Arief Budiman pursues lonely intellectual road

By Dewi Anggraeni

MELBOURNE (JP): Forty turbulent years after Indonesian was first taught at the University of Melbourne, a native Indonesian scholar and academic was appointed last year to chair the Indonesian Studies Program.

Last Thursday, in his Professorial Inaugural Lecture, critical scholar Arief Budiman thanked his wife Sitti Leila Chairani, along with all the academics who had beaten the rocky path before him.

To an audience of colleagues, students and friends, Arief gave a brief account of his modest family background, of how he had to struggle to find his way to university.

He did not forget the contribution his friends had made in fulfilling his academic achievements.

"With the help of many people, I was able to get my first university degree as a psychologist from the University of Indonesia, and later on I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to study at Harvard University in the United States of America," he said.

"All these achievements... have been the result of the help of many people. It is a collective endeavor."

The lecture, titled The Lonely Road of the Intellectual: Scholars in Indonesia, focused on democracy and scholarships in Indonesia and sparked a number of questions from the audience.

Arief quoted the American poet Robert Frost in The Road not Taken, in depicting the path taken by some intellectuals, who refused to be seduced by power or surrender to pragmatism.

Professor Charles Coppel, under whose directorship the Indonesian Studies Program fell victim to the unfortunate university restructuring in 1987, gave an historical account of the program.

The University of Melbourne was one of the first three universities in Australia to offer Indonesian Studies. Coppel said it began with a European senior lecturer and a native speaker lecturer. So the program has come a long way and the appointment of Professor Arief Budiman is clearly a watershed, he said.

According to Arief, the lonely road of the intellectual in Indonesia is gradually attracting more travelers.

"For the honest scholars, it is difficult to stay outside the social problems, keep quiet and say nothing," he said.

Arief's lecture was both universal and Indonesia-related. He mentioned three types of democracy. The first was "Top-down" democracy, in which power is given to the people by the ruling elite, but as soon as it becomes inconvenient for the ruling elite, they can withdraw their power without any fuss.

The second was democracy born of the State-Elite Conflict, which is genuine albeit temporary power inadvertently given to the people because of the rift; while the third was Bottom-up democracy, which genuinely empowers the people politically.

"The type of democracy found in Indonesia is mostly top-down," Arief added.

Arief is among a handful of scholars known for never shying away from stating their stance over many political affairs. Arief was the first Indonesian to openly declare himself a Golangan Putih ("white" group) or nonvoter, out of lack of confidence in the existing political situation.

In 1994, Arief lost his teaching position at the Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga, Central Java, following his protest over the election of the university's rector.

He won the ensuing legal battle, but quit anyway. At least 50 lecturers of the university then tendered their resignation in support of Arief.