Seventy six years ago, on October 28, 1928, a group of young Indonesians from various parts of the archipelago came together to declare their unity and proclaim the historic Youth Pledge: One Country, One Nation, One Language—Indonesia.

With reasonable life expectancy, all the declarators of the pledge must have passed away. But has the spirit of their pledge also faded away? Or, is it still alive?

Clearly Indonesia is still one country and despite the fact that there at least 300 languages spoken in the country, Indonesian language is still national language which is used from Sabang in Aceh to Merauke in Irian Jaya. What about one nation?

That Indonesia has survived a severe multi-complex turbulence during the last five years—from economic, politics, and regional crisis to terrorism—have both surprised and impressed many. Three or four years ago, the speculation widely circulating among media, scholars, politicians, leaders, and even among the Indonesian folks was: the Balkanization of Indonesia. Today, the country is still united as one nation. Nevertheless, unity is still a crucial issue because the foundations—cultural, perception and commonalities—that glue the people in the country as a nation are  constantly changing.

Nation is not a static phenomenon. It is constantly changing. This is true because a nation is constituted not just by some commonalities, but more importantly, it is constituted by people. And people are not only continually changing, they are also diverse.

What makes us diverse is race, religion, ethnicity, economic status, social status and many other diversity attributes. But what ties us together is, above all, our dependence on each other.  This may be a paradox: It is the heterogeneity, not homogeneity, of our people that becomes a crucial asset in building a solid national unity. As quoted by Bogdanor,

A society, therefore, which is rivet by a dozen oppositions along lines running in every direction may actually be in less danger of being torn with violence of failing to pieces than one split along just one line. For each cleavage contributes to narrow the cross clefts, so that one might say society is sewn together by its inner conflicts.[i]

However, a nation does not merely paste its brand label across all the diverse ethnic, racial and other types of diversity it incorporates. Nor does it superficially impose a national identity upon all its diverse members. We has a flag, a National Anthem, a Constitution, a President, a Parliament, our own Laws, and have our own final Court of Appeal, but does all this make us a Nation?

A superficially imposed unity is like a time-bomb, it will bring chaos to the nation when the time comes—when various factors merge simultaneously to create instability within the nation such as our experience in 1998. It is infinitely preferred to accept divisions of society than to impose a false national unity. As Connor observes, imposing unity by forcing a loyalty to a state structure will doom to fail.[ii] The experience of the former Soviet Union is a good example.  For almost forty years, the unity of the USSR was imposed using a repressive approach, but as history as shown, such approach only resulted in a breakdown of the country in 1989.

For a diverse nation can be united, there must exist at least one fundamental core that can bind the diverse members into a single identity. This fundamental core is a special bond that ties the people of one nation together as a family. Soekarno referred to this special bond as nationality.

Scholars define a modern nation as an amalgam of historical communities which possess a fairly clear sense of separate identity in the past but have been brought together by various economic, social and political developments.[iii] Weber observes that it is proper to expect from nationality groups a specific sentiment of solidarity. But what is the nature of this sentiment of national solidarity which can unite different people? According to Weber it is, “…above all, national solidarity may be linked to … [belief in] in common political destiny.”

The idea of a nation is etymologically derived from Latin word natus “(of) birth” which refers to a group of people linked by birth.[iv] The term birth emphasizes the claiming of the same descent, speaking the same language and sharing the same culture. The term of nation also refers to people inhibiting a country, living under one common law and recognized as such by international law. This is the definition adopted by the United Nations.

Another definition of nation refers to a multicultural situation in which the nation is constituted, not by the dominance of one of the cultures, but by a common loyalty to a transcendent factor which transcends ethnicity, religious belief, social class, race and other diversity attributes and which is constitution conjointly decided on. This is a definition widely used in the United States.

Anthropologically, Anderson defines a nation as “an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”. The term 'imagined' is used to express the link of each member, who will never know most other members, yet is related to them through a shared culture, history, and kinship, and the belief of these members create a community.[v]

Ernest Gellner, one of the prominent scholars on Nation and Nationalism wrote that “Two men are of the same nation if and only if they share the same culture, where culture in turn means a system of ideas and signs and associations and ways of behaving and communicating.” [vi] And, “two men are of the same nation if and only if they recognize each other as belonging to the same nation. In other words, nations maketh man; nations are the artifacts of men's convictions and loyalties and solidarities.” [vii]

A nation may emerge when all the people living in a single country is recognized as one nation. For instance, when Indonesian people travel anywhere else in the world, they are entitled to be given an Indonesian Passport which is recognized by the authority around the world as a certificate of Indonesian identity. But does this make us Indonesian? A truly one nation emerges when the people living in a country subscribe to a common value, common history and common destiny. It is emerged when the people living in a country have a sense of nationalism.

Nationalism, according to encyclopedia of Britannica is “a condition of mind, a characteristic of certain peoples living together in a close association on a given territory and sharing a belief in a distinctive existence and a common destiny.” It went on to describe those characteristics which make up the people of a real nation: “a deep sense of belonging, a keen feeling of loyalty... a desire to contribute to its welfare”, and, all of this adding up to “the liberty, prestige, prosperity and power of a nation”.

The thesis on nationalism in the encyclopedia went on to give this enormously important insight into what truly makes a nation. “The core of nationalism”, it pointed out, “is a type with similar feeling of attachment to tribe, clan, cast... but eventually the sights are raised and the focus is the larger group entity, the nation or the state”.

For Indonesia to continue to be a nation, just like the country’s young generations in the 20s, we have to raise our sights beyond group symbols and associations, whether by race, ethnicity or religion. We will never build a nation, we will never honor our destiny nor will we live to fulfill it in any sensible, rational and productive way until we raise our sights and understand and accept that we are not first Sundanese, Bataknese, Chinese, or anything else before we are Indonesians. In other words, our nationality is defined by our common culture, common identity and solidarities, and that we accept and respect those commonalities as a base for our unity.

A sense of identification by members with the nation can be understood in the sense of Anderson’s imagined community or Gernell’s “two men are of the same nation if and only if they recognize each other as belonging to the same nation.” For nations such as ours, which have emerged from a colonial past, our own struggle to attain independence, and from our struggle to maintain unity through a painful and traumatic experience, an endeavor to discover our identity should not be that thorny. All it takes is an understanding of our past, and recognition of the validity of that past and its contribution to our identity as a nation. Our identity, therefore, should be built upon our common history.

The question is how do we grow into a nation?

It is clear then that nation building is not about building a nation, but is about building a common identity, common aspiration, and a common destiny among a diverse group of people.  But for about five decades, the process of building a common destiny—and thus national destiny, had not taken place properly. Soekarno used continually to campaign for the unfinished revolution. “Revolution” was Soekarno’s mantra. He wanted the Indonesian people to work to finish the “revolution”. Did Indonesian people really share the same dream and destiny as those of Soekarno? More importantly, did they share the same dream and destiny with one another? They, on the contrary, were confused and hungry.

Then Soeharto came with his development campaign. Much alike Soekarno with his unfinished revolution, Soeharto wanted the Indonesian people to think and work for development. “Development” was Soeharto’s mantra. And again, did they really share the same dream and destiny as those of Soeharto? Did they share the same dream and destiny with one another? The people, in fact, were muted and perplexed as Soeharto and his cronies amassed an incredibly enormous amount of national resources for their own fortunes, leaving most people left behind economically.

During the last six years, more than 13,000 people had been killed in political, religious and social violence in Indonesia. The country is also being confronted with secessionist movements in Aceh and Irian Jaya. While one can argue that the underlying causes of the recent communal violence were unemployment, degradation of living condition, and financial crisis, one cannot rule out the rampant and intensifying expressions of ethnicity and religious belief—symbols that tend to separate one from each other.  Unemployed workers are skyrocketing, reaching at a staggering of more than 20 millions. The number of people living in poverty is more than 20% of the total population. All these seem to indicate that a sense of togetherness and shared aspirations among Indonesians are decaying. Do they (still) share common destiny and a sentiment of national solidarity? It is hard to answer “yes”.

A united and lasting nation can only be built on the basis of a shared dream and destiny. To build such common dream and destiny, a nation must formulate common values that will be upheld, which do not contradict her common descent. These common values need to be promulgated. While it is important to promulgate them, it is equally important to realize that people must not be sacrificed in the name of common values.  Once the common values are formulated, the real problem is getting the consensus of means and methods to implement them, to which William Liddle provides an insight.  As Liddle argued that the nation-building depends on the balance between national and subnational loyalties. People identify themselves with the nation not only through an abstract loyalty to it, but through communal identifications operating within the larger national life.[viii] It is only when a group is secured in its subnational identity that it can fully enter into national political arrangements and help to forge a strong national identity. A Sundanese, for instance, will identify himself as Indonesian, because his identity as a Sundanese is protected by the nation.  Once his core identity is rooted out, his sense of nationality will vanish.  So nationality is amalgam, not a replacement, of core identity to a single national identity. 

The nation-building also depends on our view of and ways to manage conflicts. The diversity nature of Indonesia offers a rich potential for building a united nation, but also poses a great threat, if it is not managed rightly, to our unity. Diversity could easily produce adversaries and conflicts. The most effective way of overcoming or minimizing the negative effect of the diversity, as Horowitz in Ethnic groups in conflict wrote, is to develop, “…measure to contain, limit, channel, and manage conflict rather than to eradicate it or to aim at either a massive transfer of loyalties or the achievement of some consensus”.[ix]

 

Building Unity to Face Common Enemies

 

While it is preferred to build a united nation by formulating and upholding common values and common destiny, a nation-building through a mobilization against an enemy is not always a bad idea. In 1956, Kenneth Boulding in his book The Image wrote an illuminating point that “…nations are the creation of not of their historians but of their enemies”.[x]  And later, Deutsch in 1963 makes the same observation, “the choice of national alignments and national identity is related to the decision to choose a common enemy”.[xi]

This is of course a rather deviation from an etymologically definition of nation which refers to a group of people linked by birth. It is also different from Anderson’s idea of nation as “an imagined political community”. But, both Boulding’s and Deutsch’s assertions are laid, to some extent, to that of Max Weber who wrote “…it is proper to expect from nationality groups a specific sentiment of solidarity in the face of other groups”.

Common enemies, as Weber observes, lead to a common solidarity. They also, as Sherif and Sherif noted in their book Groups in Harmony and Tension in 1953, manifest in in-group identification and loyalty. A clear example is the experience of the United States at the aftermath of the 9/11 where the American people were united. The Left and the Right were rallied behind their national leader. Bush’s approval ratings at that time were between 80% - 90%, the highest in his tenure so far.

Whether the Indonesian people viewed the crisis that hit their country during the last six years as their enemies, which energized a sense of solidarity and loyalty among them, remains open to debates and a thorough research. But the achieved unity is not without cost. In fact, the cost is staggering. More than 13 thousands of people were killed in various conflicts occurred in the country, and more than a million have been displaced.

It is not entirely wrong to assume that Boulding’s and Deutsch’s assertions apply to Indonesian people. After all, through out the nation’s history, especially during her struggle for independence, they had shown a remarkable solidarity and a sense of unity, from October 28, 1928—the historic Youth Pledge: One Country, One Nation, One Language—to November 10, 1945—the heroic resistance demonstrated by Indonesian fighters through out the country, especially in the battle of Surabaya in November 1945 against the Allied’s invasion. They pledged their unity and they fought with an extraordinary spirit of heroism.

The ultimate example, of course, is when the founding fathers opted for unity during their debate in August 18, 1945 about the nation’s foundation. Instead of backing a clause that could open a possibility of transforming the country into a theocracy state—and thus would divisively divide the nation, the founding fathers voted for a clause that accommodates all people of the nation as they clearly stated in the last sentence of the preamble of the nation’s constitution: social justice for all Indonesians.

In August 18, 1945, although the Colonial power still existed, the founding father had no longer considered it as the main common enemies. As they put forth at the first sentence of the fourth paragraph of the Constitution’s preamble, the common enemies were and are stated in the nation’s duty to “protect the whole Indonesian people” and “to advance their general welfare”.

Such historical precedents might be helpful in giving a perspective of the future of the nation’s unity. But they are much more helpful if those precedents are really embraced as the main consideration when the nation’s leaders, elites and people are campaigning for Indonesia’s unity. What are the factors underlying the precedents?  It is nothing but the will to and the spirit of triumph against common enemies. It is then crucial to identify our common enemies. What are our common enemies?

Today, our common enemies are not the Neo-colonial power. They are neither foreigners nor foreigners with guns and tanks. Our common enemies are ourselves and the conditions that worsen our people’s lives. Just as the founding fathers have set, our common enemies are not people - let alone our fellow Indonesians. They are not nations, either. They are our attitude and mentality.

Our enemies are the mentality that has corrupted the nation and the conducts that have put the nation’s future at a great or complete uncertainty. Our enemies are the conditions such as poverty, ignorance, intolerance, immorality, self-centre attitude and laziness that have strongly impede any efforts to build a better nation. Our leaders, elites and our people should have put these two kinds of enemies at the right context and energize the nation to combat them.

Our common enemies are not people, but poor conditions and destructive attitudes.

Reflexive Relations

It is not wrong to view a unity as an expression of the sum total of all diversities contained within it.  The identity of a unity is therefore dependent and conditional upon its diversities.  At the same time, the identity of diversity is conditional on the unity. Thus, unity and diversity are interconnected, both in principle and practice.  For instance, the identity of a father is conditional on the identity of his family, and vice versa. In an extreme case, it makes no sense if an Indonesian from a certain ethnic group, say ethnic group X, to claim that he belongs to X, but at the same time he denies that he is Indonesian.

The obsession and the misconception of unity in diversity paradigm could be backfired. Instead of promoting progress, it could bring regress. This paradigm is vulnerable to manipulations for political gain because any differences, even though they are not harmful at all, could be suppressed for unity clause.  An imposed unity does not have a relational aspect to its diversities and loses its identity of itself in a relational context. In such case, diversities are taken away and as a result the former of unity—diversity—will break down and become dysfunctional.  Some experiences during the New Order regime have shown such reality.

Since the key to building unity is the relational aspects of its diversities, the question now is what type of relation that contributes positively to unity formation. The answer is a reflexive relation. Consider these relations: being the same height as, being the same shape as, or being the same thing as.  Notice that everything that is the same height as something or other is the same height as itself.  The same thing can be said about being the same shape as and being the same thing as.  Each of these is a reflexive relation.  Imagine an entity E with non-empty members. We can define reflexivity as follows: A relation R is a reflexive relation if and only if we can conclude from the fact that X, a subset of entity E, bears relation R to something or other that X bears R to itself. Obviously, X has a reflexive relation to itself.

This type of relationship does not prescribe homogenous members. In fact, it permits diversity.  While the members are diverse, there is a subset where each member has in common. A reflexive relation emphasizes the common factor, not the unique factor of each member.  Thus, a reflexive relation describes the tendency to both formal and informal mutual communication, cooperation, networking and sharing of information and responsibility in people-to-people or groups-to-groups and groups relations on the basis of commonality. It is based on a paradigm of “us”, not “I”.

A few years ago the American conservative George Will drew attention to a gap between the political face of black America and its real opinions, as suggested by polls. Will argued that although African Americans showed consistently conservative instincts on major issues like government spending, welfare reform and capital punishment they continually voted for the Democrats because of the lack of credible sympathy in the Republican party. Black America, according to Will, was driven by a sense of exclusion from the traditional establishment, associated with conservatives, so strong that it was willing to overlook its feelings on the 'issues' and to prefer the liberal big-government Democrats who understood its vulnerability in a tough society.

In terms of minority and majority labels, our society is not much different from the US. The minority has the feeling of uncertainty or fear over the exclusionary agenda of the majority, and vice versa. Meanwhile, our political process is not immune from exclusive platforms which create division, not unity, within our society. Our bureaucracy has also been infiltrated by a culture of primordialism. Our schools are also not immune to division. When we have such realities, just like the black Americans in Will's analysis, our people will tend to overlook and discuss the real issues because they are subsumed by a sense of exclusion or fear. This can be overcome when people develop a reflexive type of relationship. Without it the country cannot move beyond the culture of fear and exclusion, and neither side—the majority and minority, cannot live mutually productive and enjoy a truly peaceful life.