Are RI's intellectuals being betrayed?<\/p>\n
By Hidayat Jati<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Recently, a foreign friend who had been in
\nIndonesia for only a month or so, confronted me with curiosity
\nabout recent political debates, such as the debate about
\n\"intellectual organizations\" and the apparent rampant anti-
\nSemitism.<\/p>\n
His questions, expressed without a hint of condescension, were
\ndifficult to answer because they were often embarrassing.<\/p>\n
\"What is it about Indonesian intellectuals? Can't they form an
\norganization? Why do they have to be organized? Why do so many of
\nthem moonlight as politicians, businessmen or cabinet ministers?\"<\/p>\n
I had not come up with an answer when he shot me with even
\nmore difficult questions, such as \"why is Schindler's List
\nbanned?\" or \"Why do some politicians and self-proclaimed
\nintellectuals suspect charity organizations of being Zionist
\ntools?\".<\/p>\n
I was still scratching my head when he asked me why a
\npolitician, who often claims to be a visionary scientist, has
\nflexed his political muscle to shut up the inquiring press
\nregarding some recent murky state transactions.<\/p>\n
I felt like replying that Joseph Goebbels was a Phd. in 19th
\nCentury Romantic literature, Martin Heidegger a Nazi and Rudyard
\nKipling a poet of the British Empire, but I didn't.<\/p>\n
My friend does not realize that, when one reads between the
\nlines, the recent mayhem about intellectual organizations and
\nxenophobic political statements indicates a serious predicament
\nin the democratization process.<\/p>\n
The connection between these seemingly unrelated phenomena is
\na subtle power-play which attempts to manipulate popular
\nsentiments and populist passions for personal gain.<\/p>\n
They constitute two neglected variables in the closed and
\nlonely corridors of the New Order government, which believes in
\nthe maintenance of a \"floating mass\" -- a depoliticized
\nconstituency.<\/p>\n
Probably sensing that big political wind might soon shake the
\nancient regime, politicians (those with pretensions to being
\n\"intellectuals\") and men of letters (those with political
\nagendas) have suddenly started forming organizations to pave a
\nroad to power.<\/p>\n
Craine Brinton, writer of the classic The Anatomy of
\nRevolution, remarked that at the dawn of great political changes,
\nmany intellectuals form alliances to express radical alternatives
\nto already anxious publics which are disillusioned with their
\ncorrupt and ineffective governments.<\/p>\n
Of course, I did not have to tell my curious friend that
\nprivileged vested interests are alive and well in this country.<\/p>\n
The most worrying aspect of Indonesia's grouped intellectuals
\nand politicians is that their alternative vision does not seem to
\noffer by any stretch a pretty picture.<\/p>\n
This is because some members of those organizations have
\nexpressed, among other things, nauseating paranoias, shallow
\nprejudices and conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n
Some of them, for example, brand Schindler's List -- a film
\nthat depicts human suffering -- or charity organizations, as
\nsimply rotten tools for the ends of a particular group.<\/p>\n
While these gutter populists state their ignorance and
\ninsensitivity towards those issues, they begin to reveal their
\nother qualities as soon as they begin to experience some
\npolitical conflicts of their own.<\/p>\n
Instead of debating, they pathetically call each other names
\nand thus unmask the true nature of their organizations: Vehicles
\ntowards power and instruments of vanity.<\/p>\n
It is clear that these people, especially those who claim to
\nbe more literary than political, fail to realize that the most
\ndifficult (and noblest) task of dismantling an unjust regime is
\nto get rid of the bitter passions that the regime created during
\nits reign.<\/p>\n
These passions were profoundly discussed by French author
\nJulian Benda, in The Betrayal of the Intellectuals, which was
\npublished in the 1920's.<\/p>\n
Benda argued that men of thought or clercs -- which could be
\ntranslated into \"intellectuals\" or \"religious thinkers (it is
\ncurious that in Indonesia today, Benda's term can be
\nsimultaneously applied in some cases) -- should not be
\noverwhelmed by those passions or by any political aspirations.<\/p>\n
In short, Benda warned that intellectuals should not become
\nmen of action, or form alliances with such men. The author
\nrealized that political commitments can shackle thoughts and
\ntransform thinkers into soldiers of dogma or, even worse, into
\ncrude status and wealth seekers.<\/p>\n
I did not have the heart to tell my friend that some of our
\nintellectuals have defended the decision to ban Schindler's List
\nas \"fitting to our own values\" or suspected the presence of a
\nChristian plot in the past cabinet.<\/p>\n
Indeed, our thinkers seem to forget that George Orwell,
\ndespite his activism shown in the Spanish Civil War, still
\nmanaged to maintain independent thought to the extent that he
\nchallenged his fellow socialists in his The Lion and the Unicorn
\nessay.<\/p>\n
Our men of letters, even if they are probably not familiar
\nwith Benda's work, should not be ignorant of his message.<\/p>\n
The late Soedjatmoko, who was a thinker who deeply cared for
\njustice and truth without any emotional excesses, in 1970 wrote
\nthat:<\/p>\n
\"...a sufficiently large number of intellectuals should stay
\noutside the government, outside of direct political involvement,
\nto strengthen and nurture the intellectual institutions and
\nvoluntary associations...This is a precondition for freedom and
\ncivility in the political system.\"<\/p>\n
The writer studied history for his undergraduate degree at
\nClark University, Massachusetts, USA.<\/p>",
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