Asian Values in Indonesia?

National and Regional Identities

Regia Shavira Fachmy/16/397207/EK/21163

“Asian value”, it is seen as an identity for some people, in which then can be use to position
people within communities and states. Identities has also a logic and history of their own. This
includes the idea of “Asian values”. Some of these elements has been presented in Indonesia that
plays a second to “Indonesian value”.

The existence of “Asian value” has showed us a particular culture policies that underlie
regional interaction in Southeast Asia. They then created an organisation that involve many Asian
countries such as Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam,
Brunei Darussalam and Myanmar. The organisation is called ASEAN and they haven’t reduced any
nationalism.

Indonesia was the country who introduced “Third World” and “Non-Aligned Movement” in
1955. in the process of formulating an essential set of values, colonial experience, ethnic mix and
potential for social conflict, it then provide examples of cultural engineering. Since Indonesia is a
paradigm, the state tries to regulate society through manipulating the system of value. The idea of
having common set of value define “order” and right above individual rights. The view of family
and self-interest are seen as an ideology with set of ideas that serves a particular interest.

National issues has been the prime motivation for participating in the idea of “Asian value”.
With this movements,not only Western but Asian “dissident” has support “Asian values” as an
alternative to Western liberalism. This is because, it shows a way to cover up the pressure of human
rights. However, there are other people who does not agree with the statement, these people are
usually called as “outsiders”. An example of countries who have problem with “Asian value” are
Malaysia and Singapore. Both countries sees this as a statement about history and the future,
common destinies and rights and citizenship. The reason behind this is because since Malaysia and
Singapore’s citizens consist of people from different part of Asia. It is then their first goal to unite
them all and connect with neighbouring countries.

Inheritance is one of the concept of “Asian values”. In Indonesia this problem arises when
some people were to be defined “Asian values” in Confucianism. This problem involve with
identity and people’s race. Malaysia and Singapore has preserve the term “race” in their constitution
or in their legal frameworks, such as censuses. Indonesia hasn’t done this, instead they viewed all
Indonesian citizens as equals under then law, until a time where they view Chinese as a different
type of citizen. In Indonesian perspective,national identity involved dissolving a local identity. like
for instance, having Malay as a lingua franca means that it blurs some categories since “Malay” was
racial or cultural term.

Racial essence of Indonesia has been identified as a nation through “integralist”.

“Integralism" was an alternative to the liberal state based on individualism or socialist state based
on class. It saw sauces as a whole, in which law and social organisation correlate with national
character. in the 1950s and 1970s, “integralist” was difficult to accept due to its aspect to “Western
democracy” that was part of the Guided Democracy. However, later on in the early 1980s,
“integralist” was revived as the formal basis of national ideology.

The first attempt to find common ground between Western Enlightenment thought and
indigenous tradition was with collaboration of Raffles. They noted the link between sam rata as
equality, in Malay/Indonesian it is known as merdeka. This is because sama rata sama rasa was
continously used told define equality. The P4 programme has been studied in work-places. schools
and universities. These “civic” programs were oriented towards a fit and proper explication of
Pancasila. Till this day, Indonesians has grown up with P4 as the basis of their education. P4 aimed
to be definitive and to close off alternative versions of identity.

Tradisi is often used to define tradition. In Balinese case tradisi are similar to village essence
of Balineseness, desa adat, which includes culture and religion. Adat is defined as essential and
strength to Balinese , this is also how they define local identity. The Balinese also use the them
globalisis as opposing a Jakarta-based control of economy, language, and culture.

Pancasila has been used by a number of writers, each writers have their own opinion and
definition of Pancasila. They mostly have a set of values that criticise the nature and course of
development and the problem of corruption and governance of the New Order state. A number of
writers believed that there should be the need to change ways of political and economic action by
participating in the “era of globalisation”. These kind of participation can lead to social justice and
different type of development that can be offered by the government.