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View all search resultsUnity over freedom
As Indonesia marks 81 years of independence, a familiar pull toward state centralization risks unraveling decades of hard-won democracy and regional unity.
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President Prabowo Subianto gestures as he delivers his annual State of the Nation address at the Senayan Legislative Complex in Central Jakarta, while Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka sits next to him, ahead of the country's 81st Independence Day, on Aug. 14, 2026. (Reuters/Stringer)
As a modern nationalist project, the Republic of Indonesia may well be one of the most successful in the world.
With hundreds of ethnic groups and local languages and with a territory spanning the length of Europe, Indonesia has been a cohesive whole for 81 years with a majority of its 280 million population proudly calling themselves Indonesian.
Much of that national identity was defined by anti-colonial sentiment, especially against Dutch colonialism, which became the raison d'être for the modern nation state of Indonesia.
Another effective tool to bind this great nation is the Indonesian language, originating in the local language of a minority ethnic group in Sumatra that for centuries was used by the people of the Nusantara archipelago as a lingua franca.
Some may object to the idea that the Indonesian Military (TNI) was another key factor in keeping Indonesia’s nationalist project going, but the truth of the matter is that the military was in the vanguard of the nation-building project.
As the country’s first modern institution, the military led the armed struggle to defend the country’s independence and later mobilized the effort to defend the country’s territorial integrity in the years following the departure of the Dutch colonial government.
Consistent with its top-down command structure, the military has always wanted to promote a centralized form of governance, where the concept of a unitary republic must take precedence over diverse and competing ideas and institutions.
