Revisiting the Youth Pledge

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.