Answered May 7
Despite linguistic links, Indonesia and Malaysia are completely incompatible.
Firstly, Malaysia is somehow most Western yet more Islamic.
Despite low level and allegedly high level corruption, Malaysian institutions do not run on graft like they do in Thailand or Indonesia. I know a lot of Malaysian’s will think this untrue but I assure you that there are differing levels of corruption in the world and Malaysia is at the lower end of the spectrum. Indonesian society at large did not adopt as much of it’s colonizers ‘DNA’ as Malaysia did from the British. Once you get outside of the large cities and provincial posts, Indonesian life is some of the most ‘traditional’ in the world. Malaysia has all but lost this. With exception to some pockets, Malaysia is also far more religious than Indonesia with faith occupying a very large part of every day life for Malays. For most Indonesians it is a more casual faith. The headscarf is far less common and it’s not illegal for Muslims to drink.
The second is the Bumiputra question.
Malaysia and Indonesia had very different paths to their own nationalism. Indonesia rose under a trans-Ethnic form. Many Indonesian heroes were Balinese or Betawi as well as Sundanese and Javanese. They seem themselves as co-inhabitants largely and defnitely differentiate themselves from the Chinese and other non-Indonesian minorities. Malay nationalism rose under putting all of those of a similar ethnicity in peninsular Malaysia under the ‘Orang Melayu’ flag. Peninsular Malaysia never had the same diversity or density as Indonesia so integrating all people under one banner was ppossibly more practical. So, if Malaysia and Indonesia united they would either have to drastically redefine Bumiputera criteria or eliminate Lit all together.
Thirdly, economics. Indonesia is vastly undeveloped and much poorer than Malaysia.
What incentive would Malaysia get from creating a union? Considering that both countries have stagnated recently in comparison to the rest of SE Asia, Malaysia would be crazy to consider this.
Lastly, politics.
Malaysia is a Monarchy and Indonesia is a proud Republic. Once again, Malaysia does not have the incentive to join with Indonesia but would it be ready to drop it’s sultanate? Because Indonesia would definitely not adopt monarchism.
So, despite cultural links there are some major theological, racial and political differences between the two that could not be reconciled. But the largest barrier would be the fact that Malaysia would gain very little and Indonesia’s vast population would swallow Malaysia with little thought.
An Indo-Malay trade union would work very well though. Between the two countries they could very easily create cartels (and thus higher prices) on certain exports which they dominate like Palm Oil.
Comment
I agree that you definitely see a stark contrast between modern urban life to very traditional rural in here. But Dutch colonial influence certainly do affect the things that you consider tradional here. Particularly in Java which was the heart of the colony. The fact that Indonesia's population didnt get overwhelmed by foreign culture probably helps that image. Cities in NEI have large proportion of Chinese and Europeans, with European usually consisting 10% of the major city and Chinese 25–40%. The Europeans are mostly mixed and adopted Indo lifestyle. Natives lived in kampungs at the outskirt of the cities. They also mingle with each other more in comparison to Malaya (mostly due to difference in racial policy and the tendency of British to exclude themself from the inferior Asians and its culture), so the colonial port culture is more complicated in comparison to Malaya's mainly Westernized Chinese (Banana) ports.
Also it helps that the later Dutch dont really categorize their population based on religion and extreme segregation policy, which was only common during the VoC period (and doesnt root too much in the society of colonial Batavia). Because the current Malaysian government have the British to thanks for their bumiputra stuff and religious policy to “protect” the Malays. That became the source of their nationalism, while the Chinese and Indians who include Singapore have taken over their number. And that cant work in Indonesian society which have developed its own ideologies from its own experience. It mostly have to unite the archipelago which mostly have little in common apart from being opressed by the Dutch. While its population are classed in accordance to their background, they were never actually excluded from each other. People of various religion and ethnicities lived next to each other (even in back then riche-noveau European Menteng/Darmo district) and many goes to the same school or hospitals. Dictators such as sukarno and suharto have to be mostly secular, in order to keep sensitive ethnic and religious issues from becoming too big. Jakarta even have Christian governor under Suharto.
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