Pancasila culture and social justice

The governance of Indonesia is founded on five values that are traced to cultural heritages evident in peaceful village interactions across the region for centuries. The values are précised as ‘Unity in Diversity’ to reflect diverse groups coming together to form a nation independent from colonialism. The values are described as hierarchical and integrated with a ‘gotong royong’ heart - ‘gotong royong’ is paraphrased as ‘mutual assistance’, ‘jointly shouldering’ or ‘sharing the burden’. Over the nation’s seven decades various internal and external influences impact public perception of the values, which consequently affect capacity of established social structures. Recurring sectarian conflict demonstrates effort is required to achieve social justice. Current President Widodo asserts a Mental Revolution is needed and encourages Indonesians to dig deep into cultural roots. This paper reviews literature to analyse the Pancasila for socio-cultural functionalities that may be a useful guide to synthesize contemporary social justice. This paper explores and analyses the Pancasila, finding components of and a cohesive paradigm, broadly situated within Indigenous Knowledge discourse. Socio-historical-cultural literature calls for reinstating collaborative inquiry as a Pancasila inspired strategy to address contemporary issues.