Endy M. Bayuni, Jakarta – When the suggestion was made that Indonesia needs to restore Pancasila to its proper place as the unifying national ideology, many people reacted with skepticism or even downright cynicism.

"Do we have to go through all that again?" was one of the most common reactions heard in recent weeks, as the nation geared up to mark the birth of Pancasila on June 1 with seminars, symposiums and an official ceremony Thursday led by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono himself.

This negative reaction does not so much reflect a rejection of the concept, as the stigma the word Pancasila carries with many of us.

Some people no doubt reject Pancasila outright. But most people who live in this country believe the principles underlying the national ideology are still relevant today, as they were when they were first introduced on June 1, 1945, by a young Sukarno.

These principles have helped tie together the collection of diverse peoples, numbering 220 million today, living on the islands that make up the archipelagic state we call Indonesia.

The five principles, later inserted into the Preamble of the 1945 Constitution when Indonesia became an independent nation, are: monotheism, humanitarianism, nationalism, consensual democracy and social justice. For a country as diverse as Indonesia in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, language and religion, Pancasila ensured the place and rights of every group in the country.

But Pancasila was hijacked by Soeharto after he successfully ousted Sukarno, Indonesia's first president, in 1966. He turned the state ideology, as well as the 1945 Constitution, into a powerful and effective tool to suppress dissent and opposition, helping him sustain power for the next 32 years virtually unchallenged.

Initially, Soeharto labeled communists and their sympathizers as anti-Pancasila, thus literally issuing the death or arrest warrants for millions of Indonesians in 1966. But later on, as he sat comfortably in power, he expanded the list of enemies of the state to include virtually every one who criticized him or opposed his policies. They were called betrayers or traitors.

If that was not enough, most Indonesians went through endless indoctrination in the state ideology. We had to take Pancasila classes at school, from grade one all the way through high school, and then all through our college years until we graduated. Once at work, many of us still had to take lengthy courses on Pancasila.

And it was not as if we had to prove our loyalty to the state as much as prove our servitude to the powers that be, meaning Soeharto and his generals, thugs and cronies.

We knew all along that nobody in the political elite, from Soeharto on down, believed in the values that Pancasila sought to promote, among the most important of which was pluralism. If they had believed in these principles, and had acted accordingly, the nation would not be in the mess we find ourselves in today.

Instead, the three decades of Soeharto's rule promoted and cultivated a violent and corrupt political culture, the legacy of which continues to haunt us.

All of this is not so much because of Pancasila, but because Pancasila was used with such deadly effect by Soeharto, becoming his most powerful tool to quell opposition. With the demise of his regime, Pancasila almost totally disappeared from the political vocabulary.

Today, the proponents who want to return Pancasila to the nation's lexicon believe that Indonesia is in the process of disintegrating. Intolerance has definitely begun creeping into the nation, and the Muslim religious right seems to be trying to impose its agenda on the rest of the country.

One of the proponents of Pancasila aptly described what is happening in Indonesia as "creeping Talibanization". Taliban refers to the ruthless regime that ruled Afghanistan along very strict Islamic rules. One of its worst features was the ban on schooling for girls.

But the question is whether Pancasila is really the answer to this challenge, given the stigma that the national ideology carries as a result of Soeharto's decades of indoctrination. Given this prevailing mind-set among people, as indicated by the cynical reactions, any attempt to bring Pancasila back into vogue, even with the best of intentions, could dangerously backfire.

The Pancasila proponents should make sure we do not repeat past mistakes and allow the ideology to be hijacked once again and turned into a tool of repression. Already, we are seeing some people and institutions showing an unusually great interest in embracing Pancasila, presumably for their own political interests.

Let us mark the anniversary of Pancasila today, but let us also remember the ugly history that accompanies the ideology.