Indonesian Nationalism Today and in the Future

Abstract

In my experience nationalism is frequently misunderstood.For that reason this morning I will begin my remarks by discussing briefly two common kinds of misunderstanding, using Indonesia as an example of a phenomenon almost universal in this century which is now crawling to its end.The first is that nationalism is something very old and is inherited from, of course, "absolutely splendid ancestors."Thus it is something that arises "naturally" in the blood and flesh of each of us.In fact, nationalism is something rather new, and today is little more than two centuries old.The first Declaration of Independence, proclaimed in Philadelphia in 1776, said not a word about "ancestors," indeed made no mention of Americans.Sukarno's and Hatta's Declaration of Independence on August 17, 1945, was essentially similar.By contrast, the mania for seeking "absolutely splendid ancestors" typically gives rise to nonsense, and often very dangerous nonsense.A nice local example is Prince Dipenegoro, who in the 1950s was anointed as No. 1 National Hero, as if the Prince had led a movement for Indonesia's national independence from the clutches of Dutch colonialism.But if one looks at what the Prince himself said in his memoirs, his actual words about his political goal were that he intended to "subjugate"-yes, "subjugate"-Java.The concept "Indonesia" was wholly foreign to him (as was the idea of "freedom").Indeed we all know that this strange Graeco-Roman neologism is very new; it started to become well known only