THE MAKING OF A PANCASILA STATE:POLITICAL DEBATES ON SECULARISM, ISLAM AND THE STATE IN INDONESIA
Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, Yogyakarta 
Writing in the early 1970s, B.J. Boland said: “As a ‘Pancasila State with a Ministry of 
Religion’, Indonesia chose a middle way between ‘the way of Turkey’ and the founding of 
an ‘Islamic State’. A ‘secular State’ would perhaps not suit the Indonesian situation; an 
‘Islamic State,’ as attempted elsewhere, would indeed tend ‘to create rather that to solve 
problems.’ For this reason, the Indonesian experiment deserves positive evaluation.” 
(Boland 1982 [1971]: 112) Studying Islam in modern Indonesia, Boland concluded that 
both the secular state and the “way of Turkey” and Islamic states are not suitable for 
Indonesia. He viewed the Indonesian concept of a “Pancasila State with a Ministry of 
Religion” proposed by the founding fathers of Indonesia as a solution to this problem. He 
also suggested that Indonesian experience is a model that deserves consideration and 
positive evaluation. As a Western scholar, I suppose, he idealized secular states, yet he did 
not view these as the best model for Indonesia. Boland knew how secularism and Islam 
have long been debated in the country with no concrete result except for the middle way, or 
the third model, of neither a secular nor Islamic state. This is referred to as a Pancasila State, 
in which religion is administered and managed by a special Ministry of Religious Affairs Debates on secularism and secularization in Indonesia, as elsewhere, are modern 
phenomena.2 In the West, they came after the Enlightenment, and in the Muslim world, 
they came along with the wave of colonization.3 In most Muslim countries, debates on 
Islam and secularism end with the victory of one over the other, either with the victory of 
Islam, such as in Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia; or the victory of secularism, 
such as in Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia. In Indonesia, the debates led to the formulation of a 
compromising ideology, as most Indonesians believe it to be, called “Pancasila” (lit., five 
pillars). Most mainstream Indonesian Muslims do not consider Pancasila as “secular,” 
simply because it contains the pillar of “Belief in One Almighty God,” and because the 
other four pillars are not in contradiction with Islam. As a compromising, synthetic ideology, Pancasila has been officially described as “neither a secular nor a religious 
ideology” and it has been claimed that Indonesia is “neither a secular nor a religious state.” 
However, as a matter of fact, there has been a process of both secularization and 
religionization (especially Islamization) in the name of Pancasila, depending on the forces 
of secularization and religionization forces in parliament, government and society. 
State formation and ideological struggles are important aspects of history that 
should be taken into account when understanding secularism(s) in both Western and non- 
Western societies (Esposito 2009; Kuru 2007). While in many parts of the Muslim world, 
Muslim independence movements were dominant, in Indonesia Muslim and secular 
nationalist movements equally contributed to the struggle for independence. The slogan of 
jihad and nationalism were aired side by side, and in some cases even fused to each other. 
The secular nationalist leaders, Western-educated members of the elite like Soekarno and 
Mohammad Hatta, were even considered to be unifying leaders, or to use Feith’s (1962) 
term, “solidarity makers,” who attracted both nationalist and Islamic groups. There was an 
association between secularism and nationalist groups, the members of which were mostly 
Muslims, as the latter idealised a non-religious, secular nation-state, while there was antinationalist 
rhetoric voiced by certain conservative Muslim leaders and organizations both 
before and after independence.4 However, most of the founding fathers representing 
Muslim groups in the sessions before and soon after independence on 17 August 1945 
supported nationalism. Indeed, most post-colonial Muslim countries have been governed 
according to the Western secular paradigm (Esposito 2009), but do not conduct official 
political debates on religion and state, although intellectual debates do sometimes occur. 
This was the case in Egypt, Turkey (Gole 1996; Navaro-Yashin 2002; Kuru 2009), 
Tunisia (Moore 1965), and several other secular Muslim countries. Indonesia is one of the 
rare cases in which the state encouraged official political debates on the relations of religion 
and state between different parties many times—and not just once at the beginning Official political debates were an important medium through which secular and Islamic 
parties articulated and communicated their ideological views. 
The present article shall deal with the political debates about secularism, Islam and 
Pancasila in Indonesian history. I use the term “political society discourse” to refer political 
debates, polemics and controversies that involves political societies, as opposed to civil 
societies. I use the term “political society” here to refer to the realm in which competition 
for political power takes place. It includes political parties, legislatures, president, and 
elections as well as rules of political competition (Linz and Stepan 1996). I will argue that 
Pancasila—or Pancasila secularism—constitutes, as Abdurrahman Wahid (2001) has 
rightly put it, a “mild secularism,” in which relative (not absolute) separation between state 
and religion is maintained, but allows at the same time the former’s moderate 
administering of some of the latter’s public affairs, on the one hand, and the latter’s 
moderate values and norms to inspire the former, on the other hand.6 If secularism contains 
three basic theses (Casanova 1994: 3-6), viz., separation of state and religion, privatization 
of religion and differentiation between religious and non-religious spheres, they are not 
fully and strongly implemented, because there has always been some degree of 
religiousness present, and this could not easily be abandoned. As for the official political 
debates, they were mostly related to the separation thesis, rather than to privatization and 
differentiation, but there has also been an association of secularism (also in the sense of 
separation) with nationalist groups and of anti-secularism with Islamic groups.7 This study 
will contribute to the knowledge of how secularism has been indigenized creatively as part 
of Indonesian political culture. This study will also show that secularism and Islam could mix in their milder sense in order to endorse a more democratic form of politics for 
Muslim society. 
To explore this subject, I will focus on political debates during the end of the 
Japanese occupation period, in which the concept of Pancasila was first proposed, and soon 
after independence on 17 August 1945, in which the Jakarta Charter was dismissed and the 
Ministry of Religious Affairs was established; during the Constituent Assembly (between 
1956 and 1959), in which the basis of the state was debated again and the Presidential 
Decree was issued to return to Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution, with the Jakarta 
Charter as the foundation of the latter; during the New Order, especially in the 1968 and 
1983 MPRS sessions in which it was decided that Pancasila would be sole basis of the 
state, and the 2000 and 2002 MPR sessions in which Amendment of Article 29 on religion 
was debated. Without neglecting its importance, I will not discuss non-official debates 
during the Dutch colonial and post-colonial periods, except in passing, because they are 
beyond the scope of my study.
Pancasila as the Sole Foundation
The debate in Indonesian religious circles regarding "Pancasila as the azas tunggal [sole foundation or principle]" came to the fore in August 1982 when President Suharto stated that "all social-political forces, particularly the political parties, should accept the state ideology as their azas tunggal." He reassured religious organizations two months later, however, that they would continue to enjoy "rights and an honorable place in the Pancasila-based state," and that Pancasila was neither a religion nor a substitute for religion.
Research on health and oral health status of elderly living alone compared to elderly living with their families - based on the data (2014) from the 6th two-year Korea national health and nutrition examination survey -
Objectives: I examined the health and oral health status of elderly people living alone compared to elderly people living with their families by using data (2014) from the 6th Two-Year Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Methods: Among 1,454 health survey respondents aged 65 years and over who participated in the 6th Two-Year Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted in 2014, 311 were elderly people living alone and 1,143 were elderly people living with their families. Results: In terms of socio-demographic characteristics, the percentage of elderly people living alone was high especially in women and when the subjects’ age, education level, and income level were low. In terms of oral health status, the percentage of elderly people living alone was high when elderly people thought that their subjectively viewed health was poor and the frequency of drinking and exercise was low. In terms of oral health status, the percentage of elderly people living alone was high among elderly people who did not have good oral health in their subjective view and did not get oral examinations for a year and had a lot of difficulty chewing. Conclusions: Family support or additional social support for elderly people who live alone should be considered to promote the healthy lives of elderly people.