3 - National Language and Nation-Building: The Case of Bahasa Indonesia

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The national language of Indonesia is originally called Malay, which is a minority language in the Indonesian archipelago. Why was this minority language eventually chosen as the national language of Indonesia? This chapter deals with the origin of the Indonesian national language and its development from 1928 to the Reformasi (Reform) period. It also examines Indonesian policy towards the national language and its relationships with nation-building. However, globalization and revival of ethnicity are two factors which may serve as challenges to the national language policy. This paper will therefore also discuss problems and prospects of such a policy.

THE ROLE OF THE MALAY LANGUAGE PRIOR TO INDONESIA'S INDEPENDENCE

Indonesia is a multiethnic and multilingual society, of which the largest ethnic group is Javanese (47 per cent according to the 1930 population census). Nevertheless, the Javanese language was not selected as the national language of Indonesia. One of the reasons was that Javanese is a complicated language which has also been used only by the Javanese. Besides, the language is hierarchical; it is divided into high Javanese and low Javanese, which should be used in accordance with the position of the person in society, therefore it is non-democratic. The languages of other ethnic groups, for instance, the Sundanese (14.5 per cent according to the 1930 population census) and Madurese (7 per cent according to the 1930 population census), were not used by others either. Only the language of the Malays, who constituted about 1.6 per cent according to the 1930 census (see Table 3.1), was used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago. Different ethnic groups when they met used this language to communicate.

Because of the above reasons, during the nationalist movement of Indonesia, which started in the first decade of the twentieth century, the language used among the nationalists was Malay. All the newspapers read by Indonesian political public were published in this language rather than in vernacular languages (often known in Indonesian as bahasa daerah, or regional languages).