Given the 'tragic abundance" the country has been throughout its existence and given the recurring national comedies of errors and fatal tragedies, what is the underlying factor that has united Indonesians together? With no particular light at the end of our tunnel, when the powers that be are only interested power in wealth accumulation for their own families, to what extent can this factor last?
I cannot answer them, yet. But I have sensed they are strongly related to what I feel about the country and what I know of nationalism. But what is nationalism? What does Indonesian nationalism mean to us these days? Is it still relevant a thing?
No sooner than I asked myself these questions was I surprised to learn how very little I did know about it. What does nationalism mean to me? I felt it had to do it with my feelings about and attitudes toward my country, government, and fellow Indonesians.
Virtual diggers of the concept of nationalism would benefit enormously as I did from two excellent essays on the issue: Epistemologi Nasionalisme by Sulfikar Amir and Diskursus Nasionalisme by Kurniawan. They are in Bahasa Indonesia; another useful and quite comprehensive account on the issue, in English, I got from Wikipedia.
The first writer Sulfikar writes at a great length of its historical development, citing that nationalism has been one of the most wonderful social discovery at least in the last one hundred years of human history. Kurniawan concurs that the end of the cold war and the globalism and internasionalism in the 1990s to date, with the advancement of communiation and information technology, did not and will not put an end to the importance of nationalism.
Interestingly Sulfikar argues that the spiritual domain within Indonesian nationalism is filled with elements that has clung dearly to and was born out of a dialectic process with colonialism. It is thus not sufficiently satisfactory to claim, he argues, that Indonesia's nationalism has its roots in local cultures since we have no strong historical foundation. What supported Indonesia as a nation as well as a nationalism ideology was the colonialism that had entirely been inspired by modernism, of which the western culture was its major source. If this entails something, it perhaps warrants another essay; at this moment I just wanted to say that my appreciation to the founding fathers has renewed.
While some of us today tend to view nationalism as a finished product, the two great essays would help us understand that nationalism is never final, if at all. Likewise Indonesia's nationalism will perenially develop in search of its form and essence along its dynamic history, which is not always linear. In other words, the questions about nationalism will stay relevant at any time of age. They are only becoming more complex. Nationalism needs to be revisited and reinterpreted from time to time, more so at a time when we are groping in the dark. Likened to a construction, or an imagined construction to borrow Benedict Anderson's term, nationalism is not physical, let alone a finished building. It is more a spirit with which a nation strives to realize what the nation wants to achieve with its existence. Is Indonesia any closer to what it has always wanted to achieve with its Independence?
As Sulfikar aptly puts it, nationalism exists as a relation between the state and the people, but to some nationalist elites it stops being public goods, rather their exclusive priviledge with which they, coupled with their gigantic authorites, dominate the discourse on nationalism. To them nationalism has revolved into an instrument for manufacturing consent in order to legitimize socioeconomic and political interest of political groups.
By doing this they are only jeopardizing it. In this perspective, the pertinence of the hauting questions becomes obvious: what is the underlying factor that has united Indonesians? To what extent can it last? Is it our love for this nation or is it that most of us go about with no choice?
Musings - Part 1
"If you sat long enough at your empty kitchen table, the whole world eventually would come to you," the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, I believe, once said.
One late evening last week I sat at my desk in front of my computer, not long enough though to bring the whole world, but quite sufficient be engrossed in thoughts of but one country.
Indonesia, in a nutshell, is an archipelagic country of more than 13 thousands islands lying in a strategic location between the Pacific and Indian oceans. Some 220 million people live there speaking one national language and or any other one of over 400 vernaculars and dialects; the fact makes it the world's 4th most populous and linguistically varied in the world. It is also the largest Muslim nation, since about 80% of the population profess Islam. Its independence goes back to 1945, when it won it from the centuries of occupation by different nations. A bit of its historical insight I posted in my old blog.
The country practically posseses everything necessary to develop into a successful nation: copper, tin, gold, forests, minerals, and oil--the black gold. Its wealth, as well as the strategic location, is supposed to be a blessing for Indonesians. However, after 60 years spanning 6 presidents, the state of abundance has been more of a curse. Indonesia remains a land of unfulfilled promises and misplaced compromises, trapped into a fierce race to the bottom.
In the face of the growing complexities and persplexities, Indonesia's condition is such that if one sits long enough and reflect on it and its people, one will be inundated by the questions as follows:
What does it mean to be Indonesian? What does nationalism mean to Indonesians nowadays? Most importantly, what are the driving forces that unite them together and to what extent can they last?
Should these existential issues be left to scholars alone? By no means. They can be left neither to the powers that be nor Kant--only to Indonesians.
As an Indonesian, "damned' am I.
***
At first, I thought I'd better leave this subject to others far more competent. Why, because I am NOT a scholar, journalist, politician, government employe, nor businessperson. I am but a layperson; an employee; a husband; and a father--period. After consulting my conscience, I finally decided to pursue the matters, thinking that I, even if incapable of putting aside personal biases, might be able to contribute as a non-partisan, non-institutional observer without any political or personal interest whatsoever.
So I am "damned," irrespective of whether or not I'll dedicate time to address the problem and hit blogging to record the results. Thus a personal journey to the heart of the matter begins. Along the way, I envisage to meet and exchange thoughts with local heroes or those from faraway lands.
One late evening last week I sat at my desk in front of my computer, not long enough though to bring the whole world, but quite sufficient be engrossed in thoughts of but one country.
Indonesia, in a nutshell, is an archipelagic country of more than 13 thousands islands lying in a strategic location between the Pacific and Indian oceans. Some 220 million people live there speaking one national language and or any other one of over 400 vernaculars and dialects; the fact makes it the world's 4th most populous and linguistically varied in the world. It is also the largest Muslim nation, since about 80% of the population profess Islam. Its independence goes back to 1945, when it won it from the centuries of occupation by different nations. A bit of its historical insight I posted in my old blog.
The country practically posseses everything necessary to develop into a successful nation: copper, tin, gold, forests, minerals, and oil--the black gold. Its wealth, as well as the strategic location, is supposed to be a blessing for Indonesians. However, after 60 years spanning 6 presidents, the state of abundance has been more of a curse. Indonesia remains a land of unfulfilled promises and misplaced compromises, trapped into a fierce race to the bottom.
In the face of the growing complexities and persplexities, Indonesia's condition is such that if one sits long enough and reflect on it and its people, one will be inundated by the questions as follows:
What does it mean to be Indonesian? What does nationalism mean to Indonesians nowadays? Most importantly, what are the driving forces that unite them together and to what extent can they last?
Should these existential issues be left to scholars alone? By no means. They can be left neither to the powers that be nor Kant--only to Indonesians.
As an Indonesian, "damned' am I.
***
At first, I thought I'd better leave this subject to others far more competent. Why, because I am NOT a scholar, journalist, politician, government employe, nor businessperson. I am but a layperson; an employee; a husband; and a father--period. After consulting my conscience, I finally decided to pursue the matters, thinking that I, even if incapable of putting aside personal biases, might be able to contribute as a non-partisan, non-institutional observer without any political or personal interest whatsoever.
So I am "damned," irrespective of whether or not I'll dedicate time to address the problem and hit blogging to record the results. Thus a personal journey to the heart of the matter begins. Along the way, I envisage to meet and exchange thoughts with local heroes or those from faraway lands.
The Perennial Tension
(A good friend Fatih recently posted an interesting piece on Religious Hatred. This post was inspired by it.)
At first blush it all may seem ironic: many of us may have been raised to find solace and peace of mind from religion, while one biggest problem with the greatest religions stem from their teachingsor, at least, our interpretations of them.
Each God-sent religion claims to possess the ultimate Truth. Particularly of Semitic origin, religions carry with them some kind of missionary spirit. Among the pious as well as the not so devout, there has been some kind of religious contestation. Call it a perennial tension, or an inherent paradox. If its hard to swallow as a fact, we should recognize the recurring phenomenon.
We cannot deny religion frequently fails to solve a great many problems. Worse, the inherent problem between, and amongst, divine religions has contributed to our bloodiest mundane problems. The more we recognize this unhappy potential, the more we can avoid religion induced conflicts from recurring.
It follows from this that we are in a pressing need for better understanding, or acceptance, on what religion is--on what it can do, or has done, for the good or the bad of humanity. We need that sort of comprehension with which we know that while lobsters may cause allergy to some people, we can live with the seeming irony and accept that the crustacean, like ourselves, have been created perfectly with the imperfection.
At first blush it all may seem ironic: many of us may have been raised to find solace and peace of mind from religion, while one biggest problem with the greatest religions stem from their teachingsor, at least, our interpretations of them.
Each God-sent religion claims to possess the ultimate Truth. Particularly of Semitic origin, religions carry with them some kind of missionary spirit. Among the pious as well as the not so devout, there has been some kind of religious contestation. Call it a perennial tension, or an inherent paradox. If its hard to swallow as a fact, we should recognize the recurring phenomenon.
We cannot deny religion frequently fails to solve a great many problems. Worse, the inherent problem between, and amongst, divine religions has contributed to our bloodiest mundane problems. The more we recognize this unhappy potential, the more we can avoid religion induced conflicts from recurring.
It follows from this that we are in a pressing need for better understanding, or acceptance, on what religion is--on what it can do, or has done, for the good or the bad of humanity. We need that sort of comprehension with which we know that while lobsters may cause allergy to some people, we can live with the seeming irony and accept that the crustacean, like ourselves, have been created perfectly with the imperfection.
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