Umi Sardjono (pen name Sintha Melati,[1] 24 December 1923 – 11 March 2011) was a prominent Indonesian activist who fought for the independence of the country and supported women's rights.
As a resistance fighter during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, she and her husband operated a food stall which served as a message center for the underground.
Released in 1979, fearing reprisals from the government and anti-communist reactionaries, she gave up further involvement in politics and refused to participate in the movement to fight the false arrests of communists and intellectuals.
The stigma created by the false army narrative and its repetition for many years by the media curtailed research on the Indonesian women's movement and Sardjono.
[6] During her schooling, Sumodiwirdjo read Raden Adjeng Kartini's Habis Gelap Terbitlah Terang (After Darkness Comes Light), which had a profound effect on her views of gender-based discrimination, colonialism, and hierarchical structures based on social class.
[6][17] As vice president, Sardjono spent most of the next few years attending international conferences in Algeria, China, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Russia.
Gerwis relied on WIDF's journal Women of the Whole World to publish articles about the harsh conditions their members faced in the new republic.
In reaction, Sardjono wrote a lengthy article advocating for consent, monogamy, equality of spouses within a marriage and for providing for the welfare of their children.
[26] The stance of Sardjono and Gerwani activists against polygamy and in support of revising the marriage laws created animosity from the country's predominantly Muslim population as well as from the army with its anti-communist leadership.
[27] In 1959, President Sukarno dissolved the Constituent Assembly, and Sardjono became a member of the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (Indonesian House of Representatives).
During the 1960s, Gerwani membership increased, and Sardjono led campaigns to establish schools, kindergartens, child care facilities, and to offer free literacy courses for rural and working-class laborers.
They targeted illiteracy in Irian Barat and established around 1,500 free child care centers across the country to assist working mothers.
Sardjono and the other activists from Gerwani abstained from voting because they could not support suppression of people who felt that militancy was an acceptable path to free women from imperialism and traditional feudal attitudes.
Although they considered withdrawing from WIDF, Gerwani representatives decided to remain part of the organization in solidarity with the global struggle for women's rights.
[36] Despite historian Benedict Anderson's research in the 1980s proving that mutilation of the army officers was fiction, the media continued to publish slanderous accusations against former Gerwani members.
[43] When other activists began to fight for reparations for those who had been targets of repression in 1965, Sardjono did not participate, preferring to remain closeted in the safety of her home.
[36][43] As a result of the stigma created by the false army narrative,[36] and the continuing ban on communist publications, scholarly research on Sardjono, her life, and Gerwani has been limited.
[45] Historian Katharine E. McGregor stated that despite Sardjono's prominence in the fight for independence and as a women's rights activist in the 1950s and 1960s, her legacy was virtually unknown in Indonesia until after her death.
[46] Saskia Wieringa, a Dutch sociologist has written several works, including Penghancuran gerakan perempuan di Indonesia (The Destruction of the Indonesian Women's Movement, 1999) about Gerwani and Sardjono.
Mardzoeki met Sardjono in 2010, and deciding to tell the lost story of the feminist movement of Indonesia, researched the history of the organization and the women involved.