Decolonising Indonesia, Past and Present

ABSTRACT

In the pursuit of an “authentically Indonesian” nation-state, for decades Indonesians have denied the civil rights of fellow citizens for allegedly being less authentically Indonesian. A key to the longstanding efficacy of such exclusionary ethno-nationalism is the failure to recognise the trans-national solidarity that helped give birth to independent Indonesia. Such solidarity is best illustrated in the extraordinary case of the making in Australia of a documentary film, Indonesia Calling (1946). A starting point of this article is the proposition that Indonesia’s cultural politics of the past and its future is never free from a protracted battle over what the nation is allowed, or willing, or able to forget and remember from its past. Mere disclosure of Indonesia’s past history with its cosmopolitan features will not necessarily lead to changes for the better in contemporary Indonesia, especially if the new revelation runs counter to the interests of those in power. Nonetheless, no substantial and long-term change for the better is possible for Indonesia without serious, open, critical re-examination of the revolutionary making of the Republic, and due acknowledgment that inauthenticity, plurality and trans-national solidarity are the hallmarks of the process.

ABSTRACT IN INDONESIAN

Upaya menciptakan keIndonesiaan yang asli selama puluhan tahun telah memakan banyak korban hak-hak sipil warga bangsa sendiri dengan dalih keIndonesiaan mereka tidak atau kurang asli. Sikap etno-nasionalisme seperti itu bisa berlangsung lama dan gencar berkat terabaikannya solidaritas lintas-bangsa yang membantu lahirnya kemerdekaan Indonesia, sebagaimana tercermin dalam pembuatan film dokumenter Indonesia Calling (1946) di Australia. Politik kebudayaan di Indonesia akan senantiasa terbelenggu oleh pertikaian tentang masa lampau macam apa yang boleh atau bersedia diingat atau dilupakan bangsa ini. Tentu saja, membongkar masa lampau saja tidak cukup untuk menciptakan Indonesia yang lebih baik, apalagi jika hal itu bertolak-belakang dengan kepentingan penguasa. Namun, mustahil mengharapkan perubahan mendalam dan berjangka-panjang untuk Indonesia tanpa menengok kembali secara jujur, terbuka dan kritis proses revolusioner yang melahirkan Republik ini, dan tanpa mengakui bahwa proses itu mengandung berbagai unsur yang tidak-asli, majemuk, dan lintas-bangsa.

KEYWORDS:

• Cold War
• colonial
• ethno-nationalism
• identity
• Indonesia
• Indonesia Calling
• Left
• trans-national

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges helpful comments on earlier versions of the work from many individuals (alphabetically): Bart Barendregt, Tom van den Berge, Rosalind Hewett, Thor Kerr, David Kloos, Anthony Liem, Henk Schulte Nordholt, Baden Offord, Gert J. Oostindie, Marjolein van Pagee, Robbie Peters, Harry Poeze, Lexy Rambadeta, Aboeprijadi Santoso, André Stufkens, and Quentin Turnour. This article also benefits from suggestions from anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. This was the first of two documentary films to have the most unsettling impact on Indonesian politics of all time, the other being The Act of Killing (2012, Oppenheimer).

2. Curiously, similar sentiments of an insular mentality, isolationist protectionism and exclusionary discrimination have informed, at least partly, immigration policies and public debates in Australia, the US and Europe alike in the early decades of the century, in the face of “new wars” (see Kaldor, 1999; McDonald, 2013) and the influx of boats of asylum seekers and illegal migrants.

3. In Indonesia’s presidential election in 2014, in a bid to impress voters, rival candidates attempted to outdo each other with displays of animosity towards vaguely defined “foreign forces” in defence of the national interest. The same rhetoric also dominated public discussion about the 2017 elections for Jakarta Governor, with the incumbent’s (Basuki Tjahaja Purnama aka Ahok) Indonesian-ness being publicly questioned due to his double minority status – Chinese descent and Christian faith.

4. Popular women’s dress in Java, especially in urban areas.

5. The phrase refers to recent controversies that strained Australia-Indonesia diplomatic and business relations in the early decades of the century, involving bans on Australian exports of beef to Indonesia, following reports of animal cruelty in an Indonesian abattoir; Australia’s policy of turning boats of allegedly illegal asylum seekers back to Indonesian waters; and Australian nationals being prosecuted for drug-related crimes in Bali.

6. Unless otherwise indicated, the first few paragraphs in this section are heavily indebted to the richly instructive work of Jan Lingard (2008) and Rupert Lockwood (1982).

7. In some cases, the weapons found by the Indian workers on the Dutch ships were loaded by Australian and Dutch labour (Goodall, 2008, p. 56).

8. Ivens’s biography by Hans Schoots (2000) is the most comprehensive and authoritative source, to which the following account is indebted. The author also gratefully acknowledges the series of instructive conversations in 2016 about Ivens and his work with André Stufkens, Director of the European Foundation Joris Ivens in the Netherlands.

9. This was not the first case of a Dutch commissioned project to produce documentary films about life in the Indies. In 1911, the Amsterdam-based Colonial Institute commissioned Johann Christian Lamster (1872–1954) to produce more than a dozen documentaries on everyday life in the archipelago for the purpose of informing, attracting and recruiting middle-ranking professionals in the Netherlands to work and improve the standard of living in the colony (see Taylor, 2015).

10. Things appear to be much more complex than simply an agitated mob attacking others recklessly. Both Tjamboek Berdoeri (1947) and someone, presumably a Chinese Indonesian, using the pseudonym Satoe Tawanan (1947), published a more complex picture of the situation. William also notes that victims among “Indonesians” have not been duly accounted for (1995, p. 55).

11. For a recent study on the violence, see Rosalind Hewett (2016). For analysis of the life of Eurasians residing in Australia after the War, see Joost Coté (2010).

12. Lockwood made the incorrect allegation that “Ivens breached his contract with the NEI Government [and], illegally using its equipment” (1982, p. 287).

13. The young Republic of Indonesia did not take Australia’s support for granted. In a radio broadcast in November 1945, Indonesia’s first Prime Minister, Sutan Sjahrir, thanked Australia, especially its labour unions, for boycotting the Dutch ships. In 1949, Indonesia requested that Australia represent the young Republic in the UN-sponsored meeting in The Hague to seek a final resolution to the protracted war with the Netherlands. The meeting resulted in the transfer of sovereignty over the Dutch colony to the Republic of Indonesia.

14. It is important, however, to put this point in its immediate context, and not to overstate the Australian-Indonesian friendship. Despite all of the wonderful links, Lingard reminds us that “the vast majority of the Australian public was uninterested or disinterested in the conflict to the north, even though the newspapers were full of it” (2008, p. 259).

15. This was also the period when “16-year-old Herb Feith and his fellow representatives in the United Nations Inter-school Committee” became acquainted with the young Republic and pursued an interest in supporting Indonesia (Purdey, 2011, p. 58). Twenty years later, Feith would be one of the founding fathers of Indonesian Studies in Australia.

16. The Act of Killing (see footnote 1) and its sequel The Look of Silence (2014, Oppenheimer) recorded some of the most devastating testimonies and nightmares of perpetrators and survivors of the 1965 violence.

17. For samples of accounts in English, see Pohlman (2013), Roosa (2016) and Stroud (2015, pp. 78–79). For an account in Indonesian see Heryanto (2016b).

18. In the first few months of its release alone, more than 50 sessions of free by-invitation screenings of the Indonesian version of The Act of Killing took place in 40 towns and cities across the archipelago (Heryanto, 2014, p. 126).

19. Examples include a screening in Bandung (August 2010) sponsored by the Australian Embassy.

Additional information

Funding

This work was part of a larger project, supported by The Australian Research Council (DP130102960), Monash University, The Australian National University and Leiden University’s KITLV.