07-30-2007, 11:03 PM
<span style='color:red'>The role of Louis Mountbatten in Indonesia</span>
Radha Rajan
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->the media has cleverly latched on to the most unimportant aspect of the edwina-nehru affair - speculating on whether the affir was platonic, physical or sexual, studiously ignoring so as not to embarras NDTV 24+7'S first family by raising doubts about Nehru's political immaturity/integrity.
The media chooses not to persist with the point that mountbatten used his wife to get Nehru to serve Empire interests - forst by getting the king to remain head of the new indian state until 1950, then not allowing the army to throw out the pakistani invaders and retrieb\ve occupied territory and lastly carrying j&k to the UN. gandhiji's wilful 'moha' for Nehru which drove him to thrust this man down the nation's throat, Nehru's wilful villainy in allowing his dalliance with edwina to serve our national interests great ill, stand exposed because neither gandhi nor nehru who ran the INC despotically informed the INC of the mountbatten's villainous role in Indonesia. Perhaps they did not know - even more unforgivable than villainy in a leadership, not knowing.
I present below excerpts from my monograph on "Religious demography in Indonesia and the making of East Timor" which i presented as a paper in delhi in october 2003 at a seminar organized by India First Foundation in which i have described the villainy of mountbatten and the UN in indonesia. pl read if you care about this nation and the fiction that goes in the name of history writing and then do your own research. i wld be very surprised if these facts told any of you a different story than what it tells me. The role that the UN played particularly with the renville agreement, its role in iran jaya, we were idiots, we continue to remain idiots. by 'we' i mean educated hindus. regards, RR
THE BRITISH IN INDONESIA AS TRADERS
The British acknowledged that Indonesia was to the Netherlands what India was to the British â a status symbol, the golden goose and the ultimate product of military might. The British were therefore never very serious about colonising Indonesia or retaining it as a colony even on the one or two occasions when their presence was mandated in the archipelago by turn of events in their own history. In 1579 Sir Francis Drake arrives in Ternate after raiding Spanish ships and ports in America. The choice of Ternate as his point of visit is significant because Ternate was an important Portuguese trading post. The Sultan of Ternate and his people were hostile in the extreme to the Portuguese particularly after the small-pox pandemic in Ternate in 1558. The Portuguese are supposed to have poisoned and killed the Sultan of Ternate in 1570 and his successor, Sultan Babullah not only expels the Portuguese from Ternate, forcing the Portuguese to build a fort in Tidore but the Sultan of Ternate keeps the Portuguese under siege in their fort in Tidore for five years until 1575 with no help for the Portuguese coming either from Melaka or Goa.
Within a year of Drake's visit to Ternate in 1579, Portugal falls under Spanish crown. In 1585, the Sultan of Aceh sends a letter to Queen Elizabeth I of England and in 1587 Sir Thomas Cavendish visits Java. This is the beginning of British interest in the Indonesian archipelago. On December 31, 1599, Queen Elizabeth charters the English East India Company. In 1602, Sir James Lancaster leads an expedition to the archipelago and the East India Company sets up a trading post in Aceh. By 1611, the English have set up posts in Jepara, Jambi and Makassar. British economic interests in Indonesia is centered in the Malay province â in Melaka (which the British acquired from the Dutch in return for Bencoolen in Sumatra), in Peneng where the British set up a trading post to guard its trade route en route to China, and in North Borneo â Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei. British economic interest in the rest of Indonesia wanes gradually through the seventeenth century and by towards the end of the seventeenth century, except for the Malay province, the British have left the field clear for the Dutch VOC in Indonesia.
THE BRITISH IN INDONESIA AS OCCUPATIONAL FORCE
The British return to Indonesia again only in the beginning of the nineteenth century, in 1811 to be precise as a result of the Napoleonic wars. The Netherlands was occupied by French troops in 1795, and a French protectorate established. The new government abolished the VOC by allowing its charter to lapse in 1799. VOC territories became the property of the Dutch government. In 1808 Louis Bonaparte, who had been made king of the Netherlands by his brother Napoleon, appointed Herman Willem Daendels as governor general of the Dutch possessions. But in 1811, a year after the Netherlands had been incorporated into the French empire, the British occupied Java. In August 1811, they seized Batavia (Jakarta) and a month later received the surrender of French forces. At the outset of the Napoleonic Wars, the British government had promised the Dutch government-in-exile that at the end of the war occupied territories would be returned to the Netherlands and true to its promise, Dutch authority was reestablished in the Indonesian archipelago in 1816.
It was History repeating itself in 1945. The British were back again in Indonesia after Japan's surrender, this time under Admiral Louis Mountbatten as the Supreme Allied Commander. And this time too it did not seem as though the British desired to hold on to Indonesia. The British and Australian forces arrive in Indonesia only in September, nearly one month after Japan officially surrenders to allied forces. But even before Louis Mountbatten assumes charge in Indonesia, Van Mook, the Dutch Lieutenant General of the Indies meets Mountbatten in Ceylon and asks him to instruct the Japanese to crush the infant Republic of Indonesia. Mountbatten agrees! When Rear Admiral Patterson arrives in Jakarta on September 16, he declares that the British mission and his mandate are "to maintain law and order until the time that the lawful government of the Netherlands East Indies is once again functioning". Indonesia's new-found independence, it was clear, was seriously threatened not just by the Dutch but also by the British and the Australians.
Dutch soldiers who had been arrested and interned by the Japanese were set free and Dutch, British and Australian forces fan out across the Indonesian nation, into every island and province. Arrayed against them is Sukarno's new Republic, the youth of Indonesia and the Sultans and Rajas, all of whom openly declared their support for the Republic of Indonesia. Fighting escalates between the Republican youths and the foreign occupying forces. Japanese forces were deeply divided over the issue of support to the new Republic. While individual Japanese officers and soldiers covertly helped the republican youth with arms, ammunition and weapons, the official position of the Japanese forces asked to stay on in Indonesia by the British to maintain law and order, was to crush the nationalist movement. One Japanese admiral handed over Surabaya to the Dutch but gave away his weapons to the republicans. The Japanese push the republicans out of Semarang and Bandung and hand over the cities to the British.
THE BRITISH HAND INDONESIA BACK TO THE NETHERLANDS
The Battle of Surabaya marks a turning point in the British agenda for Indonesia. In October, the 49th Indian infantry arrives in Surabaya and the British air-drop leaflets asking the republicans to surrender within 24 hours. Sukarno and Hatta too arrive in Surabaya and Major-general Hawthorne from Jakarta. Sukarno, Hatta, Mallaby and Hawthorne sign a cease-fire agreement. Within five hours of the truce, in the raging battle on the streets of Surabaya between British troops and the Indonesian troops and ordinary people of Indonesia, Mallaby is killed. The British bomb Surabaya as punishment killing thousands of Indonesians. The British also strafe civilians on the highway. But the British are confronted by fierce resistance and fighting by Indonesians determined to protect their independence and their republic. November 9, the British 5th Indian Division lands at Surabaya. November 10, Indonesian counterattack in Surabaya begins and fighting continues for three weeks. Not surprisingly 600 Indian troops defect from the British and join the Indonesians. The British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin calls upon the Dutch to begin talks with the Republic and to negotiate. But the Dutch are not prepared to relinquish control of their colony and declare their unwillingness to negotiate.
The Dutch gradually begin to take control of not only the eastern territories under Australian control but also British controlled areas too. In July 1946, the Allies turn over all of Indonesia except Java and Sumatra, to the Dutch.
The Dutch send their first proposal to Sutan Syahirir, Indonesian Prime Minister for a 'democratic partnership' between the Netherlands and Indonesia, but does not offer independence. Syahirir publicly responds to the offer in March demanding of the Dutch that they accept the reality of the Indonesian republic and recognize it. But in secret negotiations with the Dutch, Syahirir accepts Republican control over just Java, Sumatra and Madura while agreeing to a political union with the Netherlands under the Dutch crown. This secret agreement forms the basis for the British-brokered Linggajati agreement between the Republic of Indonesia and the Netherlands East Indies. The agreement provided for a Netherlands-Indonesian Union under the Dutch crown. In return, the Dutch agreed to recognize republican rule on Java, Madura and Sumatra, while the Dutch retained control of the entire east - the "Great East" consisting of Sulawesi, Maluku, the Lesser Sunda Islands, and West New Guinea. The agreement was signed on May 25, 1947.
<b>LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN CREATES MALAYSIA FROM INDONESIA</b>
The British had effectively throttled the flowering of the New Indonesian Republic. Mountbatten had breathed life into the defeated Dutch government in Indonesia and tied it around the republic's neck as a mill-stone. The Linggajati Agreement shattered the Republic's vision of an Indonesia Raya, the Greater Indonesian nation. The last of the British leave Indonesia by November 1946, leaving the fledgling nation at the mercy of the Dutch. For their part, the British leave Indonesia leaving the thorn of British Malaya (Malay province) behind. The British do not relinquish control of Melaka, Penang, and North Borneo until 1957. Indians in the forefront of the Indian Freedom Movement had already failed to learn their first lesson when they allowed without protest, Louis Mountbatten to assume charge as the last Viceroy of India before independence and later made him the first Governor-General of India. The result of this monumental folly was not only the partition of India and the coming into being of the obscenity called Pakistan but the festering wound of J&K, the unresolved question of the Princely states, and also the direction into which Nehru, enamored with Edwina Mountbatten which fact was utilized to the full by Louis Mountbatten to get Nehru to accede to all his demands, led the infant post-independent Indian state. It is therefore not surprising that after the British finally surrender control of the Malay province in 1957, the province becomes the new nation-state of Malaysia with the active connivance of the British government.
On November 20, 1961, Malaya officially informs the Indonesian government of the plans for the new Malaysia and two years later, on July 9, 1963 , Malaya and Britain sign final agreements in London to have the nation of Malaysia founded on August 31. Sukarno is furious. His dream and conception of the Greater Indonesian nation had been effectively broken by Malaysia's secession from the Indonesian State. East Timor would be the next to go.Â
THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA
The UN comes into being in 1945 and ironically, the UK, Australia and Netherlands, the principal wreckers of the independence of Indonesia in August 1945, are founding members of the UN and signatories to the UN Charter. The Charter of the United Nations was signed on 26 June 1945, in San Francisco, at the conclusion of the United Nations Conference on International Organization, and came into force on 24 October 1945. The Statute of the International Court of Justice is an integral part of the Charter. What does the UN Charter say?
WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
To establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.
Considering that the actions of Britain, the Netherlands and Australia in 1945 and 1946, as occupational forces in Indonesia, was aimed at the singular objective of reversing the independence of Indonesia and reverting it to Netherlands colonial control and administration, the UN remained remarkably sang-froid at the brazen violation of its Charter by the three founding member countries. The best that the UNSC could do in 1947, after two years of Netherlands and British and Australian atrocities against the Indonesian people, and after the 'police action' by the Netherlands colonial government in violation of the Linggajati agreement, was to timidly call for cease-fire on August 1, 1947. The UN does not declare the continuing presence of the Dutch in Indonesia or the continuing British control of the Malay province or British Malaya, to be illegal and violative of the UN Charter. It calls for cease-fire instead as though Indonesia is a party to the hostilities instead of being the victim of continued western and colonial aggression.
Instead of asking the Netherlands to withdraw from Indonesia immediately and unconditionally and instead of asking the United Kingdom to withdraw from British Malaya, the UN sets up a 'good offices commission' in October 1947 to find a 'settlement' in Indonesia. 'Settlement' effectively made the Netherlands a legitimate party in the negotiations. This was to legitimise colonialism and legitimise, in the process, the refusal by European colonial powers to withdraw unconditionally from their colonies. The ambivalence of the UN in dealing with violations by powerful western nations had a lesson for our leaders at the time. This is the second lesson we failed to learn and continued to repose faith in the UN to deal effectively with Pakistan's aggression and occupation of Indian territories in 1947.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Radha Rajan
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->the media has cleverly latched on to the most unimportant aspect of the edwina-nehru affair - speculating on whether the affir was platonic, physical or sexual, studiously ignoring so as not to embarras NDTV 24+7'S first family by raising doubts about Nehru's political immaturity/integrity.
The media chooses not to persist with the point that mountbatten used his wife to get Nehru to serve Empire interests - forst by getting the king to remain head of the new indian state until 1950, then not allowing the army to throw out the pakistani invaders and retrieb\ve occupied territory and lastly carrying j&k to the UN. gandhiji's wilful 'moha' for Nehru which drove him to thrust this man down the nation's throat, Nehru's wilful villainy in allowing his dalliance with edwina to serve our national interests great ill, stand exposed because neither gandhi nor nehru who ran the INC despotically informed the INC of the mountbatten's villainous role in Indonesia. Perhaps they did not know - even more unforgivable than villainy in a leadership, not knowing.
I present below excerpts from my monograph on "Religious demography in Indonesia and the making of East Timor" which i presented as a paper in delhi in october 2003 at a seminar organized by India First Foundation in which i have described the villainy of mountbatten and the UN in indonesia. pl read if you care about this nation and the fiction that goes in the name of history writing and then do your own research. i wld be very surprised if these facts told any of you a different story than what it tells me. The role that the UN played particularly with the renville agreement, its role in iran jaya, we were idiots, we continue to remain idiots. by 'we' i mean educated hindus. regards, RR
THE BRITISH IN INDONESIA AS TRADERS
The British acknowledged that Indonesia was to the Netherlands what India was to the British â a status symbol, the golden goose and the ultimate product of military might. The British were therefore never very serious about colonising Indonesia or retaining it as a colony even on the one or two occasions when their presence was mandated in the archipelago by turn of events in their own history. In 1579 Sir Francis Drake arrives in Ternate after raiding Spanish ships and ports in America. The choice of Ternate as his point of visit is significant because Ternate was an important Portuguese trading post. The Sultan of Ternate and his people were hostile in the extreme to the Portuguese particularly after the small-pox pandemic in Ternate in 1558. The Portuguese are supposed to have poisoned and killed the Sultan of Ternate in 1570 and his successor, Sultan Babullah not only expels the Portuguese from Ternate, forcing the Portuguese to build a fort in Tidore but the Sultan of Ternate keeps the Portuguese under siege in their fort in Tidore for five years until 1575 with no help for the Portuguese coming either from Melaka or Goa.
Within a year of Drake's visit to Ternate in 1579, Portugal falls under Spanish crown. In 1585, the Sultan of Aceh sends a letter to Queen Elizabeth I of England and in 1587 Sir Thomas Cavendish visits Java. This is the beginning of British interest in the Indonesian archipelago. On December 31, 1599, Queen Elizabeth charters the English East India Company. In 1602, Sir James Lancaster leads an expedition to the archipelago and the East India Company sets up a trading post in Aceh. By 1611, the English have set up posts in Jepara, Jambi and Makassar. British economic interests in Indonesia is centered in the Malay province â in Melaka (which the British acquired from the Dutch in return for Bencoolen in Sumatra), in Peneng where the British set up a trading post to guard its trade route en route to China, and in North Borneo â Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei. British economic interest in the rest of Indonesia wanes gradually through the seventeenth century and by towards the end of the seventeenth century, except for the Malay province, the British have left the field clear for the Dutch VOC in Indonesia.
THE BRITISH IN INDONESIA AS OCCUPATIONAL FORCE
The British return to Indonesia again only in the beginning of the nineteenth century, in 1811 to be precise as a result of the Napoleonic wars. The Netherlands was occupied by French troops in 1795, and a French protectorate established. The new government abolished the VOC by allowing its charter to lapse in 1799. VOC territories became the property of the Dutch government. In 1808 Louis Bonaparte, who had been made king of the Netherlands by his brother Napoleon, appointed Herman Willem Daendels as governor general of the Dutch possessions. But in 1811, a year after the Netherlands had been incorporated into the French empire, the British occupied Java. In August 1811, they seized Batavia (Jakarta) and a month later received the surrender of French forces. At the outset of the Napoleonic Wars, the British government had promised the Dutch government-in-exile that at the end of the war occupied territories would be returned to the Netherlands and true to its promise, Dutch authority was reestablished in the Indonesian archipelago in 1816.
It was History repeating itself in 1945. The British were back again in Indonesia after Japan's surrender, this time under Admiral Louis Mountbatten as the Supreme Allied Commander. And this time too it did not seem as though the British desired to hold on to Indonesia. The British and Australian forces arrive in Indonesia only in September, nearly one month after Japan officially surrenders to allied forces. But even before Louis Mountbatten assumes charge in Indonesia, Van Mook, the Dutch Lieutenant General of the Indies meets Mountbatten in Ceylon and asks him to instruct the Japanese to crush the infant Republic of Indonesia. Mountbatten agrees! When Rear Admiral Patterson arrives in Jakarta on September 16, he declares that the British mission and his mandate are "to maintain law and order until the time that the lawful government of the Netherlands East Indies is once again functioning". Indonesia's new-found independence, it was clear, was seriously threatened not just by the Dutch but also by the British and the Australians.
Dutch soldiers who had been arrested and interned by the Japanese were set free and Dutch, British and Australian forces fan out across the Indonesian nation, into every island and province. Arrayed against them is Sukarno's new Republic, the youth of Indonesia and the Sultans and Rajas, all of whom openly declared their support for the Republic of Indonesia. Fighting escalates between the Republican youths and the foreign occupying forces. Japanese forces were deeply divided over the issue of support to the new Republic. While individual Japanese officers and soldiers covertly helped the republican youth with arms, ammunition and weapons, the official position of the Japanese forces asked to stay on in Indonesia by the British to maintain law and order, was to crush the nationalist movement. One Japanese admiral handed over Surabaya to the Dutch but gave away his weapons to the republicans. The Japanese push the republicans out of Semarang and Bandung and hand over the cities to the British.
THE BRITISH HAND INDONESIA BACK TO THE NETHERLANDS
The Battle of Surabaya marks a turning point in the British agenda for Indonesia. In October, the 49th Indian infantry arrives in Surabaya and the British air-drop leaflets asking the republicans to surrender within 24 hours. Sukarno and Hatta too arrive in Surabaya and Major-general Hawthorne from Jakarta. Sukarno, Hatta, Mallaby and Hawthorne sign a cease-fire agreement. Within five hours of the truce, in the raging battle on the streets of Surabaya between British troops and the Indonesian troops and ordinary people of Indonesia, Mallaby is killed. The British bomb Surabaya as punishment killing thousands of Indonesians. The British also strafe civilians on the highway. But the British are confronted by fierce resistance and fighting by Indonesians determined to protect their independence and their republic. November 9, the British 5th Indian Division lands at Surabaya. November 10, Indonesian counterattack in Surabaya begins and fighting continues for three weeks. Not surprisingly 600 Indian troops defect from the British and join the Indonesians. The British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin calls upon the Dutch to begin talks with the Republic and to negotiate. But the Dutch are not prepared to relinquish control of their colony and declare their unwillingness to negotiate.
The Dutch gradually begin to take control of not only the eastern territories under Australian control but also British controlled areas too. In July 1946, the Allies turn over all of Indonesia except Java and Sumatra, to the Dutch.
The Dutch send their first proposal to Sutan Syahirir, Indonesian Prime Minister for a 'democratic partnership' between the Netherlands and Indonesia, but does not offer independence. Syahirir publicly responds to the offer in March demanding of the Dutch that they accept the reality of the Indonesian republic and recognize it. But in secret negotiations with the Dutch, Syahirir accepts Republican control over just Java, Sumatra and Madura while agreeing to a political union with the Netherlands under the Dutch crown. This secret agreement forms the basis for the British-brokered Linggajati agreement between the Republic of Indonesia and the Netherlands East Indies. The agreement provided for a Netherlands-Indonesian Union under the Dutch crown. In return, the Dutch agreed to recognize republican rule on Java, Madura and Sumatra, while the Dutch retained control of the entire east - the "Great East" consisting of Sulawesi, Maluku, the Lesser Sunda Islands, and West New Guinea. The agreement was signed on May 25, 1947.
<b>LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN CREATES MALAYSIA FROM INDONESIA</b>
The British had effectively throttled the flowering of the New Indonesian Republic. Mountbatten had breathed life into the defeated Dutch government in Indonesia and tied it around the republic's neck as a mill-stone. The Linggajati Agreement shattered the Republic's vision of an Indonesia Raya, the Greater Indonesian nation. The last of the British leave Indonesia by November 1946, leaving the fledgling nation at the mercy of the Dutch. For their part, the British leave Indonesia leaving the thorn of British Malaya (Malay province) behind. The British do not relinquish control of Melaka, Penang, and North Borneo until 1957. Indians in the forefront of the Indian Freedom Movement had already failed to learn their first lesson when they allowed without protest, Louis Mountbatten to assume charge as the last Viceroy of India before independence and later made him the first Governor-General of India. The result of this monumental folly was not only the partition of India and the coming into being of the obscenity called Pakistan but the festering wound of J&K, the unresolved question of the Princely states, and also the direction into which Nehru, enamored with Edwina Mountbatten which fact was utilized to the full by Louis Mountbatten to get Nehru to accede to all his demands, led the infant post-independent Indian state. It is therefore not surprising that after the British finally surrender control of the Malay province in 1957, the province becomes the new nation-state of Malaysia with the active connivance of the British government.
On November 20, 1961, Malaya officially informs the Indonesian government of the plans for the new Malaysia and two years later, on July 9, 1963 , Malaya and Britain sign final agreements in London to have the nation of Malaysia founded on August 31. Sukarno is furious. His dream and conception of the Greater Indonesian nation had been effectively broken by Malaysia's secession from the Indonesian State. East Timor would be the next to go.Â
THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA
The UN comes into being in 1945 and ironically, the UK, Australia and Netherlands, the principal wreckers of the independence of Indonesia in August 1945, are founding members of the UN and signatories to the UN Charter. The Charter of the United Nations was signed on 26 June 1945, in San Francisco, at the conclusion of the United Nations Conference on International Organization, and came into force on 24 October 1945. The Statute of the International Court of Justice is an integral part of the Charter. What does the UN Charter say?
WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
To establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.
Considering that the actions of Britain, the Netherlands and Australia in 1945 and 1946, as occupational forces in Indonesia, was aimed at the singular objective of reversing the independence of Indonesia and reverting it to Netherlands colonial control and administration, the UN remained remarkably sang-froid at the brazen violation of its Charter by the three founding member countries. The best that the UNSC could do in 1947, after two years of Netherlands and British and Australian atrocities against the Indonesian people, and after the 'police action' by the Netherlands colonial government in violation of the Linggajati agreement, was to timidly call for cease-fire on August 1, 1947. The UN does not declare the continuing presence of the Dutch in Indonesia or the continuing British control of the Malay province or British Malaya, to be illegal and violative of the UN Charter. It calls for cease-fire instead as though Indonesia is a party to the hostilities instead of being the victim of continued western and colonial aggression.
Instead of asking the Netherlands to withdraw from Indonesia immediately and unconditionally and instead of asking the United Kingdom to withdraw from British Malaya, the UN sets up a 'good offices commission' in October 1947 to find a 'settlement' in Indonesia. 'Settlement' effectively made the Netherlands a legitimate party in the negotiations. This was to legitimise colonialism and legitimise, in the process, the refusal by European colonial powers to withdraw unconditionally from their colonies. The ambivalence of the UN in dealing with violations by powerful western nations had a lesson for our leaders at the time. This is the second lesson we failed to learn and continued to repose faith in the UN to deal effectively with Pakistan's aggression and occupation of Indian territories in 1947.
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