`Bahasa Indonesia', 66 years after

`Bahasa Indonesia', 66 years after

By J.S. Badudu

BANDUNG (JP): Sixty-six years have passed since the initial
making of the Youth Pledge, one of the most historic moments in
our nation's experience and one engraved in gold in the annals of
our history. It was a moment that was to lay the strongest
foundation for the success of our struggle to oust the Dutch
colonial power from our land.

For centuries we lived under the shackles of a nation whose
country occupies an area smaller than that of the province of
West Java and whose population numbers a mere 10 percent of that
of our own. How could that happen? The answer is that there was
no concrete action to counter their policy of divide-and-rule. We
were fragmented, each of us standing alone, disunited. This is
what made us vulnerable to their rule.

Any rebellion was easily crushed, and by our own people,
Indonesians from other parts of the country, who were used by the
colonizers to bolster their power.

The Youth Pledge changed all that. The three vows contained in
the Pledge laid a solid foundation for our struggle: unity. This
unity was what we needed most of all. There were many of us, we
had the strength, but we were never one. Now we aspired to have a
common homeland, to be a single nation -- Indonesia. And in order
that the hundreds of ethnic groups, each with its own traditions
and its own language, could be joined into one huge nation, we
strove to unite them with the best possible means available:
language.

It was for that reason that the third oath in the Pledge vowed
that we would "uphold the language of unity, Bahasa Indonesia".
It was a momentous contribution which our young people presented
us in that Youth Pledge of 1928.

Of the three oaths, the pledge to use one Indonesian language
has perhaps made the most tangible contribution to Indonesia's
unity at present, to our freedom and to the establishment of our
identity as a nation. The Bahasa Indonesia has demolished our
sense of being divided into ethnic entities because it makes us
feel that we belong to one single nation. We do not consider it
an alien language even though we must admit that for most of us
the Bahasa Indonesia is a second language.

The Bahasa Indonesia, which we have made our language of unity
and embraced in our Constitution as our official language, has
its origins in the Malay language. This Malay language is not a
rich language. It is above all a means of communication among
people although it is also used in literature.

But mankind's life evolves with time. Science and technology
continue to advance and language as a simple means of
communication cannot meet the needs of either. The Indonesian
language, therefore, has had to be enriched with a host of terms
and phrases borrowed from either any of the regional languages,
or from foreign ones. Our dealings with other peoples have their
impact on the use of the Indonesian language.

Although at around the middle of the last century Governor
General Rochussen declared the Malay language a language of
instruction in schools, it was only in 1918 that the Queen of the
Netherlands proclaimed it an official language that could be used
in the Volksraad, the legislature of what was then the
Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia).

At present the Bahasa Indonesia is the official language of
Indonesia and is continually being enriched. Its growth and
development has not reached its peak. It is difficult to say how
many more years it will take before the Indonesian language
becomes stable and reaches a peak level of development that will
put it on a par with the major modern languages of the world,
such as English, German, Arabic or Japanese.

Every so often new words from Indonesia's local languages, or
from dialects of the Bahasa Indonesia enter its vocabulary. Also,
new Indonesian equivalents of foreign words continue to be coined
to enrich our language. Because so many influences from the
outside are brought into the language by users of the Bahasa
Indonesia, changes are bound to be appear in the Indonesian
language in the form of word usage, phrases or even word and
sentence structure.

All this appears to be happening at so rapid a pace that
people who do not constantly follow the developments will be left
behind. It must be admitted that the Bahasa Indonesia has not
reached the level of being a stable language. This is the reason
why in the writing of scientific papers people often find it
difficult to find the precise word or phrase to express
complicated scientific ideas.

The important thing for us with regard to the development of
the Bahasa Indonesia is the attention that we pay to the
language, or the will that we have to master it so that we use it
correctly. We must have the awareness that it is we who possess
the language and that, therefore, we must cherish this national
possession. This feeling should arouse in us not only a sense of
pride in possessing a national language, but also the intention
to use it correctly.

The improper use of the language that we can often see in
writing is proof of our indifference towards this national
language of ours. A positive attitude towards the Bahasa
Indonesia must be promoted and the best place to do this is in
schools. By instilling in our children a love for the language
from the earliest moments of their lives, we can make sure that
the coming generation of Indonesians will be good users of the
language, people who will be able to preserve the dignity of the
nation through their language.

Sixty-six years have now passed since we vowed to make the
Bahasa Indonesia our common language. Now we have made it our
national language. Let it not be that a hundred more years must
pass before it can attain the level of stability and excellence
that will make it truly fit to be a language of science and
technology, as well as a language of such beauty that it will
affect the feelings of readers of Indonesian works of literature.

It is not impossible that our greater role in world politics
in the future will also raise the Indonesian language to the
stature of a world language. May this hope some day turn into
reality and may the Indonesian language continue to thrive.

The writer is a professor of literature at Padjadjaran
University, Bandung.