The nationalistic domestic narrative of Indonesia's anti-colonial struggle is one dominated by the efforts of the secular nationalist front to establish an independent nation-state under Soekarno's leadership. However, as several scholars have pointed out, the story was more complicated than that.Footnote 1 The nationalists were often ready to collaborate with the foreign ruler of the day, whether this was the Dutch or the Japanese. The Communists had for decades coordinated local rural micro-rebellions, inciting anti-colonial feelings until the colonial crackdown of 1926 and the clash with the Republic at Madiun in 1948. The Islamists had offered an alternative platform to the secular state and had actively contributed to the political and strategic debate advancing an intransigent policy of noncollaboration, the hijrah (lit. migration) policy. Yet official national historiography has marginalised these narratives.
In the early 2000s, van Klinken pointed out that whereas a new body of Indonesian scholarship reclaiming the contributions of the Communist movement had emerged since the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, positive views of the Islamic movement had been feebler and driven by ideological affinities alone, rather than the desire to rectify historiographical accounts.Footnote 2 In the past decade both discourses have been gaining ground, bringing back into the picture Communism as well as Islamism. This article investigates the narrative of Islamic nationalism in twentieth-century Indonesia, highlighting moments of displacement and reconstitution, and focussing on the experience of, and discourse surrounding, the Darul Islam, a self-identified Islamist movement active between the 1940s and 1960s.
The Darul Islam, as explained in more detail below, was formed in 1947 by S. M. Kartosuwiryo (1905–1962), a leading member of the Islamic party Masyumi who, since the late 1920s, had advocated for shaping postcolonial Indonesia as an Islamic state. As the political ground shifted in the second half of the 1940s, Kartosuwiryo's anti-Dutch efforts were concentrated in West Java, where he eventually proclaimed the establishment of the Negara Islam Indonesia, or Islamic State of Indonesia, in 1949. After expanding from West Java to Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi, the Darul Islam/Islamic State came into conflict with the Soekarno Republic in the mid- to late-1950s, and was eventually crushed by the Republican Army in 1965.
In the official and scholarly historiographies Kartosuwiryo's move to West Java in 1947 and the proclamation of an Islamic State of Indonesia in 1949 have been portrayed as emblematic of his separatist intentions and opposition to the nationalist project. In this article I suggest that Kartosuwiryo's self-removal from the Republican capital Yogyakarta—both in a physical and political sense—should be read as a necessary step towards the establishment of an Islamic state that would encompass the entire archipelago, and possibly reach beyond it. As it crafted an official historical narrative, the postcolonial nation-state constructed the Darul Islam/Islamic State of Indonesia as separatist, and consequently enclosed political Islam within an oppositional, anti-nationalist public discourse. I argue instead that for Kartosuwiryo displacement was not an indication of separation, but the premise for an alternative national(ist) configuration.
In the following pages I examine the activities of S. M. Kartosuwiryo and the Darul Islam/Islamic State of Indonesia movement centred in West Java, to offer a narrative of the independence struggle that counters the one advanced by the Indonesian Pancasila unitary state. The juxtaposition of narratives is here intertwined with a reading of the experience of the Islamist movement as one characterised by “displacement” in its relation with Soekarno's political vision, which becomes particularly helpful in capturing subtleties that old discussions of separatism—with their assumption of fixed centres and peripheries—cannot illuminate.
This article unfolds three historical threads, each connected to the idea of exile and displacement (physical as well as political and intellectual), and the reconstitution (regardless of whether successful or failed) that followed from those processes. First I illustrate the political circumstances under which Kartosuwiryo “left” Yogyakarta in the late 1940s, focussing on the Dutch military invasion of Java, the reactions of Soekarno's Republic, and those of Islamic parties. Kartosuwiryo's physical exile and political displacement were from the centre of politics in the capital Yogyakarta to the periphery of West Java, from a position of political centrality to one of marginality and opposition.Footnote 3 These processes did not end there, however: by the end of the decade the Darul Islam had reconstituted itself as the Islamic State of Indonesia, reclaiming wholeness and centrality for its institutions, followers, and leaders; the Yogyakarta-based Islamic party, Masyumi, attempted to reconstitute unity with West Java brokering several reconciliation opportunities throughout the 1950s; and the Republican government reconstituted national unity through armed repression in the 1960s.
Second, I analyse Kartosuwiryo's own ideology as expressed in his writings from the late 1920s through the 1950s. In this section I follow Kartosuwiryo's elaboration of his political strategy as a form of voluntary intellectual displacement that bounced between local visions of authority, nationalist projects, and transregional imaginations in order to establish the political platform he envisioned for postcolonial Indonesia.Footnote 4 I highlight the circumstances that led to the emergence of these multiple goals, and more importantly focus on how these ideological elements did not exist as individual manifestations, but rather as parallel and interconnected registers of one Islamist discourse that repeatedly reconstituted itself in different shapes and forms, depending on the circumstances.
Lastly, I connect the historical experience of the Darul Islam/Islamic State of Indonesia to the construction of Indonesia's state-led nationalist narrative of the anti-colonial and independence struggles as the final stage of displacement of the Islamist movement's goals (this echoes Dutch colonial attempts at recasting the West Coast of Aceh as “isolated” for their own political purposes, see David Reference KloosKloos’ article in this special issue). The elision of Islam from the reconstructed narrative of Kartosuwiryo's intentions, characterised as separatist and anti-nationalist, was a key aspect of Indonesia's politics. If in the 1970s the state pursued a reconstitution of Islamism as a political force that needed to be marginalised through processes of enclosure, disciplining, and reconstruction, in the 2000s it was the Islamists who reconstituted the image of Kartosuwiryo as a shaheed, a martyr for Islam.
Leaving Yogyakarta
The defining moment of this section is Kartosuwiryo's decision, as vice-president of West Java's national Islamic party Masyumi, to secede from the central branch headquartered in Yogyakarta and establish a new group located in West Java, the Darul Islam. As a long-standing cadre, Kartosuwiryo's religio-political vision aligned well with Masyumi's goals; however, their respective strategies diverged in the moment the Dutch took control of West Java. After July 1947 Masyumi, centred in the Republican capital of Yogyakarta, saw its political opportunities framed by formal parliamentary politics, whereas Kartosuwiryo found it necessary to seek alternative, non-electoral avenues to implement the Islamic state platform. Moving away from Yogyakarta was a symbolic and strategic step, with concrete political implications. Kartosuwiryo had been offered the position of Junior Minister for Defence. Refusing that, and sealing his separation with his physical, voluntary displacement to the recolonised territory, was to him the only way to keep true to his vision, creating a new centre for an Islamic state of Indonesia.
One of the first steps that the Japanese authority took to “prepare” Indonesia for self-government was the establishment of a Preparatory Committee for Independence (Komite Nasional Indonesia Pusat, KNIP). This was formed in April 1945, and had as its main task the creation of common ground for the future constitution, seeking a compromise between secular nationalists, socialists, and Islamists. But Soekarno soon made clear statements against the recognition of any special role for Islam in the new nation's legal and philosophical framework, shutting down any possibility for further dialogue. The June 1, 1945 Pancasila speech, supposedly reflecting the shared opinions of the Committee, only proved the prominence of the nationalist elite. On that occasion Soekarno announced that the future independent state of Indonesia would be founded on the Pancasila, the five official principles: nationalism (kebangsaan), humanitarianism (perkemanusiaan), deliberation among representatives (permusyawaratan-perwakilan), social welfare (kesejahteraan), and belief in One God (ketuhanan). Contestation followed, but even the compromise of the Jakarta Charter—sanctioning the obligation for Muslims to follow Islamic lawFootnote 5—was scrapped from the final draft, replaced by a declaration of freedom of religion.
To appease the criticism of the religious wing, Soekarno had conceded that the Pancasila constitution was “temporary,” “quick,” and only applicable to the revolution (sementara, kilat, revolutiegrond-wet). As the political establishment prepared for parliamentary elections, Soekarno also promised that “later in the future . . . if we live in a safe and orderly state, we will gather once again the elected representatives of the people, who will enable us to make a more complete and perfect constitution.”Footnote 6 And thus Masyumi considered parliamentary democracy a viable pathway to achieving its main objective: the establishment of an Islamic state.
Under the impression that elections would take place soon, Masyumi stated its commitment to establish an Islamic state through parliamentary consultation: “Masyumi is aware that the majority of Indonesians are Muslims, and feels responsible for their safety and feels obliged to provide them with an Indonesian state based on Islam,” announced the party newsletter al-Djihad in February 1946.Footnote 7 The same newsletter sustained a continuous propaganda campaign in favour of holy war, the noncooperation hijrah policy, and an Islamic state (referred to as a darul Islam or an “Indonesian Republic based on Islam”), throughout 1946.Footnote 8 A year later, just a month before the Dutch invasion of Java, an official party document encouraged all Masyumi members “to support the effort for a Darul Islam in Indonesia” by infiltrating Masyumi members into other parties, putting pressure on the Army to include Masyumi cadres, strengthening their Hizboellah and Sabilillah armed troop divisions, preparing weapons, and deposing non-Muslim ministers as well as Muslims who did not uphold Masyumi's principles.Footnote 9
Clashes between Dutch and Indonesian forces had persisted for months, but following international brokerage and the signing of the Linggadjati ceasefire agreement in November 1946, conditions in Java had normalised. Yet, on 20 July 1947, the Dutch launched a new military campaign, invading areas of the newly formed Republik Indonesia led by Soekarno and headquartered in Yogyakarta.Footnote 10 In January 1948, the Renville Agreement—signed by the Indonesian Republic and the Dutch—established that most of West Java would be transferred from the Yogyakarta Republic to the Dutch, and that Republican troops should withdraw to Yogyakarta.Footnote 11 A new line of spatial demarcation, with different centres and peripheries, had been drawn.
West Java was now a separate entity, once again under Dutch colonial rule, with no military support from the Yogyakarta Republic and little involvement with national-level party politics. The physical isolation of West Java from Republican territories—caused by the Dutch invasion, reinforced by the Renville Agreement, and implemented by a new boundary and clearly separate military spheres of influence—laid the logistical foundations for the region's struggle for a divergent political path to independence, one that would centre around Islamist aspirations. Kartosuwiryo, although formally excluded from the negotiations, succeeded in carving an expanding West Javanese space for himself and the Darul Islam through popular support and armed prowess.
As vice-president of Masyumi for West Java, S. M. Kartosuwiryo coordinated a meeting to reorganise the party's branch in late 1947. Within this context, the Garut provincial branch of Priangan, a mountainous area in the interior of West Java, was renamed “Islamic Community's Defence Council” (Majelis Pertahanan Oemmat Islam, MPOI; or Dewan Pertahanan Oemmat Islam, DPOI),Footnote 12 marking Masyumi's new outlook as geared towards West Java's defence against the Dutch. At the same time, the party's multiple armed wings were merged into a single army, the Islamic Army of Indonesia (Tentara Islam Indonesia, TII). From then on the town of Garut, and the Priangan region more generally, would be the headquarters for the activities of the Islamic Army and its political infrastructure, the Darul Islam (DI).
Kartosuwiryo and his aides led West Java's political agenda through Islamic structures, at times in conversation with the Yogyakarta Republic, and at times in conflict with their agents. In February 1948 five Masyumi branches (Tasikmalaya, Garut, Kuningan, Majalengka, and Ciamis), as well as representatives of other Islamic organisations, gathered some five hundred delegates and dissolved the West Java branch of the Masyumi political party altogether; at the same time, they articulated the explicit aim of establishing an Islamic state and army.Footnote 13
The sense that Masyumi's central branch in Yogyakarta and its policies had nothing more to offer to West Java was reaffirmed a few months later. Between February and March, the gathered party leaders nominated Kartosuwiryo as imam (“guide”) of the region's ummah (“Muslim community”), issued a call for armed jihad (“effort”) against the Dutch, prepared the grounds for the establishment of an Islamic law “special zone,”Footnote 14 and instructed the Islamic Army's troops to “reach power in a tactful way, succeed in taking control of the Republic, and include it [its territory] within the Islamic state.”Footnote 15 The ultimate purpose was to prepare a New State, a Negara Baru, as an alternative solution to Soekarno's Republic.Footnote 16
Although scholarly and official narratives have depicted Kartosuwiryo's actions as dictated by his opposition to the Republic, archival sources suggest that Kartosuwiryo understood the Darul Islam as being on the same side as Soekarno's Republic, simply holding a different geographic focus and ideological leaning.
In the aftermath to the Dutch capturing of Soekarno and his cabinet in December 1948, Kartosuwiryo declared that the struggle for the Islamic state was “the continuation of the independence struggle, following on from, and in line with, the 17 August 1945 proclamation.”Footnote 17 But Republican troops in Central Java (belonging to the Tentara Nasional Indonesia [TNI], Indonesian National Army) were not recognising this communion of intent. Despite the fact that local officers displayed some awareness that the TNI was impinging on Darul Islam territory, breaching its sovereignty,Footnote 18 the West Java Siliwangi Division of TNI returned to the region acting “as rulers in charge of the territory.”Footnote 19 Consequently, the Darul Islam saw TNI soldiers as their enemy, a wild, illegal militia, and an “obstacle” to the Islamic revolution.Footnote 20
The first half of 1949 was marked not only by a new agreement between the Dutch and the Republic (the Roem–van Royen Agreement, signed in May), but also by the escalation of the Darul Islam's presence and control over an ever-growing amount of territory. The Darul Islam expanded across West Java and reached into Sumatra (in the Palembang, Bengkulu, Lampung, Jambi, and Tapanuli areas), as well as South Kalimantan, the Moluccas, Sumbawa, and the Lesser Sunda Islands.Footnote 21 On 7 August 1949 Kartosuwiryo proclaimed the establishment of the Islamic State of Indonesia (Negara Islam Indonesia, NII). This step, which constituted the NII as a self-standing entity and actor on the political scene, was a turning point for West Java's Darul Islam supporters, as well as other religiously oriented movements across the archipelago (such as those in Aceh, South Sulawesi, and Kalimantan), and the Pancasila Republic.
Kartosuwiryo's commitment to the Islamic state was not pursued in a vacuum, as Masyumi and the Darul Islam/NII—although formally independent from one another—hailed from the same roots and advanced in the same direction. But whereas Masyumi worked from within the nascent structures of Indonesian parliamentary democracy, seeing the Pancasila constitution as a stepping stone towards this goal,Footnote 22 and electoral consultation as the opportunity to reopen the debate with the secular nationalists, Kartosuwiryo and the Darul Islam had moved to West Java, where they fought for the same goal of an Indonesian Islamic state on different premises. If Kartosuwiryo's efforts reached their apex on 7 August 1949, when he formally seceded from the Yogyakarta Republic by proclaiming the NII Islamic State (Negara Islam Indonesia), Masyumi's own efforts were consistently frustrated by the political and ideological stalemate that engulfed the Republic throughout the 1940s and 1950s.
Throughout 1949 and 1950 the Republican government continued to labour for the raffirmation of a nation-state inclusive of the entire “Netherlands Indies” territory, and eventually Soekarno succeeded in transforming the federal Republik Indonesia Serikat (Federated States of Indonesia) into the Unitary Republic of Indonesia, from Aceh to Merauke. Amidst these centralising efforts, the political and military establishments had contrasting approaches to the Darul Islam, as the cabinet oscillated between reconciliation and suppression.
Masyumi leadership continued to argue that the Darul Islam was the party's ally,Footnote 23 and that the ummah should not support any other government but the Islamic State.Footnote 24 Muhammad Natsir, Masyumi leader and cabinet member, led the parliamentary commission for the study of the Darul Islam and reached the conclusion that the movement should not be destroyed.Footnote 25 But Masyumi's commitment to a peaceful solution to the Darul Islam “problem,” which persisted for many years, was part of a larger political platform which it had inherited from its predecessor, the Sarekat Islam party (elaborated in the next section). However, the government was much less invested. Vice-president-to-be Mohammad Hatta and the Sultan of Yogyakarta, Hamengkoeboewono IX, reached out to Kartosuwiryo himself, and the Minister of Interiors established a “contact commission,”Footnote 26 but their political will quickly dissipated when expectations were unmet. Following Masyumi's 1955 electoral demise, the government's calls for order and security prevailed, and the forceful termination of the Darul Islam went unopposed.Footnote 27
Masyumi's voice had not been strong enough to compete with Soekarno and the Army. Although Masyumi gathered the majority of the votes outside of Java, in 1955 Soekarno's coalition won the elections.Footnote 28 In 1957 the political scene had completely turned around: the military gained the upper hand in Jakarta, Soekarno proclaimed martial law under the auspices of “Guided Democracy,” and reconciliation with the Darul Islam was sidelined in favour of “Operation Annihilate” (Gerakan Operasi Penumpasan). After a few months dedicated to studying the movement and elaborating an antiguerrilla strategy, in 1959 the West Java Siliwangi Division of the TNI moved on to an “active-offensive” phase that made use of mobile units. The operations spanned December 1959 and mid-1965 in West and Central Java, peaking in 1962 when Kartosuwiryo was arrested, tried, and executed.Footnote 29 Similar operations were led in Aceh, South Kalimantan, and South Sulawesi, with the result that by 1965 the central Indonesian government had imprisoned, executed, or co-opted all Darul Islam leaders, thereby neutralising the rebel organisation.
In sum, Kartosuwiryo's rejection of the post of junior minister of defence, his move to West Java, the transformation of the local branch of Masyumi into the Darul Islam, the subsequent struggle to establish expanding pockets of Islamic rule, and eventually his proclamation of an Islamic State of Indonesia with a constitution and penal code, were all manifestations of his withdrawal from politics—both geographically (away from Yogyakarta) and strategically (out of formal politics). But was this secession the last step on the path of disengagement?
The nationalist and mainstream scholarly narratives have pointed at the Islamic State's proclamation as the ultimate sign of Kartosuwiryo's separatist interests, but I instead propose to look at this secession as the necessary step to reset the terms of engagement with the Pancasila state and for a reunification on different grounds.Footnote 30 The Islamic State was headquartered in West Java, but in its most grandiose vision its blueprint was not for West Java alone: the stated purpose of its documents and the actions of its members consistently pointed outwards, with an expansionist drive to include the rest of the archipelago and beyond, depending on the nature and audience of the document.
Goals Displacement
Kartosuwiryo's political path was marked by displacements and reconstitutions not only in his movement's relationship with the Indonesian Republic, but also in his own political framework. Kartosuwiryo's strategies to achieve an Islamic state took differing shapes through time, however it would be limiting to see this as a chronological “progression,” as diverse strategies coexisted. In what follows I analyse Kartosuwiryo's writings and actions to articulate his political ideology along three realms: the local (West Java), the national (Indonesia), and the transregional (the “global ummah”), but overlaps are unavoidable. This should not be seen as a sign of ideological incoherence, but rather of how inextricable the fate of a region is from its surrounding nation, or that of a transregional Islamic federation from national realities.
A note on terminology is needed here. In this section I use the term “pan-Islam” to identify any political strategy aimed at involving Muslims from as broad a network as possible, with no pre-set geographical, ethnic, linguistic, or denominational boundaries. “Internationalism” refers to collaborations that operate within the framework of the nation-state structure and require its retention. This is markedly different from “transregional” and “transnational” strategies: although the former term is most apt for colonial territories and the latter for nation-states, these terms are two faces of the same coin as they both refer to cooperation and conversations taking place across borders, within the spirit of transcending them, and possibly doing away with them altogether.
West Java
Kartosuwiryo was originally from Cepu, a small village at the border between East and Central Java, yet most of the Darul Islam's actions took place in West Java, and more specifically in the Priangan area. It was to West Java that Kartosuwiryo moved in 1947, there that he proclaimed the Negara Islam Indonesia in 1949, and there that he was captured by the Army in 1962. This reflected a combination of historical circumstances—the Dutch reinvasion and occupation, for example—as much as Kartosuwiryo's early political life. As Kartosuwiryo's career in the Sarekat Islam party (Partai Sarekat Islam Indonesia, PSII) grew stronger, West Java became his preferred area of action: in mid-August 1929 he presided at the West Java Provincial Congress in Garut, acting as secretary of the party's executive committee (a position he had held since March),Footnote 31 and a few months later he was conducting propaganda campaigns across the region.Footnote 32
Around the same time Kartosuwiryo married Siti Kalsoem, the daughter of a local kiyai, Ardiwisastra.Footnote 33 Whether it was love or politics that brought him to the Priangan is impossible to ascertain, but Kartosuwiryo's new kinship connection to Kiyai Ardiwisastra, the chairman of Sarekat Islam's branch in Malangbong, vice-regent (bupati) of the village, a member of the Sundanese menak aristocracy, and a renowned religious scholar, was crucial to his political achievements. In a society in which sociopolitical networks dictated one's fortune, such a marriage set the grounds for an alliance between Kartosuwiryo and the Sarekat Islam in West Java, as well as for the strengthening of Kartosuwiryo's own individual authority as a reflection of Kiyai Ardiwisastra's status as a representative of an important Sundanese family and a respected Islamic scholar.
According to local legends, the menak were tightly connected to traditional religious and political authority as they represented the lineage of the first Islamic sultan of West Java—the Sultan of Pajang, himself related to the sixteenth-century Sultan of Demak—or, alternatively, the pre-Islamic Sundanese Prabu Siliwangi of Pajajaran. The Dutch East India Company's takeover of Java added a new layer to this relationship: the bupatis saw their religious authority increased and were now called imam (guide) or khalifa (caliph),Footnote 34 while the menak aristocracy had been transformed into a political elite. In order to retain their social and political relevance, the menak found themselves needing to foster a closer relationship with Islamic institutions, such as pesantrens (rural religious schools) and ulamas (Islamic scholars). As argued by Herlina Lubis, “all kaum menak were required to make Islam a factor in their political thoughts and practices” if they desired to retain their sociopolitical relevance.Footnote 35 The menak, now embodying the roles of bupati and ulama, thus emerged as ultimate bearers of political authority, both in colonial and traditional terms. And by marrying Ardiwisastra's daughter, Kartosuwiryo both strengthened his “modern” political standing in Sarekat Islam, and gained a position within traditional patterns of authority.
A key element of the menak-bupati tradition that will later become a trademark of Kartosuwiryo's leadership in West Java was the dual allegiance to shari‘a-based orthodoxy and an attachment to pre-Islamic practices.Footnote 36 Such confluence of interests was manifested, for example, in their maintenance of heirlooms. Keris (daggers with undulated blades), spears, swords, books, and shadow puppets were deemed to possess magical powers, but at the same time were used as religious symbols, decorated with Qur'anic inscriptions and deployed during Islamic ceremonies.Footnote 37 Another “bridge” between the supernatural world of magic and Islamic orthodoxy, which fits well with later tales of Kartosuwiryo's charismatic leadership, was the centrality of the local concept of power. Described as pulung in Javanese or wahyu in Arabic, this idea of power pointed in the direction of a divinely bestowed authority.Footnote 38
Some Darul Islam followers testified, in the 1960s, that Kartosuwiryo had received the wahyu Cakraningrat Sadar, traditionally considered the one bestowed upon kings and leaders, and had thus been invested with the title of Kalifatullah seluruh ummat manusia, or “Representative of God to the entire community.”Footnote 39 Others claimed
[he had] admitted to being the reincarnation of Raden Patah, one of the most famous men of religion and the first sultan of Demak, the first Sultanate of Java. He told his devotees that for long he had desired to establish the NII [Negara Islam Indonesia] and that only he could become the leader, or imam, because he had been predestined for that by God.Footnote 40
And still more Darul Islam activists told the story of how Kartosuwiryo had been in the jungle when a ray of light appeared in front of him and an “essence” (zat) drew the kalimat shahadat (Islamic profession of faith) on his forehead.Footnote 41
In the aftermath to his capture and death, Kartosuwiryo was described as a mystic, believed by his followers to practice the ilmu Joyoboyo (“science of prophecy”) and to be a messiah—referred to as either the Imam Mahdi (Islamic messianic figure) or the Ratu Adil (the Javanese image of a Just King). Also in line with traditional patterns of authority, it was said that he owned amulets (jimat) that made him invincible, as well as a keris and a cundrik (a small keris with a straight blade).Footnote 42 These were the characteristics that early commentators would identify as crucial to forming Kartosuwiryo's “leadership skill,” or seni kepemimpinan, Footnote 43 combining mysticism with commitment to Islam.Footnote 44 It is of utmost interest to notice how the narrative of Kartosuwiryo's religious “fanaticism,” which at the beginning of his career complemented that of his mysticism, would in later years disappear, as Kartosuwiryo morphed into a “dedicated sufist” who had not been educated in the Islamic sciences.Footnote 45
The circumstances above offer an advantageous perspective to see how Kartosuwiryo's aspirations for an Islamic state of Indonesia were deeply rooted in—and made possible through—his connection to West Java. Supporters’ constructions of his political persona rested on imaginings of religious authority embedded in local symbols of power (the jimat, keris, and ilmu Joyoboyo), but also combined Javanese references with Islamic vocabulary (such as the Kalifatullah, wahyu Cakraningrat Sadar, and the Imam Mahdi/Ratu Adil figure), to mark their distinctive religious context.
The Nationalist Project
The framework within which Kartosuwiryo visited the Priangan was however not at all rooted in local ambitions. Far from it. Kartosuwiryo was in fact rising in the echelons of Sarekat Islam as the party itself expanded its scope and ambitions, casting its opposition to the socioeconomically unjust colonial regime into Islamic terms.
Sarekat Islam had emerged from a batik traders’ union to protect the interests of Muslims vis-à-vis the Chinese, but under the leadership of H. O. S. Tjokroaminoto and Haji Agus Salim it had been transformed into an Islamic party in the 1920s. The former was more concerned with issues of socioeconomic justice and the empowerment of the indigenous population, while the latter pushed for a more openly Islamic agenda. Kartosuwiryo, however, absorbed both approaches, becoming a key figure in the Sarekat Islam.
In his first year contributing to Sarekat Islam's bulletin Fadjar Asia (Dawn of Asia), Kartosuwiryo's articles showed the double influence of Tjokroaminoto and Salim, but by late 1929 his focus had shifted towards Islam, Islamic nationalism, and Islamic law. It was at this point that the Sarekat transformed into a full-fledged nationalist party inspired by Islam, as it changed its name to Partai Sarekat Islam Indonesia.Footnote 46 Similarly, Kartosuwiryo advocated political noncooperation with the Dutch as the foundation of the anti-colonial struggle and the establishment of a state solely based on Islamic principles and jurisprudence. As the nationalist struggle unfolded, Kartosuwiryo continued to express his commitment to an Islamic vision of an independent state of Indonesia.
Islamic nationalism was itself harnessed in the double commitment to religion and a nation-state. Although Kartosuwiryo never saw this as problematic, it did compromise his relationship with “secular” nationalists. One such occurrence was the second Youth Congress, held in Weltevreden on 27–28 October 1928. The Sumpah Pemuda (Youth Pledge) affirmed the commitment of young generations to the establishment of an Indonesian nation in which the unity of the homeland would prevail over different ethnic and linguistic communities, and it is often earmarked as the official beginning of Indonesia's nationalist movement.Footnote 47 Kartosuwiryo, himself a signatory to the pledge, held a specific worldview, for which Islam was a necessary element of the anti-colonial discourse.Footnote 48 As he argued that Islam “is the religion embraced by a large part of the Indonesian people in general, and also the religion that functions as a bond between several groups and peoples that have settled in our homeland,” he concluded that the Youth Congress's conversations “should be exclusively based on Islam.” His speech was interrupted soon after he had started,Footnote 49 but Kartosuwiryo would continue to engage nationalist ideals from his religious perspective.
In his very first article in Fadjar Asia, titled “Religion and Politics,” Kartosuwiryo fleshed out Sarekat Islam's uniqueness. Staging a debate between a “modern” Muslim and a “conservative” Muslim, Kartosuwiryo argued that being pious did not mean being “traditional,” but rather meant looking at the sociopolitical problems of the Indies’ through the lens of religion:
Maybe, then, you don't know that religion embodies rules, rules for this world and the hereafter. Hence, religion is political. Aren't you aware that in the history of Islam there are Islamic empires, Islamic wars, and so forth? Colonial politics itself is founded on religion, especially the Christian religion; there is a policy named Kersteningspolitiek, aimed at Christianizing the Indonesian population. Hence, religion is an important factor in colonial politics.Footnote 50
Furthermore, the only strategy out of oppression and poverty was religion:
Hold on to the ties connecting the Islamic ummah! Hold on to Islam truly! Follow the orders of Allah, and stay away from that which He forbids. Clearly this is the noble way to obtain freedom for the people and the motherland in a more encompassing and true sense, liberated from all forms of slavery, humiliation and subjugation, which are still now affecting us Indonesians in general and Muslims in particular.Footnote 51
This was Kartosuwiryo's platform, as “Islam” and “the orders of Allah” were to be translated into a free, independent, sovereign Islamic state. Kartosuwiryo often reaffirmed how independence was meaningful only if it created an environment favourable to the implementation of Islamic laws and the establishment of a government based on Islam.Footnote 52 To him, those who based their nationalism solely on their love of the motherland, without recognising any higher principle, were doomed to become political “chameleons.”Footnote 53
As Kartosuwiryo engaged in a public debate aimed at clarifying how nationhood should be perceived under colonial rule—for some it was “Javanese nationalism,” for others “pan-Asianism,”—it became clear that to him and the PSII, kebangsaan (nationhood) was not to be linked to worldly desires nor was it limited by any territorial boundary. Kebangsaan was wide and broad in scope, and connected only to religious affiliation and to the unity of Islam; Islamic nationalism was solely committed to the prosperity of God.Footnote 54 In late 1929 Kartosuwiryo would become more vocal in his claims for pan-Islamism, and PSII would follow this transformation in early 1930. Yet the shift would not be final. Kartosuwiryo's early vision of independent Indonesia as an Islamic nation-state would return, at full strength, through Masyumi propaganda and the Darul Islam in the 1940s.
The foundational text of Kartosuwiryo's Islamic State, for example, stated the establishment of an Islamic “nation.” This proclamation, released on 7 August 1949, was said to be issued by “the Indonesian ummah” to encompass the entirety of the Indonesian nation-state, establishing national institutions (e.g., a parliament), and to be recognised across the world.Footnote 55 This was a nation-state as much as Soekarno's Yogyakarta Republic.
Transregional Imaginations
The Islamist-nationalist struggle, however, was not necessarily seen as a solo endeavour of one nation's ummah against colonial forces. The transregional dimension, which at times was framed as pan-Islamism, and at others as internationalism, was a key strategic element in pursuing the goal.
“Our movement dedicates each and every bone of its body to pan-Islamisme,”Footnote 56 declared Kartosuwiryo in September 1928, for the first time introducing the term of pan-Islam. Soon after, attempting to balance nationalism and pan-Islamism, he added that Islamic internationalism, or inter-Islamism, meant the creation of a network of Islamic countries that desired to cooperate with one another on the road to nationalism, thus mirroring changes that were taking place within Sarekat Islam.Footnote 57 As in 1929 Sarekat Islam had constituted itself as a national entity, by 1930 it had changed its nature from being an Islamic-socialist organisation to an Islamic party committed to pan-Islam, with its amended constitution stating that the unity of the Indonesian ummah was a step towards the unity of the Islamic community worldwide.Footnote 58
This outward shift had been largely informed by Mustafa Kemal's decision to abolish the Caliphate in March 1924,Footnote 59 and the activities of the Indian Khilafat movement. Sarekat Islam party leaders had established a Central Comite Chilafat in Surabaya as early as 1924, and later that year the same city hosted the al-Islam Congress to discuss how to approach the Caliphate question. The following year, the al-Islam Congress in Yogyakarta decided to send an envoy to India to establish relations with the Central Khilafat Committee there; in 1926, Tjokroaminoto attended the Meccan Moe'tamar ‘Alam Islami (International Islamic Congress), and in 1927 Hadji Agoes Salim followed suit.Footnote 60
The initial interest in pan-Islamism had come from political changes in the Middle East, but as politics “at the centre” turned towards nationalist aspirations, Sarekat Islam embraced it further as a pillar of its political strategy. In the 1930s events from the wider Muslim world were discussed at party congressesFootnote 61 and in its publications,Footnote 62 and more assertive strategies for the implementation of pan-Islamism were discussed.Footnote 63 The peak of this approach, which coincided with Kartosuwiryo's leadership of the party, was reached in 1936, when Sarekat Islam's programme stated its desire to strive for Islamic brotherhood across nations as a means to unify the entire Islamic ummah. This aspiration was reconfirmed in 1940, when the Islamic pillar of God's unity (tauhid) was seen as key
to achieve a) the perfect unity of the Islamic world, internally as well as externally; b) unity among Muslims; c) equality among human beings of all social levels before and outside the law, equality in international relations, and between one ummah and the other ummahs.Footnote 64
The ultimate goal was the building of a new world, the doenia baroe, as an Islamic world, the Dar-oel-Islam. Footnote 65 This was the last time that Sarekat Islam pledged to pan-Islamism as a party policy, but Kartosuwiryo would continue on this path during the Japanese occupation.
After their invasion of Java and Sumatra in 1942, Japanese administrators were successful in leading religious leaders to read their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere project in Islamic terms. Kartosuwiryo refocussed his outward attention away from the Middle East and towards Asia: the establishment of a Keloearga Asia-Timoer-Raya (Greater East Asia Family), advocated by the Japanese, was to be pursued as the final step of the gradual Islamisation of the whole of society. Kartosuwiryo saw Dai Nippon's doenia baroe as a bridge towards the afterlife (Dar al-Akhirat), and as a reflection of the Dar-oel-Islam. Footnote 66
This long-lasting commitment to an outward-oriented Islamic state—whether this be across the Muslim world or across Asia—was eventually halted by Japan's surrender. Whereas the Islamic state remained a pillar of Masyumi politics, calls for pan-Islam faded away in postwar politics. Kartosuwiryo continued to advocate for the achievement of an Islamic state of Indonesia, whether in local, national, or transregional terms. The 1949 Islamic State's Proklamasi seemed more focused on establishing an Indonesian state, yet the Manifesto Politik released just a few weeks later openly addressed Kartosuwiryo's transregional aspirations for the Islamic State.Footnote 67
As the Islamic State expanded to Aceh, South Sulawesi, and South Kalimantan, it was to become the core of a borderless, transnational Islamic state. And as relations between the Islamic State and the Republic of Indonesia deteriorated, its leaders saw the projection of their local struggle onto a larger scale as providing additional motivation and strength to the Indonesian ummah. In the 1950s, the Darul Islam's final goal was formulated as unifying the ummah and achieving a “worldwide union of Islamic states” based on Islamic laws and bringing to life the Khalifatullah Fil'ardi (Representation of God on Earth) within the structure of an Islamic federation of nation-states; this federation was to reach nations that had already returned their governments to Islamic rule, such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Malaysia,Footnote 68 and support Islamic rebellions across the world (such as that in the Philippines: Kahar Muzhakkar, Darul Islam leader in South Sulawesi, had supposedly sent a delegation to the Sulu islands to lay out the foundations of an Islamic state there).Footnote 69
Sarekat Islam, Kartosuwiryo, and the Islamic State displayed a changing prioritisation of pan-Islam over nationalism, and internationalism over transnationalism, between the 1920s and the 1950s. It is possible to detect a chronological trajectory, as political strategies do emerge from and mould onto circumstances, but it is also important to notice the internal conversation that allowed for shifting priorities, reflecting the reconfiguration of strategies necessary to accommodate the displacement of ideological-cum-political goals.
Narrative Displacement, Reconstitution, and Enclosure
In my own narrative of Kartosuwiryo's career, the focus has been on his engagement with and commitment to Islam within the broader context of his contemporary and contextual realities. And I have done so as a conscious effort to bring back to light Kartosuwiryo's own voice, as expressed in his writings from his early days as a journalist through his last authored pamphlets (no memoir or private letters are available, and so all we are left with is his public persona). The decision to follow this leader's own voice emerges from the fact that the experience of the Darul Islam had for decades been narrated either by a nation-state interested in affirming itself as the only legitimate authority, or by Western scholars embedded in an interpretative frame that rejected any political role for religion. In this article, I have limited my analysis to Indonesian works on Kartosuwiryo, the Darul Islam, and the Islamic State, reading them as yet another form of displacement.
The Darul Islam's “violent turn” against the fledging nation-state, which had started in the mid-1950s, coincided with Indonesia's first attempt at creating an official history. The West Java volume, part of a series commemorating the Republic's foundation and commissioned by the Ministry of Information, described the Darul Islam's activities as “rotat[ing] around the individual aspirations of Kartosuwiryo,” a man driven by feelings of political disappointment, fanaticism, religious dogmatism, and adventurism, who used Islam as a tool to achieve his own political aspirations.Footnote 70 This vision obliterated the multiplicity of opinions that were expressed in the indigenous press, and the movement's own motivations.Footnote 71 But as the army began to engage more systematically with the Islamic State, the Darul Islam and Kartosuwiryo were gradually stripped of their religious-political ideology, through a process that led to the equation of Islamist motivations (or “coating”) with separatism, anti-nationalism, and terrorism. By the 1970s, when Indonesia embarked on a national historiography project as a core aspect of the authoritarian regime's propaganda, this approach was the only voice to be heard.
During Suharto's New Order, then, only the state's actions appeared as legitimate, especially vis-à-vis the 1950s protest movements, which were now inevitably presented as threats to the new state. Throughout the 1970s the military popularised visual representations of the Darul Islam through memorabilia, pictures, and graphic dioramas that appeared in museums and publications.Footnote 72 These images strengthened two representations of Kartosuwiryo and his followers: on the one hand was their anti-nationalist stand, and on the other their identity as traditional Javanese and Sundanese men rather than “orthodox” Muslims whose commitment to an Islamic state might have been seen as legitimate (as it had been in the case of Sumatra's Padri movement in the early nineteenth century).
It is my final contention that Indonesian history's official displacement of Kartosuwiryo's goals away from Islam and into the realm of separatism, anti-nationalism, and terrorism allowed for two reconstitutive processes: on the one hand it led to the reconstitution of political Islam as a negative political force, and therefore to its enclosing in a defined, narrow space of public discourse. On the other hand, when the Suharto New Order regime collapsed in 1998, Kartosuwiryo came back to the surface thoroughly transformed. Fifty years of rehashed nationalist narrative had led to the shaping of Kartosuwiryo as a “sterile rebel,” a condition that ultimately allowed for the reconstitution of Kartosuwiryo as a martyr for Islam and a model for future action.Footnote 73 But this approach also enacts a form of displacement, as it wilfully elides aspects of the movement that would preclude its insertion in the master-narrative of Islamist thought as it has emerged in the twenty-first century.
The story of Kartosuwiryo, the Darul Islam, and the Islamic State of Indonesia tells us the larger story of political Islam in twentieth-century Indonesia, especially once we focus on the relationship between religion and Soekarno's vision for the postcolonial nation-state. In this article I have followed the experience of Indonesia's Islamism, framing it in terms of displacement (whether physical or intellectual) and subsequent reconstitutions, as this lens magnifies some of the most intricate nodes of this relationship: how did the Darul Islam, Masyumi, the Republic and its TNI Army relate to each other? What goals was the Darul Islam/Islamic State striving for? How did nationalism, local traditions, and pan-Islamism intersect? And what dynamics allowed for the resurfacing of Kartosuwiryo as a shaheed in the early 2000s, after decades of being labelled an enemy of the state?
