Encountering Islam: The Politics of Religious Identities in Southeast Asia

8. Natsir & Sukarno: Their Clash over Nationalism, Religion and Democracy, 1928-1958

8 Natsir & sUkarNo: their Clash over NatioNalism, religioN aNd demoCraCy, 1928–1958 Audrey Kahin In the closing months of 2008, as Indonesia prepared to hold its third national elections since the downfall of the Soeharto regime, a continuing point of controversy was the growing strength of religion in the country’s political life. Discussion of this issue became more heated with the passing of the pornography bill on the national scene (see Rinaldo, this volume) and the increasing number of local initiatives being introduced aimed at strengthening Islam’s social and political role. These measures sparked widespread controversy, as they were often seen as aimed at undermining freedoms essential to a democratic society in order to appease some of the stronger Islamic groups (see also Platzdasch, this volume). Similar controversies have been part and parcel of the Indonesian political scene throughout the country’s postcolonial history, though they were forcibly suppressed during much of Soeharto’s tenure. Until the final years of his regime Soeharto, like Sukarno before him, had seen the force of political Islam in Indonesia as a threat equal to that 192 Audrey Kahin of communism and thus needing to be similarly contained. Especially during his first two decades in power, Soeharto attempted to impose the kind of control the colonial government of the Netherlands East Indies had earlier maintained, wherein religion was permitted to play a large role in the country’s social and cultural life while it was rigorously excluded from exerting any political influence. In the late colonial period and in the first decades of independence, Mohammad Natsir, who headed the Masjumi, the country’s largest Muslim political party, had been one of the major Indonesian political figures who had fought for the inclusion of religion in the political arena. At the same time, in the 1930s and 1940s, Natsir was in the forefront of the nationalist movement and in the 1950s strove hard to maintain Indonesia as a democratic state. His relationship to Sukarno, Indonesia’s first president, and the alliance and disagreements between the two men throw some light on the debates within Indonesia over the form the new state should take and the role of Islam within it. Conflicts regarding the role of religion in the country’s political life had divided nationalist political forces in the Netherlands East Indies long before the declaration of independence in 1945. Already in the late 1920s and early 1930s, leaders of nationalist organizations, both those belonging to specifically Islamic parties and those defining themselves as religiously neutral, were attempting to work out the most viable basis for drawing the people of the Indonesian archipelago into an overarching nationalist movement. The major issue that divided Indonesian nationalists centred on whether Islam, embraced by at least 85 per cent of the population, provided the natural tie among the peoples of the diverse societies making up the Netherlands East Indies or whether the new independence movement should be religiously neutral in order to avoid alienating the country’s important minorities of non-Muslims. In an influential 1925 essay, “Nationalism, Islam and Marxism”, Sukarno, Indonesia’s foremost nationalist leader and future president, attempted to harmonize the three major streams he perceived in Indonesian society (Sukarno 1969). A few years later, Mohammad Natsir, as a young student in Bandung in the late 1920s, also began to confront some of the basic problems surrounding Islam’s role in the struggle for Indonesian independence. At that time he attended the demonstrations mounted by the Indonesian National Party (Partai Nasional Indonesia, PNI) and covered Sukarno’s speeches there for Pembela Islam, the journal of the Persatuan Islam (Persis), for which he served as editor and correspondent (Federspiel Natsir and Sukarno 193 1970, pp. 12–16).1 Though strongly attracted to the PNI’s condemnation of Dutch colonialism and its demands for an independent Indonesia, Natsir was worried by the growing criticisms voiced by its leaders against aspects of Islamic teachings. As a result, he began to draw a sharp line between a struggle for independence emphasizing nationalism, as was espoused by Sukarno, and a struggle for independence based on Islamic ideals (Pembela Islam 1931–1932).2 Writing under the alias, Is, he emphasized the indispensability of Islam as the major foundation of the nationalist movement.3 Many religiously neutral nationalist leaders reacted angrily to these articles and accused Pembela Islam of trying to split the unity of the independence movement...