If we think of Indonesia in this light, Bondar suggests, this metaphor will definitely on of loss and lack: a loss of something/someone and a lack of something/someone, losses in the past and thus shortfalls today, losses in the present caused by lacks in the past; political, social, cultural, demographic and economic.

Indonesia has never seen development. It has only formed and been deformed chaotically over successive post-independence regimes of continuous loss and lack from Sukarno’s Old Order (1945-66) to the current era of Reformasi (1998 to present).

These regimes varied: sometimes they were cruel, sometimes they were moderately repressive or authoritarian. Some, like the Dutch East Indies (1818-1942), were alien and imposed from above with their own rules, restrictions and laws.

The most important thing for ordinary Indonesians was to survive, to cling to life. “A good government is one that kills less” has been their motto.

Indonesians chose life. Characterized as the “happiest” people on earth, it has one of the world’s lowest suicide rates (2.4 per 100,000 people in 2019) while its near neighbor Singapore, driven and relentless, has more than four times that number (11 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019).

Maybe this is the source of Indonesians’ distrust of innovations and progressive ideas, of the deadlock between survival and development, between identities and values, between the West/United States and Asia/China.

We still cannot give a definitive answer to the question, “Who are Indonesians and what do they want?” This is because the problems begin from self-identification: Who should be considered Indonesian? Does being Indonesian include, for example, the 7 million citizens of Chinese descent (3.3 percent of the population)?

Therefore, the second part of the question gets lost in the uncertainty of the first: If we still don’t know who Indonesians are, how can we find out what they want?

Yet, the metaphor of loss/lack, as with any figure of speech, is limited and does not exhaust the complexity of the issue. It obscures the roots of the problem: Why did all of this happen to Indonesians in this particular way and when did it actually start?

Indonesians, especially Javanese, are sometimes natural fatalists and quite often, they have two explanations: “it was destined (takdir)” and “it was a curse (kutukan)”.

They usually tend to explain this specific character of their historical destiny through the intervention of factors that are totally out of their control. Meanwhile, those seeking a rational explanation of contemporary defects or eternal properties of the “Indonesian soul” sometimes find nothing but empty references to “ancient times”: medieval controversies of semi-legendary kings like Siliwangi of Pajajaran (1482-1521) and Brawijaya V of Majapahit (1293-1527).

The more remote those references, the more likely it is that the search for the probable roots of the problem become confused. It is also more likely that Indonesians are to blame, such as in the dualism between paganism, which was all-too important here, and Islam, which has never been deep enough to overcome this dualism.

That is why, in a way, it is simpler to say, “it was destined” and “it was a curse”. Regardless of the method used, the search for Indonesians’ losses and what they lack will inevitably be distilled down to things that have no relation to “us” as Indonesians are today.

As an historian who has worked all his life with literary texts, I tend to evaluate the horizon of Indonesian problems based on literature. For stateless nations, as Indonesia was during its 350 years of colonial rule, literature becomes their state and their statehood. Texts record attitudes, express hopes and bewail losses. Literature was virtually the only cultural institution for thoughtful Indonesians like the last of the court poets, Raden Ngabehi Ronggowarsito (1803-1872).

After all, it was literature and the invention of folklore during the 19th century that gave birth to pergerakan nasional (national movement), with Serat Centhini (1814), the great encyclopedia of Javanese manners, serving as Java’s response to European colonialism. In this sense, Indonesians are not unique.

No wonder that Ronggowarsito’s oeuvre can be interpreted from different standpoints: as ordeals of the Javanese soul, as a story of the loss of Javanese sovereignty or an undying dream of Javanese sovereignty, as literary documents declaring the connection between the nation and finally, as the claim that the power of folk life with all its eternal robustness, resplendence and optimism will always prevail over historical destiny.

An Indonesian exists not thanks to history, not with history or in history, but rather near history and most often, despite history.

History, as a narrative of consequent events in which causes bring consequences, geopolitical vectors compete and great efforts confront each other, is a secondary and unknown world for Indonesians. Their interaction with history has never done them any good. Therefore, Indonesians are exactly an “unhistorical nation” in the Hegelian sense.

Indonesians as a nation did not just grow out of the environment of folklore or make it the main source of their existence, for example, like the Germans with Grimms’ Fairy Tales (1812). That would be too simple.

Indonesians did more than that. They have an author and writer who is more folkloric than folklore itself and more versed in the vernacular than modern writers: Muhammad Yamin (1903-1962). As has been noted on many occasions, he helped to craft the myth of Indonesia with a “golden age” that actually never existed and with the loss of the Golden Age that actually did exist.

He created the myth of Indonesia with its heroes, archetypes, narratives, flair and ambitions, which remain Indonesians’ key constructive tropes to this very day.

Slava Ukraini! (Glory to Ukraine!) Heroyam Slava! (Glory to the Heroes!)

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A historian. The article was inspired by Ukrainian poet Andrij Bondar. This is the second of two-part article.