Are RI's intellectuals being betrayed?

Are RI's intellectuals being betrayed?

By Hidayat Jati

JAKARTA (JP): Recently, a foreign friend who had been in
Indonesia for only a month or so, confronted me with curiosity
about recent political debates, such as the debate about
"intellectual organizations" and the apparent rampant anti-
Semitism.

His questions, expressed without a hint of condescension, were
difficult to answer because they were often embarrassing.

"What is it about Indonesian intellectuals? Can't they form an
organization? Why do they have to be organized? Why do so many of
them moonlight as politicians, businessmen or cabinet ministers?"

I had not come up with an answer when he shot me with even
more difficult questions, such as "why is Schindler's List
banned?" or "Why do some politicians and self-proclaimed
intellectuals suspect charity organizations of being Zionist
tools?".

I was still scratching my head when he asked me why a
politician, who often claims to be a visionary scientist, has
flexed his political muscle to shut up the inquiring press
regarding some recent murky state transactions.

I felt like replying that Joseph Goebbels was a Phd. in 19th
Century Romantic literature, Martin Heidegger a Nazi and Rudyard
Kipling a poet of the British Empire, but I didn't.

My friend does not realize that, when one reads between the
lines, the recent mayhem about intellectual organizations and
xenophobic political statements indicates a serious predicament
in the democratization process.

The connection between these seemingly unrelated phenomena is
a subtle power-play which attempts to manipulate popular
sentiments and populist passions for personal gain.

They constitute two neglected variables in the closed and
lonely corridors of the New Order government, which believes in
the maintenance of a "floating mass" -- a depoliticized
constituency.

Probably sensing that big political wind might soon shake the
ancient regime, politicians (those with pretensions to being
"intellectuals") and men of letters (those with political
agendas) have suddenly started forming organizations to pave a
road to power.

Craine Brinton, writer of the classic The Anatomy of
Revolution, remarked that at the dawn of great political changes,
many intellectuals form alliances to express radical alternatives
to already anxious publics which are disillusioned with their
corrupt and ineffective governments.

Of course, I did not have to tell my curious friend that
privileged vested interests are alive and well in this country.

The most worrying aspect of Indonesia's grouped intellectuals
and politicians is that their alternative vision does not seem to
offer by any stretch a pretty picture.

This is because some members of those organizations have
expressed, among other things, nauseating paranoias, shallow
prejudices and conspiracy theories.

Some of them, for example, brand Schindler's List -- a film
that depicts human suffering -- or charity organizations, as
simply rotten tools for the ends of a particular group.

While these gutter populists state their ignorance and
insensitivity towards those issues, they begin to reveal their
other qualities as soon as they begin to experience some
political conflicts of their own.

Instead of debating, they pathetically call each other names
and thus unmask the true nature of their organizations: Vehicles
towards power and instruments of vanity.

It is clear that these people, especially those who claim to
be more literary than political, fail to realize that the most
difficult (and noblest) task of dismantling an unjust regime is
to get rid of the bitter passions that the regime created during
its reign.

These passions were profoundly discussed by French author
Julian Benda, in The Betrayal of the Intellectuals, which was
published in the 1920's.

Benda argued that men of thought or clercs -- which could be
translated into "intellectuals" or "religious thinkers (it is
curious that in Indonesia today, Benda's term can be
simultaneously applied in some cases) -- should not be
overwhelmed by those passions or by any political aspirations.

In short, Benda warned that intellectuals should not become
men of action, or form alliances with such men. The author
realized that political commitments can shackle thoughts and
transform thinkers into soldiers of dogma or, even worse, into
crude status and wealth seekers.

I did not have the heart to tell my friend that some of our
intellectuals have defended the decision to ban Schindler's List
as "fitting to our own values" or suspected the presence of a
Christian plot in the past cabinet.

Indeed, our thinkers seem to forget that George Orwell,
despite his activism shown in the Spanish Civil War, still
managed to maintain independent thought to the extent that he
challenged his fellow socialists in his The Lion and the Unicorn
essay.

Our men of letters, even if they are probably not familiar
with Benda's work, should not be ignorant of his message.

The late Soedjatmoko, who was a thinker who deeply cared for
justice and truth without any emotional excesses, in 1970 wrote
that:

"...a sufficiently large number of intellectuals should stay
outside the government, outside of direct political involvement,
to strengthen and nurture the intellectual institutions and
voluntary associations...This is a precondition for freedom and
civility in the political system."

The writer studied history for his undergraduate degree at
Clark University, Massachusetts, USA.