Keyword

national heroes, regions and ethnicity, invention of culture

Objectives

In today’s Indonesia small regions and ethnic groups responding to democratization of the central government and delegation of authority to localities by creating their own cultures and histories and seeking recognition at the national level are popping up everywhere. This research will compare these movements across a variety of regions and ethnic groups that are turning to cultural self-expression as they grope for new relationships between themselves and the central government. We will investigate how “region” and “ethnicity” that are not tied to returning to any particular geographical area affect the emergence and re-emergence of social groups from multiple perspectives: cultural, historical, political, and developmental. Concretely we will examine designation of national heroes as a means of promoting national unity: (1) reassessing the formation of the modern democratic nation state; (2) current national hero movements that move in a different direction, revitalization of regional loyalties and creation of regional cultures; and (3) aiming to clarify through investigation of local motives and background as well as shared historical process the role of “region” and “ethnicity” in decentralizing nation states, from the perspectives of global political economy and democratization.

Research Results

This joint research held five study meetings for the presentation of fifteen reports in total. The research team was made up of young researchers of politics, history and anthropology specializing in Indonesia. In addition, we invited an Indonesian anthropologist, Dr. Fadjar Ibnu Thufail, who is a relative of a national hero (deceased) as a special lecturer. His participation enabled us to discuss the Indonesian system for national heroes from an Indonesian perspective. Our specific results are as follows:

(1) In the early period of the system formation, people supporting the Sukarno regime were recognized as national heroes, while in the period of the Suharto regime, national heroes were recognized in a way to cover each state along with the movements to unify the people. Thus, as a result of our analysis of the changes in the times starting from the formation of the national hero systems up to the present day, it became clear that there was a close relation between the Indonesian political social development that occurred in the period starting from the establishment of a nation and the unification of the people up to the contemporary times of democratization and decentralization, and the image of national heroes expected by each central government each time.

(2) Through comparative studies of common theme national heroes, we were able to clarify in a more systematic way the reasons and motivations for which various ethnic groups, regions and organizations adopted a method, which was the certification of national heroes, when trying to establish their own presence in Indonesia to raise their profiles, by paying attention to the regional history, the competitive relationship among organizations and the conditions of natural or social resources.

(3) In contemporary Indonesia where democratization and decentralization are being promoted, the movement to promote national heroes from a local region is becoming increasingly accelerated while such regional society sensitively responds to a great number of system reforms carried out by the central government. As a result, we have been able to grasp the current situation where the national heroes who fit the module as expected by the government, which means the people who are acknowledged to “have contributed to the establishment and development of a nation,” are born continuously every year while there are some diversities or differences by region.

(4) This accelerated aspiration in regional society for the certification by a central government can be considered to represent one of the contemporary characteristics of nationalism in modern Indonesia or a new development that is in a germinal stage. This knowledge may provide a new viewpoint on nationalism studies because researchers could refer to it for a comparison with other nation’s nationalism and for a discussion of the significance of a nation in a nation state that has reached a period of maturation.