Indonesia means Multiculturalism!

by Timotius Wibowo
Reading: Bernard Adeney-Risakotta (2009), “Religion, Violence and Diversity: Negotiating the Boundaries of Indonesian Identity” in Religion, Civil Society, and Conflict in Indonesia. Zurich and Berlin: LIT.

Addressing the problem of religion, violence and diversity in Indonesia, Bernard Adeney-Risakotta (2009) suggests a dialectic dialogue between three different ways of liberal human rights, a substantive vision of good society, and multiculturalism. I absolutely agree with Adeney-Risakotta’s suggestion. However, among the three substances, I propose multiculturalism to be the starting point. It means that the other two substances should be developed from multiculturalism point of view. Although this article has enough room to discuss multiculturalism, it does not regard its prominence among the three.
I suggest multiculturalism to be the starting point of any efforts both in building national identity and in solving the problems of religious and social diversity, based on at least three reasons. First, from both geographical and social points of view, Indonesia’s culture comprises thousands cultures. Such a richness of culture unfortunately has been regarded as burden, instead of blessing. That is why our leaders in the past always failed to unify Indonesia’s multicultural people. For centuries, cultural codes have been strong factor in Indonesia’s communities, both in building social relationships and in solving social conflicts.
Second, from historical perspective, multiculturalism is our unfinished task in building the foundation of our nation. Our political leaders, especially Sukarno and Suharto, used Pancasila only as a short cut to solve the problems of diversity. However, in my opinion, Pancasila could not really solve the problems. The first principle of Pancasila, “Ketuhanan Yang Mahaesa,” is never friendly both to Indonesian indigenous beliefs (and cultures) and minority’s religions. Instead of protects them, it is often used as a legal base to oppress them. Cultural peace during the New Order Era was only a deceit, since it was exercised by authoritarian presidency and its military forces.
Third, from global perspective, multiculturalism is the most proper value to establish a strong identity for Indonesian people. Amidst the bipolarization of radical Islam and secular Western (American) forces, Indonesia should build her national identity on her own heritages. The most dangerous threat of those two bipolar powers is not in political or military context, instead in cultural. Neither Western (or American) culture nor the Middle East (or Arabian) culture should colonize Indonesian people. Indonesian people should develop their own culture derived from its multicultural reality. Extinction of a nation starts from its culture.
It is true that it will take a long way to build Indonesia’s identity based on its multicultural reality. Such effort, nevertheless, is worthy. If we succeeded to finish it, we would have a strong cultural foundation for our nation.