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Hanuman figure on float at Independence Day parade, August 17, 1986 in Peliatan, Bali

About this photograph

Creator
Margery H. Freeman
Date created
Unknown
Location
Peliatan, Bali, Indonesia
License
This photograph copyright ©2006. Terms of use

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Hanuman figure on float at Independence Day parade, August 17, 1986 in Peliatan, Bali

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A fuzzy white Hanuman figure stands atop a float at the Indonesian Independence Day parade on August 17, 1986 in Peliatan, Bali.

Hanuman is standing on, and fighting with, a red serpent whose long neck projects upward from the float. Small Indonesian flags (half red on the top and half white on the bottom) stick out from the base of the float around Hanuman’s body.

Indonesian leaders declared the nation’s Independence at the end of World War II on August 17th, 1945. The former colonial ruler, The Netherlands, refused to accept the declaration and fought against the Indonesian revolution until 1949 when all attempts to re-take the large Southeast Asian colony, which they called “The Netherlands East Indies,” failed.

Towns throughout Indonesia stage annual Independence Day parades on August 17th, each one decorated according to local themes of valor and pride. Here the bold Hanuman character of the Ramayana can be re-imagined as if he were a mythological hero of the Indonesian revolution against the Dutch.