A History of Modern Indonesia

Inside Indonesia, 107: Jan-March, 2012

Between 1965 and 1968 half a million Indonesians were killed by the military and civilian vigilantes and hundreds of thousands imprisoned without trial. The purpose of this violence was to eliminate the Indonesian left which had wanted to introduce socialism to Indonesia. The repression targeted not only members of the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) and affiliated organisations, but also Sukarno supporters from the Indonesian Nationalist Party and the military.

Indonesian Politics and Society is an exceptional tool for understanding social and political change in Indonesia over more than three decades. It contains more than eighty translated extracts of carefully selected speeches, pamphlets, manifestos and poems, providing a unique insight into the social thought and political concerns of a wide range of actors intimately involved in the struggle to shape modern Indonesia following the triumph of Soeharto’s New Order in the 1960s. This volume introduces and assesses the thinking of state ideologues, modernising pluralists, social radicals, and of political Islam, during a period of tumultuous change and sometimes violent conflict. It also relates the ideas of the major protagonists in political struggles to important events in Indonesia following the fall of Soeharto. Much of the material presented is made accessible for the first time to English-language readers. As such, the book is an invaluable text for scholars of modern Indonesia, and for those who seek to understand the ideas that continue to be relevant to the actors currently reshaping the country’s social and political terrain. (From front matter in book)

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia, 2009

Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, 2011

Indonesia in the 1950s Nation, modernity, and the post-colonial state My dream was about a clean and tidy country with beautiful trains. A country where everybody would be happy. 1 Perspective, mobility, rootedness Since Soeharto's New Order, the 1950s have been represented in Indonesian historiography as 'the road to disaster', when the country was torn apart by regional rebellions and rising political tensions between right and left, which were mainly attributed to the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI, Indonesian Communist Party). 2 This image is now being challenged and much more work needs to be done to investigate the relatively unknown 1950s in more detail. Usually, the 1950s have been viewed in comparison with other eras-in a negative sense as a time of stagnation and a prelude to chaos and in contrast to order and development during the New Order, or, alternatively, in a positive sense as a period of democracy, as opposed to New Order authoritarianism, and as the aborted prehistory of post-1998 decentralization. However, instead of using the 1950s as a kind of background to other periods, it is more interesting to assess this decade on its own terms and explore its particular dynamics and complexities. 3 In this essay I want to focus on discussions 1

Indonesia Sebagai Ruang Imajinasi, 2018

This was a presentation I gave at the one-day Conference on 'Indonesia sebagai Ruang Imajinasi [Imagining Indonesia]' at Universitas Brawijaya, Malang, on 7 November 2018. The paper was subsequently published in the conference proceedings - Indonesia sebagai Ruang Imajinasi. Ed.Ary Budhiyanto dkk. (Malang: Program Studi Antropologi, Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya, Universitas Brawijaya, 2018), pp.1-7. There is also a PowerPoint presentation which will help to bring this paper alive visually. The main theme I was asked to address by the conference organisers related to concepts of political space in 19th century Java (in particular during the era of Diponegoro [1785-1855] and the Java War [1825-30]) and the subsequent emergence of the concept of Indonesia through the publications of George Windsor Earl (1813-1865) and his younger contemporary, James Richardson Logan (1819-1869), founder of the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia (Singapore, 1847-63). I also looked at the period of the early 20th century Indonesian nationalist movement or pergerakan nasional (1908-1942).

2013

This dissertation tackles one central problem: What were the intellectual and social origins of New Order Indonesia (1966-1998)? The analytical lens that this study employs to examine this society is the Indonesian middling classes’ pursuit of modernity. The dissertation comes in two parts. Part One reconstructs the evolution of the Indonesian middling classes and their search for progress. Part Two uses three case studies to analyze the middling classes’ search for Indonesian modernity under the New Order. The first explores the top-down modernization undertaken by President Soeharto’s assistants at the National Development Planning Board, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology. The second case study investigates the “bottom-up” modernization performed by the Institute for Economic and Social Research, Education, and Information. The third case study deals with how several authors used popular fiction to criticize the kind of Indonesian modernity that emerged in the New Order era. This research yields several findings. First, the Indonesian middling classes championed a pragmatic, structural-functional path to modernity. Second, to modernize the country rapidly and safely, the modernizers proceeded in an eclectic and pragmatic manner. Third, between the Old and the New Order, there existed strong continuity in ideas, ideals, skills, and problems. Fourth, the middling classes’ modernizing mission was fraught with contradictions, naïvetés, ironies, and violence, which had roots in the nationalist movement in the first half of the twentieth century. The New Order was neither wholly new nor an aberration from the “normal” trajectory of Indonesia’s contemporary history. The sort of modernity that the Indonesian middling classes ended up creating was Janus-faced.

This is the English text of my 1 December 2014 inaugural lecture as Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Humanities University of Indonesia, Depok (Jakarta). It deals with the processes of memory and forgetting, and reflects on what happens when a nation loses its sense of history- as appears to have happened with contemporary Indonesia. The full text has been published in Indonesian and can be read in FX Domini BB Hera (ed.), 'Urip iku Urub; Untaian Persembahan 70 Tahun Profesor Peter Carey [Life is Fire; A Collection of Contributions to Celebrate the 70th Birthday of Professor Peter Carey]' (Jakarta: Penerbit Buku Kompas, 2019), pp.56-69.

Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historical narrative about 1965 that was created by the New Order regime has been defended and reaffirmed by the post-New Order ‘democratic’ state. During the New Order, the 1965 narrative was used to justify and legitimize state sponsored violence against the PKI and other left wing nationalists that resulted in at least half a million deaths in the mid 1960s. This same narrative underpinned the political legitimacy of the newly emerging New Order state and articulated a version of national identity and nation building that was the antithesis of the previous era. The survival of the 1965 narrative has facilitated the survival of anti-communist ideology from the New Order. It continues to underpin political legitimacy for those in power as well as provide impunity for acts of political violence and repression that are used to defend their social and political power. Anti-communist ideology continues to support a restricted notion of citizenship and national identity. Restricted notions of citizenship today significantly constrain the freedoms of civil society to engage in open discourse about the possibilities for deepening and strengthening political democracy and its institutions. The ongoing contestation over the 1965 historical narrative indicates that history and versions of ‘the past’ are part of the dynamic of democratic politics in Indonesia. Analysis of the contestation over the 1965 authoritarian historical narrative allows us to examine the changes and continuities in concepts of national identity and citizenship, and in the categories of political ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ from the New Order authoritarian regime to the reformed democratic state that exists today.

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 1991