I Gusti Ngurah Rai (30 January 1917 – 20 November 1946) was an Indonesian military officer and participant in the Indonesian National Revolution. He was the founder and first commander of the Indonesian National Armed Forces unit in the Lesser Sunda Islands, and the direct leader of armed anti-Dutch resistance in Bali. He was killed in November 1946 in a battle with Dutch troops near the village of Marga in central Bali.
A National Hero of Indonesia, he was posthumously awarded one of the country's highest military honours, the Star of Mahaputera, and promoted to the rank of brigadier general, having died with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He is one of the most revered figures in Bali's modern history. I Gusti Ngurah Rai's name has been given to Denpasar's international airport, the island's largest university and largest stadium, a ship of the Indonesian Navy, streets in many Balinese settlements, and streets in several cities in other parts of Indonesia.
Ngurah Rai was born on 30 January 1917 in the village of Carangsari in Petang district, Badung Regency, southern Bali, into an affluent family of noble origin. He was the second of three sons of I Gusti Ngurah Palung (Indonesian: I Gusti Ngurah Palung) and his wife Ni Gusti Ayu Kompyang. At the time of Rai's birth, his father held the post of head of the Petang district administration.
Relatives and fellow villagers remembered Rai as a sociable and energetic child who enjoyed active games and the local form of the Indonesian martial art silat.
His father's official position and financial means allowed him to be sent to Denpasar to study at a Dutch elementary school for indigenous Indonesians, named HIS Denpasar. He then went to MULO Junior High School in Malang, East Java to continue his education at a Dutch secondary school. However, he did not complete his studies there. After his father's death in 1935, Ngurah Rai had to return to Bali.
After returning home, Ngurah Rai spent more than two years outside formal education and without regular employment, until in 1938 he entered the officer school of the Prajoda Corps, a paramilitary formation that had been established by the Dutch colonial administration in Bali shortly before, in 1936. Prajoda was not part of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL), and had the status of an auxiliary battalion-level unit responsible for maintaining order on the island and providing guards of honour during various official and ceremonial events. Its rank-and-file and non-commissioned personnel were recruited from the local population, mainly young men from aristocratic Balinese families; Dutch military personnel were appointed to senior officer posts, while junior officer posts were filled on a mixed basis.
At the Military Cadet School, which was located in Gianyar Regency in the south-eastern part of the island, Rai distinguished himself through good academic performance and independently studied several additional subjects, including English. Despite his small stature, even by the standards of a Balinese man in the first half of the 20th century; Rai was only 154 centimetres tall, and his weight did not exceed 45 kilograms even in later adulthood, he successfully coped with the physical demands of military training.
After graduating from the school with the rank of second lieutenant in 1940, Rai was sent to short-term officer courses in Magelang. In the same year, he was transferred for accelerated retraining to an artillery school at Corps Opleiding Voor Reserve Officieren (CORO) in Malang, a city already familiar to him from his earlier schooling.
Activities during the Second World War
In late 1941, after the outbreak of hostilities in the Pacific theatre, Ngurah Rai was recalled from Malang to serve in Prajoda. By the time of the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies in January 1942, this auxiliary corps, numbering about 600 men, remained the only armed formation stationed on Bali, as there were no regular KNIL units on the island. Formal command of the corps was assigned to major general G. A. Ilgen, commander of the third infantry division of the KNIL, which was responsible for the defence of eastern Java, Bali and Madura. Its actual commander, however, was lieutenant colonel W. P. Roodenburg.
Despite the mobilisation measures that had been taken, Prajoda was unable to offer even minimal resistance to the Japanese, who made a surprise landing on Bali on 19 February 1942. The corps' units avoided contact with the enemy, mass desertion began, and the command's order to destroy the infrastructure of the Denpasar airfield to prevent its use by the enemy was not carried out. Under these circumstances, Roodenburg was forced to withdraw the remaining Prajoda troops from the Japanese landing area and formally disband the corps. The Balinese returned to their homes, while the Dutch officers fled to neighbouring Java, which at that time was still under KNIL control. Ngurah Rai is known to have helped two of his Dutch fellow servicemen cross to Java.
After the establishment of Japanese control over Bali, the island, like the entire Lesser Sunda island chain, was assigned to the occupation zone of the Second Fleet. Like many Indonesians, Ngurah Rai was initially relatively loyal toward the Japanese, associating their invasion, which had interrupted Dutch colonial rule, with the possibility of better development for the country and its political self-determination. He took a position at the Bali branch of the Japanese transport company Mitsui Bussan Kaisha, where he was involved in organising shipments of rice and other goods to Japan.
Over time, however, Ngurah Rai became convinced that the Japanese occupation had only worsened the situation of the Balinese population. By 1944, Rai's attitude toward the occupiers had become highly critical. He joined the anti-Japanese underground resistance that was taking shape in Bali during this period and began cooperating with the intelligence services of the Allies, which maintained a station in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies. Heading an intelligence cell made up mainly of his former Prajoda comrades and subordinates, many of whom also worked at the local branch of Mitsui Bussan Kaisha, Rai supplied the Allies with information on the schedules and cargoes of Japanese transports. At one point, he came under suspicion and was detained by the Tokubetsu Keisatsutai, but was released after three days in custody due to a lack of evidence.
Alignment with the authorities of the Republic of Indonesia
After Japan's emperor officially announced the acceptance of the terms of surrender on 15 August 1945, followed two days later, on 17 August, by the proclamation of the independence of the Republic of Indonesia, spontaneous self-organisation began in Bali among supporters of the sovereignisation of the Dutch East Indies. By the end of August, several political groups had been formed, mainly youth organisations. With the arrival on the island of I Gusti Ketut Pudja, who had been appointed by President Sukarno as governor of the Lesser Sunda Islands province, with its capital in the Balinese city of Singaraja, republican authorities gradually began to take shape there. A significant part of the Balinese feudal nobility adopted a wait-and-see position during this period, fearing the imminent return of the Dutch colonial authorities to the island. Ngurah Rai, however, immediately came out in support of independence. Establishing close cooperation with Ketut Pudja, he began creating military-police forces on the island intended to resist the restoration of Dutch rule.
At the same time, Ngurah Rai warned his supporters, many of whom came from the lower strata of Balinese society, against conflict with the aristocratic elite, believing that any form of class conflict would weaken the country's capacity in the struggle for independence. At the same time, owing to his own background, he retained the ability to communicate with the highest-ranking Balinese, including many rulers of local princely dynasties, and urged them to remain loyal to the republican authorities.