Close
Stay informed: Sign up for eNews Subscribe
Read Chapter 1
Close

Chapter 1

The Golden Bridge

Independence - politieke onafhankelijkheid, political independence - is no more and no less than a golden bridge, and after we have crossed that bridge we will perfect our society.
-Sukarno

The image of independence as a golden bridge to the future can be found several times in Sukarno's political writings. It first appeared in his 1933 speech "Mentjapai Indonesia Merdeka" (Achieving an Independent Indonesia), quoted in the epigraph above, but nowhere was it more significant than in his famous "Birth of the Pancasila" speech, of June 1, 1945. Speaking to a committee of Japanese officials, Javanese aristocrats, and elite nationalist politicians who had been convened to explore the possibility of Indonesian national independence, he argued that political independence must precede rather than follow from the resolution of such "petty issues" as the nature and organization of state authority, the intellectual and physical readiness of the population for self-rule, and the general level of social welfare throughout the archipelago. These were matters that could be properly dealt with only after political independence had been achieved. "If every one of the seventy million Indonesian people [orang Indonesia] has to be independent in their hearts before we can achieve political independence [English in original], I say again, we will not get an independent Indonesia before the Day of Judgment! ... It doesn't matter if the people [rakyat] can read or not, it doesn't matter if the economy is strong or not, it doesn't matter if the people are ignorant or clever, as