Sumpah Pemuda

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sumpah Pemuda, or Youth Pledge, was a declaration made in October 28th 1928 by young Indonesian nationalists at a conference in the then-Dutch East Indies. They proclaimed three guiding principles, more boldly than their elders had hitherto dared (spelling altered to conform to standard Indonesian and edited for length):

Bertumpah darah yang satu, tanah air Indonesia (One blood — the Indonesian homeland)
Berbangsa satu, bangsa Indonesia (One people — the Indonesian nation)
bahasa persatuan, bahasa Indonesia (a unifying language — Indonesian)

The pledge, revolutionary at the time, became policy after Indonesia attained independence. Since there are hundreds of distinct languages spoken across the archipelago, the principles of unity were more than just an ideal; they were a practical necessity. When Sukarno declared independence in 1945, there were almost no fluent speakers of Indonesian in the whole country. Fifty years later, the government reported that more than 80% of the population could not only speak but also read Indonesian. While government figures may have set a low bar for literacy, there is no denying that the government has achieved remarkable success in unifying a diverse and far-flung nation.

The ideals of the Sumpah Pemuda entailed no tolerance of separatism, and were cited in quashing rebellions in the 1950's and more recently in the case of independence movements in East Timor and Aceh. As part of a compulsory curriculum of national ideology, the Sumpah Pemuda (along with the Pancasila, or "the Five Ideals") was drilled into pupils across the nation.