T

he year was 1928. Although nationalist movements had already been gaining traction since 1908, many segments of society were yet to awaken to a national consciousness.

It took the combined efforts of many pemuda (youths) to finally kick-start the engine of nationalism into gear. After two conferences, one in 1926 and another in 1928, the Sumpah Pemuda (Youth Pledge) was born. In three sentences, on Oct. 28, 1928, the pemuda pledged to acknowledge one motherland, one nation, and one language: Indonesia.

Throughout Indonesian history, pemuda have always been illustrated as agents of change, both for better and for worse.

In August 1945, a group of pemuda came to Sukarno’s home, engaging in a heated discussion with the founding father. They wanted Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta to immediately declare Indonesia’s independence without waiting for it to be gifted by imperial Japan.

Twenty years later, Sukarno was met by a group of pemuda dressed in military uniforms. They carried with them a message: the revered leader had to attend a meeting of utmost importance in Bogor. With that message came the end of an era. Sukarno was then replaced by Soeharto, and pro-Sukarno pemuda were never heard from again.

At the twilight of the Soeharto regime, the pemuda were once again at the frontline. Following the killing of four Trisakti University students in May 1998, the pemuda kicked into revolutionary gear. The iconic image of hundreds of pemuda storming the legislature building to this day remains a nostalgic reminder of the sheer political power of Indonesia’s pemuda.

The pemuda were often romanticized as being harbingers of a bright, new era. As Sebastian, Chen and Syailendra observed in the 2014 book Pemuda Rising, the pemuda of Indonesia can be characterized as “morally idealistic, dauntless and impetuous […] unpredictable and potentially flammable.”

During a critical time in Indonesian history, they were the ones “shouldering the political burden of the nation with a sense of defiance and precariousness.”

How does the revolutionary pemuda fare in this modern day and age? The revolution still lingers, yet it rarely manifests on the streets. Taking to the streets and sticking it to the fuzz have seen a significant decline in appeal among today’s pemuda.

Instead, the pemuda of today are more often seen silently contributing to their nation through many creative means.

From developing games and apps to building an electric car, their brand of bringing about social change is not about being loud and overt; it is more about showing off what they have done for their country. One is more likely to find a politically active pemuda on Twitter and Facebook than on the streets.

In the eyes of elites, the pemuda have always been a lucrative group to be co-opted. We will be seeing a significant increase in young people eligible to vote as Indonesia hits its demographic bonus. The pemuda will thus shoulder immense political responsibility; their votes will steer the direction of the country.

It is important that our youth recognize the extent of their power and responsibility.

On Oct. 28, we will once again celebrate the Youth Pledge. To ink the pledge, hundreds of pemuda gathered from across Indonesia. They still carried with them their respective regional identities, yet they agreed to pledge their allegiance to a new collective identity that would later become the drive for Indonesia’s independence. They bonded together in spite of their differences and achieved great things.

Our ideals of unity are coming under attack. We are no longer strangers to waves of ethnocentric rhetoric. The most recent bout came from the newly inaugurated governor of Jakarta, Anies Baswedan. In his inaugural speech, Anies declared that it was time for the pribumi (indigenous Indonesians) to rise, a clear indicator of an increasingly worrying trend in ethnocentrism ahead of the 2019 presidential election.

As the pemuda before, today’s pemuda need to be cognizant of the large responsibility they shoulder, especially amid increasing identity politics. They need to understand that they will be relentlessly seduced by power-hungry political elites, who will employ divisive rhetoric.

It is important for the pemuda to stand united; they need to promote the values of tolerance and universality, as their predecessors did in 1928.

If the pemuda of yesteryear exhibited their political strength by toppling an authoritarian regime as a prerequisite for progress, the burden now falls upon the youth today to use their political power to oversee and direct progress.
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The writer is a lecturer at the International Relations Study Program at President University Cikarang. The views are personal.