On October 28, 1928, Indonesian youth nationalists from all over the country proclaimed a historic Youth Pledge, known as “Sumpah Pemuda”, for a unity of homeland, nation and language. This pledge helped Indonesia’s unification in Indonesia’s struggle for Independence. Ever since then, the Youth Pledge has been the quintessential symbol marking youth’s role and involvement in a nation building and development.

As a youth, and as an Indonesian, one could not help but to question whether any development has occur within the youth’s movement in the past 79 years. In evaluating this situation, we shall first analyze the challenges faced by each youth movement. This analysis is needed because the characteristic of a youth’s movement is largely intertwined with the challenges faced by such movement. Hence a comparative analysis on the characterization of the youth’s movement and its challenges before and after 1928 has to be employed.

Youth’s movement before the year of 1928 faces the challenge of colonialism and the repression of any freedom, particularly for any freedom of expression and right to education. This challenge is not only faced by Indonesian youth movement, but almost any other movement in any colonized territory. Specifically in Indonesia, the youth movement is characterized with segregation. This character is due to nature of multicultural Indonesia which is comprised more than 300 ethic groups and 200 different languages that stretch across 1,919,440 km². Along with this nature is the divide et impera’s politic employed by the Dutch colonialism.

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