ABSTRACT
Ethnicity is nowhere but everywhere in Indonesia. It is nowhere because for seventy years between 1930 and 2000 no census measured Indonesia’s ethnic composition. The New Order government of President Suharto (1966-98) had few explicit policies on ethnic groups, though it had several veiled and indirect ones. With the widespread support of the media and intellectuals, it was keen to develop a modern, non-ethnic Indonesia and therefore avoided mentioning anything ‘ethnic’. The literature on ethnicity in Indonesia is surprisingly meagre and distorted as a result.
