Communist cultural calamity has gone, but ...

Communist cultural calamity has gone, but ...

By T. Sima Gunawan

JAKARTA (JP): Little Taufiq Ismail had a big dream of becoming a great writer, but he enrolled in the veterinary and farming department at the University of Indonesia because he realized it was hard to earn a living as an author.

"I was just being realistic. I knew the life of a writer was difficult. I needed another profession to support my life," Taufiq, who launched his new book Prahara Budaya (Cultural Calamity) last weekend, told The Jakarta Post.

But why veterinarian science instead of medicine or engineering?

Taufiq, winner of the Southeast Writer's Award 1994, smiled and began his story.

It started when he won an international scholarship from the American Field Service to study in the United States for a year.

He went to Whitefish Bay High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During school holidays he worked part-time on a farm beside Lake Michigan. It was a 100-hectare mixed farm with between 50 and 100 cows and 10,000 chickens. The owner lived in a three-story house in the middle of the farm.

"All the walls of the third floor were glass. I imagined how cool it would be if I was there writing my poems," he recalled.

Taufiq therefore studied to veterinarian at a school now run by the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), and got his degree in 1963.

He had written poems since high school and continued after he became an assistant professor. In 1964 he was scheduled to continue his studies in the United States but never made it. Three days before he was supposed to leave, the rector decided that Taufiq couldn't go.

Then, in another blow, Taufiq was fired from IPB.

It was all because he had signed a document called Manifestasi Kebudayaan (Cultural Manifestation), along with 19 other writers, including H.B. Jassin, Trisno Sumardjo, Wiratmo Soekito, Bur Rasuanto, Goenawan Mohamad and Soe Hok Djien (Arief Budiman).

Manifestasi Kebudayaan, shortened to manikebu, was signed on Aug. 17, 1963 to protest the use of arts and culture as a tool of communism.

According to Taufiq, there were three important elements of manikebu: the objection to the policy on "politics as commander", the objection to the "aim-justifies-the-means" policy and the reconfirmation of Pancasila as the state ideology.

"We strongly objected to politics as the leader, which ruled that works of arts must reflect the politics of the party (the now-banned Indonesian Communist Party, PKI)," Taufiq said.

The manikebu movement confronted the People's Cultural Institution (Lekra), which was set up by the PKI on Aug. 17, 1950. Pro-communist writers believed that the arts should be a political tool and condemned the nationalist writers.

Eight months after its establishment, manikebu was declared illegal by President Sukarno, who was under the strong influence from the left wing.

The conflict between the nationalists and Lekra activists is depicted in Taufiq's book, Prahara Budaya. It is a collection of documents, poems and publications which portray the "ideology war" of Indonesian writers between 1959 and 1965. The book was compiled along with D.S. Moelijanto, an expert in documenting literature.

When communist party wielded power in the 1960s, nationalist writers lived in a nightmare.

"It was very, very scary," Taufiq recalled.

He said that the economy was terrible as well. There was a lack of staples and inflation reached 1,000 percent.

"You couldn't find rice or soap. When they arrived, you had to queue and bought them using coupons to prevent any accumulation of the goods," Taufiq said.

At the same time, a nation-wide plague of wereng (rice mites) and rats attacked thousands of hectares of rice paddys, Taufiq related. The people hunted rats once a week for the next two years.

"Cats sold for Rp 3,000 each, which was equivalent to a piece of medium quality Pekalongan batik," Taufiq, who sold batik after he lost his job at the university, said.

Conditions were so terrible that suggestions that people eat rats floated around, he added.

"This really happened, but the young Indonesian's don't know about the facts because it isn't in books," he said.

Taufiq said he found it hard to find the necessary documents for Prahara Budaya, because some of them had been destroyed. He said books had been burnt on a large scale three times in the 1960s. Included in the burnings were books that had been confiscated from the Unites States Information Service's libraries.

"They also burned the recordings of Koes Bersaudara, who were said to be similar to the Beatles," Taufiq said without identifying who destroyed them.

He had to go to the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore to get the needed materials for Prahara Budaya.

"Never before has a book discussing the conflicts of ideology between Lekra and non-Lekra been written here," he asserted.

A book about the growth and downfall of Lekra was published in Malaysia in 1972. An Australian author touched on the issue in a book published in 1986, and two years later Goenawan Mohamad wrote a long essay on Manifestasi Kebudayaan, but none of them thoroughly discuss the problem, Taufiq said.

Taufiq said that Prahara Budaya was published to give the public a clear picture about what really happened to arts and culture, and "not to take any revenge against Lekra."

Taufiq said he didn't have a grudge against Lekra, adding that he liked the works of Sitor Situmorang and Pramoedya Ananta Toer, two former Lekra activists.

Lekra was dissolved in 1965, following the aborted PKI's coup d'etate. The New Order government then banned books produced by its writers.

The government also exonerate those involved in manikebu. Taufiq was invited to return to his almamater, but refused because there was a more interesting job on offer.

Jakarta Governor Ali Sadikin opened the Taman Ismail Marzuki art center in 1968 and Taufiq worked there until 1978.

"There was idealism at TIM, but I didn't have any savings. I needed money to send my child to school," he said.

He moved to PT Unilever and has since worked as a public relations officer for the company.

His dream of owning a farm, lots of cattle and house with heaps of windows hasn't come true, but he has become a respected Indonesian writer.

Books

Taufiq has loved books since childhood. He started reading novels at the age of eight at the home library of his parents -- Taufiq's father was a journalist and his mother a teacher who also wrote poems. He adored the books and wanted to be a novelist.

"One day, after school, I lay down and started writing my first novel. It was only one line and I have never been able to finish it," Taufiq said with a big laugh.

He wrote his first poems when he was at high school and sent them to the media.

"They always rejected my poems. Finally, after two years, one of my poems was printed in Mimbar Indonesia magazine," he said.

"I wanted to be both a novelist and a poet, but my destiny has set me as a poet."

Among his collections of poems are Tirani, Benteng, Puisi- puisi Sepi, Kota Pelabuhan, and Ladang Jagung.

Rerumputan Dedaunan, an anthology of 160 translated American poems, will be published soon, pending copyright arrangements. Taufiq, who translated them at the University of Iowa in 1992, got the title of the anthology from Leaves of Grass, the works of his favorite poet, Walt Whitman.

Taufiq said that just like other works of literature in Indonesia, his books are not printed on a large scale.

Before Indonesia gained its independence in 1945, only 3,000 copies of a new novel were printed. Today, with three times the population, publishing houses still issue only 3,000 copies at the first printing of a new title.

"For a collection of poems, they print about 1,000 or 2,000 copies," Taufiq explained.

Indonesian's poor appreciation of literature and aversion to reading has of course affected the development of Indonesian literature.

There has never been any scientific research on the decline of reading, but Taufiq knows Indonesians don't like reading because he sees that public libraries are deserted.

Relating an experience of a couple of years ago, Taufiq said that on his way to attend an international book fair in Germany, he sat with four national publishers and noted that none of them read during the flight.

"They published books, but they didn't seem to be fond of reading," he said.

"People, especially children, spend more and more time in front of the television. This really bothers me," Taufiq said.

The communist cultural calamity has gone, but another catastrophe might happen if Indonesians don't begin to read.