Welcome Lunar New Year<\/p>\n
Onghokham, Historian, Jakarta<\/p>\n
When I was a schoolboy growing up in Surabaya before World War
\nII, during the Dutch colonial days and attending a Dutch
\nelementary school (ELS), life was dominated by three calendars.
\nThe most important one around which daily life was scheduled,
\nschool terms, holidays, etc., was the European (Gregorian)
\ncalendar. There were also the Chinese lunar calendar and the
\nJavanese calender.<\/p>\n
The Javanese calender was used for calculating which nights
\nwere good for looking for omens, for meditation, burning incense
\nand holding ritual meals (slametan) to ensure health and success
\nfor various members of the family or the household. Then there
\nwas the Chinese lunar calendar for commemorating Chinese
\ncelebrations, such as the Chinese New year, or Imlek, which this
\nyear falls on Feb. 1l, inaugurating the year of the goat. Imlek
\nnormally falls in the first days of spring (signifying renewal).<\/p>\n
The Chinese, like all peasant agrarian civilizations, based
\ntheir cyclical annual celebrations on the seasons. Similarly,
\nChristmas, which also originating from an agrarian civilization,
\nwas originally celebrated as the feast of lights during the
\ndarkest days of winter. Even today in tropical climates like
\nIndonesia, this festival is characterized by Christmas trees with
\nwhite pieces of cotton attached to their branches to resemble
\nsnow.<\/p>\n
In the same way, the Chinese New Year is commemorated in
\nIndonesia's tropical climate as the arrival of spring, although
\nthis time of the year is usually marked by the monsoon season in
\nthe equatorial lands.<\/p>\n
However, regardless of seasons, calenders, religion or
\npolitics, most Chinese consider Imlek, or the first day of the
\nNew Year by the Chinese calender, as a holiday and the most
\nimportant day of the year.<\/p>\n
The Chinese lunar calender does not mark Sunday as a day off,
\nand Chinese usually take Imlek as their day off even believing
\nthat working on this day will bring bad luck.<\/p>\n
Every Imlek should in fact be inaugurated by plenty of
\nfireworks, a tradition in Indonesia that died out with the
\nbeginning of the Pacific War (1942-1945), and the following
\nturbulent times.<\/p>\n
However, this year Imlek is for the first time going to be
\ncelebrated as a national holiday because of a presidential
\ndecree issued by President Megawati Soekarnoputri.<\/p>\n
As far as the writer knows, the Chinese calender has no
\nreligious origins nor did it originate from Confucius. Rather it
\nwas probably developed during the Han Dynasty. Some scholars
\nstate that the calender is 2,000 years old. The Han dynasty (206
\nBC -- 220 AD), was indeed the earliest and longest surviving
\nimperial dynasty in China, even resulting in the Chinese being
\nreferred to as the people of Han (Han ren).<\/p>\n
Whatever the origins of the Chinese calender, Imlek is indeed
\nthe most important of the Chinese customary (adat) festivals. The
\nother notable other adat days converted into national holidays in
\nthe post colonial period are Nyepi (Hindu-Balinese) and Waisak
\n(Buddha's birthday).<\/p>\n
The policy of making an adat holiday into a national one has
\ntwo purposes: First, to integrate an ethnic group into the nation
\nand to strengthen the state's own ideology of diversity in this
\nmultiethnic and multicultural, but unified, society, and to
\nreinforce the state ideology Pancasila, which emphasizes the same
\ntheme.<\/p>\n
Last year's decision to make Imlek a national holiday has been
\nwelcomed by many Indonesians of Chinese origin; yet many also say
\nthat what is more important is the elimination of the many
\nirritating, discriminatory rules and practices affecting the
\nethnic Chinese when dealing with the civil service, police and
\nother state agencies.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, making Imlek a national holiday will lead to
\ngreater integration, and the awareness that the Chinese living in
\nthese islands are as much an integral part of the Indonesian
\nnation as any other group, an awareness that should lead to
\ngreater stability and confidence in the country, including among
\nthe members of the important business community.<\/p>\n
One may wonder why this policy came to be implemented so
\nrelatively late given that Indonesia is a multicultural society.
\nIt must be remembered, however, if the adat days of every ethnic
\ngroup, such as for instance the Hari Kesodo of the Tengger people
\nof Mount Bromo, East Java, and many others, were to be declared
\nnational days then the Republic might end up with more than 400
\nannual national holidays.<\/p>\n
Regarding the Chinese, during Soeharto's 32-year-long New
\nOrder there was a policy of eliminating all traces of Chinese
\nculture, such as banning the use of Chinese characters, public
\ncelebrations, and even their adat festivals. The myth of those
\ntimes was that the traumatic events of l965, the fall of the Old
\nOrder, and the rise of the New Order was the result of a Chinese
\ncommunist plot.<\/p>\n
However, of equally great importance is that the traditional
\nconception of who is a citizen be not based on race but rather on
\ncitizenship, which as we know can be based on the ius soli
\n(birthplace) -- the Anglo-Saxon, modern concept -- or the ius
\nsanguinus (race or blood descent) -- which still dominates German
\nthinking and has influenced traditional Dutch concepts,
\nespecially as practiced in the Netherlands Indies with its three
\nracially segregated groupings: Europeans, foreign orientals and
\nnatives.<\/p>\n
Of the two concepts of citizenship, the ius soli is the more
\nmodern and the more accepted, especially now given the global
\nmovement of professionals, guest workers and migrants. This
\nmodern concept of citizenship should now be adopted and practiced
\nin Indonesia.<\/p>\n
This could probably be brought about by educating society,
\nespecially the bureaucracy, regarding the new concept, with the
\nsubsequent necessary changes being made to discriminatory
\nlaws\/regulations and policies, and with penal sanctions for
\nbribery being strictly enforced on both sides.<\/p>",
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