IN MEMORIAM: CAK NUR
(Photo credit: http://www.pergerakan-indonesia.org/)
Following are Cak Nur's, or Nurcholish Madjid's, living thoughts on Indonesia as far as I could grasp them, based on a meeting with him on 21 February 2002, Venue: Campus of Paramadina Mulya, Jl. Gatot Subroto Jakarta. It's also an excerpt from Towards a New Indonesia, a book that I compiled in 2002. While part of the plethora of problems Indonesia faces today is believed to have stemmed from its past, insight into its history and sufficient knowledge about what has shaped the country today may contribute in the processes of identifying and solving the problems as well as the nation building. In this part, Nurcholish Madjid presented historical insight into the country, starting off by highlighting the country's relative similarities with and differences from its older brother, Japan.
For over three thousand years, the Japanese culture has been such a continuous phenomenon. It's very amazing: 3ooo years without real interruption, despite the fact that the people borrowed some things from outside from everywhere in the world, for example China, which makes it-although not very unique, very interesting. Indonesia, too, borrowed the Latin alphabet for its language.
But one thing that makes it very sharply different from Indonesia is Japan being a very homogenous country. If it is not strictly speaking, then in term of education, which is just about the same from one end to the other, just like America, which is also the same from end to end. On the contrary, Indonesia still suffers from developmental gap. Some of us here in Jakarta have already gone into what Toffler dubbed as the Third Wave; quite a few Indonesians have already entered the second wave, but most of us still dwell in the third wave, being agrarian, something that had been begun by the Sumerians six thousands years ago!
What may be most striking, there are also those who haven't even arrived at the first wave, still living in pre-Sumerian stage. We were taken by surprise by some of the documentation made by activists who showed how some people were still involved in killing, chopping the head of the victim and eating it. Some used to think these were only things of the past when they were innocent children. But it is still happening in Indonesia.
Which makes it somewhat valid to reflect that one of the passive crimes of Soeharto is that he didn't educate his people, although he had the means to. He could have mobilized teachers or intellectuals.
Indonesia is not a nation. Rather, it's a collection of nations. Aceh is a nation; Batak is just another. Indonesia is just like the USA in a smaller format. Some of the nations within Indonesia are bigger than those in Europe. "Indonesia" itself is not a name. It is a mere anthropological term concocted by the German Adolph Sebastian back in 1864. In those days, the large part if not all of Southeast Asia was still called Java. The Malay language was called Jawi, bahasa Jawi, or tulisan Jawi. Prof. Hamka once speculated, if we had not found word "Indonesia," the republic perhaps would be called "Jawa" today.
A look into the development of the national language would provide interesting and important evidence. Back in 1938, the language of unity was the Malay, not bahasa Indonesia. Both sides of the Malay areas, the peninsula and the Sumatra sides, were centres of activities. The Minangkabau (or west Sumatrans), being one most sophisticated "nations," contributed a great deal to the development of the Malay language. (Through the works of literature and linguistics from their poets and writers-red.)
Indonesia only emerged out of imagination and creative vision of its founding fathers. Bahasa Indonesia, which has developed out of a political decision, has been a very successful example. One can say that (early) Indonesia, in term of "software," was the Sumatrans, but these people had neither power nor experience to govern. In term of "hardware," Indonesia was and is Java, and the Javanese do have both the two elements.
The Javanese are a big people inhabiting a broad area up to Mindanao. They may have a tendency to be imperialistic, as a demarking dichotomy of "the Javanese" and "non-Javanese" reflects. Like it or not, big nations do have such tendencies, e.g. the Chinese who differentiate the "middle kingdom" from "peripheral kingdoms;" the Arabs marked areas of "abode of peace" and "abode of war."; the Romans used such terms as "civilized" against "the barbaric"; also "the West" and " the rest" dichotomy that may remind one to the thoughts of Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama.
Such is also the Javanese mindset. In the shadow puppet play, there exist two groups of people. The characters on the right hand side of the master are the good people--the Javanese themselves, while the ones on the left are always wong sabrang, people from out of Java, who are destined to be dumb and dark and doomed to fail and lose. This pattern still clings until today.
There was, in fact, a scenario of burgeoning Indonesia into a big state, but understandably, the Javanese did not like the idea. Then when the time arrived for Indonesia's founding fathers to decide on how to manage the country, they looked at America. If one studies the writings of Soekarno, they are rampant with ideas and quotations from Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, and his favorite Franklin de Roosevelt.
It is quite clear that when the Dutch attempted to make a comeback to regain their colonial "right" by joining the British troops, America opposed. Australia was also among the first to support Indonesia's struggle for freedom. In short, we ended up as a republic. As for the cabinet, President Soekarno chose a presidential one, not a parliamentarian, for he considered the latter as a bourgeois democracy.
Soekarno was keen on the idea of pluralism. Following the American example, we then inherited the plurality motto of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika and were also left with the broadly defined national values in a document misnamed later as the Jakarta Charter, where we first learned of "Pancasila." We are left with a garuda bird as our symbol of freedom. But one thing we didn't borrow from America is federalism, and now we're dearly paying for it. The Javanese did not quite like the idea.
It was no accident that the cultural pattern tends to parallel with the Islamic, although things are somewhat intermingling today. Geertz once used the terms "santri" and "abangan," but the abangan today has greatly changed. For example, in 1950 it was impossible for the PNI people (where the PDI-P party fundamentally originates from--red) to say salam or read the Qur'an. Now, it's a common thing.
Much of the tension happening today may have its root in the perception of and against the Javanese. But to liken it to the movement of a pendulum, it is now coming to the middle; one day it may stop right in the middle. Interestingly, today, it is symbolically represented by Pekalongan, an area in the middle of Java. Modern journals in Indonesia, such as Tempo, are established by the Pekalongan people. Most outstanding poets and writers of today's Indonesia also come from this area.
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Indonesia is taking shape. What's happening now is not it. The new balance will be attained some 20 years from now. The promotion of Gus Dur as president was very symbolical, although unfortunately he was not very productive. But then again, actually the time was not ripe yet. We should wait for about another two decades. One thing is clear, though. Since 1998 we have committed ourselves to democracy, and this is no wishful thinking; it's optimism. When Sukarno said his commitment to democracy, it was mere rhetoric.
Soekarno is the greatest textbook thinker, something that he himself condemned once. In reality, he got confronted by his own personalities; he was a man of many faces. Being a Pekalongan son of priyayi, he grew up in Surabaya, where under the guidance from Cokroaminoto he learned to be a good Moslem. In Bandung he was exposed to and internalized western ideas when studying at the now ITB. Soekarno was overwhelmed by such cultures and ideas as Javanese, Islam, Western, and Socialism and couldn't resolve them within himself. Sometimes he was Javanese, conservative; sometimes he was a fiery man from Surabaya. He once declared "Revolution is to uproot and rebuild." He had the chance to uproot, but never rebuild. To find remnants of western influences upon the man, the presidential palace still stands gracefuly in European glamour.
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Since 1998 we have experienced something new in the form of freedom of expressions, a novely unthinkable even just one year earlier. To some people who couldn't stand it, it's rather excessive, but are we really to mistake the excesses for the essence? Following a series of harsh criticisms over the performance of his ministers, President Gus Dur panicked and invited the five of us: Akbar, Amin, Alwi, Mega, and myself. We concurred that his ministers did not perform effectively, and it was not about lack of coordination in term of managerial administrative coordination. It was more with vision management. Gus Dur seemed at first interested, but he did nothing about it. Indonesia needs a strong, benevolent and enlightened leader. If we don't see any these days, we have to ensure that such kind of people can emerge to the top. So high is the hope for the next general election.
