Claiming history: military representations of the Indonesian past in museums, monuments and other sources of official history from late guided democracy to the new order

Deposited with permission of the author. © 2002 Katharine Elizabeth McGregor.General A. H. Nasution established the Armed Forces History Centre in 1964 for the purpose of countering a communist history of the 1945-49 revolution. After the coup attempt of 1965 and the ensuing military takeover of government the History Centre assumed a far more assertive and prominent role in history making. The fact that Nugroho Notosusanto, as Head of the Centre, took over the planning of Sukarno's half-completed National Monument History Museum project in 1969 provides evidence of the extent to which national history making became military business in the early New Order period. The study considers how history was represented in the projects of the Centre from its inception in 1964 to its last museum project in 1993. It traces how the military used history from the early years of the New Order to legitimize the overthrow of the Sukarno regime, to justify the killing of perhaps 500,000 alleged communists, to strengthen military unity and to legitimize the military's political role and the suppression of regime dissent. Where possible this study compares military representations of the Indonesian past with earlier representations of the past, especially Sukarnoist interpretations of the past made in the leftist Guided Democracy period. In doing so the thesis examines how the national myth and related constructions of national identity were transformed by the military-dominated New Order regime. In the wake of the 1965 coup the Centre worked quickly to complete an official history of the coup as a communist plot. It then prioritized projects designed to cement military unity. In 1972 the army sponsored a seminar on how the '1945 values' could be transferred to the younger generations. This resulted in a wide range of history projects emphasizing the military's role in the revolution. In the early years of the New Order regime Nugroho Notosusanto, a trained historian with a thwarted career as a soldier, was the driving force behind the Centre. In the latter years of the regime, as the 1945 Generation retired from the military, the History Centre focused on different themes including the historical threats of the extreme right (extreme Islam) and the extreme left (communism). Whereas emphasis on the threat of extreme Islam was particularly promoted by Benny Murdani in the mid 1980s and thereafter largely abandoned, the threat of communism remained a cornerstone of the regime from its inception to its end. This is evidenced by the elaborate and continuing memorialisation of the site at which the bodies of the army victims of the 1965 coup were dumped and continuing annual commemoration held at this site. The thesis also encompasses analysis of the museum as a site of visual historical representation in Indonesia. It examines Indonesian perceptions of the functions of museums and the military concept of the museum as a medium through which to transfer values to young Indonesians. In doing so the study aims to promote critical thinking on the functions which history museums should serve in the future