Hut RI Ke-64

Anyone who has spent a summer in Indonesia knows what the title of this blog entry means.

Sort of.

64 stands for the number of years that the Republic of Indonesia has been independent – from Japan. RI is simply Republik Indonesia.

Hut is an acronym, and stands for the equivalent of Happy Birthday.

I think.

Ke is short for Kemerdekaan which is short for Proklamasi Kemerdekaan. Which means Independence Day.

I think.

I find it interesting that Indonesia and the United States have a similar tradition in counting their respective years of independence.

We number our years of independence from 1776 when we issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4^th of that year. So we have 232 years of independence from the world’s largest colonial power at the time, Great Britain.

Even though Britain hotly contested this claim for another 5 years, and occupied many parts of the warring colonies for that period of time.

Indonesians number their years of independence from a week after the Japanese announced that they were surrendering on August 10th, giving Indonesian patriots a week to hear the news, react and declare their independence.

Their former owners, The Netherlands contested this claim and moved to take back their possession for 2 years. The Netherlands, however, were sapped of any strength, having themselves been occupied by Nazi Germany for nearly 6 years.

So they dropped their claim. A non-issue in Indonesia because, like Americans in the 18^th century, independence existed from the day of declaration, and not the actual day of victory.