Indonesian Cultural History: Symbols, Language and Literature
Indonesian cultural history is the story of the objects, scripts, words, books and paintings through which a large and varied archipelago came to see itself as one nation. The main threads are the flag, anthem, emblem and state philosophy that the republic adopted, the old writing and vocabulary it inherited from earlier kingdoms, the early newspapers and fiction that shaped a modern national language, and the artists and writers who argued about what Indonesian culture should be. Each thread is taken up in its own section below, and each one answers a different question about the country.
Indonesian cultural history and the search for a shared identity
Before 1945 the islands held a great many local languages, royal courts with their own traditions, and colonial administrations that ruled them as a single territory without treating them as one people. When independence was declared, the new state needed symbols that every citizen could recognise, a language that a schoolteacher in Sumatra and a farmer in Papua could both use, and a body of culture that could sit beside the older traditions without erasing them. Much of what happened in the following decades was an argument about how to do that.
These threads therefore fall into four kinds of inheritance. The first is the set of things the state chose to display. The second is the writing and vocabulary carried forward from older kingdoms. The third is the press and fiction that gave the national language its modern form. The fourth is the painting and public debate that tested what a national culture was allowed to be. Reading across them gives a clearer picture than any one does on its own, and Indonesian history places each of these threads in its political setting.
National symbols the republic adopted
The red and white flag
The red and white flag was first raised during the proclamation of independence on 17 August 1945, at the house on what was then Jalan Pegangsaan Timur in Jakarta, and its design has remained the same since. Its two colours are often traced to the banner of the Majapahit kingdom of eastern Java, and other explanations are also offered, including one about cloth cut from Dutch flags. The story of the colours matters less to most visitors than the practical question of how the flag is used. The fuller history, including the choices made in 1945, is set out in the national flag of Indonesia, and the rules for displaying it respectfully are in the red and white flag’s meaning and display.
The national anthem
The anthem was first performed on 28 October 1928 at the Second Indonesian Youth Congress, which produced the Youth Pledge. The composer, Wage Rudolf Supratman, performed it on the violin. It became the national anthem when independence was proclaimed in 1945. The story of how a song written in the 1920s came to be the official anthem of a republic is told in the history of Indonesia Raya, and the life of the man who wrote it is covered in the page on Supratman.
The state emblem
The Garuda Pancasila emblem was adopted in February 1950. The eagle holds a scroll bearing the national motto, and its shield carries five symbols, each standing for one of the Pancasila principles: a star for belief in one God, a chain for just and civilised humanity, a banyan tree for the unity of Indonesia, a buffalo head for democracy guided by wisdom, and rice and cotton for social justice. Each element of the emblem is taken in turn on the Garuda Pancasila page, which links the design to the country’s founding principles.
Pancasila and the principles behind the state
Pancasila means five principles, and the term comes from a speech Sukarno gave on 1 June 1945, on the last day of the first session of the body preparing for independence. The speech is usually called the Birth of Pancasila address. Sukarno proposed the five principles as the philosophical basis of an independent Indonesia, and they have been the foundation of the state’s ideology ever since. The five principles, in the wording used in the modern state, are:
- belief in the one and only God;
- just and civilised humanity;
- the unity of Indonesia;
- democratic life guided by wisdom in deliberation among representatives;
- social justice for all the people of Indonesia.
The principles are less a list to memorise than a set of tensions the state keeps working on, between unity and local difference, between a democratic process and the guiding role of wisdom, and between individual rights and collective welfare. How the principles were drafted and debated is covered in the Pancasila page, which is the right starting point for the origins rather than the symbolism.
Language, scripts and the old words the nation inherited
Kawi, the writing of old Java
Kawi is the script used for the Old Javanese inscriptions that survive across Java and parts of Bali. It descends from the Pallava script of southern India, which spread into maritime Southeast Asia around the fourth century. The oldest known Kawi text is a stone stele near Salatiga in Central Java, dated to about the year 750. Java holds the largest body of Kawi inscriptions, and the script became the vehicle for Old Javanese literature. Later Javanese and Balinese scripts developed from it, so the later scripts of Java and Bali share a common ancestor with it. Its forms and earliest surviving stones are covered on the Kawi script page.
Sanskrit words in Indonesian
A large number of Indonesian words come from Sanskrit, many of them arriving through Old Javanese and the courts and cultures that used it. Words such as bahasa for language, bumi for earth and dewa for god are all Sanskrit in origin. Old Javanese, which absorbed Sanskrit heavily, has a dictionary with tens of thousands of entries, and almost half of those entries are Sanskrit loanwords. Because these words have been in use for so long, most speakers do not notice them as foreign at all. How this layer of vocabulary entered the language, and why it still feels like ordinary speech, is the subject of Sanskrit loanwords in Indonesian.
The 1947 spelling reform
On 19 March 1947 the republic introduced a new spelling system named after Education Minister Soewandi. It replaced the Van Ophuijsen spelling that the Dutch had used for Malay. The most visible change was the handling of the vowel sound written oe under the old system, which became u, so that goeroe became guru. The reform kept the digraphs ch, dj and tj, and it dropped several diacritical marks used in the older system. It stayed in use until 1972, when the Enhanced Spelling System replaced it. Read the Republican spelling system for the changes and their consequences.
Print, fiction and the making of a modern literature
Malay newspapers under colonial rule
The press was one of the first places where a written Malay for a wider public took shape. The newspaper Selompret Melajoe began in Semarang on 3 February 1860, written in Low Malay. Its early readers included Peranakan Chinese and members of the Javanese elite, and it kept printing until 1920. Papers like it helped normalise a written Malay that ordinary people could read, which became the base for the language the nation later adopted. Read the early Malay-language newspapers for the wider picture of these papers and their editors.
Abdullah’s autobiography
Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, known as Munshi Abdullah, was a Malacca-born munshi, a scholar and writer who lived in Singapore. He wrote his autobiography in Jawi, the Arabic-based script used for Malay, between 1840 and 1843, and it was published in 1849. It departed from the classical tradition of myth and legend and instead described ordinary life, officials, merchants and the colonial port as he saw them. It is also remarkable for its description of the British arrival in Singapore in 1819, even though the author was not present for it and pieced the story together from the people who were. The book is treated as one of the first Malay works printed commercially, and read Hikayat Abdullah to see why it still matters for historians of the region.
Max Havelaar and the coffee trade
Max Havelaar was published in 1860 under the pen name Multatuli, which was the writer Eduard Douwes Dekker. Its full title, Max Havelaar, or The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company, shows its target: the trade in coffee grown under colonial rule in Java. The novel is set in the Dutch East Indies and attacks colonial officials and the system they served. Its importance lies in how much debate it caused in the Netherlands and how it became a reference point for later Indonesian writers. The novel and its context are covered in the Max Havelaar novel.
Takdir Alisjahbana and Pujangga Baru
The magazine Pujangga Baru was founded in 1933 by Armijn Pane, Amir Hamzah and Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana. Its first issue came out in July 1933, and it ran until the early 1940s, a period that critics often call the Pujangga Baru generation. The magazine became a forum for modern Indonesian literature and for the argument that the nation should build its culture on modern forms rather than on old court models. Takdir, as he is usually known, was its chief editor for much of its run and went on to a career in language and public life. His role in the magazine and his later work are set out in Takdir Alisjahbana.
Chairil Anwar and the 1945 generation
Chairil Anwar was born in Medan in 1922 and died in Jakarta on 28 April 1949, at the age of twenty-six. His best-known poem, Aku, dates from 1943. He is the central figure of the poets who belong to the 1945 generation, a group that broke from the more traditional verse of the 1930s and wrote in a direct voice. His short life produced a body of poetry that has remained widely read. His work and the reasons he became a symbol for his generation are the subject of Chairil Anwar.
The 1963 cultural manifesto
The Manifes Kebudayaan was signed in August 1963 by a group of writers and intellectuals who rejected the social realism promoted by the left-leaning Lekra institute and argued instead for universal humanism. The manifesto placed Pancasila at the centre of Indonesian cultural life, and its signatories presented themselves as free intellectuals opposed to what they saw as communist control of the arts. The government moved against it: Sukarno banned the manifesto on 8 May 1964. The episode shows how sharply the question of what culture should serve was contested in the early 1960s, and the 1963 manifesto covers it in full.
Painting and the early Indonesian artist
Raden Saleh was born around 1811 in Terboyo, near Semarang, and was sent to the Netherlands in 1829 after the Belgian painter Antoine Payen persuaded colonial authorities to fund his training. He studied under the Dutch painters Cornelis Kruseman and Andreas Schelfhout, spent years travelling through Germany and France, and returned to Java around 1852. His career placed him between two worlds, trained in European academic painting but painting the landscapes, animals and events of the archipelago. Anyone interested in how Javanese artists first entered the European tradition should read about Raden Saleh.
Choosing where to start
For a reader who wants to understand the nation’s public face, the best starting points are the flag, the anthem and the emblem, because together they show how the state chose to present itself. If your interest is language, begin with the Kawi script for the old writing, then move to the Sanskrit loanwords for the vocabulary, and finish with the 1947 spelling reform for the modern standard. Readers drawn to literature should begin with Abdullah’s autobiography, which shows a Malay prose that broke from older forms, and then read the Max Havelaar page to see how fiction was used against colonial policy. The Pujangga Baru and 1945 generation then carry that line into the twentieth century.
The threads do not have to be followed in order. Each stands on its own, and where they overlap, such as the Pancasila principles appearing in both the state symbols and the cultural debate, the fuller treatment is the better place to go. A reader who wants the political background of any of these threads should keep the country’s political history in view alongside them.
Practical notes for reading about Indonesian culture
Check an exact day against a second source before you rely on it, particularly for the early twentieth century and for the birthdays of writers and painters. The same is true of the old place names and spellings, which change with the spelling reforms described above, so a name may appear in more than one form. Keep that in mind when you compare older and newer texts, because a difference in spelling is often the only difference between two names for the same person or place.
Finally, the subject is best approached as a conversation rather than a finished story. The flag, the anthem and the emblem look settled today, but the questions behind them were argued over for decades. The literature and the manifesto show how sharp those arguments could become, and the old scripts and loanwords show how much of the modern language rests on older foundations. Reading these threads together gives a fuller sense of how Indonesia built its culture, and why that work is still going on.