Patung Pahlawan is a bronze statue located in Jakarta, Indonesia. The statue depicts a peasant man wearing a caping with a rifle on his shoulder, a woman behind him offering him a dish of rice. The caping is a traditional farmer's hat in Indonesia, thus the statue is also referred as the Farmer Statue (Patung Pak Tani or Tugu Tani).

History and design

When Soekarno - the first president of Indonesia - visited Moscow, he was impressed with the statues in the city. The president of the Soviet Union introduced him to a Socialist realist

Socialist realism

Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...

 sculptor Matvey Manizer

Matvey Manizer

Matvey Genrikhovich Manizer was a prominent Russian sculptor. Manizer created a number of works that became classics of socialist realism.- Life :...

 and his son Ossip Manizer. In order to inspire them, Soekarno invited the sculptors to Indonesia to built a statue which embodies the fight to achieve independence, which at that time Indonesia was fighting for the freedom of West Papua from the Dutch colonialism. While exploring a rural village in West Java

West Java

West Java , with a population of over 43 million, is the most populous and most densely populated province of Indonesia. Located on the island of Java, it is slightly smaller in area than densely populated Taiwan, but with nearly double the population...

, the sculptors were inspired by a folklore about a mother who supported her son to win the war and to remember his parents and his land as well as giving him some rice for his journey.

The statue was built in the Soviet Union and brought to Indonesia by ship. It was inaugurated in 1963. The statue sits at the junction of Menteng

Menteng

Menteng is a subdistrict of Central Jakarta, one of the administrative city which forms the special capital territory of Jakarta, Indonesia.The subdistrict is best known as the location of the Menteng residential area, a new urban design developed in the 1910s to become a residential area for Dutch...

 and Prapatan Street, which had been important place during the days of the August 1945 revolution

Indonesian National Revolution

The Indonesian National Revolution or Indonesian War of Independence was an armed conflict and diplomatic struggle between Indonesia and the Dutch Empire, and an internal social revolution...

. The statue has been very controversial since armed peasants are sometimes identified with communism.

There is a caption on the pedestal, a sentence by Soekarno: "HANJA BANGSA JANG MENGHARGAI PAHLAWAN PAHLAWANNJA DAPAT MENJADI BANGSA JANG BESAR" (English: "ONLY A NATION WHICH RESPECTS ITS HEROES IS A GREAT NATION")