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."