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Indonesia in the 1950S Nation, Modernity, and the Post-Colonial State

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Indonesia in the 1950S Nation, Modernity, and the Post-Colonial State Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde Vol. 167, no. 4 (2011), pp. 386-404 URL: http://www.kitlv-journals.nl/index.php/btlv URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-101398 Copyright: content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License ISSN: 0006-2294 HENK SCHULTE NORDHOLT 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 posi- tive sense as a period of democracy, as opposed to New Order authoritarian- ism, and as the aborted pre-history 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 Suwarno, a former freedom fighter, who was 20 years old in 1949, in an interview with de Volkskrant, 21-12-2009. 2 I would like to thank the participants of the conference Kemerdekaan dan Perubahan Jati Diri/Post-colonial Indonesian Identity, Yogyakarta, 14-15 January 2010, and Gerry van Klinken, Jennifer Lindsay, Remco Raben, Heather Sutherland and Jean Gelman Taylor for helpful remarks and stimulating questions. 3 For a similar approach to the years immediately preceding World War I in Europe, see Blom 2008. henk schulte nordholt is Head of Research KITLV and Professor of Southeast Asian Studie s at VU University Amsterdam, where he also obtained his PhD degree. His research interest s in- clude Indonesian history and recent political developments, anthropology of colonialism, and Bali. He is the author of ‘Modernity and cultural citizenship in the Netherlands Indies: An illustrated hypothesis’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 42-3, 2011, pp. 435-57, and Indonesië na Soeharto: Refor- masi en restauratie, Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2008. Professor Schulte Nordholt may be contacted at [email protected]. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) 167-4 (2011):386-404 © 2011 Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:04:21AM via free access Indonesia in the 1950s 387 about Indonesian national identity, which were primarily framed in cultural terms, and tentatively explore some historical trajectories.4 In his recent manifesto on cultural mobility, Stephen Greenblatt (2010) drew attention to an interesting paradox. On the one hand we see practices of cultural mobility. Traders, priests, soldiers, migrant labourers, newspapers, novels, schools, objects, ideas, images, and sounds were all vehicles of mobil- ity, and Southeast Asian history is to a large extent characterized by cultural mobility. Gradually, colonial regimes, and later on nation-states, accompa- nied by academic institutions, handbooks and encyclopedias, produced tem- porary illusions of sedentary, closed cultures, turning dynamic processes into static things. Both mobility and institutionalization reveal a paradox: culture consists on the one hand of mobility, interaction, adaptation and change, but on the other hand it represents a deeply felt longing for rootedness and stabil- ity in order to create a sense of ‘at-homeness’ because of the threat posed by mobility. Although culture is mobile, it is often appreciated because it offers refuge from the outside world. Taking these ideas about mobility and rootedness into consideration, how should we evaluate the optimistic efforts to shape a new nation driven by modernity during the first half of the 1950s? And to what extent were these efforts gradually aborted by the encroachment of a neo-patrimonial state, which was dominated by a post-colonial middle class? An optimistic desire for the future In his recent history of the Indonesian nation, Taufik Abdullah (2009:183) de- scribes Soekarno’s homecoming in Jakarta on 28 December 1949. While Jakar- ta was, in Soekarno’s words flooded by ‘millions and millions of people’, the new president went to the former palace of the Dutch Governor-General, and by doing so the new nation took possession of the former colonial state. This was according to Taufik perhaps the greatest moment in his life as a national leader.5 But was it perhaps also the climax of the nation itself? 4 Two inspiring workshops, sponsored by the Australian Netherlands Research Collaboration and hosted by KITLV, focused on cultural politics in Indonesia between 1950-1965: Indonesia’s Cultural Traffic Abroad 1950-65, Leiden, 7-9 April 2009; Culture and the Nation, Arts in Indonesia 1950-1965, Jakarta, 5-7 October 2009. For the rich results of these meetings, see Lindsay and Liem 2011. 5 Taufik Abdullah 2009:200. Soekarno’s complex ideas about the nation and a national culture deserve a separate study which goes beyond the scope of this essay. He was a modern architect who literally designed the signs and symbols of the new nation, and mobilized the population to become Indonesians, but in doing so – and in propagating an ongoing revolution – he also exploited nativist ideas while his democratic credentials were minimal. Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:04:21AM via free access 388 Henk Schulte Nordholt In 1950 nationalism was triumphant. According to Herbert Feith (1962:74), ‘its power as a cohesive force binding the archipelago together was at its zenith’. That year had witnessed a remarkably easy transition from a federa- tion of 16 states into a unitary republic. This process was not primarily forced from above because, according to Taufik Abdullah (2009:194), the real forces of unitarism were the local informal leaders whose political orientations had been largely shaped by the sense of being part of the national revolution. The year 1950 also witnessed the launch of a new outward-looking national identity, expressing optimism and self-confidence, as echoed by the opening quotation of this article. Jennifer Lindsay (2011a:15) rightly remarks that in the early 1950s the Indonesian nation was primarily a cultural project. Moreover, she observes that ‘to be an Indonesian was to be modern’. National identity and modernity were therefore inextricably intertwined. On 18 February 1950 a young poet, Asrul Sani (1928-2004), published with his friends a cultural manifesto entitled ‘Surat kepercayaan’ (Testimonial of beliefs) in ‘Gelanggang’, the literary section of the weekly magazine Siasat. On behalf of his literary colleagues, later known as Angkatan 45, or Generation of 1945, Sani wrote: ‘We are the legitimate inheritors of the culture of the whole world, […] and we shall transmit this culture in our own way. We come from the ordinary people and for us the people are a mixture of everything from where a new and healthy world would be born.’ (Quoted in Taufik Abdullah 2009:200.) According to Taufik Abdullah, this manifesto made the boundaries and rootedness of culture irrelevant. Indonesian culture was no longer localized and materialized in ancient objects, because ‘Indonesianess (ke-Indonesia-an) does not rest in our brown skins and cheek bones but rather in the expression of our hearts and minds’.6 Indonesian culture should there- fore be seen as a process of continuous creation. ‘Surat kepercayaan’ was not a clear-cut definition but a declaration about the future, a statement that the modern world is a source of inspiration, and that a new national culture is not passively inherited but actively created. Culture was seen as the process of creativity itself. But the authors of the manifesto considered politics to be other people’s business. The making of a new national culture was very much seen in terms of mobility seeking inspiration from various parts of the world and moving to a better future, and in so doing emphasizing discontinuity with the past. Building a new future implied that the past had to be abandoned. However, the search for a national identity and efforts to define what a national culture should be, would remain an unfinished project in which mobility, open- mindedness and an orientation towards the future collided with a desire for rootedness, essentialized identities and a focus on the past. The debate about 6 As quoted by Taufik Abdullah 2009:202; see also Lindsay 2011a:10-1. Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:04:21AM via free access Indonesia in the 1950s 389 Indonesia’s national culture therefore oscillated between an outwardly ori- ented modernity and an inward-looking nativism. New organizations such as Lekra (Lembaga Kebudajaan Rakjat, Institute of People’s Culture) and journals such as Mimbar Indonesia addressed ques- tions about how to give cultural content to sovereignty and how to reconcile a deeply felt desire for progress and modernity with cultural artefacts and practices inherited from the colonial past. To some extent the pre-war dis- cussion in Poedjangga Baroe about the indigenous roots of Indonesian culture and the search for a rooted authenticity versus a radical new internationally oriented culture was continued. In Mimbar Indonesia debates concentrated on questions about whether a culture should be rooted in the past or based on a forward-looking belief in modernity, expressed in terms such as newness (kabaharuan), progress (kemajuan), and dansa (dance) in contrast to tari (tradi- tional dance) (Bogaerts 2011).
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