Do the Javanese have a stranglehold on power?

Do the Javanese have a stranglehold on power?

By Tam Notosusanto

JAKARTA (JP): It is usually the minority who becomes the
scapegoat, like the case of the ethnic Chinese people here. But
what happens if it affects the majority?

"Well, rather than making the Chinese people or the Westerners
scapegoats, why don't we make the Javanese people scapegoats once
in a while?" said Lance Castles.

The Australian historian, now a guest lecturer at Gadjah Mada
University in Yogyakarta, made the jocular remark at the end of
the discussion titled "The Prejudice of the Javanese and the Non-
Javanese in Contemporary Indonesian Politics and Culture".
Organized by the Institute of the Study and Free-Flow of
Information (ISAI), it was held at Teater Utan Kayu, East
Jakarta, last Thursday.

Despite his remark, Castles mainly defended the Javanese.

It was Sindhunata who attacked the dominant role of the
Javanese in the Indonesian political and cultural scene, which he
blamed for the country's current chaotic condition. Incidentally,
he is an ethnic Javanese.

In his paper The De-Javanization of Indonesian Politics,
Sindhunata, a Yogyakarta-based philosopher and anthropologist who
is also chief editor of Basis magazine, described how the country
was weakened by a form of nationalism that is mainly an
aggrandizement of past glory. Indonesia's first president Sukarno
always harked back to the golden age of the Majapahit kingdom,
while second president Soeharto is obsessed with the great era of
Mataram.

It led to further Javanese-style historiography which resulted
in episodes like the Great Assault of March 1, 1949, in
Yogyakarta; there are doubts today whether the stories which have
spread about this particular battle were only an effort to
exaggerate Soeharto's heroism.

This mythical concept of nationalism, Sindhunata argued, is
closely connected to the Javanese concept of a state, which is
determined from the center, not from the perimeter. Thus, the
strong Javanese mind frame became one reason why the Federal
Indonesian Republic was strongly opposed, and later was the
impetus for Sukarno to devise his Guided Democracy, and even
later for the New Order government to come up with Pancasila
Democracy. All bore the concept of national union as something
sacred and not to be disturbed, because weakened power of the
central government and division in the rest of the country would
mean danger.

Sindhunata cited noted lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution, who
blamed Prof. Soepomo, an architect of the Indonesian
Constitution, for delegating too much power to the president,
making him a kind of a Javanese king who, from his central
position, radiates power that is to cover all of the archipelago.
Most of the members of Soepomo's Constitution-devising team were
ethnic Javanese.

"Soepomo's biggest sin, however, was blatantly conveying that
his concept of state is borrowed from the Khositu Dai Nippon
under Tenno Heika, a belief in an integral state that is suitable
for the Japanese empire, but will only give us danger of
ultranationalism," added Sindhunata.

He said that Soepomo's concept contained elements of Nazism,
such as the unity of leadership and the people and state
totalitarianism.

Fascism, Sindhunata said, was apparent in the New Order
regime, which put military officials all over the country in
significant posts, such as governors and regents. Fascism is
closely related to racism, he said, which is why the Ambon
tragedy would probably never have occurred without its presence.

"We should be cautious that behind the adiluhung culture of
Java, there is potential for racism and fascism," Sindhunata
concluded. "And the main concern for the reform era is how we de-
Javanize our political culture."

Castles, in fluent Indonesian, came to the defense of the
Javanese.

"All this time, I don't see that the Javanese and the non-
Javanese have become the point of conflict between the two
groups," he said. "I see indigenous and nonindigenous, Chinese
and non-Chinese, Islam versus Christian, Dayak versus Madura,
Sambas versus Madura and so on.

"But where do you find Javanese people getting killed because
they are Javanese, or non-Javanese people killed by Javanese
people because they are non-Javanese?"

Castles acknowledged there was conflict between two political
cultures in the history of Indonesia. "But I think the problem is
becoming less and less, and we are too pessimistic if we say, for
example, federalism is not suitable to the Javanese concept of
power."

He considered Indonesia extraordinarily fortunate compared to
other multiethnic or multicultural nations.

"The ethnic groups that exist in Indonesia, great and small,
are considered equal. This is different from race. This seldom
happened in other countries in the world if we talk about
nationalism."

In many nations, there is a majority group and a marginal,
minority group. He said it included Indonesia, but was irrelevant
to the issue of Java and non-Java. The Javanese people are not
really dominant over the non-Javanese, he argued.

Castles said it was due to the fact that the national language
did not come from the Javanese. The country's capital is located
in the region of the Betawi people, not in Javanese cultural
centers such as Surakarta or Yogyakarta.

The third speaker, political scholar Arbi Sanit who happens to
come from Minangkabau ethnic (West Sumatra), counter-argued
Castles' disposition. He said that although the Javanese were not
dominant, they held most of the power, and that they chose a
concept of the state that was centralistic and integralistic.

"It's the betrayal of the political structure toward the
social structure."

Sanit complained about the centralized power structure, and
the imbalanced distribution of wealth between Java and the other
regions, resulting in the current waves of protests and struggle
from the provinces.

The speakers took questions from audience members, mostly
speaking in Javanese-accented Indonesian and mainly criticizing
Sindhunata, saying his thesis was nonempirical and preoccupied
with mythology.

"I think the danger of mysticism is really close to the
Javanese culture," said Sindhunata. "We have to be cautious about
this because the whole structure of the Javanese thinking will
compromise our religions and our way of thinking. The debate
then should not only be at the empiric level, but also in the
epistemological, dialectical sense in order to demythologize and
demystify our whole thought."

The speakers agreed on one thing.

"The cure is democracy," said Castles. "As long as there is no
more dictatorship, there will be no more domination of one
group."

"We cannot continue to have a nationalism that is retained on
old mythologies like we were doing in the Old Order and New Order
eras," said Sindhunata. "We must earn nationalism and the
facility for that is none other than democracy."

"We cannot dwell too long on the conflict between Java and
outside Java, it will melt away," said Sanit. "But definitely
there is a mechanism needed for that: democracy. With democracy
there will be room given to the regions outside Java in
accordance with the demands of democracy, so there will be open
competition between the ethnic groups and no more domination."