LIRICA CORAL IDEAS GENERALES

Reinforcing students’ reflections on their role and identity, in national politics and in wider social life, was the sense that they were continuing a long tradition of involvement, dating back to the beginnings of the nationalist movement in 1908. This historical framework both provided students with a powerful source of legitimacy for their actions and at the same time set limits for the ways in which they were able to define their roles and identities.

In Salemba and Gelora Mahasiswa, the tradition of youth and student activism in Indonesia was an important point of reference for students’ definitions of their roles and identities. A March 1977 edition of Gelora Mahasiswa, for example, argued that students’ involvement in social and political life was a continuation of the pioneering role played by their older student brothers and sisters (kakak-kakaknya mahasiswa) Sukarno, Hatta, Syahrir, Sutomo and Mohammad Yamin as well as the 1966 generation of students. As such, students’ current involvement in social and political life represented ‘a logical passing on of the baton’ from these pioneering students of the past to the new generation:

Doesn’t what students now strive for paint ‘their vision of the future’ but also represent an ‘echo from the past’. Namely a kind of transformation of the values of the Indonesian Student movement’s struggle since Boedi Oetomo, the youth congress, Perhimpunan Indonesia in the Netherlands and so on until today, which has been adapted to the latest situation and conditions (Gelora Mahasiswa March 1977, 7).46

These ‘historical facts’ would, the article concluded, counter the recent attempts to limit students’ role in social and political life.

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Bukankah apa yang diperjuangakan oleh mahasiswa Indonesia sekarang menggambarkan ‘their vision of the future’ tetapi juga merupakan ‘echo from the past’. Yakni semacam transformasi nilai-nilai perjuangan dari Gerakan Mahasiswa Indonesia sejak Boedi Oetomo, kongres pemuda, perhimpunan (Mahasiswa) Indonesia di Negeri Belanda dan seterusnya sampai hari ini; dengan diadaptasikan pada situasi dan kondisi mutakhir (Gelora Mahasiswa March 1977, 7).

The designation of figures such as Sukarno, Hatta, Syahrir, Sutomo and Mohammad Yamin as mahasiswa and the reference to an Indonesian ‘student movement’ establishes a link between the past and the present.47 The reference to these key nationalist figures as mahasiswa, and the representation of organisations such as Budi Utomo and Perhimpunan Indonesia as part of a unitary historical movement of Indonesian students, connects the struggle of contemporary mahasiswa to the struggle of the youth of the past, and in particular to the generations of 1908 and 1928. The differences between the generations are represented in terms which emphasise the continuities between them: each generation, including the present one, responded to the social and political conditions around them in different ways albeit ways which were consistent with the idealism and spirit of youth so celebrated in New Order accounts of their role (see chapter three).

The idea that the youth and students of the New Order were continuing a long historical tradition was also central to the way the state defined students’ role and identities. As noted in chapter two, Suharto saw the role of contemporary youth and students as being to implement development and so ‘give substance to’ (mengisi) Indonesia’s independence. However, as the president noted at the opening of the Symposium on the Writing of the History of the Youth Movement in Indonesia in October 1980, there was a key difference between the role of youth in the past and their role in the contemporary nation. In the past, the president asserted, youth had played a significant part in the destruction of colonialism. In the era of development, however, their role was a ‘productive and constructive’ one (Suharto 1980a, 175; see chapter two). Moreover, as chapter three suggested, official New Order histories such as the Sejarah Nasional Indonesia celebrated the role of youth and students in the nationalist movement, the revolution and the events of 1965-66. At the same time, the lessons contained the

Sejarah provided a set of parameters within which the contemporary young generation could think about their roles and identities. In doing so, the Sejarah aimed to limit the practical ways in which students could act in their capacity as mahasiswa.

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Students who wrote in the student press of the mid to late 1970s did not make a clear and consistent distinction between the terms pemuda and mahasiswa. In some articles, pemuda was used as an overarching term in reference to the pioneering pemuda of the Sumpah Pemuda, the pemuda of the revolution and the spirit of the ‘pemuda’ of 1966 (see for example Salemba 1 February 1977, 3). In others, the terms used to represent the young political actors of the past include pemuda mahasiswa

The New Order’s celebration of the role of past youth and students provided students with a powerful source of legitimacy for their actions in the contemporary period. By framing their role in politics and social life in terms of a tradition which the state itself saw as an integral part of Indonesia’s development as a nation, students were able to claim that they, like their ‘older brothers and sisters’, were rendering a vital service to the future of the nation. At the same time, this historical framework also set limits for the ways in which the students of the New Order period were able to define their roles and identities. As avenues for tolerated dissent narrowed and opposition became ‘un- Indonesian’, the tradition of student involvement in politics remained one of the few legitimate bases on which students could justify their contemporary role.