In search of Achmad Sukarno

![CDATA[For somebody who does not exist Achmad (sometimes spelled Achmed, Ahmad, and Ahmed) Sukarno certainly gets around. Contributing to stress levels amongst academics, Achmad has popped up frequently in the essays of successive generations of undergraduates. This materialization is not surprising given his frequent and longstanding appearances in authoritative reference sources such as encyclopaedias, biographical dictionaries and the like. He appears for instance in the 1994 edition of the Chambers Dictionary of World History. More recently (and naturally) he also graces cyberspace with his ethereal presence, abundantly so in fact. Undoubtedly the internet is the usual source of his undergraduate essay manifestations in recent years. Achmad also appears in some older books about Indonesia. For example, he features in the index (though not the text) of that old stalwart Louis Fischer’s The Story of Indonesia, published in 1959, a book that introduced many people to Indonesia in the 1960s. Similarly Achmad appears in the index to Deliar Noer, The Modernist Muslim Movement in Indonesia, published in 1973. He also appears in Brian Crozier’s Southeast Asia in Turmoil, published in 1965, prompting criticism from Harry Benda when he reviewed it in Pacific Affairs the following year. Indonesia specialists, such as Benda, who deplored the addition of Achmad to Sukarno, probably expected the practice would eventually wither away. Surely the sources in which Achmad appears would gradually gather layers of dust on library shelves as successive generations of students reached for the newer publications from which, Benda and others had banished him. But far from fading away, Achmad seems to be experiencing resurgence. There he is in John Pilger’s The New Rulers of the World, published in 2002. He takes a bow in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Conflicts, also published in 2002. He also appears in Barbara Kellerman, Bad Leadership: What it is, how it happens, why it matters, published in 2004. More disturbingly for the Achmad deplorers he also appears in Zachary Abuza’s Militant Islam in Southeast Asia (2003), Robert Hefner’s Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (2000), and even more recently in W. Roger Louis, The Oxford History of the Twentieth Century (2006). And recently too Achmad has received the seal of approval from the NSW Board of Studies, which has placed Achmad Sukarno in the current NSW Modern History Syllabus, approved in July 2004. In the 999 syllabus he was plain old Sukarno. Like it or not it seems we are stuck with Achmad. In this paper I want to look at three questions. • Where did the Achmad addition to Sukarno originate? • Is it possible that Achmad really is Sukarno’s other name? • Does it matter?]]