Culture of Unity and Diversity In Indonesia

Izdiharti Husniyah - 170211604547

Indonesian society has been so familiar with living in so many different cultures and
ethnics through all the decades. Bhineka Tunggal Ika which means that ‘eventhough it is
different, but it is still one’ has been introduce to Indonesian peoples as a national slogan of
the country. It propose to unite all the differences and variety of peoples in one goal. Not all
the country has these multicultural thing as Indonesia has. So, Indonesia can be the
ambassador and example of a peace country with all the diversity for the world.
From media.neliti.com said, Indonesian society consists of groups from many
different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Every ethnic group has a different set of
traditions, art and culture, and also uses a different language. So Indonesia has a complicated
multiethnic structure and more than 250 ethnic languages. In addition, Indonesian people live
on more than 3000 islands, including five large islands, namely Jawa, Kalimantan, Sumatra,
Sulawesi, and Irian. In general, Indonesian past cultural history was influenced by many
cultural values from other regions. It included the cultures of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam,
and Western civilization.
Many Indonesian people will introduce themselves as their specific ethnic group to
each other. Even many of them use their own ethnic or region language as their first language
and has been using in their daily conversation. But here the function of Indonesian language
as a national language also has an important role for them. When they want to interact to each
other among different ethnic group of Indonesia, they will automatically speak in Indonesia
to communicate. They did not need to be told for doing that, they just naturally understand
about it. So, Indonesian peoples are naturally a billingual even since they are kids, because
they master their ethnic language and Indonesian language at the same time. But when they
want to introduce themselves to the foreign people, most of the time they will say that they
are Indonesians for them easy to understand. That is what we called another uniqueness of
Indonesia that not all the country has.
This diversity makes most of Indonesians people easy to understand other cultures
and differences. People from Java will understand that their culture are differences with
people from Padang. Eventhough they are same from Indonesia. Foreign people might see
that they are just same as Indonesians, but it is a different cases for Indonesian people itself.
We can not deny that, sometimes there will be some cases that causes by this multicultural
and diversity things, like tribal fighting, culture missunderstanding, and many other conflict.
But it can not be the end of Indonesia as a multicultural country. Government and society has
the important role to solving those problems. That is why Indonesia still exist until now with
all the variation of cultures that makes Indonesia rich.
Ethics and races in Indonesia are not only coming from original descent of Indonesia,
but also from foreign country, such as arabic, chinese, or western people. Their amount are
not small too. But they can be called as Indonesians also because they are born and raised in
Indonesia. They might be originally from country outside of Indonesia, but their soul has
been Indonesian since many years ago. Indonesians accept them as a part of them, and did not
see them as a foreign or different.
Being different is normal, because nothing is exactly the same in this world.
Everything has their own uniqueness and colour, like a rainbow can be beautiful because its
diversity. Indonesia can take this chances of being multicultural as a strenght to show
Indonesia’s beautiful colour to the world.
Despite of all the multiculturalism, Indonesia sometimes has the problem also with
the majority and minority group. Such as javanese as the biggest and progressive ethnic and
region in Indonesia most of the time has more attention from the government and it causes
the unfairness to other ethnic and region especially for the remote and furthest place from the
downtown. Or Islam as the majority religion also most of the time place as the priority in the
country, so sometimes it is also cause some problems too. From www.culturalsurvival.org it
said that, I think because there are many challenges facing Indonesia's smaller and poorer
minorities. They must negotiate artfully with the government over their cultural and
economic interests if they are to benefit rather than simply withstand physical or cultural
damage by the bulldozer of development.
References:
https://media.neliti.com/media/publications/108763-EN-multicultura-perpectives-in-
indonesian-s.pdf
https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/multiculturalism-
some-lessons-indonesia