The vitality of Indonesian depending less on its historical antecedents than its symbolic character as an expression of the anticolonial project (at once the unification of the whole former Dutch colonial empire into a harmonious nation, the democratization of the national community, and the growth of a free spirit of fraternity) the postrevolutianary fate of this project has had decisive effects on the language forming a new and thin topsoil to the cultures of Indonesia, it has proven only too subject to erosion once the winds began to blow.