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$Pretitle{}
$Title{Indonesia
Chapter 1C.   The Growth of National Consciousness}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Donald M. Seekins}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{java
established
schools
independence
dutch
indonesian
political
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$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.