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.