Three Facet of Transformation in Indonesia: Reading a Country a as a Nation for Struggle

History of Religions in Indonesia pt. 2. 1900 to the Present—
Prof. Bernard Adeney-Risakotta & Dr. Sri Margana
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Roma Ulinnuha-ICRS 2009
Reading:
1. M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia Since 1300, pp. 199-233
2. Robert Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslim and Democratization in Indonesia ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,, 2000

Week #3: Religion and Politics in Indonesia

Three Facet of Transformation in Indonesia: Reading a Country a as a Nation for Struggle

People inhabited archipelago of the former East Indies, engineered by intellectuals of the country, had been tried to eradicate the Colonial power—after 350-year of Dutch occupation. At the shadow of the Japanese, the first contestation of the country is how to formulate the notion of independence through nationalism type of ideology. This perspective of nationalism has been supported by the Japanese—proclaiming as the old brother of Indonesia, by giving a space for Indonesian to accentuate the education, and military, although it is widely known as the strategy to make Indonesia a basis for the Pan-Japanese authority in South East Asia.

This first stage ideology of nationalism, I argue, is necessary in motivating the Indonesian souls grasping the dream of independence. Soekarno, Hatta, and Sjahrir had played their own roles in enhancing this strategy. There has been a critical moment of argument in deciding the Indonesian independence when the senior ( Soekarno) wanted to follow the Japanese initiatives, while the young Indonesian leaders ( such as Sjahrir) strictly argued to proclaim the Indonesian independence from their own action. Despite of their difference, the ideal of nationalism ideology has gained its culmination. Riklefs states this as the ‘a dramatic declaration of independence outside of the framework set up by the Japanese’ (p.210).

The second contestation of the Indonesian ideology, I argue, is the foundation of Indonesian state. Gaining the independence in August 17, 1945, Indonesia faced two central issues—the revolutionary war and the formation of the newly born state. The first type of nationalism that had successfully engineered the Indonesian independence had been challenged. The need of some interests as the part of Indonesian unity were in cross-road among the nationalist, the leftist and Islam. The state within the state –as formulated in the RIS (the federation type of states) failed to seed the unity of Indonesia. The establishment of the Republic of Indonesia is the answer of the challenge of the ideology. This serves, I believe, as a rejection of the notion of hegemony in Gramsci’s notion–‘by winning the consent of the subordinating groups by making them accept the dominant discourse’. In other word, Hefner emphasized it that ‘embrace a concept of nation that transcended ethnicity, region, religion (2000: 39).

The third contestation is on the era of acceptance of Pancasila as the state ideology. In addition, the other facet of this stage also included the revision of the nine-word imbued in the first principle of Pancasila as formulated in Jakarta Charter. The moderation of the first principle has made the ‘inclusive’ nuance of the way of life of Indonesian nation. Pancasila is the state-ideology unified Indonesia’s diversity and multiculturalism. However, of course, in the path ways of Indonesia, Pancasila has been struggled within itself to be in an equilibrium mode against the notion of power, interest, and authority. Can Pancasila –then as the state ideology, deliver the unity, tolerance, respect, justice and humanity in the faces of growing particularity, intolerance, prejudice, unfairness and dehumanization in Indonesia?