What is the Indonesian nation? What is a nation?
Although Aceh is a local, perhaps regional, issue, its story presses us to examine the myth of modern nationhood. Aceh has all the textbook characteristics of a nation: a uniformity of race, language, religion, and above all, a sense of common destiny, separate from other peoples. They have a strong enough feeling to fight for their own future over decades. But through most of those decades, the world media, and of course, the Indonesian media, have talked about an Indonesian nation. So which is the nation? Indonesia (which all this while included the Acehnese), or Aceh? My money goes to Aceh. What is Indonesia, but the successor to the Dutch empire in the East Indies? The Dutch never pretended they were ruling over a nation. They were ruling a motley of island-communities and statelets: the Riau, the Balinese, the people of Seram, Flores, Yogyakarta, Madura But then, of course, empires prided themselves on heterogeneity, on peaceful diversity under a benevolent, civilising crown. Indo
