Indonesia Etc- book review

For such a diverse, fascinating and lofty country, Indonesia is somewhat obscure. Completely made up of islands, and thus the world’s largest archipelago nation, Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim nation and fourth most populous, and it is Southeast Asia’s largest economy. But other than Bali (and maybe the Komodo dragon), is there anything famous about it? Elisabeth Pisani decided to do something about this pitiful situation by setting out to travel across the length and width of the nation. The result was Indonesia Etc- Exploring the Improbable Nation, part travelogue, part history and political primer.

As a former journalist and epidemiologist who had lived and worked in Indonesia for many years and spoke the language, Pisani certainly had the knowledge and experience to pull this off. But more importantly, she had the traveler’s knack of always being curious, never shunning an adventure, and being able to befriend strangers, even stay with them for months as she did with a family in a headhunting tribe.

Eschewing the main island of Java, where the capital Jakarta is located and home to two-thirds of Indonesians, at least until the end, Pisani travels from giant Sumatra to tiny islands in the Maluku chain. She also takes on Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo (Malaysia and Brunei occupy the rest).

However, what makes the book really compelling is that Pisani goes beyond just travel, but gives insights into Indonesian aspects and quirks, such as the prevalence of local corruption. It is common to portray third-world countries as naturally beset by corruption with family and ethnic ties playing a huge role. But, Pisani explains that for Indonesia, factors like government decentralization and democracy exacerbate corruption.

There is also some good commentary about Indonesia’s recent history, from colonialism under the Dutch to its independence in 1945 to the present. We also learn about the country’s first two leaders, Sukarno and Suharto, and the complications with forming a nation made up of hundreds of peoples, languages, and cultures spread amongst thousands of islands.

Pisani also does not shy away from the hard issues like the mass killings of hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Communists by the army and militias under the guise of crushing an attempted coup in the late 1960s, as well as the conflict in East Timor, which eventually separated and became independent, and Aceh, where fundamentalist Islam is strong.

For the latter, which some call “Veranda of Mecca,” a strong separatist movement has given way, after the 2004 tsunami, to collaboration with the central government but with more autonomy to run their own affairs, which notoriously includes sharia law. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, a pair of gay men were publicly caned after being caught engaging in sex. And also recently, the former mayor of Jakarta, a Chinese Christian, was found guilty of blasphemy for criticizing a passage in the Koran. He had also lost the election in May to an Islamist rival.

The book was published in 2014 and had been on my reading list for some time. It still holds up even if some of the political and social problems described like Islamic fundamentalism and the decreasing tolerance towards minorities may be even worse now. But nevertheless, this strengthens Pisani’s assertion that Indonesia is still a country that deserves more attention from the world.

Visit the book’s website where she still writes about Indonesia.