Reinventing the Indonesia Identity, or Reinventing History?

On August 17, a date that will mark the 80th anniversary of Indonesia’s independence, the government plans to launch a new official account of the country’s history. The 10-volume series, which has enlisted more than 100 historians from various universities, is set to chronicle Indonesia’s history from the time of Homo erectus to the election of President Prabowo Subianto in 2024.

The project is led by the Minister for Culture Fadli Zon, a close associate of Prabowo, who first floated the notion of a significant rewrite in December 2024. Speaking to Reuters in May, Fadli said that the series of textbooks would have an Indonesia-centric narrative and aim “to reinvent the Indonesian identity.”

However, the project has been surrounded by controversy, with academic historians concerned that the real intention of the project is to censor some of the darker episodes of Indonesian history, especially those related to the New Order regime of 1965-1998, in which Prabowo played a key role.

As a leading hardline general in the latter years of the New Order, Prabowo has been credibly implicated in a litany of human rights abuses, including atrocities committed by the Indonesian army in East Timor and Aceh, and the abduction of student pro-democracy activists in 1997 and 1998. For years, Prabowo has openly praised Suharto, his former father-in-law, stressed the advantages of a less “unruly” political system, and since taking office last October, has allowed the military to take a more active role in the governance of Indonesia.

As the independent historian Jonathan Tehusijarana noted back in June, the project appears to mark the revival of the Sejarah Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National History), which was developed under the New Order regime as “an effort to shape a hegemonic narrative of Indonesian history.”

Marzuki Darusman, a leading human rights activist who served as attorney general between 1999 and 2001, has said that the project is a dangerous attempt to “engineer the past.” Asvi Warman Adam, a leading historian at the Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia, described the likely outcome as “propaganda.”

The content of the textbooks has not yet officially been released, but draft volume summaries and a chapter outline circulated online have confirmed the above fears. According to these summaries, the project will avoid much mention of the darker side of Indonesia’s history since independence, including the 12 episodes of human rights violations that were officially recognized by Prabowo’s predecessor, Joko Widodo, in 2023, most of which took place under the New Order.

For instance, there is little mention of the Indonesian military’s destruction of the Indonesian Communist Party in 1965-66, which followed the failure of an apparent coup attempt by dissident army officers in September 1965. Over the subsequent months, at least half a million actual and suspected communists were killed, while another million were detained without charge, some for decades. What one Western scholar has described as “one of the largest and swiftest, yet least examined instances of mass killing and incarceration in the 20th century” is instead presented in the textbook simply as a “resolution” of an attempted coup plot.

There is also little coverage of the student movement that played an important role in the downfall of Suharto in May 1998, nor of the repressive means used to stave off the regime’s collapse. This omission is obviously convenient for Prabowo, who is accused of (but denies) the kidnapping of pro-democracy activists in 1997 and 1998. He was subsequently discharged from the military on these grounds. A summary of the rule of Suharto only mentions how “student demonstrations... became a factor” in his resignation.

Another area of concern is the lack of any reference to the sexual violence perpetrated against Chinese Indonesian girls and women during the anti-Chinese riots that were stirred up in Jakarta and other big cities in May 1998. A fact-finding report, commissioned by President B. J. Habibie and published in late 1998, found at least 52 reported cases of rape in the unrest. But Fadli Zon, who authored a book that defended Prabowo’s actions as a special forces commander under Suharto, has dismissed the sexual violence as “rumors,” adding that there “was never any proof. It’s just a story.” Hadli has also told lawmakers that the textbook “does not discuss May ‘98... because it’s small.” In general, the textbook outline classifies victims of human rights abuses as a “security disturbance.”

The Civil Society Coalition Against Impunity, which includes more than 500 local organizations, described Fadli Zon’s comments about the mass rapes of 1998 as “a deliberate manipulation and distortion” and part of an attempt “to systematically remove critical narratives about gross human rights violations from the public domain.”

The textbook project reflects the gradual revisionism that has recast the New Order period as an era of political stability and economic expansion, and Suharto as bapak pembangunan Indonesia – the “father of Indonesian development.” As Ken M.P. Setiawan of the University of Melbourne pointed out, this effort has been aided by a demographic shift. As he argued, “Most young voters, who account for 56 percent of Indonesia’s electorate, and were largely responsible for Prabowo’s 2024 election success, have very little or no memory of the Suharto regime.”

In this sense, the situation in Indonesia is analogous to the revisionism that has taken hold in the Philippines over the past decade, culminating in the election of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, in mid-2022. There has been a broad whitewashing of the violence and corruption that took place under Marcos Sr., particularly during the Martial Law period, from 1972 to 1986. In 2016, Marcos’ body was transferred to the country’s Heroes' Cemetery with full official honors; in Indonesia, Prabowo’s administration also plans for Suharto to be similarly recognized with the granting of the title of “national hero.”

Both examples are arguably part of a broader global trend in which apparently stable liberal consensuses – regarding free market economics, human rights, and liberal democratic values – have fractured under the pressure of growing nationalism and populism, and increasing geopolitical turbulence.

There are legitimate discussions to be had about the extent to which a national history textbook should focus on the negative aspects of a nation’s past, in comparison with its achievements. It is also unlikely that any textbook could fully satisfy every constituency, and virtually any choice would prompt controversy to a greater or lesser extent. At the same time, as the news magazine Tempo wrote in an editorial in May, “removing or minimizing incidents like the 1998 Reformasi and the student movement are systemic measures to change the way future generations see the past, with the ultimate aim that they only know one version of ‘the truth’ that is in line with current political interests.”

The fall of Suharto was supposed to indicate Indonesia’s determination to break with the New Order’s corruption and repression, as well as the dominant role played by the military, and to embrace a more tolerant and pluralistic form of politics. Indonesia’s textbook project is a sign that this break was never as total as it seemed, not least in terms of who controls Indonesia’s economy. Despite the benisons of democratization, the country’s leaders evidently still have both the desire and the means to shape the past to suit the political needs of the present.