Indonesian political leaders in the mid-20th century attempted to create a new state founded both on the rule of law and on their understandings of traditional Indonesian communal life. They sought simultaneously to “advance” toward modernization and industrialization and to preserve older, village-level norms and values which they projected onto the national legal and political screen. This article examines the inconsistencies inherent in these twin aspirations and the continuing tensions, during a period of rapid growth and economic development, between rights-based conceptions and those based on an ideology of harmony and communal village life.