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68Islam, Democracy and Human Rights in Contemporary IndonesiaIslamic political parties, was banned by the Japanese colonialrulers. The difficulties of communication amongst Muslimleaders were resolved by the presence of Masyumi. This enabledthem to investigate Islamic and Indonesian problems, as wellas a strategy for facing the Japanese colonials themselves.Natsir was not recruited as a member of Dokutritsu ZyunbiCoosakai (BPUPKI %u2014The Council for the Investigation ofIndonesian Independence Preparation), which was created by theJapanese in the last months before their defeat by the Allied Forces.The task of this council was to formulate input to the establishmentof independent Indonesia, which %u201cone day%u201d would be granted bythe Japanese to the Indonesians. All 62 members of this councilwere installed by the Japanese colonial government at the requestof Soekarno and Mohammad Hatta %u2014two trustworthy figures inthe eyes of the Japanese. The members of this council, such as AgusSalim, Suleiman, Masjkur, A. Kahar Muzakkir, Ki BagusHadikusumo and some other %u2018ulama generally came from theolder generation. Young adversaries, such as Natsir %u2014who wasactive in intellectual, political and ideological debates with otherfactions in the Dutch colonial era%u2014 were not represented in theBPUPKI. The significance of this council was even felt in thefollowing periods. Most of the bills formulated by this council wereapproved to become the official constitution of Indonesia, i.e.Undang-undang Dasar 1945 (the Constitution of 1945), which isstill valid today.The Independent PeriodNatsir%u2019s political activity in the independent era had upsand downs. He regarded this as normal. He argued that the