$Unique_ID{bob00206} $Pretitle{} $Title{Indonesia Chapter 1C. The Growth of National Consciousness} $Subtitle{} $Author{Donald M. Seekins} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{java established schools independence dutch indonesian political government particularly japanese} $Date{1982} $Log{} Title: Indonesia Book: Indonesia, A Country Study Author: Donald M. Seekins Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1982 Chapter 1C. The Growth of National Consciousness During the twentieth century the ties of Dutch political domination were broken, and a basis for national unity was created. These were two somewhat discrete, though naturally not unrelated, processes, however, and their occurrence was not to be entirely simultaneous. The process of national unification and political development continued long after the declaration of independence in 1945 and, in fact, in 1982 was still continuing. Anticolonial resistance was, or course, nothing new. In the villages of Java and the coastal communities of the Outer Islands, it had been based on militant Islam or on peasant expectations of the coming of a "just king" who would expel the Dutch and initiate a new age of happiness and prosperity. A religious element had been part of the appeal of the revolt of Pangeran Dipanagara in 1825 at the beginning of the Java War. Unrest, particularly among the poorest of the peasants, was a persistent phenomenon; the followers of Surantika Samin, a rural messiah who founded his own religion known as the "Science of the Prophet Adam," resisted the Dutch in a passive way beginning around 1900, refusing to pay taxes or perform labor service in the teak forests of central Java until independence. They continued to cause trouble for the Republic of Indonesia until the 1960s. Traditional peasant resistance was to become entwined in the twentieth century with a more modern nationalism, which first arose among the social elite. Its development was in part the result of the influence of events outside the archipelago. These included the rise of Japan as a modern power in East Asia, particularly after the defeat of Russia in 1905; the Philippine struggle for independence first against Spain and then against the United States in 1898; the Chinese revolution of 1911; the rise of a Modernist Movement in Islam, particularly in Egypt; the growth of the Indian National Congress, established in 1885; and the success of Kemal Ataturk in creating a modern, secular state in Turkey on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. A common theme was shared: the struggle of nonwhite peoples against traditional or colonialist regimes. The successes, particularly in Japan and Turkey, made a deep impression on those aware of world events. The Ethical Policy In 1899 the liberal Conrad van Deventer published an article, "A Debt of Honor," which argued that the Netherlands had a moral responsibility to return to Indonesia all the profits that had been extracted from the colony from the sale of cash crops following the Dutch parliament's assumption of fiscal responsibility for the colony in 1867. This money, which he estimated at being almost 200 million guilders, would be invested in welfare and educational facilities. Advocates of what became known as the Ethical Policy had great faith in the value of progress along Western lines. Snouck Hurgronje, one of its most prominent proponents, came to believe in his experience with militant Islam that the adoption of enlightened policies, particularly in the field of education, would enable Indonesians to shed both Islamic and adat preoccupations. This would enable them to develop a modern consciousness necessary for self-government. The advocates of the Ethical Policy were somewhat vague about their ultimate objectives; some apparently believed that reforms would draw Indonesians and the mother country into a much closer, and in fact permanent, collaborative relationship. Others acknowledged that complete independence was a possibility but only in the distant future. Yet under a liberal government, which came to power in the Netherlands in 1901, these ideas became the basis for government policy. Education was a central concern of the Ethical Policy. In 1900 there were only about 1,500 elementary schools in the entire archipelago for a population of over 36 million. Despite its central position, Java was poorly endowed with schools: a total of some 562 for a population of over 28 million. The Batak region of Sumatra and Manado in northern Sulawesi, with 200 schools for a population of 321,000 and 366 schools for a population of 423,000, respectively, were fortunate in having a large number of missionary institutions. In 1906 a system of village schools was established. Although the government subsidized the construction of school buildings, the responsibility for maintaining them and paying teacher salaries was left to the villagers themselves. Although many resented the schools as a new government-imposed burden, there were some 3,500 village schools by 1913 and 18,000 by 1940. The literacy rate for adults, however, remained low even by 1930, averaging 7.4 percent overall and 6 percent for Javanese. In Sumatra, where there were a large number of village-level Quranic schools, the rate averaged 13.1 percent. Educational opportunities were limited even for the priyayi at the beginning of the century. A school for the training of native medical assistants had been established as early as 1851, and there were three "chiefs' schools" for the education of the higher priyayi after 1880. A small number of priyayi attended European primary schools where they had the opportunity to study Dutch, the key to gaining modern skills and an awareness of the outside world. There were some 1,545 students in such schools by 1900, and a tiny handful even managed to study in the Netherlands. Yet colonial officials were uneasy about the idea of Indonesians entering the same educational system as Europeans. Seven-year schools for Indonesians were established in 1914 in order to enable them to qualify for higher education without having to pass through the European system. The old chiefs' schools were reorganized as Training Schools for Native Officials, and the old medical school became the School for Training Native Doctors in 1900, using Dutch as the language of instruction. Teachers training schools were also established. On the tertiary level, a technical college was established at Bandung in 1920 and a law facility at Batavia four years later. Enrollments in Western-type schools increased tremendously in the 1900-30 period, from 265,940 to over 1.7 million. Those receiving a Dutch education, however, remained a small elite, who came to have a tremendous influence over the course of Indonesian affairs in the coming decades. Raden Adjeng Kartini, daughter of the regent of Jepara, was one of the very first women to receive a modern Dutch-language education at a European school. In letters written to Dutch friends (translated into English as Letters of a Javanese Princess), published after her premature death in 1904, she called for the modern education of Indonesian women and their emancipation from the oppressive weight of social custom. These letters became very influential, stirring a debate on this subject among proponents of the Ethical Policy. A number of Kartini Schools for girls were established on Java in 1913 from private contributions. The greatest challenge faced by Ethical Policy leaders was in the areas of population and health, particularly on Java. Java's population was estimated at around 5 million in 1815. The end of an era of devastating wars and the imposition of a stable, if exploitive, regime after 1830 provided the environment for radical growth. The population increased from 11 million in 1860 to 28 million in 1930 (including Madura). Food shortages became common in regions that had previously enjoyed an abundance of rice, and health standards deteriorated; sanitary facilities were overcrowded and poor. The government increased investment in health and sanitation nearly tenfold between 1900 and 1930. It dealt effectively with outbreaks of bubonic plague through village-level campaigns in which thousands of old houses with thatched roofs which provided a sanctuary for rats, were torn down and rebuilt and the vermin destroyed. The chronic problem of beriberi, a vitamin deficiency disease affecting people whose diet is predominantly polished white rice, was also alleviated. Yet the number of fully qualified physicians remained very low: one per 62,500 persons on Java and one per 52,400 on the Outer Islands in 1930. In 1905 the government began a movement to relieve population pressure on Java by encouraging settlement in the Outer Islands; by 1930, however, there were only 36,000 permanent settlers from Java in southern Sumatra and other localities. This was, however, the beginning of a policy that would be more actively pursued by the Republic of Indonesia after 1945. Overall, government policies could at best only stem the decline in living standards attendant upon the increase of the population on Java which on the eve of the Japanese occupation in 1942 was around 48 million. The pace of political reform was particularly slow and grudging, especially for those whose hopes had been aroused by Ethical Policy statements about self-government. The Decentralization Law of 1903 created residency councils with an advisory capacity composed of Europeans, Indonesians, and Chinese; there was talk two years later of unifying the European and the native civil services, but nothing was done. Nevertheless, reforms within the civil service aimed at replacing the traditional-modern duality of the political system was attempted. In 1911 the apprentice system, based on personal ties of loyalty between priyayi and bupati, was replaced by a more impersonal system in which the youngest native civil servants were appointed assistant clerks and paid a salary. After 1918 a policy of "deguardianization" was initiated. This involved the removal of the lowest level Dutch officials from the rural areas and the transfer of powers from them to the regents-a move bitterly resisted by the former, who sabotaged the reform when possible. Conservatives were extremely reluctant to allow for the establishment of anything resembling parliamentary institutions in the colony, fearing that this would encourage the development of politics rather that the process of orderly administration, which they prized. Nevertheless, plans for the creation of a People's Council, or Volksraad, were approved in 1916. This was to be a body composed of both elected and appointed members, including Indonesians who would advise the governor general and apprise him and the Dutch home government of public opinion; its views were to be sought by the governor general on the budget and allocations for defense of the archipelago. Its first meeting was held in 1918, and although it had no real political power, it served as a forum for the more moderate of politically active Indonesians during the 1920s and 1930s. Starting in 1925 a system of regency councils, replacing the older residency councils, was established on Java. Council members included Indonesians, and they were expected to advise and work closely with the regents, whose powers were in principle increased by the "deguardianization" reforms. They were appointed or chosen by a very limited electorate and served four-year terms. Priyayi and Radicals: The Rise of Political Organizations Most of Java's regents were content with the positions afforded them within the colonial political system. Their posts were for the most part hereditary, and they continued to enjoy a carefully preserved, if irrelevant, pomp. Their prestige, however, had declined, for they were seen not only as creatures of the Dutch but also as institutional antiques in a rapidly changing world. With a few exceptions, such as Hadiningrat, regent of Demak, who in 1899 advocated the promotion of modern education among the elite, they remained a strongly conservative force. The lower priyayi, however, had less interest in preserving the status quo; it was from this group of impoverished aristocrats, petty officials, schoolteachers, health officers, and inspectors that the impetus for the independence struggle originated. In 1908 students of the native medical school in Batavia established an association, the Noble Endeavor Society (Budi Utomo), which is considered the first modern political organization. It was at first strongly influenced by Tjipto Mangunkusumo, a doctor who had written articles for a liberal journal criticizing the hereditary transfer of the post of bupati. Members included students from the training schools for teachers, doctors, and native officials; they saw themselves as future counselors of the common people, committed to promoting their welfare and enlightenment. The higher priyayi, however, regarded Budi Utomo as a threat and a challenge. The more radical followers of Tjipto Mangunkusumo criticized the privileges of the bupati and even, indirectly, the policies of the Dutch. Struggles within the organization led to the rise of a more conservative leadership, stressing traditional Javanese values, such as harmony, and it became more acceptable to at least the more progressive regents. The government recognized Budi Utomo as a legal organization in 1909. Radicals resigned, and the group, which lasted until 1935 but never had more than a few thousand members, ceased to be in the forefront of the development of a national consciousness. The Dutch government, in its most liberal phrase, allowed and even welcomed the establishment of native associations. The associations that appeared after Budi Utomo tended to be regional or sectional. These included Pasundan, a Sudanese organization, founded in 1914; Young Java, founded in 1918; Young Minahasa and the Sumatran Union, also founded in 1918; and the Ambonese Union, founded in 1920. These were elite groups, composed for the most part of students much like those of Budi Utomo. A radical current, reflecting European social democratic ideas and a more vocal nationalism, appeared with the establishment of the Indies Party in 1912. Its founder, E.F.E. Douwes Dekkar, a Eurasian and relative of the author of Max Havelaar, advocated independence and the creation of an "Indies" citizenship for persons of all races, including Eurasians and Chinese, living in the archipelago. The Indies Party drew, among others, the discontented Tjipto Mangunkusumo; it was banned by the government in 1913, its leaders being exiled to the Netherlands. The following year, H.J.F.M. Sneevliet founded the Indies Social-Democratic Association, which in 1920 became the Indies Communist Association and in 1924 the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Another current in the early development of political movements was Islam. It had its origins among Muslim traders, both Indonesian and Arab, who organized the Islamic Commercial Union in 1909 to resist Chinese domination of local enterprise, particularly in the trade of batik textiles. By 1912 this had evolved into the Islamic Union (Sarekat Islam). Under the leadership of Umar Said Tjokroaminoto, who had resigned from government service and for a time had been part of an itinerant wayang (see Glossary) troupe, the union became the first association to gain a large following among the common people. Its membership of some 66,000 in the summer of 1912 grew to over 360,000 by the spring of 1914. Its aims included the promotion of the teachings of Islam, mutual aid for union members, and the encouragement of commercial enterprise among Indonesians. Its rapid growth, which came as an unsettling surprise to the colonial authorities, was to a large extent the result of its success in harnessing popular dislike of Chinese businessmen and moneylenders. It also drew on traditional Javanese beliefs about the return of the just king, and Tjokroaminoto went so far as to cast himself in the role of a charismatic, if not divine, leader. In 1913 the colonial government had recognized the branches of Sarekat Islam-but not its central organization-as legal associations. At the group's first archipelago-wide conference in 1916, attended by delegates from some 80 branches, including those established in the Outer Islands, Tjokroaminoto called for self-government for Indonesia within a union of the archipelago and the Netherlands. Another Islamic group, Muhammadiyah, had been established at Yogyakarta in 1912. More than Sarekat Islam, it reflected developments in the wider Islamic world and particularly the Islamic Modernist Movement of the late nineteenth century, which had its center in Cairo. Modernism was an attempt to combine fundamental Islamic scripture and law, purified of all later accretions and superstitions, with Western science. It was particularly strong among the Minangkabau of Sumatra, and a number of Modernist schools had been established there. On Java, Muhammadiyah confronted both the adat and traditional Muslim authorities but had a nationwide following by the late 1930s. The Muslim Scholars League (NU), an orthodox group, was established in 1926 as a conservative reaction to the growing influence of Muhammadiyah and that of Tjokroaminoto. The Russian Revolution and Lenin's support, through the Communist International (Comintern), of anti-imperialist movements in Asian countries stimulated the rise of the PKI. During the 1920s it became particularly active. Strong among trade unions, which had been organized principally among government employees and workers in government-owned enterprises as early as 1911, communists led a railroad strike in 1923 and a strike among metalworkers two years later. In 1926-27 the PKI attempted to initiate revolution among villagers in west Java and west Sumatra; these risings were forcibly suppressed, the party was banned, and some 1,300 communists were exiled to the Boven Digul camp in the western portion of the island of New Guinea; several thousand others were imprisoned elsewhere. The PKI all but disappeared, not to be an important element in Indonesian politics again until after independence. Indonesian leaders in the first decades of the twentieth century devoted a great deal of attention to educational reform, and a number of experimental schools were established outside the government and missionary systems in the 1920-30 period. Tan Malaka, later a revolutionary leader, organized a private school at Semarang in 1921 under Sarekat Islam auspices, stressing the values of collective action, organization, and working for the welfare of the masses. By the following year there were twelve Sarekat Islam schools, with some 3,000 students. In 1912 Ki Hadjar Dewantaro, a member of the Indies Party, had turned from political action to educational reform a decade later and established the first Pupil's Garden School, or Taman Siswa, at Yogyakarta. Although influenced by European educational reformers during his exile in the Netherlands after 1913, Ki Hadjar Dewantaro stressed the importance of maintaining Javanese cultural values and not turning students into imitation Europeans. Many consider the appearance of the Pupil's Garden Schools to be a milestone in the Indonesian national movement, emphasizing as it did the cultural aspect of national liberation. Another aspect of cultural nationalism was linguistic reform. In 1917 the Noble Java Movement (Jawa Dipa) was established. Its objective was the elimination of the honorific language of Java, which social inferiors used in their conversations with superiors. It encouraged all Javanese to use Ngoko, the "abrupt" speech superiors used to address inferiors. Preoccupations with Javanese were eclipsed during the 1920s, however, by the rise of Malay as a pan-Indonesian and truly "national" language of the archipelago. Sukarno and the Nationalist Movement The late 1920s saw the rise of Sukarno to a position of prominence among political leaders. He became the country's first truly national leader and its president from independence until his forced retirement from political life in 1966. Born in 1901, the son of a lower priyayi schoolteacher and his Balinese wife, he associated in his youth with radical cultural and political figures, such as Douwes Dekker, Tjipto Mangunjusumo, and Ki Hadjar Dewantaro. He was particularly close to Tjokroaminoto of Sarekat Islam until his divorce from Tjokroaminoto's daughter in 1922. Although he received an engineering degree from the Technical College at Bandung in 1926, his vocation was politics, and in 1927 he founded the Indonesian Nationalist Association, which became the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI). Its program stressed mass organization, noncooperation with the Dutch authorities (in contrast to those political figures who used the People's Council and other constitutional organs as their forum), and the ultimate goal of independence. Assessments of Sukarno's career tend to stress his role as a charismatic or demagogic leader, showing little concern for the development of political institutions or the evolution of a consistent ideology. He clearly had a romantic concept of his mission: he regarded himself as involved in a life-and-death struggle with the forces of evil, as were the righteous warriors of wayang plays. For him, politics was the opposition of "us" and "them," as in the confrontation of good and evil in the wayang drama, rather than a process of negotiation and compromise. At the same time his thinking, like that of many Javanese, including Tjokroaminoto, revealed the urge to bring together and synthesize many different, often contradictory, themes. These included not only wayang and rural Javanese beliefs in the just king, but Marxism, Islam, and a kind of pan-Asianism. The evolution of Sukarno's ideas struck a deeply responsive chord among the people; his speeches drew enthusiastic audiences of thousands. Whereas the Indies Party and the PKI appealed to an often overly theoretical internationalism and whereas the Islamic groups and Budi Utomo espoused more or less narrow religious or class interests, Sukarno became the articulator of an evolving Indonesian identity. His syncretism served the purpose of creating an ideology with appeal to all significant national groups, and to this end-as his critics pointed out-he was willing to sacrifice consistency and accuracy. A number of themes can be discerned in Sukarno's thinking during the late 1920s and 1930s. One of the most important was a response to the Marxist emphasis on the historical role of the proletariat-his notion of Marhaenism. Marhaen was a rice farmer Sukarno encountered in Java in 1930. Unlike the member of the proletariat who was forced to sell his labor to capitalists, Marhaen owned his own land and tools but was still poor and exploited. The Marhaen concept involved the creating of what historian Bernard Dahm calls a "new common denominator," which would encompass the great majority of the Indonesian population-small traders, artisans, and workers, as well as peasants. From this, Sukarno argued the need for mass organization and action. The exploited Marhaens, rather than simply the proletariat, would be the driving force of history. Their true interest was national independence and emancipation from the international network of Western-based imperialism; at the same time, a distinctly Eastern political and economic order would have to evolve. Sukarno argued that once what he termed the golden bridge of independence had been crossed, there were two possible roads: one would lead to the establishment of an Indonesian capitalism with its own brand of exploitation based on the expansion of selfish, individualistic interests; the other would lead to a classless Marhaenist society. The economic basis of the latter would be socialism, but socialism expressed through the traditional Indonesian concept of mutual aid, such as was traditionally found in Javanese villages. Politically the Marhaenist order would be based not on Western parliamentary principles but on the consultation of interest groups and the building of a consensus. Harmony, rather than the conflict of individuals and groups within a Western-style parliamentary context, would be emphasized. Sukarno's attitude toward Islam was a characteristically complex and ambiguous one. Like the Modernists of Muhammadiyah, he claimed that Islam was, at heart, progressive, While studying the religion during his period of exile in the 1930s, however, he interpreted Muslim scripture and law in a relativistic way that alarmed Modernist and orthodox Muslims alike. Like Ataturk in Turkey, he advocated the establishment of a secular rather than an Islamic state, a point that alienated him further from the Islamic community. In his zeal for synthesis, he proclaimed triumphantly in 1941 that he was a mixture of the three "isms" of Islamism, Marxism, and nationalism. Sultan Sjahrir and Mohammad Hatta appeared in 1931 as Sukarno's most important rivals for leadership of the independence movement. Graduates of Dutch universities, they had been leaders of Indonesian students in the Netherlands and viewed the struggle for independence from the distant perspective of European social democracy. They were, moreover, Minangkabau from Sumatra and lacked the mystic orientation of the Javanese, which Sukarno exploited so successfully. Stressing the need for modern education and organizational rationality, they criticized Sukarno's preoccupation with rousing the masses. In 1931 they established a group known as Indonesian Nationalist Education (PNI-Baru). Sukarno subsequently attempted to forge a united front of the PNI-Baru and his own group, the Indonesia Party (Partindo), which he had established after the Dutch pressured the dissolution of the PNI in 1931. This effort, however, was not successful. By the late 1920s the colonial government seemed to have moved a long way from the idealistic commitments of the Ethical Policy. Attitudes had hardened in the face of growing Indonesian demands for independence, and conservatives were becoming increasingly influential in the formulation of policy. Sukarno was put on trial for sedition in December 1929 and sentenced to four years in prison. Although his sentence was commuted after two years, he was arrested again in 1933 and exiled to the island of Flores in the Lesser Sunda Islands and later transferred to Bengkulu in Sumatra in 1938. The change in the Dutch attitude, however, may have been more a working out of the logic of the Ethical Policy than a complete refutation of it. Its advocates did not, overall, equate self-government and development with independence, and even the liberal Governor General Alexander W.F. Idenburg had told Douwes Dekker and the other leaders of the Indies Party in 1913 that the archipelago would never be permitted to be independent from the Netherlands. The Japanese Occupation and the Struggle for Independence The Japanese occupation, which lasted three and one-half years, was a watershed in the emerging nation's history. The image of Dutch invincibility, which had been built up since at least the end of the Java War in 1830, was shattered as Japanese forces captured the archipelago with relative ease in early 1942, landing in Batavia in March. With its capture, the city was given the old name of Jakarta. The link between power and the legitimacy of colonial rule was thus permanently broken. Hopes were raised, particularly among the peasants of Java's villages, that the prophecy of Jayabhaya, a twelfth-century king, would finally be fulfilled. According to the prophecy, which like the myth of the just king was widespread among the masses in the last years of Dutch rule, white men would dominate Java for two centuries. They would be expelled by "yellow men," who themselves would depart after three years. Then the island would regain its freedom and prosperity. Its apparent fulfillment in 1942 was to do more to dissolve the people's resignation to colonial rule than all the arguments of the nationalists, including Sukarno, in the preceding decades. Even more significantly, under Japanese auspices political institutions were established that provided the basis for an independent republican government after August 1945. In their desire to mobilize the population for the war effort, the Japanese established the first genuine Indonesian armed forces. The Japanese divided the archipelago into three jurisdictions: Java and Madura, under the 16th Army; Sumatra, for a time joined with Malaya, under the 25th Army; and the eastern archipelago under naval command. Their motivations for striking south into Dutch possessions were both strategic and economic: they wanted control of the Strait of Malacca leading into the Indian Ocean, and they needed the petroleum and rubber resources of Sumatra and the eastern archipelago to keep their design for a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere running. Aside from fields in captured Burma, Japan had no significant oil reserves. There was no thought of promoting Indonesian independence, yet attitudes toward the population varied among the jurisdictions. In Sumatra and the east, the overriding concern was the maintenance of law and order and the efficient extraction of needed resources. Java, however, had little economic value outside of its huge labor force, and the 16th Army was tolerant, within limits, of political activities carried on by nationalists and Muslims. This tolerance grew as the momentum of Japanese expansion was halted in mid-1942 and subsequently reversed as the Allies began their counteroffensives. Sukarno and Hatta agreed in early 1942 to cooperate with the new conquerors, as this seemed to be the best opportunity to secure independence for the archipelago. Other nationalist leaders, particularly Sutan Sjahrir, repelled by Japanese fascism, had refused and gone underground. The Japanese were particularly impressed by Sukarno's mass following, and he became increasingly valuable to them as the need to mobilize the population for the war effort grew between 1943 and 1945. According to Dahm, Sukarno, though outwardly loyal to Japan, never subordinated the goal of national independence to its interests and criticized-indirectly at least-Japanese intransigence on this point, particularly after Burma and the Philippines were given formal independence in 1943. He was described as being not so much pro-Japanese as anti-Western in his viewpoint. Sukarno's reputation, however, was tarnished by complicity in recruiting forced labor on Java to work in other Japanese-occupied territories. These workers, of whom there were around one-quarter of a million, worked under inhuman conditions, and only about 70,000 were alive at the end of the war. The Japanese, for their part, needed Sukarno in order to enlist popular efforts for their own ends. In March 1943 he was made head-along with Hatta, Ki Hdjar Dewantaro, and Kyai Haji Mas Mansur, a leader of the Muhammadiyah-of a political organization known as the Center of People's Power (Putera). Tokyo's decision in May 1943 to make the archipelago a part of Greater Japan was a major setback for the nationalists. Sukarno agreed, however, to serve as head of a 43-member Central Advisory Council in September of that year. Provincial advisory councils were also established at this time. Sukarno was also made head of the Java Service Association, set up in January 1944 to replace Putera. He resisted the incorporation policy, continuing to travel around Java in order to prepare the people for independence. He cautioned them, however, that this could not be achieved without the endorsement of the Japanese. In 1943 the military government organized the Youth and Vigilance Corps to help them maintain order on Java. The heiho (paramilitary forces) were established as part of the Japanese armed forces. In October 1943 the Defenders of the Fatherland (Peta) was created as an independent military force to assist the Japanese in repelling an Allied invasion of the archipelago. By the end of the war, it had some 37,000 men in arms on Java and 20,000 in Sumatra. Its officers formed an important element of the leadership for the post-war armed forces of independent Indonesia. Other Japanese-created organs included the neighborhood associations set up on the village level for surveillance and mobilization purposes. The youth arm of the Java Service Association, the Barisan Pelopor, or Vanguard Column, was given training in guerrilla warfare beginning in early 1945. The Japanese attempted to enlist the support of Islamic leaders on both the national and the village level, apparently in a move calculated to counteract the growing influence of the nationalists. The Bureau of Religious Affairs had been established in March 1942, and in November 1943 the Council of Indonesian Muslim Associations (Masyumi), a pan-Muslim organization joining together Modernist and orthodox groups into a united front, was set up. A large number of village religious leaders were brought to Jakarta for training and indoctrination. In December 1944 a Muslim armed force, the Army of Allah, or Barisan Hizbullah, was attached to Masyumi.