Jonathan Tehusijarana – The Prabowo Subianto government's plan to make wholesale changes to Indonesia's national historiography feels like it was inevitable. This is an administration that has shown itself willing to play fast and loose with history, using it as a tool for political gain.
The idea of rewriting Indonesian history was initially floated by Culture Minister Fadli Zon in December 2024 as an "Indonesia-centric" update to existing history books. It was only in recent weeks, however, that the full extent of the project has been revealed. And judging by the apparent motives behind the project and how it is being carried out, there are real grounds for concern.
'New' national history with same old flaws?
The project is essentially a revival of the old format of the Sejarah Nasional Indonesia (SNI, Indonesian National History). Developed under the New Order regime, the SNI was an effort to shape a hegemonic narrative of Indonesian history.
While SNI was written by an assortment of scholars and historians from across Indonesian academia, it was controversial. Of note was the resignation of several leading historians due to the perceived heavy handedness of Nugroho Notosusanto, the project lead. Nugroho himself was well-known as the unofficial 'official' historian of the New Order, due to his affiliation with the Indonesian Armed Forces History Centre.
Likewise, criticism of the new project has proliferated among academics, both within and outside the project. Archaeologist Harry Truman Simanjuntak, previously an editor of the project's first volume, focusing on pre- and early history, has resigned due to disagreements over the project's treatment of pre-history. Scholars grouped under the Alliance for Indonesian Historical Openness (AKSI), meanwhile, have voiced the concerns of many in academia that the project represents an attempt to emulate the positioning of SNI as the sole possessor of historical truth.
In fact, it is easy to find parallels between the SNI and Prabowo's national history project. For example, the latter was initially presented as an 'official' state history, just like the SNI, though this statement has since been retracted by the editorial team.
Likewise, early briefs of the new project circulated online have been widely criticised for being selective in their presentation of the Indonesian past – another glaring flaw it shares with the SNI. The project, for example, shuns many notable historic gross human rights violations. In its initial brief, the anti-communist genocide of 1965-1967 (which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths) is presented simply as a "resolution" of the 30 September Movement.
Heroes and villains: the politics of history
But perhaps the most problematic aspect of the new history project is the extent to which politics plays a role in it. Indonesian national historiography has always been political, but the Prabowo government has politicised history to an extent not seen since the New Order.
The project's vague aim of presenting Indonesian history in a "positive tone" displays a blatant disregard for critical historiography, and can be seen as a way of ensuring the project presents a version of history favoured by the state.
The deadline for completion of 17 August 2025 is also an unrealistic one for a research project of this size. The decision that the project cover events as far as the Jokowi presidency and the building of the new capital of "Nusantara" also raises further concerns about bias and accuracy in its treatment of so recent a period as capital-H "History."
The Prabowo government's approach to national heroes is indicative of its approach of trying to use history for its own political gain. A good example is its disrespectful decision to postpone the announcement of new national heroes on Heroes Day (10 November) last year, without explaining why.
Although the Minister of Social Affairs said that the president would make the announcement following his return from a whirlwind overseas tour, this failed to materialise, despite finalisation of the 2024 national heroes shortlist.
And then there is the reemergence of controversial proposals to nominate former president Soeharto as a national hero. While this has been consistently raised and dismissed since his death in 2008, it gained a new impetus this year when Central Java, Soeharto's home province, officially selected him as their nominee for this year's announcements.
Prabowo had also made a promise to trade unions this May Day that Marsinah would become a national hero. Marsinah, a woman labour activist who was kidnapped and killed for her activism under the New Order regime, allegedly by members of the TNI, has long been seen as a martyr by the Indonesian labour movement.
The promise of Marsinah's appointment sits uncomfortably alongside the growing controversy over the nomination of Soeharto this year. It has raised questions about a kind of quid-pro-quo situation: is Marsinah's selection as national hero, probably in 2026, a way to ensure trade union support for Soeharto's potential appointment in 2025?
The bleak future of the Indonesian past
So far, no draft chapters of the new history project have been made publicly available, and the closed nature of its formulation has rightly sounded alarm bells. There appear to have been very few attempts to open the project up to public scholarly debate, apart from the token grilling the editorial team received at the hands of the DPR, the national legislature. The absence of a truly public and democratic discussion about the direction of the project makes it more likely it will become a repeat of the SNI.
This, once again, should not come as a great surprise. The past few months of the Prabowo presidency have shown that it is prone to policies reminiscent to that of the New Order. Dissenting voices have increasingly been intimidated and silenced, and the military's return to the centre of power has gone beyond mere symbolism with the appointment of active military personnel to senior government positions.
The new history project echoes this reversion to the New Order. The New Order was a characterised by the dominance of Soeharto at the head of a hierarchical regime based on patron-client relationships. The new project's lack of public consultation suggests it will produce top-down history in the mould of the SNI.
Considering the importance of history and national heroism to Indonesia's civic life, a reproduction of the SNI will herald to a return of New Order civic values, prioritising hierarchy, discipline, and a distinct lack of democracy.
National history from below
If the new project wants to present a national history that is both accurate and unifying, it must depart from traditional Rankean approaches to history. Writing in 19th century Prussia, Leopold von Ranke set the standard for "empirical" history by emphasising the importance of primary sources, in particular official archives, for an accurate record of the past.
This approach ultimately privileged an elite, "great man" retelling of the past, as archival sources were the realm of the elite. To shape a more holistic and representative 'history from below, any new national history must also include previously marginalised sources. It must tell stories that have been sidelined by previous regimes, looking, for example, to women's history, the history of Indonesia's adat (traditional customary) communities, labour history, and even the perspectives and memoirs of former political prisoners,.
Recent studies in Indonesian history, most notably a new project on the Indonesian war of independence led by Dutch and Indonesian scholars, have sought to include not just Western and Indonesian voices, but also the experiences of marginalised groups like Chinese and Indian Indonesians. "Indonesia-centrism" must make an effort to include all Indonesians in the national narrative, rather than just an elite few.
A failure by the new history project to include these voices, which is what looks like happening, will make the project just another space for the state to create a 'civic religion' that privileges its own political interests at the cost of a holistic and meaningful retelling of the nation's complex past.