Budi Utomo

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Budi Utomo (also Boedi Oetomo; "Pure Endeavor") was a Javanese political and ethnic organization founded in 1908 in the colonial Dutch East Indies. It was composed of members of the Javanese elite (priyayi), and advocated modernization of Javanese culture and greater educational opportunities for the elite. While the organization was only occasionally an important political force, many historians consider it to be a forerunner of the later, more explicitly nationalist political organizations in what became Indonesia.

The organization was founded in May 1908 as a gathering of students in the government-run elite schools on Java. Its early leader was Dr. Wahidin Soedirohoesodo, but by the organization's first major gathering in Yogyakarta in October 1908, he was already stepping aside for other younger organizers. Tjipto Mangunkusumo, who would later found the more radical Indische Partij, argued that Budi Utomo should expand its scope to include the working classes, and to include the rest of the Indies outside of Java.

The organization reached a peak in membership at about ten thousand near the end of 1909, around the same time it received official legal recognition from the Dutch colonial government.

BU officially dissolved in 1935 when what remained of the organization joined several other similar groups to form the moderate Greater Indonesian Party (Parindra).