A nation awakes
Ninety-three years to the day, yesterday, a handful of young Javanese intellectuals met in Jakarta to declare the founding of Budi Utomo. It was the first association set up by Indonesians on the basis of modern organizational principles, and adopted the lofty aim of improving the intellectual base of young Javanese from all walks of life.
Why only young Javanese? Why not all young Indonesians? The answer is that, at that time, in 1908, the concept of a unified country or nation called Indonesia was unfamiliar. That concept only emerged 20 years later, in 1928, when youth movement leaders, representing the various major regions of this country, met and declared their acknowledgement of the principle of "one country, one nation, one language -- Indonesia".
Nevertheless, despite its limited scope, Budi Utomo's birth is remembered today as National Awakening Day. And indeed, it was a major milestone in the history of Indonesia's emergence as a fully fledged nation among other nations of the world. Following in the footsteps of Budi Utomo, other Indonesian youth organizations emerged: Jong Java (Young Java), the Jong Sumatranenbond (Association of Young Sumatrans) and others.
Still, all or most of those youth organizations that saw the light in the early decades of the last century had as their aim the promotion of local ethnic interests, even though the understanding that they all belonged to one bigger social and political entity -- the Netherlands East Indies, the future Indonesia -- must have gradually taken hold in the back of the young organizers' minds.
Given current developments in several regions of this country, however, it seems legitimate enough to ask ourselves what relevance the birth of such a purely Javanese-oriented organization, such as Budi Utomo, can possibly have in the context of Indonesia's now commonly acknowledged immense ethnic and cultural diversity. Or, to rephrase the question, can the birth of a modern organization in Java, such as Budi Utomo, and the rise of intellectual concerns affecting the indigenous population in parts of Java be assigned any significance to developments elsewhere in the archipelago?
For us to be able to answer this question in the positive, it is necessary that we rethink or broaden the concept of national awakening to provide equal room to all of the different ethnic populations and cultures that make up this geographic and political entity called Indonesia. For much too long, the concept of unity has been confused by successive governments in Jakarta with uniformity.
Federalism is still considered a dirty word in Indonesia and those Indonesians dreaming of a federal state being established in this country are likely to have to wait quite a long time before they can see their dream become a reality -- if ever. However, even without going as far as allowing every province to turn itself into a separate state, real unity and real cohesion are well within the grasp of Indonesia. The point is to give due and full recognition to the uniqueness, and to the needs and wants, of each and every one of the country's regions.
As Indonesians commemorate National Awakening Day, let them not forget that their country's great strength and wealth, its majesty and grandeur, lie in its huge diversity. They can do much to preserve those assets by appreciating that huge diversity.