Color:
The Indonesian flag consists of
two equal horizontal bands of red (top) and white.
The origins of the Indonesian
flag can be traced to the flag of the Majapahit Empire of the 13th century.�
The Majapahit flag had nine stripes of red and white.
In 1922 Indonesian students in
Leiden, the Netherlands, adopted a flag red over white with a bull in the centre
for their association. The flag, without the bull, was adopted by the Indonesian
nationalist movement at the second Youth Congress in Jakarta in 1928.�
The Sang Saka or Merah Putih
(which means red-white), as it is known, became the official national flag at
the Declaration of
Independence on 17 August 1945.� Sukarno's
wife, Fatmawati, made a flag for the ceremony by hand sewing two pieces of
coloured cloth together and hoisting it on a bamboo staff.
The red in the flag represents
the human blood spent in the revolution, the white stands for purity and truth.
Copyright � 2001 Aji Kusuma -- All Rights Reserved --