How is the Historiographies in Indonesia after Soeharto’s Era ? By Nihayatul Wafiroh

The generation who was born from 1960s until 1980s would have the same memories about Indonesian history. For instance, Sukarno joined the banned party, which is a communist party, and we always had assumed that Suharto was the most important person to bring Indonesia in the new era. Our knowledge about Indonesia based on one resource which was the historical book in our school. Geery Van Klinken in his article The Battle for History after Soeharto claimed that the power of Suharto arranged everything about the Indonesian history.

Although Soeharto already fell in 1998, it does not mean that Indonesia would create better historiographies. There are still some problems for example the less controlled by state. Indeed, this situation opens the opportunities for all people to write the history that is based on their own perspectives. In the other hand, the reform era has brought an opportunity for everyone to express their courage to write about the history of Indonesia, so there emerge several groups of historians who have a different focus on the historiographical Indonesia. Klinken groups four historiographical streams into four groups: (1) Orthodox nationalist stream, (2) Societal historiographies at the national level, (3) Regional ethno-nationalisms, (4) Local histories.

For me the most interesting of these four groups is the first group. Disclosure of information and the absence of pressure from the government do not open their eyes about the real history of Indonesia. Indeed, the history of Indosia had been covered by Suharto. They still hold the view of the "forbidden" to have a different view of history, so they raided the history books that in their view not in line with their opinions. If this group still exists, I am sure that the historigraphical Indonesia will not move ahead.

Then, how about the history of religions in Indonesia? I think that during Suharto’s era, the history of religions was only written from one side which was government’s side. So is there any differences before and after Soeharto’s era?