While negotiating independence from Dutch colonial rule, Indonesian nationalists decided that a reformed version of Malay (renamed Bahasa Indonesia) would become the official language. Malay had evolved due to the need in maritime Southeast Asia for a lingua franca for trade and other exchanges. In this region, hundreds of languages were spoken across thousands of islands that now comprise the modern nations of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. As it was grammatically simple, non-hierarchical, and easier to learn than other regional languages, Malay became an accepted language of communication. Bahasa Indonesia aimed to bring more than 300 ethnic groups together with no one ethnic group, including the Javanese, overshadowing the rest. From the outset of its independence, Indonesia recognised the importance of avoiding the inequality that was likely to occur by imposing the language…
