By Max Lane
Executive Summary
- During 2025, conflicting perspectives on Indonesia's political history have become a heated political issue. Central to the political controversies are the different interpretations of the circumstances of Suharto's rise to power, and later, the causes and events surrounding the end of the Suharto regime in 1998.
- Strict censorship enabled the Suharto government to vigorously uphold its officially sanctioned version of Indonesian history in public discourse and school curriculum. However, the post-1998 Reformasi changes and the rise of digital social media greatly expanded space for academia and civil society to espouse alternative narratives.
- In this context, three events in 2025 have provoked the more recent contention over what would constitute the correct version of Indonesia's political history. These are the centenary of the birth of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, a writer imprisoned just after Suharto came to power; the announcement by the government that it was compiling a new 11-volume history of Indonesia; and finally, a re-nomination of the late President Suharto for consideration to be formally declared as a National Hero.
- While neither the new compilation of Indonesian history nor the elevation of Suharto's status have been finalised, the polemics over these issues have highlighted divisions in society that may have significant impact on political outcomes. The fundamental divide is between those who wish to emphasise the positive legacy and achievements of the Suharto era, versus those who demand due acknowledgement of the regime's past actions.
Introduction
Several developments during 2025 have highlighted the extent to which Indonesia's historical identity remains a latent source of unresolved contradictions. These include the commemorative events for and positions taken in relation to the birth centenary of the revolutionary writer and New Order era political prisoner, Pramoedya Ananta Toer; the nomination of the late President Suharto for elevation to National Hero status; and the attempt to produce a new official national history of Indonesia by Prabowo Subianto's Minister of Culture, Fadli Zon. Throughout 2025, these three processes have generated their fair share of national controversy.
History in Indonesian politics
Debates over national history happen in all countries. There are naturally different views representing different ideological frameworks and different social group interests. This is especially so in the case of Indonesia, where, despite a relatively short history of existence, major political convulsions have produced totally opposing frameworks of understanding history and of deploying history as a political weapon. The biggest of these convulsions, the 1965 seizure of power by the Indonesian Army and the suppression of ideological contestation, involved the tight enforcement of a monolithic and censored historical narrative.[1] Over 32 years, between the departure of Dutch colonial power in 1950 and the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998, monolithic censorship over historical narrative was enforced by the state. This included tight control of school curricula, including the compulsory viewing in cinemas of officially sanctioned movies; the banning of publication of a large number of books including historical primary resources; and the creation of new national public holidays for key events in the official national history such as Pancasila Day on 1 October, the day Suharto seized power in 1965.
The writing of official histories during this period not only included the events relating to the overthrow of President Sukarno and the installation of Suharto, but covered almost all of the 20th century up until then, both generally ideologising the political history of the anti-colonial struggle as well as demonising the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI).[2]
After 1998, when Suharto was forced to step down and democratic space opened up, there has been less state capacity to enforce the monolithic Suharto-era official history. Suharto suffered a collapse in political stature, while at the same time, greater space was won for open political competition and greater freedom of speech. However, the Suharto-era version of the birth of the New Order – that Suharto moved to save Indonesia from a Communist coup – has remained in all formal presentations of history, including school curricula. The PKI's and Marxist-Leninist ideology remain banned. At the same time, there has been a proliferation of books and Indonesian-language material on the Internet, with alternative versions and primary source materials.[3]
New history textbooks have needed to provide a narrative for the fall of Suharto. This has usually been dealt with by a brief reference to negative developments, including human rights violations and corruption, in Suharto's final years with no other revision to the official history.[4] Outside of official government versions, statutory, academic, and civil society institutions have published much material documenting the violence, including arrests and disappearances, provocation of violence, including the raping of many Chinese Indonesian women, other anti-Chinese violence and other human rights violations carried out in attempts to prevent the fall of Suharto. While statutory bodies such as the Human Rights Commission (KOMNASHAM) and the KOMNAS PEREMPUAN (National Commission on Violence Against Women) released reports on what happened in 1998, as well as on other similar events during the 1965-1998 period, almost none of these were introduced into the narratives used by the state or the political elites.
From 1965 until 2025, an official version of national history has virtually monopolised discussion of history. The strength of this monopoly has been under attack since 1998 as KOMNAS HAM and KOMNAS PEREMPUAN have produced more material about events in 1998, and the Internet effectively ended censorship. While it is unlikely that broader masses of the population will access this material, it is widely accessed by civil society and on campuses. Two versions of the end of the Suharto era are alive in Indonesian society: the first is that a popular movement forced an end to authoritarian rule in the face of the deployment of violence, including racial and gender violence, aimed at safeguarding Suharto's rule. The second version leaves any narrative about the end of Suharto's rule as vague, and emphasises the New Order's stability and success. There is, of course, a spectrum of other narratives between these two poles, but the two poles have been defining ones.
Between 1999 and 2019, successive governments of Indonesia were all led by people not associated with the New Order or who were seen as reformers during the New Order. President Abdurrahman Wahid (r. 1999-2001) and Megawati Sukarnoputri (r. 2001-2004) had been opposition figures. Former two-term president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, while a Suharto-era general, was considered a reformer initially close to presidents Wahid and Sukarnoputri. Yudhoyono was the president who oversaw the introduction of a new system of direct elections for province and district heads. His successor Joko Widodo's initial image, which led him to the presidency, was as a figure unconnected to the New Order establishment, although this was later revealed to be untrue.[5] All these governments' images benefited from the ambiguous narrative regarding the ending of the New Order. They portrayed themselves as reformasi (reform) governments but took no actions against the Suharto-era elite and in fact built alliances with them and integrated them into their government.
This ambiguity was immediately challenged with the election of former Suharto-era general Prabowo Subianto as president. President Prabowo was both a senior general during the Suharto era and Suharto's son-in-law, and was also seen among all pre-reformasi political forces as a military figure who was willing to resort to violence – including the alleged kidnapping, torture, and disappearance of activists – to keep Suharto in power. Among pro-reformasi forces, Prabowo was associated with allegations of provoking racially motivated riots in 1998 as a means of discrediting anti-Suharto forces.[6] As soon as he was elected in February 2024, the contradiction between old and new, even if ambiguous, historical narratives was sure to come to the fore.
2025: It started with literature
2025 is the centenary of the birth of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesia's internationally most recognised writer. Pramoedya was aligned with the pro-Sukarno Left before 1965 and was a columnist for the Indonesia Party (Partindo)-affiliated newspaper, Bintang Timur (Star of the East). He was also connected to the People's Cultural Institute (Lekra), whose central leaders were members of the PKI. Pramoedya was arrested in 1965 and imprisoned without trial until 1979. Soon after his release, his then new novels, written in prison, starting with Bumi Manusia (This Earth of Mankind) were published and then banned soon after each publication. However, they became best-selling serious literature and elevated Pramoedya to the status of literary icon and stubborn critic of the Suharto government.
It was to be predicted that the present Prabowo government would not support any commemoration of Pramoedya's centenary and that any commemoration would come from the pro-Reformasi civil society sector. Not only was Pramoedya associated with the pre-'65 Left, Prabowo's Minister of Culture, Fadli Zon, was a long-term opponent of Pramoedya. In 2006, then-member of parliament Zon had asked the Attorney-General to stop the re-publishing of Pramoedya's books, which had started almost immediately after Suharto's resignation in 1998.[7] Zon claimed that the books contained Communist teachings. In 2024, after the death of the prominent Indonesian poet Taufiq Ismail, probably the literary figure most hostile to Pramoedya, Minister Zon named him the Father of Indonesian Literature.
There was clearly a possibility of a contradiction becoming manifest in 2025.
As it turned out, this contradiction did not manifest in opposing polemics. Pramoedya's daughter approached Zon to speak at a commemorative festival in Pramoedya's hometown, Blora, Central Java, in February 2025. The minister agreed; his speech at the Festival was very positive about Pramoedya's works, in stark contrast to his statements in earlier years.[8] Rather, the contradiction was manifested more simply in the absence of any initiatives by the government to commemorate Pramoedya. The most politically and culturally significant aspects of the commemorations throughout 2025, especially in February and March, were numerous and all generated from within the literary, academic, and activist communities, with no real support from government institutions. There have been literally scores of events in towns, large and small, organised by book clubs, literature appreciation circles, bookshops, university lecturers, and even trade unions and student activist organisations, all done with no government support.[9]
Minister Zon's positive speech at the Festival Opening at Blora was no doubt calculated given the level of support for Pramoedya's works. The prestigious Indonesian publishing house, Gramedia, had already announced it would publish a centenary edition of the "Buru Quartet" – the four books that started with Bumi Manusia. The newly formed Pramoedya Ananta Toer Foundation[x] had announced in January that there would be a year-long series of events to commemorate the centenary. The contradiction was manifested in the significant community response on the one hand, and, apart from the one speech by Minister Zon, the absence of material support or programmes by the government or any elite connected institutions, on the other.
The revised official history controversy
During this same period, the contradiction between historical narratives emerged more sharply around another issue, namely, Minister Zon's project for a revised 11-volume history of Indonesia, starting from the first appearance of humans in the region until the election of President Prabowo.[11] It involves over 100 historians overseeing the project, funded by the Ministry. This version of history is currently scheduled for publication in November 2025. While it will be interesting to see how the volumes deal with subjects that have become controversial, such as the rapes of Chinese women in 1998 and the role of the state in the 1965 killings, it is the months-long controversy that reveals the most about Indonesia's ideological life as it relates to history.
The polemics had two primary foci. First was opposition to the idea of having an officially sponsored history. Such an orientation brought back memories of the tightly enforced single history narrative of the Suharto era. Second, there were strong objections to statements made by Minister Zon on the events connected to the fall of Suharto and attempts to keep him in power, including the provocation of riots, the rapes of Chinese Indonesian women, and the kidnapping and shooting of protesting students. The focus of the controversy has been on how the new history will deal with the 1965-2025 period, where the two contradictory historical narratives clash.
In particular, the minister stated that there had been no mass rapes of Chinese women and that there would be no reference to that in the section dealing with the fall of Suharto.[12] This provoked a strong backlash from women's organisations, human rights groups and historians.[13] Members of parliament also moved to query this statement.[14] During the early months of 2025, the Alliance for the Openness of Indonesian History (AKSI), active since 2016 as a coalition of human rights activists, historians and history teachers, responded to the minister's plans. Its lead spokesperson was Marzuki Darusman, a former attorney-general of Suharto who later turned to human rights activity, with other key people being academic historian Andi Achdian, Ratna Saptari from the History Teachers Association, and Ita Fatah Nadia, a well-known independent historical researcher. In May, they attended a hearing with the parliamentary commission dealing with education, and presented a statement rejecting the project as "authoritarian" and a tool for "regime whitewashing".[15]
AKSI continued to release statements through until August 2025, warning of the dangers of monolithic history.[16] In July, it had joined the broad backlash against Zon's statements on the 1998 mass rapes, sharply criticising his reference to them as merely rumours, when a fact-finding report had been presented to then president BJ Habibie by KOMNASHAM.[17] On 15 August 2025, AKSI issued a statement on Indonesia's 80th Independence Day, warning of "national decline" through eroded human dignity, rule of law, and equality, exacerbated by historical manipulation. Other civil society organisations made similar criticisms.[18]
While Zon's remarks that the rapes of Chinese Indonesian women were merely rumours provoked the sharpest public criticism, there were other criticisms of the draft outline that had been circulated from January. These included the criticism of a reference to the events of 30 September 1965 where they were still referred to as "G30S/PKI" (G30S meaning Gerakan 30 September), that is, reaffirming that the kidnappings of Army generals that evening were carried out by the Indonesian Communist Party, despite many academic historians' critiques who argued that it was carried out by sections of the Army.[19] There remains a silence over the mass murders of leftists in 1965. Other serious human rights violations, such as the extra-judicial killings of petty criminals in the 1980s, torture and massacres in Aceh in 1980s and in 1999, the violent attack on the headquarters of the then Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) in 1996 and others are also not mentioned in the draft.[20]
AKSI's and other historians' criticism of the concept of an official history was also articulated by Bonnie Triyana, a member of parliament from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), PDI's successor party. Triyana is the founding publisher of Indonesia's first popular history magazine, Historia.[21] Reflecting clearly on the situation that existed during the 32-year Suharto period, Triyana raised the spectre that labelling one version of history as 'official' creates the potential for other versions to be deemed illegal.
Initially scheduled for release in August on the country's 80th Independence Day, the publication was at first postponed until October and is now scheduled to be released on 10 November. [22] [23] [24] The Ministry has carried out 'public examinations' of the draft in Universitas Indonesia, Universitas Negeri Padang, Universitas Lambung Mangkurat, and Universitas Negeri Makassar, and plans more. However, there have been no public statements from the Ministry clarifying what, if any, concessions may end up being made to the critics. Since June, though, Zon has stated that any new publication should not be labelled "official". This is probably the main concession, although it is more a concession to reality than to the critics. Without a return to the strict authoritarian rule of the Suharto era, there is no mechanism to enforce a single version of history in Indonesia. While official textbooks in schools may retain the government's version, students and teachers can access books and articles with alternative histories with great ease, especially online.
The contradiction in historical outlook was reflected in another polemic, though minor in terms of national discourse, namely, over the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the 1955 Asia-Africa "Bandung Conference", hosted by then President Sukarno, commemorated in many countries in the Global South this year. The Indonesian government has organised no commemoration. Even the mainstream, if liberal, Jakarta Post editorial board took the government to task for ignoring the anniversary and not using it to relaunch Indonesia's profile as a Global South leader.[25] As a project of President Sukarno which rejected any alignment with the former Western colonial powers, an official commemoration would have stood in contradiction to the current government's affirmation of continuity with the New Order, which was a rupture with the Sukarno era, referred to as the Old Order.[26]
Continuity or discontinuity with the Suharto era?
Both the developments relating to Pramoedya's centenary and the Minister Zon's national history project connect to the political status of the dominant history narrative as it relates to the rise and fall of Suharto's New Order. After 1998, with the emergence of the term Reformasi, the emphasis was on discontinuity as regards ending authoritarianism. Multi-party elections without state control, a freer media, and the withdrawal of the military from political life were the key features of this change. In the ideology of history, 'reformasi' affirmed a rejection of authoritarianism and the implication that the New Order was authoritarian and corrupt. However, the historical narrative of the New Order arising out of saving Indonesia from communism and the denial of the military's role in the mass killings remain in place. Decrees and legislation banning Marxism also remain in place.
On the one hand, the emergence of Pramoedya as a popular and respected writer threatens that narrative, as he represents, within this narrative, the PKI and communism. Minister Zon's history project – by proposing to retain the origin story of the New Order and blurring the violent circumstances of the attempts to prevent Suharto's downfall – is an attempt to strengthen the old narrative. Most crudely symbolic of the attempts to strengthen the present administration's sense of continuity with the Suharto era are the nominations of Suharto as an official National Hero (Pahlawan Nasional). In March 2025, the Ministry of Social Affairs announced that they had received 10 nominations, including that of Suharto.[27] Suharto's name has been on the nomination list since 2010, but was resubmitted by the regional government of Central Java, although the governor denied it was he who authorised it.[28] In May, social affairs minister Saifullah stated that previous obstacles to Suharto being named a National Hero had been overcome and that the government may name him a National Hero on Heroes Day, which falls on 10 November (and is also the day that the new History of Indonesia is scheduled to be launched).
This issue sees Indonesia similarly politically divided, as on the Pramoedya and history questions. Politicians from the Golkar party – still associated with Suharto – strongly support the nomination, stating that Suharto's banning of the PKI should be a basis for such a nomination.[29] Of course, Prabowo's Gerindra's party are supportive. One of Suharto's daughters, Titiek Suharto, the president's ex-wife, is deputy chairperson of Gerindra's Advisory Council[30] and naturally supports the nomination of her father.[31] The PDI-P, headed by former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, whose own father was deposed and arrested by Suharto, is not enthusiastic about the nomination, calling for it to be re-examined.[32] Civil society and human rights organisations are diametrically opposed to the nomination.[33]
The outcome of Suharto's nomination and the final content of the History of Indonesia will not be known until 10 November. Whether Pramoedya's works, recognised throughout the world and even praised by Minister Zon once, will be taught in Indonesian schools any time soon is not known either.
What has been underlined as a key element in Indonesian ideological life is the central place of history and the question of affirming whether the trajectory into the future will deepen any rupture with the New Order's authoritarianism or restore stronger continuity. Events on 10 November will not decide this; what comes after the date will, as the differences cannot be simply decreed away.
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document: https://www.iseas.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/ISEAS_Perspective_2025_86.pdf
[Max Lane is Visiting Senior Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. He is the author of "An Introduction to the Politics of the Indonesian Union Movement" (ISEAS 2019) and the editor of "Continuity and Change after Indonesia's Reforms: Contributions to an Ongoing Assessment" (ISEAS 2019). His newest book is "Indonesia Out of Exile: How Pramoedya's Buru Quartet Killed a Dictatorship", (Penguin Random House, 2023).]