Towards a more unified Indonesia

Towards a more unified Indonesia

The recent international conference on population settlement held in Jakarta has prompted me to write this letter. In his opening speech at the conference, President Soeharto was reported (Kompas, Nov. 28, 1995) to have reaffirmed that the objectives of the Indonesian transmigration program, among other things, were to accelerate development work outside Java and to further strengthen persatuan dan kesatuan bangsa (unity and integrity of the nation).

I agree that transmigration projects could help achieve those objectives, but their success, particularly with regard to the ideal of the unity and integrity of the nation, would, I think, depend a lot on the way the projects are implemented.

When we talk about 'persatuan dan kesatuan bangsa', we should remember the vital importance of the three primordial elements which have been directly or indirectly responsible for many conflicts, or even wars, around the world. They are: race and ethnicity, religion and language.

Here in Indonesia we are fortunate in terms of religion and national language, because 88 percent of Indonesians are Moslems and more than 85 percent regularly speak Bahasa Indonesia, or at least understand it. These very high percentages are a kind of godsend for Indonesia and indeed Islam and Bahasa Indonesia should be used advantageously as a matrix to cement the nation together, wherein the other religions would function as the complementary constituents. It follows that in this view any attempt to weaken Moslem unity or any effort to unnecessarily dilute Bahasa Indonesia with words or phrases from the various dialects should be discouraged as they are liable to undermine national unity.

Although Islam and Bahasa Indonesia should facilitate the attainment of our national unity, the remaining major factor, namely racial, or ethnic, identity, is quite a different matter. Indonesia is far from homogeneous in this respect since the largest ethnic groups, the Javanese and Sundanese, make up only 39 percent and 15 percent of the total population respectively.

Several medium sized ethnic units, such as the coastal Malays, the Buginese/Makassarese, Minangkabau, Batak and Chinese range in the population share from seven percent to three percent, while smaller ethnic entities constitute less than one percent of the population each. I would suggest that because the most distinguishing feature among the ethnic groups is their dialects, Indonesians should gradually allow them to languish (rather like the case of the Scottish and Welsh languages in the United Kingdom today) but at the same time promote the primacy of Bahasa Indonesia, including in private use.

One obvious advantage of this is that when a Batak, a Javanese, a Chinese or Buginese does not speak his own dialect anymore and speak only Bahasa Indonesia, we would automatically think of him as a pure Indonesian and forget his ethnic origin. In the case of an ethnic Chinese, however, he would further need to disassociate himself from Chinese culture and traditions and channel his orientation and loyalty entirely to this country.

I would not consider transmigration projects successful in the promotion of 'persatuan dan kesatuan bangsa' if the Javanese transmigrants continue almost exclusively to speak in their own dialect, or even use distinctly Javanese names for their new villages as has happened in the Lampung province. On the other hand, many a descendant of Javanese indentured laborers in North Sumatra plantations do not speak Javanese anymore and consider themselves primarily as Indonesians.

To minimize the use of dialects and hence lessen ethnic differences as envisaged above will not be an easy task, but with ready willingness I hope Indonesians can achieve it by the year 2045, in time for the country's 100th anniversary.

MASLI ARMAN

Jakarta