Al Irshad Al Islamiyyah Junior High School and Al Bani Primary School, two Islamic schools in Karanganyar, Central Java, have been in the spotlight over the past few days for their refusal to hold the mandatory flag-raising ceremony. Sutardi, the principal of Al Irshad, has insisted that saluting the flag was against his Islamic beliefs. According to him, saluting the flag was akin to shirking one’s duties to God.Not long after this, seven teachers at state schools in the district were also found to have flouted a ministerial decree that requires students to salute the flag and sing the national anthem. Karanganyar district chief Rina Iriani threatened to close down both establishments and dismiss the teachers from the civil service.
The incident adds to a number of recent attacks on Indonesia’s struggle to maintain the current poor level of patriotism among the population. A lack of pride at being Indonesian has become and remains rife. Now, an assault on nationalism comes from within instead of from external elements, and is clearly visible in the following issues.
First, our citizens seem to now have less respect for the state symbols, such as the national flag, anthem and state ideology (Pancasila). This behavior stems from multifaceted backgrounds. Seen from the background factor of their schools, they have a close relation to and are influenced by firebrand cleric Ja’far Umar Thalib. This figure is notorious for his radical and intolerant Islamic views.
A strict interpretation of such Islamic campaigns stipulates that saluting the national flag is not simply a tradition of infidels who exaggerate respect toward their leaders, but also the glorification of an inanimate object.
For sure, this interpretation is bolstered by a parochial and textual understanding of Islamic teachings. In the discourse of national insight, reverence for the national flag cannot be equated to the worship of God. This issue should thus be resolved through sustained dialogue.
Poor leadership and politicians also contribute to putting the country’s state symbols into a corner. People no longer respect the Pancasila as the state ideology, for example, since they see so-called leaders as only implementing the Pancasila in books, writing and speeches, but then betray it in their daily lives.
In a nutshell, while radical religiousness accounts for their tolerance, the living examples set by Indonesia’s poor politicians make the community allergic to and lose trust in the state symbols.
Second, historical amnesia has been growing among our citizens. Indonesian heroes’ sacrifices were paid in blood in their struggles to raise the red and white flag for the country’s independence in 1945. Our heroes and founding fathers viewed the flag as a symbol representing the spirit, hopes and ideals of a nation.
The flag is a peaceful sign of these heroes’ wish for a united and unitary state of Indonesia. They were patriotic and loved their country, and it is to their struggle we pay our respects when it comes to saluting the flag.
There is also huge possibility that this denial of the importance of state symbols is inseparably linked to a lack of learning about Indonesia’s history, which in turn leads people to fail to understand the human story behind Indonesia. Political instability and economic pressure during and after the reform era have raised one generation after another in this country of young Indonesians who are, by and large, historically illiterate.
Hence, the best way to fix this problem is to bring conversations about Indonesian history back to the dinner table, take children and youngsters to historical landmarks and give them books, and require teachers to have an education in history, not just degrees. Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon, not only because it decreases a sense of belonging to the nation, but also lays the groundwork for social tension among our fellow citizens.
Third, the declining intellect of leaders leads to public disorientation. Frankly speaking, people are getting bored of politicians who have turned their backs on moral integrity. Antonio Gramsci names them “politicians without ideology.” Such politicians never get involved in social transformation to serve public interests. Indeed, they succeeded in obtaining scholars’ degrees from various universities, but they reach their seemingly intellectual status through corruption, public lies and poor accountability.
Our founding fathers were capable of instilling in the Indonesian people a strong sense of nationalism because of their own sincere commitment, honest idealism and intellectual integrity. These factors served as their capital, making them figures of reflection and action, which left no yawning gaps between saying and doing.
They were intellectual leaders whose dialectical thinking was oriented toward people’s interests rather than glorifying themselves in a self-admiring ways. Their intellectual traces benefit people and last longer. Tan Malaka’s political thoughts in Madilog, the thoughts of Mohammad Hatta on democracy and cooperative, or Sutan Sjahrir’s grand design of Indonesian socialism, remain relevant and irreplaceable.
In a short, they have left some sort of legacy – commitment, thoughts, action, and of course a nation – with a view to developing and preserving loyalty to this country. Now, it is saddening to learn that their legacy has been transformed into pieces in Indonesia’s recent democratic period.
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