Language Without Character

Soekarno's use of language, similar to that of Hatta, always upheld the nation, possessed character and glorified his paragons. The political language of the two founders of this nation was never a betrayal.

The areas of thought, experiences, and expressions that present-day Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language) can serve to communicate with subtlety, grace, and exactness is remarkable. Nothing could be more misleading than to imagine contemporary Bahasa Indonesia as a kind of superimposed lingua franca without an organic vitality of its own. –Anthony H. Johns, 1963

Kompas' headline report (28/10/2022), "Menjaga Bahasa, Menjaga Bangsa Indonesia” (Protecting the language, protecting the Indonesian nation), reminds us about the central correlation between language and the nation.