Sutan Sjahrir

Sutan Sjahrir (5 March 1909 – 9 April 1966), an avant garde and idealistic Indonesian intellectual, was a revolutionary independence leader. He became the first prime minister of Indonesia in 1945, after a career as a key Indonesian nationalist organizer in the 1930s and 1940s.

Although Sjahrir was one of the most significant Indonesian politicians of his time, he did not engage in politics through a sense of vocation nor out of interest, but rather through a sense of duty to his country and compatriates and commitment to his democratic ideals. Described as an omnivorous intellectual Sjahrir had education at the heart of his passion.

Sjahrir was a close associate of the older statesman Mohammad Hatta, a key leader of the Indonesian revolution and leader of the Indonesian underground resistance during the Japanese occupation. When in his fifties his relationship with Soekarno deteriorated Sjahrir was gaoled. He died in exile, his name discredited and erased from Indonesian textbooks by the New Order.