Long before Indonesia declared independence, the red and white colors had already become a deeply rooted symbol of struggle across the archipelago. President Soekarno once emphasized, “Our flag has existed for 6,000 years.”
This was not an arbitrary claim, there is a long historical journey behind the two colors that now fly across the nation.
From Majapahit to the Battlefield
The earliest recorded use of red and white dates back to the 13th century, when the Majapahit Kingdom, centered in Trowulan, East Java, adopted them as its royal banner. The flag consisted of layered red-and-white stripes.
These colors symbolized core values: red for courage and agility, and white for purity and spiritual devotion.
Majapahit was not alone. The Kediri Kingdom also used a similar banner, as did the Bugis Bone Kingdom in South Sulawesi. Even during the struggle of Sisingamangaraja IX in the Batak lands, red and white were raised as symbols of resistance.
In Aceh, fighters carried red-and-white banners adorned with images of swords, crescents, suns, stars, and verses from the Qur’an. The symbolism reached a defining moment during the Java War (1825–1830), when Prince Diponegoro explicitly used the red-and-white banner as a sign of resistance against Dutch colonial rule.
A Philosophical Meaning Beyond Aesthetics
Soekarno explained that the choice of these colors was not merely political.
“These colors were not simply chosen for the Revolution. They originate from the very beginning of human creation. A woman’s blood is red. A man’s semen is white. The sun is red. The moon is white,” he said, as recorded by Cindy Adams in Sukarno: An Autobiography as Told to Cindy Adams.
He further noted that the soil of the archipelago is reddish, while plant sap is white. In Javanese tradition, red-and-white rice porridge has been served for centuries as part of cultural rituals.
From a legal and national perspective, as cited in Sejarah Hukum Indonesia by Sjahdeini (2021), red signifies “bravery,” while white represents “purity” or “truth.” Together, the red-and-white flag embodies the idea of courage in upholding truth.
More deeply, red represents the human body, while white symbolizes the soul—two elements that complement and complete one another.
A Flag Born from Scarcity
On August 16, 1945, on the eve of the proclamation of independence, Fatmawati discovered that the available cloth measured only 50 centimeters, far too small for a national flag.
With little time, she improvised: white fabric was taken from a bedsheet, while the red cloth came from a young man named Lukas Kastaryo, who had purchased it from a street vendor. From these modest materials, the sacred Red-and-White Flag was sewn.
The following day, August 17, 1945, at 56 Pegangsaan Timur Street in Jakarta, the Red-and-White was raised for the first time as Indonesia’s national flag. Before that, for 340 years (1602–1942), the Dutch flag had flown, followed by the Japanese flag for about three years and five months (March 1942–August 1945).
The spirit of defending the flag has endured ever since. During the First Dutch Military Aggression in 1947, Joesoef Ronodipoero—head of Radio Republik Indonesia—refused to lower the red-and-white flag at the RRI office despite being threatened at gunpoint by Dutch soldiers. As a result, the flag continued to fly.
This act of courage was later immortalized by Ibu Soed in the national song “Berkibarlah Benderaku.”
