A nation awakes
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.