A REVOLUTION took place in August 1945, even though there was no rebellion. On that day in Jakarta there was no mass attack on a prison, no peoples’ army that toppled a power trying to remain in place. No barricades were to be seen, nor was there any monarch who could give the order for the revolution to be quelled.

On that morning 62 years ago, all that could be seen was a group of people listening to Bung Karno reading a text that came to be