The government has named four National Heroes. We need to find a new definition of heroic values to fit the challenges of the times.
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Kompas/Bahana Patria Gupta
Students visit the 10 November Museum at the Heroes Monument complex in Surabaya on Thursday (9/11). In the week leading up to Heroes Day, the museum has seen its visitor numbers increase drastically, the majority of them students keen to learn about the struggle of their fellow Surabayans during the Battle of Nov. 10, 1945, known today as Heroes Day.
The government has named four individuals as National Heroes. Amid our appreciation for the contributions of our national heroes, we need to find a new definition of heroic values to fit the challenges of the times.
The day before the commemoration of Heroes Day on Thursday (9/11), President Joko Widodo bestowed the title of National Hero on four historical figures at the State Palace in Jakarta. With this addition, Indonesia now has 173 national heroes.
Three of the four new national heroes are from outside Java: Adm. Malahayati (Keumalahayati) of Aceh, Sultan Mahmud Riayat Syah of the Riau Islands and TGKH M Zainuddin Abdul Madjid of West Nusa Tenggara. The fourth is from Java, Yogyakarta to be precise, Lafran Pane.
There are many considerations for their selection as National Heroes under Presidential Decree No. 115/TK/2017. Social Affairs Minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa says a figure is named a National Hero because they had committed acts of heroism during his or her lifetime and had contributed to national and state interests.
Adm. Malahayati, for example, was a female admiral from Aceh who led a naval fleet against Dutch forces in 1559. She was the first female admiral to establish Inong Balee troops that consisted entirely of the widows of Acehnese soldiers. Under her leadership, the Inong Balee killed Cornelis de Houtman, the Dutch explorer who discovered the European route to Indonesia in search of spices.
Like Malahayati, Sultan Mahmud Riayat Syah also fought against the Dutch. He successfully sank the Dutch ship Malaka’s Walvaren and won the 1784 war.
Meanwhile, TGKH Zainuddin Abdul Madjid was an ulema who established the Nahdlatul Wathan, the largest Islamic mass organization in West Nusa Tenggara. His educational background in Mecca did not affect his sense of nationalism. He joined the fight against the colonial regime and helped Indonesia win independence in 1945.
Lafran Pane was a leading figure of a youth organization. He initiated the establishment of the Islamic Students Association (HMI) two years after independence on Feb. 5, 1947. Although it was an Islamic students movement, Lafran and the HMI strongly opposed Maridjan Kartosuwiryo’s Islamic State idea. During the early days of independence, he worked hard to defend the Pancasila ideology from those groups who were trying to change it.
Our heroes are not restricted to those who had fought for the nation’s independence in the past. Those who fought to resolve national problems can also be named heroes. It is important to champion the values that give rise to new heroes to lift the nation’s condition.
Contemporary context
Gadjah Mada University sociologist Arie Sujito said in mentioning “heroes”, most people would assume that the term referred to those who had fought for independence.
Heroes are more than this. There are new heroes in the contemporary era who work quietly without being widely known. They are those who fight to solve national problems in various sectors, even though the fight occurs in limited space and time.
For example, Arie said, when a particular area faced ecological threats, a local individual emerged to rehabilitate the environment. Similarly, when corruption grew uncontrollably, there were people who fought to promote anti-corruption values in society.
The tales of these new heroes who work in the pursuit of human values, said Arie, must be communicated to the public. Their stories could inspire people in their areas to do the same thing. If this happened, national problems such as poverty, social inequality and corruption could be overcome.
Historian Anhar Gonggong said youths and other people of the current era could not be considered heroes, even though they had contributed to civil society and the state.
He said it was difficult now to find a national hero who possessed honesty, courage and sincerity. For example, he said Sukarno and Hatta were respectively an engineer and an economist who lived during colonial times. “As intellectuals, they could have worked with the colonial regime. But they did not do that. Instead, they fought against colonial rule, risking imprisonment. Can we find figures like them today?” Anhar asked.
Beyond debate, communicating a meaning and value of heroism that fits contemporary challenges and is understandable to the young generation is work that remains for Indonesia as a nation. New meaning is needed to keep the idea of nationhood alive among the younger generation who will shape Indonesia’s future.
