:16:56.950 --> 00:16:58.629 United States that eventually tipped the scales, 00:16:58.730 --> 00:17:01.799 wasn't it? It was. The Marshall Plan. The U .S. 00:17:01.820 --> 00:17:04.460 was pouring billions into rebuilding post -war 00:17:04.460 --> 00:17:06.920 Europe, including the Netherlands. When the Dutch 00:17:06.920 --> 00:17:09.059 launched another major military offensive and 00:17:09.059 --> 00:17:12.339 captured Sukarno, the U .S. finally had enough. 00:17:12.559 --> 00:17:14.660 They threatened to cut off all Marshall Plan 00:17:14.660 --> 00:17:16.579 funds to the Netherlands if they didn't stop 00:17:16.579 --> 00:17:19.220 the war. Money talks. Money talks louder than 00:17:19.220 --> 00:17:21.960 guns sometimes. The Dutch folded almost immediately. 00:17:22.259 --> 00:17:24.819 In December 1949, sovereignty was officially 00:17:24.819 --> 00:17:27.299 transferred. Sukarno moved into the old Dutch 00:17:27.299 --> 00:17:29.720 governor general's palace and renamed it the 00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:32.160 Merdeka Palace. Palace, Freedom Palace. He had 00:17:32.160 --> 00:17:34.619 one. So the architect has finally built the house. 00:17:34.680 --> 00:17:36.779 The tenants have all moved in. Yeah. But now, 00:17:36.859 --> 00:17:40.259 now the roost starts leaking. The 1950s in Indonesia 00:17:40.259 --> 00:17:43.720 sound absolutely chaotic. Chaotic is an understatement. 00:17:44.079 --> 00:17:46.859 They tried to implement a Western style liberal 00:17:46.859 --> 00:17:49.380 democracy, you know, a parliament, elections, 00:17:49.500 --> 00:17:52.240 a prime minister. But this is a nation of thousands 00:17:52.240 --> 00:17:54.940 of islands and dozens of competing ideologies. 00:17:55.240 --> 00:17:58.420 You had Islamists, communists, nationalists, 00:17:58.440 --> 00:18:00.420 regional separatists all fighting for power. 00:18:00.579 --> 00:18:02.700 And the government was just paralyzed. Completely. 00:18:03.059 --> 00:18:05.019 Cabinets were collapsing every few months. There 00:18:05.019 --> 00:18:07.259 were rebellions in the outer islands. It was 00:18:07.259 --> 00:18:10.059 a mess. And Sukarno is the president, but he's 00:18:10.059 --> 00:18:12.480 watching all this and he hates it. He despises 00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:16.180 it. He called it. 50 % plus one democracy. He 00:18:16.180 --> 00:18:18.779 argued that Western democracy was all about conflict, 00:18:18.859 --> 00:18:21.160 about fighting to get a bare majority. He said 00:18:21.160 --> 00:18:23.720 that wasn't the Indonesian way. He felt it was 00:18:23.720 --> 00:18:26.099 tearing the architectural integrity of his nation 00:18:26.099 --> 00:18:28.700 apart. So he proposes his own solution, guided 00:18:28.700 --> 00:18:31.420 democracy, which, let's be honest, sounds a lot 00:18:31.420 --> 00:18:33.480 like a dictatorship with a better branding team. 00:18:33.849 --> 00:18:36.650 That is absolutely the criticism. But his sales 00:18:36.650 --> 00:18:39.930 pitch was culturally brilliant. He used the metaphor 00:18:39.930 --> 00:18:41.990 of the traditional Indonesian village. He said, 00:18:42.089 --> 00:18:44.849 in a village, we don't vote and fight. The elders 00:18:44.849 --> 00:18:47.950 gather, they discuss Musyawara until they reach 00:18:47.950 --> 00:18:50.450 a consensus mufakat. And in this grand national 00:18:50.450 --> 00:18:53.269 village, who is the head elder? Sukarno, of course. 00:18:53.390 --> 00:18:57.240 In 1959, he issues a decree. He dissolves the 00:18:57.240 --> 00:18:59.599 parliament, tosses out the constitution, and 00:18:59.599 --> 00:19:02.440 concentrates all power in his own hands. He becomes 00:19:02.440 --> 00:19:05.160 the great leader of the revolution. And to hold 00:19:05.160 --> 00:19:07.980 this unstable chemical mixture together, he invents 00:19:07.980 --> 00:19:11.460 another ideological concept. Massacombe. Nasikom 00:19:11.460 --> 00:19:14.339 is the absolute peak of his political high wire 00:19:14.339 --> 00:19:17.480 act. It's an acronym for nationalism, nationalism, 00:19:17.960 --> 00:19:20.859 agama, religion and communism. Communism. OK, 00:19:20.920 --> 00:19:22.759 hold on. Those three things are fundamentally 00:19:22.759 --> 00:19:25.039 incompatible. Communism is officially atheist. 00:19:25.359 --> 00:19:28.599 Religion is, well, religion. And the nationalists 00:19:28.599 --> 00:19:30.740 in Indonesia were mostly the army who absolutely 00:19:30.740 --> 00:19:33.200 loathed the communists. How on earth do you mix 00:19:33.200 --> 00:19:36.099 oil, water and fire? By shaking the bottle really, 00:19:36.180 --> 00:19:38.849 really hard. Sukarno believed that his charisma, 00:19:38.990 --> 00:19:41.789 his force of personality, was strong enough to 00:19:41.789 --> 00:19:43.990 force these three opposing groups to work together 00:19:43.990 --> 00:19:47.349 under his guidance. He needed the army, the nationalists, 00:19:47.369 --> 00:19:49.890 to keep order. He needed the religious groups 00:19:49.890 --> 00:19:53.150 for moral legitimacy. And he needed the communists, 00:19:53.250 --> 00:19:56.109 the PKI, for mass mobilization. The PKI was huge 00:19:56.109 --> 00:19:58.150 at this point, right? The third largest communist 00:19:58.150 --> 00:20:01.049 party in the entire world after only China and 00:20:01.049 --> 00:20:03.940 the Soviet Union. And Sukarno started leaning 00:20:03.940 --> 00:20:06.779 on them more and more, specifically to balance 00:20:06.779 --> 00:20:09.519 out the growing power of the army, who he correctly 00:20:09.519 --> 00:20:11.619 feared was getting too powerful and might be 00:20:11.619 --> 00:20:14.019 plotting against him. And this is where the West, 00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:16.579 especially the U .S., really starts to panic. 00:20:16.980 --> 00:20:19.759 It's the height of the Cold War. And here's Sukarno, 00:20:19.779 --> 00:20:21.640 the leader of the fifth most populous country 00:20:21.640 --> 00:20:24.599 in the world, openly cozying up to the communists. 00:20:24.759 --> 00:20:27.000 And he wasn't quiet about it. He steps onto the 00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:29.759 world stage and basically tries to flip the entire 00:20:29.759 --> 00:20:33.549 script of the Cold War. In 1955, he hosts the 00:20:33.549 --> 00:20:36.430 Bandom Conference. This is the birth of the non 00:20:36.430 --> 00:20:38.910 -aligned movement. He stands up and tells the 00:20:38.910 --> 00:20:41.529 nations of Asia and Africa, you don't have to 00:20:41.529 --> 00:20:43.730 choose between Washington and Moscow. He had 00:20:43.730 --> 00:20:45.369 his own terminology for this, too, didn't he? 00:20:45.509 --> 00:20:48.799 Nifo and Old Defo. That's right. the new emerging 00:20:48.799 --> 00:20:51.640 forces Nifo versus the old established forces 00:20:51.640 --> 00:20:55.200 Oldefo. He saw the world not as East versus West, 00:20:55.380 --> 00:20:58.259 but as the oppressed versus the oppressors. He 00:20:58.259 --> 00:21:00.859 wanted to unite China, Indonesia, the African 00:21:00.859 --> 00:21:03.000 states into a whole new power bloc that would 00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:05.720 challenge the old colonial powers. And his foreign 00:21:05.720 --> 00:21:08.220 policy became extremely aggressive. Unbelievably 00:21:08.220 --> 00:21:11.059 so. Look at Confrontasi the Confrontation. When 00:21:11.059 --> 00:21:13.099 the British helped form the Federation of Malaysia 00:21:13.099 --> 00:21:16.619 in 1963, Sukarno took it as a personal insult. 00:21:17.349 --> 00:21:19.750 He called Malaysia a British neocolonial plot 00:21:19.750 --> 00:21:22.230 designed to encircle and weaken Indonesia. So 00:21:22.230 --> 00:21:24.230 he launched a low -level war against them. He 00:21:24.230 --> 00:21:26.970 sent paratroopers into Borneo. It was a huge 00:21:26.970 --> 00:21:29.490 international incident. And then when the UN 00:21:29.490 --> 00:21:31.609 officially recognized Malaysia and gave them 00:21:31.609 --> 00:21:34.430 a seat on the Security Council, Sukarno just 00:21:34.430 --> 00:21:38.390 quit. He pulled Indonesia out of the United Nations. 00:21:38.430 --> 00:21:42.690 Yes, in 1965. To this day, it's the first and 00:21:42.690 --> 00:21:45.190 only time a nation has ever formally withdrawn 00:21:45.190 --> 00:21:48.200 from the UN. That is a bold, almost reckless 00:21:48.200 --> 00:21:50.640 move. And he definitely wasn't making any friends 00:21:50.640 --> 00:21:52.880 in Washington. The relationship with the U .S. 00:21:52.880 --> 00:21:55.380 became toxic. When they threatened to cut off 00:21:55.380 --> 00:21:57.200 aid because of his aggression towards Malaysia 00:21:57.200 --> 00:21:59.779 and his friendship with the PKI, Sukarno stood 00:21:59.779 --> 00:22:02.279 up in a massive stadium speech and just shouted, 00:22:02.400 --> 00:22:05.039 Go to hell with your aid. Go to hell with your 00:22:05.039 --> 00:22:07.940 aid. I mean, that's a quote that must have reverberated 00:22:07.940 --> 00:22:10.440 around the world. I can see why the CIA had a 00:22:10.440 --> 00:22:12.200 file on him thick enough to be a doorstop. They 00:22:12.200 --> 00:22:14.660 desperately wanted him gone. And this leads to 00:22:14.660 --> 00:22:17.829 one of the more... Well, bizarre chapters of 00:22:17.829 --> 00:22:20.950 the Cold War. The honey traps. This was my favorite 00:22:20.950 --> 00:22:23.589 part of the research. It's almost comical how 00:22:23.589 --> 00:22:26.150 badly the intelligence agencies misread the cultural 00:22:26.150 --> 00:22:29.079 context. It really is. I mean, it was no secret 00:22:29.079 --> 00:22:32.259 that Sukarno was a womanizer. He had nine wives 00:22:32.259 --> 00:22:35.539 over his lifetime, countless affairs. He styled 00:22:35.539 --> 00:22:38.900 himself as the great lover. So the Soviet KGB 00:22:38.900 --> 00:22:40.859 thought they could use this against him. During 00:22:40.859 --> 00:22:43.359 a visit to Moscow, they allegedly filmed him 00:22:43.359 --> 00:22:45.380 in a hotel room with some flight attendants that 00:22:45.380 --> 00:22:47.799 they had planted there. Classic blackmail stuff. 00:22:48.059 --> 00:22:50.039 Do what we say or we release the tapes. Exactly. 00:22:50.720 --> 00:22:53.140 So they present the tapes to him, expecting him 00:22:53.140 --> 00:22:56.460 to be terrified and compliant. Instead, the story 00:22:56.460 --> 00:22:58.660 goes that Sukarno watched the footage, burst 00:22:58.660 --> 00:23:00.880 out laughing, and asked if he could have a few 00:23:00.880 --> 00:23:03.819 copies to take home. He wanted a copy. He wasn't 00:23:03.819 --> 00:23:07.079 ashamed at all. In Javanese culture, that kind 00:23:07.079 --> 00:23:09.579 of virility, that shakti, was seen as a sign 00:23:09.579 --> 00:23:13.079 of spiritual power and charisma. Being a ladies' 00:23:13.140 --> 00:23:15.640 man didn't hurt his poll numbers. It helped them. 00:23:15.779 --> 00:23:18.420 It showed he was full of vitality. And the CIA 00:23:18.420 --> 00:23:20.680 tried the same thing, didn't they? The CIA went 00:23:20.680 --> 00:23:22.980 one step further and produced a fake pornographic 00:23:22.980 --> 00:23:25.819 film hiring a Sukarno lookalike. They planned 00:23:25.819 --> 00:23:28.339 to release it to discredit him, but it failed 00:23:28.339 --> 00:23:30.480 for the same reason. He was just Teflon when 00:23:30.480 --> 00:23:32.980 it came to these kinds of scandals. But Teflon 00:23:32.980 --> 00:23:36.940 eventually wears off. And by 1965, the country 00:23:36.940 --> 00:23:40.119 is in a terrible state. The economy is in absolute 00:23:40.119 --> 00:23:43.380 freefall. Inflation is at something like 600%. 00:23:43.740 --> 00:23:46.299 People are queuing for rice. He's fighting an 00:23:46.299 --> 00:23:49.579 expensive, pointless war with Malaysia. And physically, 00:23:49.799 --> 00:23:52.140 he's falling apart. Kidneys were failing. He 00:23:52.140 --> 00:23:55.180 was in constant pain. And that delicate political 00:23:55.180 --> 00:23:58.619 balance, that nasicum mixture, was about to violently 00:23:58.619 --> 00:24:01.079 explode. The army and the communists were ready 00:24:01.079 --> 00:24:03.500 to kill each other. Sukarno was the only thing 00:24:03.500 --> 00:24:05.619 holding them back. And his grip was slipping 00:24:05.619 --> 00:24:08.480 fast. And then comes the night of September 30th, 00:24:08.480 --> 00:24:12.109 1965. The G30S movement. This is the turning 00:24:12.109 --> 00:24:14.369 point, the event that changes everything. It's 00:24:14.369 --> 00:24:16.289 still one of the most debated and mysterious 00:24:16.289 --> 00:24:18.650 events in modern Asian history. What exactly 00:24:18.650 --> 00:24:20.569 happened? In the middle of the night, a group 00:24:20.569 --> 00:24:22.630 of mid -level soldiers calling themselves the 00:24:22.630 --> 00:24:25.650 30th September Movement kidnapped six of the 00:24:25.650 --> 00:24:27.849 top army generals in Jakarta. They were taken 00:24:27.849 --> 00:24:30.569 to an Air Force base, murdered, and their bodies 00:24:30.569 --> 00:24:32.849 were thrown down a well at a place called Lubang 00:24:32.849 --> 00:24:35.130 Buaya Crocodile Hole. And who are these soldiers? 00:24:35.250 --> 00:24:37.069 Who are they working for? That's the mystery. 00:24:37.269 --> 00:24:39.529 They claimed to be loyalists who were protecting 00:24:39.529 --> 00:24:42.109 Sukarno. They said they were launching a preemptive 00:24:42.109 --> 00:24:45.769 strike to stop a CIA backed coup by a council 00:24:45.769 --> 00:24:48.910 of generals who were planning to overthrow Sukarno 00:24:48.910 --> 00:24:52.329 on Army Day just a few days later. So they claimed 00:24:52.329 --> 00:24:54.289 they were actually saving Sukarno from the army. 00:24:54.410 --> 00:24:57.089 That was their story. But the next morning, the 00:24:57.089 --> 00:25:00.380 optics were terrible. So Carno, for reasons that 00:25:00.380 --> 00:25:02.779 are still unclear, went to the Halim Air Force 00:25:02.779 --> 00:25:05.319 Base, which was the rebel headquarters. This 00:25:05.319 --> 00:25:07.079 made it look like he was involved or at the very 00:25:07.079 --> 00:25:09.519 least complicit. He didn't condemn the murders 00:25:09.519 --> 00:25:12.599 right away. He seemed confused, hesitant. He 00:25:12.599 --> 00:25:14.819 was losing control. And this is where the villain 00:25:14.819 --> 00:25:16.640 or the hero, depending on which history book 00:25:16.640 --> 00:25:20.230 you read, enters the stage. Major General Suharto. 00:25:20.509 --> 00:25:23.109 He was the head of the army's strategic reserve, 00:25:23.250 --> 00:25:25.470 and for reasons that are also still hotly debated, 00:25:25.670 --> 00:25:28.230 he was not on the assassins' hit list. He seized 00:25:28.230 --> 00:25:30.910 control of the army almost immediately, and he 00:25:30.910 --> 00:25:34.210 pointed the finger squarely at one group, the 00:25:34.210 --> 00:25:36.630 communists. He blamed the entire thing on the 00:25:36.630 --> 00:25:39.509 PKI. He spun a narrative that the communists 00:25:39.509 --> 00:25:41.750 had masterminded the whole thing as an attempt 00:25:41.750 --> 00:25:44.589 to take over the country. And he launched a counterattack. 00:25:44.769 --> 00:25:47.210 And not just a military one. No. A purge. This 00:25:47.210 --> 00:25:50.450 part of the file is just chilling. It was a genocide. 00:25:51.049 --> 00:25:53.529 Over the next few months, the army, with the 00:25:53.529 --> 00:25:55.849 help of local religious and vigilante groups, 00:25:56.089 --> 00:25:58.690 hunted down and killed anyone even suspected 00:25:58.690 --> 00:26:01.940 of being a communist or a sympathizer. The death 00:26:01.940 --> 00:26:04.359 toll is debated, but the most common estimates 00:26:04.359 --> 00:26:07.539 range from 500 ,000 to over a million people 00:26:07.539 --> 00:26:11.839 killed. The rivers in Java and Bali were literally 00:26:11.839 --> 00:26:15.759 clogged with bodies. And Sukarno, the great leader 00:26:15.759 --> 00:26:18.619 of the revolution. Where was he in all this? 00:26:19.799 --> 00:26:22.539 completely powerless to stop it. He tried. He 00:26:22.539 --> 00:26:24.400 gave speeches saying the generals' murders were 00:26:24.400 --> 00:26:26.380 just a ripple in the ocean of the revolution. 00:26:26.640 --> 00:26:29.119 He was desperately trying to downplay it to save 00:26:29.119 --> 00:26:32.200 his nasicum concept, to save the balance of power. 00:26:32.539 --> 00:26:35.180 Calling a massacre of his top generals a ripple 00:26:35.180 --> 00:26:37.880 probably didn't sit well with the public or the 00:26:37.880 --> 00:26:41.329 army. It destroyed his credibility. The students, 00:26:41.430 --> 00:26:44.150 who used to adore him, took to the streets. But 00:26:44.150 --> 00:26:46.509 they weren't chanting long live Boncarno anymore. 00:26:46.769 --> 00:26:48.910 They were chanting for the price of rice to come 00:26:48.910 --> 00:26:52.049 down and for the PKI to be banned. Sukarno was 00:26:52.049 --> 00:26:54.569 losing the street. He was still technically president, 00:26:54.730 --> 00:26:57.529 but Suharto now held the gun. And then came what's 00:26:57.529 --> 00:26:59.789 called the slow motion coup, the Super Samar. 00:26:59.910 --> 00:27:03.490 March 11th, 1966. The presidential palace was 00:27:03.490 --> 00:27:05.809 surrounded by protesters and unnamed troops. 00:27:06.289 --> 00:27:09.230 Sukarno was forced to sign a document, the Surat 00:27:09.230 --> 00:27:12.670 Perenta Sabelis Moret, or Super Samar, the order 00:27:12.670 --> 00:27:15.549 of March 11th. It gave Suharto the authority 00:27:15.549 --> 00:27:17.930 to take all measures considered necessary to 00:27:17.930 --> 00:27:20.369 restore order and security. It sounds like a 00:27:20.369 --> 00:27:22.809 blank check. It was. It was the legal instrument 00:27:22.809 --> 00:27:24.910 of the coup. Suharto used that piece of paper 00:27:24.910 --> 00:27:28.130 to officially ban the PKI, arrest Sukarno's loyal 00:27:28.130 --> 00:27:30.809 ministers, and just slowly, methodically, he 00:27:30.809 --> 00:27:32.869 tightened the noose around Sukarno's neck. Was 00:27:32.869 --> 00:27:35.289 Sukarno forced to sign it at gunpoint? That's 00:27:35.289 --> 00:27:36.890 the million -dollar question that historians 00:27:36.890 --> 00:27:39.410 still fight over. Some accounts say three of 00:27:39.410 --> 00:27:41.609 Suharto's generals cornered him and forced him. 00:27:41.910 --> 00:27:44.589 Others say he was just exhausted, sick, and thought 00:27:44.589 --> 00:27:46.609 signing it would calm things down and that he 00:27:46.609 --> 00:27:49.130 could regain control later. But once he signed 00:27:49.130 --> 00:27:53.200 it, it was over. By 1967. He's officially stripped 00:27:53.200 --> 00:27:57.200 of his powers and the end of his life. It's just 00:27:57.200 --> 00:27:59.799 so tragic. It's heartbreaking. This is the man 00:27:59.799 --> 00:28:02.799 who hosted Queen Elizabeth and JFK, who charmed 00:28:02.799 --> 00:28:05.079 Khrushchev, who literally built the nation from 00:28:05.079 --> 00:28:07.599 scratch. And he was placed under house arrest 00:28:07.599 --> 00:28:11.180 in a villa in Bogor. Suharto's new regime isolated 00:28:11.180 --> 00:28:13.299 him completely. And they denied him proper medical 00:28:13.299 --> 00:28:15.579 care. For his failing kidneys, yes, he wasn't 00:28:15.579 --> 00:28:17.579 allowed to see the people he had liberated. He 00:28:17.579 --> 00:28:19.759 was interrogated constantly about his role in 00:28:19.759 --> 00:28:22.759 the 1965 events. The architect was now a prisoner 00:28:22.759 --> 00:28:24.920 in the very house he had built. When he died 00:28:24.920 --> 00:28:27.880 in June 1970, millions of people still lined 00:28:27.880 --> 00:28:30.029 the streets for his funeral procession. They 00:28:30.029 --> 00:28:32.329 wept. Even Suharto showed up for the funeral, 00:28:32.430 --> 00:28:35.230 but it was pure political theater. For the next 00:28:35.230 --> 00:28:37.930 30 years, the New Order government tried to bury 00:28:37.930 --> 00:28:40.690 his legacy. They wanted to remember him only 00:28:40.690 --> 00:28:43.470 as the proclamator of independence. But forget 00:28:43.470 --> 00:28:45.789 the president who leaned left and challenged 00:28:45.789 --> 00:28:49.109 the West. They banned his books. They demonized 00:28:49.109 --> 00:28:51.569 his politics. But you can't really bury a figure 00:28:51.569 --> 00:28:54.730 that large. No. History has a way of correcting 00:28:54.730 --> 00:28:58.329 itself. After Suharto fell, his legacy was slowly 00:28:58.329 --> 00:29:02.009 rehabilitated. His daughter, Megawati Soekarnoputri, 00:29:02.150 --> 00:29:04.769 eventually became the fifth president of Indonesia. 00:29:05.430 --> 00:29:08.609 And just recently, in 2024, the government officially 00:29:08.609 --> 00:29:11.690 revoked the 1967 resolution that stripped him 00:29:11.690 --> 00:29:14.190 of power, effectively clearing his name of involvement 00:29:14.190 --> 00:29:16.950 in the G30S coup. A vindication more than 50 00:29:16.950 --> 00:29:18.730 years too late. But a vindication nonetheless. 00:29:18.809 --> 00:29:21.250 It brings the circle to a close. So as we look 00:29:21.250 --> 00:29:24.789 back at this just massive life, how do we sum 00:29:24.789 --> 00:29:26.750 it up? What's the final verdict on Soekarno? 00:29:26.829 --> 00:29:29.049 I think you have to see him as the visionary. 00:29:29.609 --> 00:29:32.730 The artist. He could dream up a nation, design 00:29:32.730 --> 00:29:35.349 its philosophical soul, and convince a hundred 00:29:35.349 --> 00:29:38.049 million people that they were all one family. 00:29:38.289 --> 00:29:40.789 He gave them an identity and a sense of pride 00:29:40.789 --> 00:29:43.670 when they had none. But he couldn't manage the 00:29:43.670 --> 00:29:46.049 checkbook. He couldn't deal with the boring, 00:29:46.190 --> 00:29:49.269 gritty reality of economics, of logistics. He 00:29:49.269 --> 00:29:51.869 was a spectacular revolutionary, but a terrible 00:29:51.869 --> 00:29:54.690 administrator. He gave them pride. He told them 00:29:54.690 --> 00:29:56.690 they were great people at a time when the rest 00:29:56.690 --> 00:29:58.529 of the world told them they were colonial subjects. 00:29:58.829 --> 00:30:01.369 Exactly. He made them stand tall. But standing 00:30:01.369 --> 00:30:03.789 tall doesn't put rice in the bowl. And in the 00:30:03.789 --> 00:30:06.670 end, empty bellies often matter more than even 00:30:06.670 --> 00:30:09.609 the most inspiring rhetoric. And that leads me 00:30:09.609 --> 00:30:11.910 to a final thought for you, our listeners, to 00:30:11.910 --> 00:30:14.650 maybe chew on. Sukarno was obsessed with this 00:30:14.650 --> 00:30:18.130 concept he called birdicari, which means standing 00:30:18.130 --> 00:30:21.250 on your own two feet. He truly believed that 00:30:21.250 --> 00:30:23.670 real independence meant rejecting all foreign 00:30:23.670 --> 00:30:26.869 reliance, even if it meant economic ruin. It's 00:30:26.869 --> 00:30:29.069 the whole philosophy behind go to hell with your 00:30:29.069 --> 00:30:31.849 age. A very powerful, very nationalistic sentiment. 00:30:32.190 --> 00:30:35.049 So the question is. In today's hyper -connected, 00:30:35.049 --> 00:30:37.849 globalized world, where every single nation relies 00:30:37.849 --> 00:30:41.490 on intricate trade deals and supply chains, was 00:30:41.490 --> 00:30:44.109 Sukarno's vision of total self -sufficiency a 00:30:44.109 --> 00:30:47.049 noble dream, or was it just a dangerous delusion? 00:30:47.289 --> 00:30:50.549 Is it better to be poor and proud, or rich and 00:30:50.549 --> 00:30:52.490 dependent? That is the question that I think 00:30:52.490 --> 00:30:54.509 every developing nation is still struggling to 00:30:54.509 --> 00:30:56.829 answer today. Indeed. Thanks for joining us on 00:30:56.829 --> 00:30:58.910 this deep dive into the life of Sukarno. We'll 00:30:58.910 --> 00:30:59.390 see you next time.