Challenges Across the Generation

In Indonesia, nationalism is the unifying force that binds a wide variety of differences, but this is not always the case in other parts of the world.

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

Residents carry posters at the Millennial Road Safety Festival in the National Monument Area, Jakarta, Sunday (23/6/2019).

Indonesia has been an independent nation for 75 years. However, its self-awareness as a sovereign nation became solidified 17 years ago, even if it was drawn up much further in the past on National Awakening Day 112 years ago.

Of course, we must not underestimate the anticolonial resistance and struggle of the past, for example those led by Imam Bonjol, Diponegoro, and many others in various parts of the archipelago, but the Indonesianness of the efforts prior to the 20th century is unknown. It can be said that the Youth Pledge was a big leap in history, because the youth put aside their regional, ethnic and religious differences and came together as a nation (“an imagined political community”, Benedict Anderson) that later came to be called Indonesia.