President Sukarno

                                            Sukarno 
                                                       1st President of Indonesia
                                             In office 18 August 1945 – 12 March 1967


Prime Minister
Sutan Sjahrir
Amir Sjarifuddin
Muhammad Hatta
Abdul Halim
Muhammad Natsir
Soekiman Wirjosandjojo
Wilopo
Ali Sastroamidjojo
Burhanuddin Harahap
Djuanda Kartawidjaja


Vice President   Mohammad Hatta


Personal details 
Born 6 June 1901 Blitar, Soerabaia, Dutch East Indies
Died 21 June 1970 (aged 69) Jakarta, Indonesia
Political party Indonesian National Party
Spouse(s) Oetari Inggit Garnasih Fatmawati Hartini Kartini Manoppo Ratna Sari Dewi Soekarno Haryati Yurike Sanger Heldy Djafar Amelia de la Rama Braly
Religion   Islam

Biography
Born Kusno Sosrodihardjo (6 June 1901 – 21 June 1970) was the first President of Indonesia. Sukarno was the leader of his country's struggle for independence from the Netherlands and was Indonesia's first President from 1945 to 1967. He was replaced by one of his generals, Suharto and remained under house arrest until his death.

Like many Javanese people, he had only one name; in religious contexts, he was occasionally referred to as "Achmed Sukarno".  The name Soekarno means "Good Karna" in Javanese.

Background 
Sukarno as an HBS student in Surabaya, 1916. The son of a Javanese primary school teacher, an aristocrat named Raden Soekemi Sosrodihardjo and his Balinese wife from the Brahman caste named Ida Ayu Nyoman Rai from Buleleng regency, Sukarno was born at Jl. Pandean IV / 40 Surabaya, East Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Following Javanese custom, he was renamed after surviving a childhood illness. After graduating from a native primary school in 1912, he was sent to Europeesche Lagere School (Dutch-medium junior secondary school) in Mojokerto. When his father sent him to Surabaya in 1916 to attend a Hogere Burger School (Dutch-medium secondary school), he met Tjokroaminoto, a nationalist and founder of Sarekat Islam, the owner of the boarding house where he lived. In 1920, Sukarno married Tjokroaminoto's daughter Siti Oetari. In 1921 he began to study at the Technische Hogeschool (Technical Institute) in Bandung. He studied civil engineering and focused on architecture. In Bandung, Sukarno became romantically involved with Inggit Garnasih, the wife of Sanoesi, the boarding house owner where he lived as student. Inggit was 13 years older than Sukarno. On March 1923, Sukarno divorced Siti Oetari to marry Inggit (who also divorced her husband Sanoesi). And later on Soekarno also divorced Inggit and married Fatmawati. Sukarno graduated with a degree in engineering on 25 May 1926. In July 1926, with his university friend Anwari, he established the architectural firm Soekarno & Anwari in Bandung, which provided planning and contractor services. Among Sukarno's architectural works are the renovated building of the Preanger Hotel (1929), where he acted as assistant to famous Dutch architect Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker. Sukarno also designed many private houses on today's Jalan Gatot Subroto, Jalan Palasari, and Jalan Dewi Sartika in Bandung. Later on, as president, Sukarno remained engaged in architecture, designing the Proclamation Monument and adjacent Gedung Pola in Jakarta, the Youth Monument (Tugu Muda) in Semarang, the Alun-alun Monument in Malang, the Heroes' Monument in Surabaya, and also the new city of Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan. Atypically, even among the colony's small educated elite, Sukarno was fluent in several languages. In addition to the Javanese language of his childhood, he was a master of Sundanese, Balinese and of Indonesian, and especially strong in Dutch. He was also quite comfortable in German, English, French, Arabic, and Japanese, all of which were taught at his HBS. He was helped by his photographic memory and precocious mind.  In his studies, Sukarno was "intensely modern," both in architecture and in politics. He despised both the traditional Javanese feudalism, which he considered as "backward" and was to blame for the fall of the country under Dutch colonialism, and the imperialism practiced by Western countries, which he termed as exploitation of humans by other humans and is responsible for the deep poverty and low levels of education of Indonesian people under the Dutch. To promote nationalistic pride amongst Indonesian people, Sukarno interpreted these ideas in his dress, in his urban planning for the capital (eventually Jakarta), and in his socialist politics, though he did not extend his taste for modern art to pop music; he had Koes Plus imprisoned for their allegedly decadent lyrics despite his reputation for womanising. For Sukarno, modernity was blind to race, neat and Western in style, and anti-imperialist.

Independence Struggle
Sukarno was first exposed to nationalist ideas while living under Tjokroaminoto. Later, while a student in Bandung, he immersed himself in Western, communist, and Islamic political philosophy, eventually developing his own political ideology of Indonesian-style socialist self-sufficiency. He began styling his ideas as Marhaenism, named after Marhaen, an Indonesian peasant he met in southern Bandung area, who owned his little plot of land and worked on it himself, producing sufficient income to support his family. In university, Sukarno began organising study club for Indonesian students, the Algemeene Studieclub, in opposition to the established student clubs dominated by Dutch students. On 4 July 1927, Sukarno with his friends from the Algemeene Studieclub established a pro-independence party, Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI), upon which Sukarno was elected as the first leader. The party advocated independence for Indonesia, and opposed imperialism and capitalism because it opined that both systems worsened the life of Indonesian people. The party also advocated secularism and unity amongst the many different ethnicities in the Dutch East Indies, to establish a united Indonesia. Sukarno also hoped that Japan would commence a war against the western powers and that Java could then gain its independence with Japan's aid. Coming soon after the disintegration of Sarekat Islam in early 1920s and the crushing of Partai Komunis Indonesia after their failed rebellion of 1926, PNI began to attract a large number of followers, particularly among the new university-educated youths eager for larger freedoms and opportunities denied to them in the racist and constrictive political system of Dutch colonialism.  Sukarno with fellow defendants and attorneys during his trial in Bandung, 1930. PNI activities came under the attention of the colonial government, and Sukarno's speeches and meetings was often infiltrated and disrupted by agents of the colonial secret police (Politieke Inlichtingen Dienst/PID). Eventually, Sukarno and other key PNI leaders were arrested on 29 December 1929 by Dutch colonial authorities in a series of raids throughout Java. Sukarno himself was arrested while on a visit to Yogyakarta. On his trial at the Bandung Landraad courthouse from August to December 1930, Sukarno made a series of long political speech attacking the injustices of colonialism and imperialism, titled Indonesia Menggoegat (Indonesia Accuses).

On December 1930, Sukarno was sentenced to four years in prison, which was served in Sukamiskin prison in Bandung. His impressive speech, however, received wide coverage by the press, and due to strong pressure from the liberal elements both in Netherlands and Dutch East Indies, Sukarno was released early on 31 December 1931. By this time, he had become a popular hero widely known throughout Indonesia. However, during his imprisonment, PNI had been splintered by oppression of colonial authorities and internal dissension. The original PNI was disbanded by the Dutch, and its former members formed two different parties; the Partai Indonesia (Partindo) under Sukarno's associate Sartono who were promoting mass agitation, and the Pendidikan Nasional Indonesia (PNI Baroe) under Mohammad Hatta and Soetan Sjahrir, two nationalists who recently returned from studies in Netherlands who were promoting long-term strategy of dispensing modern education to the uneducated Indonesian populace to develop an intellectual elite able to offer effective resistance to Dutch rule. After attempting to reconcile the two parties to establish one united nationalist front, Sukarno chose to become the head of Partindo on 28 July 1932. Partindo has maintained its alignment with Sukarno's own strategy of immediate mass agitation, and Sukarno disagreed with Hatta's long-term cadre-based struggle. Hatta himself believed Indonesian independence will not occur within his lifetime, while Sukarno believed Hatta's strategy to be ignorant of the fact that politics can only make real changes through formation and utilisation of force (machtsvorming en machtsaanwending).  During this period, to support himself and the party financially, Sukarno re-entered architecture, opening the bureau Soekarno & Rooseno. He also wrote articles for the party's newspaper, Fikiran Ra'jat. While being based in Bandung, Sukarno travelled extensively throughout Java to establish contacts with other nationalists. His activities attracted further attention by the Dutch PID. On mid-1933, Sukarno published a series of writings titled Mentjapai Indonesia Merdeka ("To Attain Independent Indonesia"). For this writing, he was arrested by Dutch police while visiting fellow nationalist Mohammad Hoesni Thamrin in Jakarta on 1 August 1933. This time, to prevent providing Sukarno with platform to make political speeches, the hardline governor-general jonkheer Bonifacius Cornelis de Jonge utilised his emergency powers to send Sukarno to internal exile without trial. In 1934, Sukarno was shipped, along with his family (including Inggit Garnasih), to the remote town of Ende, on the island of Flores. During his time in Flores, he utilised his limited freedom of movement to establish a children's theatre, among its members was future politician Frans Seda. Due to an outbreak of malaria in Flores, the Dutch authorities decided to move Sukarno and his family to Bencoolen (now Bengkulu) on western coast of Sumatera, on February 1938. In Bengkulu, Sukarno became acquainted with Hassan Din, the local head of Muhammadiyah organisation, and he was allowed to teach Islamic religion at a local school owned by the Muhammadiyah. One of his students was 15-year old Fatmawati, daughter of Hassan Din. He became romantically involved with Fatmawati, which he justified by stating the inability of Inggit Garnasih to produce children during their almost 20-year marriage. Sukarno was still in Bengkulu exile when the Japanese invaded the archipelago in 1942.
(Source Wikipedia)

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