Time to Stop Reproducing Colonial Mentality Within Ourselves

The issue of colonialism has not truly ended; it has not fully become part of the past. Colonialism has merely changed form: from physical occupation to a mindset, mentality, and even nostalgia. This was highlighted at last week’s 20th Praksis Forum in Jakarta when Dutch author Michel Maas dissected his book “De Gelogen Kolonie: Naar Indonesië om Indië te vergeten”. The book explicitly challenges Dutch romanticism towards the Dutch East Indies. We must honestly acknowledge that, to this day, parts of Dutch society still view Indonesia through a colonial lens. What they recall is not the suffering of the colonised people, but the orderliness of colonial cities, old buildings, canals, tropical plantations, and exotic life in a faraway land. The Dutch East Indies are remembered as a “beautiful period” of peace and tranquillity. But peace for whom? Order for whom? Comfort for whom? In colonial nostalgia, forced labour fades from memory. Famine caused by the Cultivation System is dismissed as a mere historical footnote. Military violence is forgotten. What remains are black-and-white photographs that appear picturesque in museums or tourist postcards. Therefore, Maas’s book is important not only for the Netherlands but also for Indonesia. It reminds us that colonialism was never built for the advancement of the colonised. Colonial infrastructure was not a gift. Colonial order was not an act of generosity. Everything was designed to serve the economic and political interests of the colonisers. Historian Peter Carey at the forum even described the Cultivation System as a form of slavery.