Aug. 17 and New Order: Nation-building problem

Max Lane, Center for Asia Pacific, Social Transformation Studies University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, max_lane@telstra.com

Indonesia was in a state of constant revolutionary motion from the beginning of the 20th century until Sept. 30, 1965. All around the world the modern nation state was created through revolutionary processes. The French Revolution, with its slogan of "liberty, fraternity, equality" has probably made the greatest impact on the popular mind although other European nations also experienced great revolutions.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the concept of a modern nation state called Indonesia was non-existent. What is now the Indonesian archipelago comprised a wide range of societies. There were strong and highly developed kingdoms and societies organized along tribal lines.

There were no modern nations, that is, communities with clear geographical borders, a common language, common currency and shared economic life, and a shared cultural outlook.

Like the struggle in Europe against despotism under kings and princes, in the archipelago, the political struggle associated with the struggle to create and establish the modern state was related with the struggle against colonial despotism; which often utilized aspects of the old, feudal despotism of the sultans and kings that dominated the islands before the arrival of the Dutch.

The struggle cannot be separated from the struggle for freedom of despotism of all kinds. Most leaders of the anti-colonial movement, figures such as Sukarno, Mohammad Hatta, Syahrir, and the one who started it all, Tirto Adhisuryo, were all democrats, opposed to despotism.

Their answer to colonial despotism was the idea of "Indonesia Merdeka" -- a "free" and "independent" Indonesia. Tirto Adhisuryo, the subject of the series of four novels by Pramoedya Ananta Toer (the "Buru Quartet"), founded the first newspaper that struggled against colonial despotism. The newspaper's slogan was "voice of the governed".

It was the cry of the governed against despotism that triggered a great revolutionary process, leading to the idea of a multi-ethnic nation, "Indonesia", that brought into being the great mass movements of the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Sarekat Islam and Sarekat Rakyat; and that inspired the proclamation of independence on Aug. 17, 1945 and the political, guerilla and diplomatic struggle between 1945 and 1949.

Indonesia was, and therefore is, the product of a conscious struggle for democracy and not a manifestation of a cultural, ethnic or religious unity. Later, various leaders and movements sought to give more specific content to the call for "Indonesia Merdeka". Some did seek to draw ideas for this purpose from stocks of ideas from pre-existing cultural traditions.

These included various trends in Islam and from Javanese folk as well as aristocratic philosophy. But never was any of this thinking far away from one or other of the streams of thought on modern democracy. Sukarno could draw on Thomas Jefferson and Karl Marx, while using Islamic and Javanese folk concepts.

The anti-colonial movement developed great streams of Islamic, social democratic, and socialist thinking. The proclamation of independence followed by intense struggle until 1949 ended Dutch colonialism and formal transfer of authority from the Netherlands to the Republic of Indonesia. The Indonesian state was established, a huge step in building an Indonesian nation. But formal independence did not complete the formation of the nation.

The Indonesian language needed to be spread to the population and to be developed into the real language of the people. Political institutions that would convince the people that they were real owners and participants of the new country had to be established. A national culture had to be developed that was more than just a conglomeration of traditional cultures; a national literature had to be established. The economy had to be restructured out of the hands of the Dutch and developed as an instrument of the welfare of the Indonesians, and not a small group of Dutch, British and U.S. companies.

The process of nation building, of completing all these tasks, was characterized by struggle between the ideological perspectives that had developed during the previous decades. This process, including up until 1965, despite various distortions, was essentially democratic: All the major ideological streams in society were able to participate. Political parties were the main engines of nation building; ideological struggle was the essence of its democratic character.

In 1965, Maj.Gen. Soeharto suppressed all struggle between ideologies, imposing a single formal "ideology", "Panca Sila". The New Order also introduced, by both force and money politics, a single real ideology combining extreme obedience to authority and desire to be obeyed (gila hormat), worship of money and vulgar economic growth and consumerism. We can call this ideology "Golkarism".

Parallel with this was a suppression of the political parties of the Left, the purging of centrist parties of their Left wing and the gutting of the right-wing parties of the ideological life. Soeharto's suppression of ideological struggle and his gutting of the political parties also ended key elements of the natiion-building process itself. President Sukarno regularly stressed right up until 1965 that the national revolution was not finished. Soeharto destroyed the revolutionary process before it could be completed.

None of the political institutions, neither the parties that survived during the New Order nor the parliamentary institutions, developed as genuine instruments of participation and ownership. Even now the mass of the population is alienated from these institutions and the political elite that inhabits them. Not surprisingly, local rather than national sentiment is strengthening. Even in Java, people are demanding provinces of their own, such as Cirebon.

The trend towards localism and the alienation from political institutions, including parties, will only be reversed if ideological life can be restored. Nation-building can only be resumed and completed with a conscious effort to redefine once again what is meant by "Indonesia Merdeka".

In the political institutions, Golkarism still prevails. In the mainstream parties, one form or other of Golkarism dominates. Many new parties have been formed but none yet have been able to launch a new ideological offensive to redefine and give content to the "Indonesia Merdeka" that was proclaimed on Aug. 17.

Where will such a dynamic come from? The New Order created a political elite rolling in money whose ideology is Golkarism. The New Order also created a mass of tens of millions of poor people, alienated from the institutions of the political and conglomerate elite.

In the 1920s, Sukarno told the story of how he watched a poor farmer work his land with a single buffalo and no matter how hard he worked remained poor. The man's name was Marhaen. Marhaenism, or an ideology of prioritizing both the needs and the organization of the poor developed as a popular outlook during the national revolution between the 1920s and 1965.

Now very few speak of the "Marhaen": But there is more talk of the "rakyat miskin", the poor. Now there is no great "poor peoples movement", but everywhere the poor protest their conditions and grumble about the elite. If the elite has created Golkarism, then a poor peoples movement, when it develops, will surely also produce ideologies of its own.