A Great Opinion - Indonesia and Its Culture

This is written by Leroy McSwain,

My Great Friend who lives in North Carolina, America

I have made many friends in Indonesia using Facebook since November of 2009. They have surprised me by how kind they are, and because of that, I have developed an interest to learn about the country of Indonesia itself. I have read that the Indonesian people generally are very friendly to foreigners and my own experience corresponding with Indonesians over the internet supports that reading.

Before I began to correspond with Indonesian people over the internet, I knew very little about the country except seeing it on the map. I remembered about the Dutch East India Company (VOC) from high school history and I read some sad reports of the violence during the independence of East Timor. Of course, I had also heard of some of the more exotic creatures that hail from that vast realm, such as the Komodo Dragon and the Orang Utan. Other than that, I knew almost nothing and, as you will soon discover in reading this, I still know next to nothing. I myself live in the United States and have never visited Indonesia. So everything I write in this document is based on what I have read or the impressions that I have got from talking to Indonesian people. I, therefore, apologise in advance for any statements that I make which may unintentionally be inaccurate.

Apparently, the climate of Indonesia is much more fierce than that to which I am accustomed in my home of North Carolina. Although, occasionally, North Carolina gets hurricanes, in Indonesia, one must encounter tsunamis, earthquakes, frequent flooding, and even volcanoes. I heard about one guy who was eaten by a Komodo Dragon, but that story probably isn't true. Indonesia gets a large amount of rain compared to where I live. (For example, the town where I live didn't get any rain at all during September of 2010.) In Bogor, however, it is said that it rains some every day. With the rain and the proximity to the ocean, the air is moist and the relative humidity is high. (I hear many complaints about the humidity here in North Carolina, but I doubt if it is as high as Jakarta.) Being at the equator means that Indonesia is very hot and the temperature I hear hovers around 30 degrees Centigrade throughout the year with little variation. It must feel very hot there. (In contrast, North Carolina has four distinct seasons and temperatures vary from 39 degrees down to just below zero in the Winter.) All the persons with whom I have made acquaintance in Indonesia live in Jakarta. Jakarta is a big place judging from the photographs that I have seen. I can't imagine what life is like in a city of that size, because the place where I live is very small (around 23.000 persons). I have heard that Jakarta faces some of the problems associated with big cites such as: traffic congestion, smog, erratic driving, slums, fires, &c., but what I have read indicates that violent crime is low there; so that is very good. I think that the hardships of difficult weather have forged the Indonesian people into a hard-working and patient people. The Indonesians that I know seem to be optimistic people in spite of depressing conditions like smog, flooding, and traffic congestion.

Indonesia is still a young nation as it has only been independent since 1949. It is much younger even than the USA, which I usually think of as a young nation compared to the countries of Europe.. It has many challenges to overcome as it faces the future, such as poverty and transportation issues. I like the motto of Indonesia: 'Bhinneka Tunggal Ika'. I'm pleased to see that Indonesia prides itself on diversity. Indeed, Indonesia must be a most diverse nation. It's hard to imagine that over three hundred different languages are spoken there. Bahasa Indonesia, a dialect of Malay, the lingua franca which holds the nation together and allows everyone to communicate, is the only one of those languages that I have learned a few courtesy expressions in, but the individual Indonesians have other languages as their mother tongues. Some of those languages are important literary languages like Chinese and Javanese. In addition, there is Indonesian slang which, if not an actual language in itself, at least is an incomprehensible jumble of consonants to me. Also, the ethnic diversity there is vast. Jakarta looks like a modern city to me with monuments and shopping malls, the things I should expect to find in an American city. The inhabitants of Jakarta seem to have found a balance between the piety of Islam and the 'People of the Book' and democratic principles like tolerance of religion and the equality of persons. Costume in Jakarta may be more conservative than in the US. I've seen photos of persons swimming in the swimming pool with all of their clothes on. (Bathing suits are generally worn in the US for that.) I even read that you can be arrested for wearing a bathing suit there. I agree that it's good to protect Jakartan and Balinese culture from undesired foreign dominion but I hope the law shows mercy to foreigners who don't understand the culture. Contrasting with Jakarta in the northwest tip of Sumatra is Aceh where Shari'a law is in effect. I imagine that province is more conservative than Jakarta. Then, on the other hand, in the other extremity of Indonesia is Papua, populated by indigenous people, with customs that date back to antiquity. The traditional costume in Papua seems to be distinct from the other regions of Indonesia. I looked at a colour-coded map which displayed the different ethnic groups of Indonesia. That map looked like a patchwork quilt. I haven't been able to learn about all those different groups.

That strikes me as wondrous because I come from a thoroughly uniform nation. Unfortunately, the USA lost much of its cultural diversity during the ninteenth century when our indigenous peoples (the American Indians) were forcibly relocated or exterminated. That is a sad page in America's history. Our media, in the twentieth century and today, has also played a large role in homogenising my country.
Preserving cultural differences while holding together as one nation is important. That will require wise governance from officials and loyalty from the people. It sounds challenging to make policy that will apply fairly to all those different types of people. That will take long deliberation from all of the various representatives. The autonomy model used in Aceh and Papua could be a good solution.

Reading over the history of Indonesia since its independence, it appears that the country is waking up from a government which was less open than the current administration. Term limits have been set for the president and that is in keeping with democratic ideas. It will keep anyone from holding office for thirty years. I hear that the government can be criticised now which is important in a democracy. I know in the past, under the pre-Reformasi regime, that ethnic Chinese were heavily discriminated against. It was illegal to even display Hanzi characters and many Chinese people changed their names to Indonesian sounding names. Now, a lot of those laws have been repealed. My friends learned Mandarin language in their school and can watch television programmes from (the Republic of) China. We can't even do that in the USA (except with Youtube). I've heard that Mandarin news broadcasts air in Indonesia today. I'm pleased about this, in part because most of the people I know in Indonesia are ethnic Chinese.

In America also, we have a repressive past, worse than Indonesia, because slavery was legal here for many years until it was finally abolished (at the Federal level) in 1865. Since that time, we have slowly learned to treat persons of different races as equal and I feel that Indonesia will be able to become a leader in this area. Indonesia is doing better so far than we did, because it took us around a hundred years (after the abolition of slavery) before black persons and white persons could even sit together on a bus.

I have a nice photograph on my computer of the Jakarta Cathedral next to the Istiqlal Mosque. It's good that different religions can coexist in Indonesia (although I recognise that there has been some violence over the issue in the past). The state recognises six religions: Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Catholicism and Protestantism (which last two are considered by the government to be different religions). I don't understand why the government must recognise religions, but my understanding of Indonesian government is not very deep. State recognition of religion leads to some interesting consequences such as that a person may not legally marry in Indonesia unless he or she confesses a particular state-recognised religion and it must be the same religion. So, in theory, an atheist or pagan can not contract a marriage within Indonesia. (In contrast, the American government is forbidden to recognise any particular religion although some say that our tax office essentially acts to establish and disestablish religions.) The first principle of the Pancasila is belief in one God and that forms the basis for the belief in the sacrosanct humanity of each person. This is similar to the language in our Declaration of Independence (from the British Empire) which attributes the 'unalienable rights' of persons to their Creator.

I think that education in Indonesia is much better than in the USA, because the people that I talk to over there seem to be very intelligent. Most of my friends were enrolled in a parochial school in central Jakarta called Strada One; so I don't know about other schools. I'm impressed with the good English that they use. It makes me lazy to learn Bahasa Indonesia since I don't need it to communicate with them. In contrast, in my school, we were sheltered from even hearing other languages. Strada is a vocational school which trains its students in acccounting and gives them practical ability to survive in the economy.

Indonesia may be on the eve of greatness. As the torch of cultural leadership of the world passes from the West to East Asia, I hope that those nations can learn from the experiences of Western nations and possibly avoid some of the mistakes that were made (and are still being made), such as meddling in the affairs of other countries in order to hold dominion over them.


See also...

• A Never Ending Task
• Being Si Pitung 2011 - Apologize Me! 
• Valentine's Day is prohibited? Who cares?