International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 164

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
America. They saw that Dutch policy hindered instead of promoted the spread of Dutch and
other European languages. The reality that they had to accept -- that less than two percent
of the population could communicate in Dutch at the end of colonial period -- had
awakened a further policy which was idealised by the Dutch Minister of Colonies, H.J. van
Mook to the East Indies Department of Education while he was in exile in Brisbane:56
A common language is the surest measure for spreading culture and loyalty. The
British always encourage the speaking of English in their dominion and colonies. We
have not done this in the Netherlands East Indies. Let us do it after the war.
The dream was a ‘pipe dream’ as the teaching of Dutch, English, Germany, and French was
banned in the entire archipelago by the new colonizer. The new colonizer, Japan, preferred
to be called the “Old Brother” in South East Asia. Within this guise, they conquered the
Indonesians. Books and other materials written in Dutch and other European languages
were burned. Bahasa Indonesia was then inaugurated as the language of instruction in the
schools. From 1942 until 1945 during the Japanese occupation, there were no formal
schools teaching any European language although this was still carried out clandestinely.
Bahasa Indonesia gained a powerful stronghold to unite the former colonial Indonesia. On
17 August 1945, Soekarno proclaimed the Indonesian Independence of the Republic of
Indonesia and the 1945 Constitution proclaimed Bahasa Indonesia as the language of the
state in Chapter XV, article 36. This ousted the dream of the Dutch to reclaim the Indonesia
by its new language policy after World War II.
The birth of a nation, independent Indonesia, at the end of World War II was
followed by further contest from the outside world to re-claim Indonesia whether through
political, educational, cultural or economic colonization. The multiethnic religious state
continued struggling from within and from outside. Many compromises had to be carried
out by the new nation facing the arrival of the global era. One of the hurdles faced by the
new nation was the burden of the debt imposed by the former Dutch colonialists on
Indonesia. When the United States brokered the final settlement of the Revolution, it
sacrificed the new nation’s interests for its own purposes. The U.S insisted that the
Indonesians accept a deal in which the new nation had to take over Dutch debts of
U.S$ 1,723 million plus interest. The U.S wanted to protect the economic rebuilding of
Europe established in the Marshall Plan and to create the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
as the basis of their campaign against communism.57 Instead of the Dutch compensating the
Indonesians for almost 350 years of colonial rule, the Indonesian had to compensate the
Dutch, based on the fiction that the Indies had been an autonomous entity, not part of the
Netherlands.58 It was scandalously arranged as the trade-off in liberating Indonesia from the
56

Rijks Instituut voor Oorlogs Documentatie—Indische Collectie, Amsterdam (National Institut for War
Documentation—East Indies Collection), C 050294 quoted by Groeneboer in the Introduction, Op. Cit., 1.
57
Vickers, Op. Cit., 133.
58
Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, 443.

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