Soldiers now teach Pancasila on campuses. Can students (really) debate them?

Photo from itb.ac.id

In another alarming and unsettling sign of increasing militarisation under Prabowo Subianto’s presidency, members of the Indonesian military (Tentara Nasional Indonesia, TNI) have been delivering lectures on the state ideology, Pancasila, on campuses across the country.

In other words, militarisation has now crept into university classrooms.

This raises concerns over whether the state is trying to impose a single and unifying interpretation of Pancasila, Indonesia’s idiosyncratic ideology, on students and academia.

Military speakers on campus

In Bandung, an army major general addressed a Pancasila class at the Bandung Institute of Technology in April 2026, and another gave at a Pancasila lecture on the same campus in September.

Padjadjaran University, where I teach, has a military speaker scheduled for a Pancasila lecture on 2 October 2026. Their appearances at these reputable universities present them as figures of authority om the study of Pancasila.

In eastern Indonesia, soldiers have spoken at student orientation sessions. In August, a regional military commander addressed new students at Hasanuddin University and Makassar State University. Another spoke about the same subject at Muhammadiyah University of Papua, where military members seem to have become the sole interpreters of Pancasila.

At the Ganesha University of Education in West Jakarta, a commander recently told new students in 2017 to practise Pancasila rather than debate it. This is greatly alarming. How can students decide what a principle requires if they cannot question its interpretation?

Yes, military influence in civilian institutions persisted after Soeharto’s fall. But asking active military members to lecture university students about the meaning of Pancasila is a new low for democratic Indonesia.

Is the TNI really the best role model for civic values for students?

Public vs military interpretation of Pancasila

The five principles of Pancasila appear in the preamble to the 1945 Constitution. They are: (1) belief in one God; (2) a just and civilised humanity; (3) national unity; (4) democracy led by the wisdom of deliberation amongst representatives; and (5) social justice for all Indonesian people. Article 2 of Law 12 of 2011 on the Formation of Laws and Regulations calls it ‘the source of all sources of state laws’; the law’s explanatory memorandum (penjelasan) calls it ‘the state’s philosophical foundation’.

Pancasila’s five principles therefore provide citizens with grounds to judge public power, including military power. Their application, therefore, is a matter for public argument. No one institution can claim its own interpretation as the only patriotic one. Take a military land dispute, for example. One side may invoke the principle, of ‘national unity’ to demand support for a state project, while residents may invoke ‘social justice’ to protect their homes.

Law 12 of 2012 on Higher Education requires Pancasila to be part of undergraduate and diploma curricula, and protects academic freedom. By contrast, Law 25 of 2014 on Military Discipline names ‘hierarchy’ and ‘unity of command’ among the principles of military discipline. It requires subordinates to obey service orders from superiors. That structure serves military operations.

But civilian education serves a different purpose: students must be able to test a claim, disagree with a lecturer, and ask questions freely – including, for example, whether an appeal to unity conceals an abuse of power.

These settings produce markedly different ways of putting Pancasila into practice. A soldier may be taught to express loyalty through discipline within a command structure. A civilian student must be free to weigh conflicting accounts of justice and hold that structure to account.

A military general can explain defence policy, but military rank gives no special expertise in teaching civilian constitutional values. Of course, officers may defend their views, like anyone else. The issue here is who sets the terms of a compulsory course. In theory, a seminar led by independent scholars can challenge a military interpretation, but, in the real world, a lecture built around a general’s authority makes that harder.

Indonesia has seen the cost of an official monopoly. Soeharto’s New Order spread its preferred, often-repressive, interpretation through compulsory nationwide Pancasila instruction,  and cast demands for democracy and human rights as threats to harmony.

A university need not revive that program in its entirety to revive its central mistake of treating democratic dissent as a failure to understand the nation.

Should the TNI teach courses on Pancasila?

The military’s claim to teach civic values must also be scrutinised against its own record.

In 1998, Human Rights Watch documented the disappearances of activists under Soharto’s New Order. Top military figures at the time, including President Prabowo Subianto and and Defence Minister Sjafrie Sjamsuddin, currently hold top public offices.

Fast forward to 2026, a military court convicted four serving intelligence personnel for an acid attack on rights defender Andrie Yunus. An appeals court later reduced two sentences and reversed two dismissals. The verdict establishes those men’s guilt, but it does not establish who else, if anyone, ordered the attack. That question demands scrutiny.

Land rights offer another test. For example, in June 2026, East Java’s provincial legislature reported a dispute between the navy and residents of 10 villages in Pasuruan. This raised questions about who bears the cost of military land claims and what the fifth principle (social justice) means to affected residents.

Amnesty International has also documented online campaigns involving accounts presenting themselves as military units that brand critics “foreign agents”. When criticism is framed as a threat to the nation in this way, unity can become a demand for obedience. This is the danger of a military version of Pancasila: the security institution gets to define civic virtue while evading questions about its own conduct.

In short, the TNI’s claims that it models Pancasila values are highly suspect.

Keep military away from campuses

There are no educational reasons for a military officer to give civilian students Pancasila lectures. Universities have teachers, constitutional scholars, and communities whose experiences illuminate the Pancasila teaching. Students can study the armed forces and question officers about defence, but giving an officer the lecturer’s podium to define the national ideology instead lends military authority a civilian endorsement – or could even elevate it to the position of judging civilian behaviour.

Repetition makes that authority seem natural and deepens campus militarisation.

As I have written before, universities lose their independent public role when they execute state priorities. Can students ask a general about the disappeared, Andrie Yunus’s attack, or a navy land claim without being labelled disloyal? If not, the lesson is obedience dressed as national philosophy.

A university should teach something more demanding: no holder of public power owns Pancasila, and each must answer for how they put it into practice.