Revisiting the Youth Pledge

By Harkiman Racheman

MEDAN, North Sumatra (JP): The commemoration of the Youth Pledge on Oct. 28 this year carries great significance. In line with the current atmosphere of multidimensional reform, the historic Youth Pledge, signed and approved by representatives of young intellectuals from diverse parts of the archipelago, may now need to be reinterpreted, reexplored, or even reassessed within the renewed framework of post-Soeharto modern Indonesia.

To begin with, in the year 1928 a group of young intellectuals within social organizations such as Jong Sumatranen Bond, Jong Java and Jong Ambon took the unprecedented initiative to hold a large-scale national gathering in Jakarta. They were there to formulate and hence determine the cultural blueprint for the upcoming new nation which was later called Indonesia.

At the youth congress, it was unanimously decided that the new country was to be established principally on the ground of "one country, one nation and one (state) language". For the first time in modern Indonesian history, young intellectual leaders from various sociopolitical and ethnic and cultural persuasions gathered together to formally voice their self-determined nationalistic desire to live in one country, as one unitary nation and to "deeply respect" Bahasa Indonesia as the unifying state language. (They did not agree to speak only Bahasa Indonesia, because such a move could have been wrongly interpreted.)

It is seldom realized that the Youth Pledge itself contains the essential unifying principles and values instrumental to Indonesians to start molding together their ideal country. More often than not, the pledge is thought of as a common sociocultural coming together of diverse elements in the country for the sake of national space-sharing. Hence, it has been also wrongly construed that the Indonesian youths met to discuss conditions pertaining to that common goal.

Indonesia was, is and will always be a country as pluralistic as its flora and fauna. Following through on this metaphor, these plants or animals also project the diversity of the country's ethnic, religious and cultural experiences and backgrounds which do not necessarily merge easily. It is no wonder then that divisive sentiments are very much a living reality in the past just as they are today.

And it has to be said that such immature in-group feelings can always pose a serious threat to the multiethnic unitary nation. The dominant cultural group can obviously continue to impose their distinctive cultural values on other lesser groups. The dominant religious group, to mention another example, would naturally strive to maintain some sense of control in matters related to national decision-making.

As has been clearly exemplified by the Soeharto regime, in a corrupt government these divisive forces can easily be turned into a means for dirty politicking.

It is in this particular context that the Youth Pledge offers a useful perspective. With the national consensus evident in the 1928 event, the disturbing dichotomy between majority and minority interests should be finally settled. At the 1928 event, the ethnic Javanese majority, to use a now classic example, could have easily secured their right to nominate their mother tongue as the official language of the aspiring nation.

However, it didn't happen due to their multicultural tolerance and sympathy. What this indicates is that in the future the Youth Pledge should continue to be appreciated as a necessary buffer toward extreme expressions of majority-minority conflicts of interest.

It cannot be overemphasized that the Youth Pledge is a formal declaration of the tremendous willingness of the entire population to live together in unity as well as diversity. It also guarantees that the country, with its diverse components living together in modern multiculturalism, will not lead toward a much rejected cultural amalgamation, but rather a harmoniously formed cultural cluster.

The signing of the pledge by the young intellectuals, most of them in their 20s, therefore constitutes a crucial point of departure in any effort to modernize Indonesian culture as a whole. The liberated young minds had chosen consciously to leave behind past-oriented values of traditionalism to welcome the future-oriented principles of modernism.

With the pledge itself, the direction of the nation's cultural identity became transparent and predictable. If divisive forces in the past is a disturbing setback, then the cultural modernization engineered by the Youth Pledge can only be a step forward. It can function as a bridging gap between the old Indonesia and the new Indonesia which we aspire to.

Hopefully, this year's commemoration will function as a reminder to the new government to walk back on the once decided track which leads toward real unity in cultural diversity, as opposed to pseudo uniformity imposed by the New Order.

The writer graduated from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Based in Medan, he is currently a freelance writer and a university teacher.

Window: ...the Youth Pledge should continue to be appreciated as a necessary buffer toward extreme expressions of majority-minority conflicts of interest.