The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXXI, Part 1-2, 1983 - Khamkoo

Mohammad Hatta, Indonesian Patriot, Memoirs, Edited by C.L.M. Penders (Gunung
Agung, Singapore, 19S1), pp. 319 .
It cannot be said. that the birth of independent Indonesia was an easy one.
Comparisons are only occasionally relevant, but if the creation of independent India,
the world's second m0st populous nation, was difficult, at least there was a viable
indigenous civil service and an economic and communications structure on which to
build. Dutch policies and geographic obstacles had seen to it that the world's fifth
most populous country, Indonesia, inherited very little, and the protracted four-year
war of independence, coming immediately after the dislocation of the Japanese occupation,
reduced the country to shambles, which the political chaos in the post-independence
period under Sukarno did little to improve. Westerners, and for that matter
some Easterners too, with short historical memories often forget the appallingly difficult
circumstances of post-war Indonesia.
The publication of the memoirs in English of the country's first Vice-President
and one of the leaders of the struggle for independence therefore forms a valuable
addition to the literature of the period. Hatta, a Minangkabau from Sumatra, was
born in 1902, and from 1921 to 1932 studied economics at Rotterdam University. He
became by process of natural selection and leadership the principal advocate of independence
for Indonesia while in Holland, where he was imprisoned for his activities for
nearly six months.
Shortly after his return to Indone~ia, Hatta met for the first time the other
chief architect of independence, Sukarno, after the latter's release from prison by the
Dutch. Sukarno was proposing a union between his Partindo independence party and
Hatta's new Pendidikan Nasional Indonesia (PNI, Indonesian National Education
Party). Almost immediately a personality clash emerged between the impulsive Sukarno
and the cautious constitutional Hatta, which erupted into print with Sukarno's party
attacking Hatta for his apparent cooperation with the Dutch in allowing his name to
go forward as a socialist candidate for the elected Lower House in the Hague. Nothing
came of the proposal, as Hatta withdrew, and Sukarno was imprisoned again the following
year.
Hatta was magnanimous, and wrote an article published in Daulat Ra'jat in
support of Sukarno, as .a leader of the independence movement. However, when
Sukarno announced his withdrawal from politics, Hatta returned to the attack, saying
his "attitude has besmirched the national movement" and speaking of Sukarno's
'tragedy', his "unsteady character and principles''-. ·
In view of this profound basic antagonism, it says a lot for both that they were
able to overlook their differences and work together in the cause of national independence.
Hatta himself was interned in exile from 1935, first at Tanah Merah in West
Irian, then at Banda Neira in the Moluccas, and from 1942 at Sukabumi in Java, He
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