Enlightenment toward national integration

Regionalisme, Nasionalisme dan Ketahanan Nasional (Regionalism, Nationalism and National Resilience); By Edi Sudradjat, Lance Castles, et al.; National Defense Institute and Post Graduate Studies, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, 1998; 232 pp + xii; Rp 6,500.

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Problems related to each race, religion, culture and ethnic group in a multicultural state will always be material for ceaseless debate.

Long before the establishment of the nation-state, each social group within this state had its own particular value system and social institutions.

Colonialism, prompted by its own interest and needs, had forcefully bound divisive attachments and kept each group under its control.

This was inherited by the independent state, and for many countries, cultural and political integration has been difficult to achieve long after formal declaration of independence.

The fact that separatism, which is also construed as negative regionalism, still exists here, such as what is going on in Irian Jaya and some other regions, is an example of this paradox.

Without any pretension to offer wise answers to the problem, this book only attempts to illustrate the complexity of a nation- state through various approaches.

Contributors include Gen. (ret) Edi Sudradjat, the former defense minister and the single military representative in the book, and noted historians.

The book enlightens the reader about how each social group, in terms of race, religion, culture and ethnicity, should be treated by the state and, eventually, by all of us, in the pursuit of integration.

Editors, including Ichlasul Amal, Gadjah Mada University's renown rector, write that national integration needs the movement of communal loyalty to a higher and broader level.

Kinship or ethnic groups of origin should no longer be considered the main source of status. Community members should, individually, begin to find ways to express their loyalty to a community of a higher status, that is, the nation.

This process would be followed by the emergence of certain institutions transferring "the nation" into concrete forms like educational institutions, the House of Representatives, political parties and the Army.

Participation in such institutions should be open to all Indonesians irrespective of race, religion, culture and ethnicity, so that each individual's effort to promote public welfare and their sense of sovereignty sharing would be realized.

One of the many contributors, Lance Castles, a long-time scholar and lecturer of Indonesian studies, writes that national integration should become a reality if the development of "nationalism" is geared toward one that is integrated with universalism.

He views that the "national culture" and national educational system have largely avoided abolishing ethnic diversity -- the opposite to the melting pot idea.

Castles says such a vision, known as multiculturalism, is now also being developed in the United States, Canada and Australia. This concept takes cultural and racial diversity as a wealth, and the target is integration (not assimilation) based on mutual respect among ethnic groups.

But Castles also mentions what now inevitably sounds like a deeply disturbing warning: the face of nationalism "which is more terrifying as a segregator" instead of a unifying factor, "leading to hundreds of thousands of victims of ethnic cleansing and the evacuation of millions of others". The book was published a few months before the May riots, which largely victimized ethnic Chinese.

Mutual respect between different groups, he writes, would become a reality only if the government is capable of establishing a civil society, which, as historian Sartono Kartodirdjo writes, seems to be forgotten by the government.

Sartono says that the spirit of a civil society had long been part of communal identity here.

He writes that this spirit of equality, democracy etc., prevailed particularly after the 17th century, with the rise of Islam-based kingdoms.

Nationalism in the real sense, Sartono says, "abolishes ethnic boundaries". Again we are reminded of poor ethnic relations here as he refers to ethnocentrism and the victimization of ethnic Chinese in earlier riots.

On separatism, such as in Irian Jaya and East Timor, noted historian Taufik Abdullah believes that the mistake lies in the indoctrination of inappropriate values and symbols to the communities in these two regions.

He emphasizes that the national awakening marked in history such as with the establishment of the Boedi Oetomo organization by Javanese youths are meaningless to the people in Baucau or Abepura or Timika.

National heroes Tuanku Imam Bonjol, of a Minang ethnic group, Prince Diponegoro, who was Javanese, and Acehnese Tjut Nyak Dien, do not mean much to people in Irian Jaya and East Timor.

He writes that a far more effective strategy in dealing with separatism in these two provinces is reviving their collective recollection of their joint efforts with other regions to fight colonialism.

-- Celes Reda

The reviewer is a student of the Yogyakarta Institute of Agriculture.