Facing challenges of peaceful integration, coexistence

Facing challenges of peaceful integration, coexistence

Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ

Indonesia's amazing diversity -- her geographical dispersion, plurality of ethnicities and cultures and of religious communities and observances, the mixture between indigenous people and migrants, between the provinces, between "Jakarta and the rest", but also, vertically, between villages and cities -- has become a challenge, if not a threat, to the country.

Indonesia's future will depend on how she handles this diversity.

The integration of diverse ethnic, religious, racial or cultural communities into one peaceful, cooperative society within a democratic state has become a global challenge. Many countries in Africa, in the Balkans, Iraq, India, Myanmar, Pakistan, in the former Soviet Union, Sri Lanka and Thailand -- and of course, Indonesia -- to name a few, have seen communal violence.

In parts of Latin America, native Indians are still being killed off for the sake of economical interests. Central and Western Europe do not even have a clear idea as to what the integration of their vast immigrant population could mean.

The recent brutal killing of filmmaker van Gogh by a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent has shattered the self-image of the Netherlands as an open, multicultural society with a place for everybody. In Germany, the public is mulling over the idea of a Leitkultur -- a hegemonic culture -- and whether it should be made obligatory that Islamic instruction in public schools be given in the German language.

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, about 10,000 people have been killed in ethnic and religious conflicts over the last eight years, with almost 1.5 million people becoming internal refugees at times.

All these conflicts are connected to ethnic and religious diversity, although the concrete reasons behind them are complex and multifaceted.

One such factor relevant to Indonesia is intra-national migration, which has created sharp economic competition at the grassroots level. The bloody clashes in the region of Mamasa in October were typical for the kind of violence arising from an economic gap -- whether real or imagined. Even in Jakarta, conflicts between certain ethnic groups erupt from time to time.

Why has it become so difficult to manage social diversity?

In Indonesia, at least, communal conflicts along ethnic and religious lines are inseparable from the general tendency to violence and brutality, behaviors that have come to prevail since the final Soeharto years of the late 1990s.

As to their causes, we can only speculate. Perhaps, under the skin of seemingly expanding welfare, people came to feel increasingly the "victims of development", driven from their land to make way for a government project and provided compensation that often evaporated through the hands of corruptors before ever reaching them. Meanwhile, the communist brand was brandished to muzzle those who complained.

Thus, the people kept silent, steadily accumulating resentment and anger that, in their powerlessness to point their fingers at those responsible, found an outlet in "the other": Chinese Indonesians, the owners of luxury cars, minorities, ethnic groups, religious communities, even the neighboring village. A small spat, then, would suffice to trigger full-scale violence, perhaps even civil war.

Furthermore, modernization intrinsically creates new social imbalances and thus increases social tensions. While the upper strata enjoy the glamorous world of malls, high-rises and five- star hotels, people on the streets live and work under the rules of pitiless competition. The one quickest with the knife is the one who survives.

Moderate optimism seems to be the more realistic perspective, considering the two fundamental decisions in Indonesian history.

First, in 1928, youths from many parts of Dutch Indonesia chose Malay -- a minority language but the regional lingua franca -- over Javanese as the "Indonesian language".

This choice was fundamental to Indonesian unity. Had Javanese -- the most widely spoken Indonesian language with a distinct cultural identity -- been chosen, Indonesia probably would never had gotten off the ground, because her other cultures would have regarded themselves subject to Javanese hegemony.

Second, in 1945, the founding fathers unanimously established Pancasila as the fundamental, ethical tenet of the new republic. With Pancasila, they resolved the potentially dangerous question as to whether the Indonesian republic should be an Islamic state or one based on secular nationalism.

Pancasila declares that Indonesia, on the one hand, regards religiosity as a fundamental orientation, but on the other, accepts all religions without discrimination.

To understand the momentous implications of this decision, one need only recall that the founding fathers, almost all of who were Muslims, consented unanimously that Islam, the religion of almost 90% of Indonesia's peoples, would be accorded no special status in her constitution.

Although some Muslim groups demanded time and again that the Muslim population should be legally obliged to live according to sharia, the basic consensus that Indonesia belongs to all her citizens without discriminating between majority and minority religions has, up to this day, never been questioned.

Maybe Indonesia holds, after all, better cards than many other countries for managing her diversity. Her people are used to and have a natural disposition to accepting fellow Indonesians of whatever cultural or religious orientation and to live with them.

If Indonesia succeeds in establishing a just and democratic political and economic system, the traumas of the Soeharto era and the dislocation caused by modernization will loosen their hold, and thus create a chance to reassert the sociocultural tolerance inherent to the peoples of this vast archipelago.

However, this will only happen if ideological exclusivism is resolutely repulsed and a corresponding educational system is implemented.

It is clear that a pluralistic nation like Indonesia cannot stay together unless she accepts her diversity, which can only be done if Indonesian society, on principle, is organized in an inclusive way. This way, all the various ethnic, religious, and cultural groups do not feel threatened in their specific identities.

In short, the legal-social system must make it possible for all communities to live according to the cultural and religious ideals particular to them, and discourage their trying to force these ideals upon others. This is precisely the meaning of Pancasila.

Endeavors to put the country under any exclusive, particular or sectarian way of life is poison for the country and must therefore be repelled. For instance, some districts enforce religiously distinctive uniforms on certain days in schools and offices that run counter to the very unity of Indonesia, and should thus not be tolerated by the central government.

Tolerance for the diversity of Indonesians requires zero- tolerance toward all exclusivistic ideologies, be they religious or otherwise.

Traditional tolerance has to be relearned. Along with values like openness, fairness and pluralism, tolerance should be made the subject of a national campaign and, specifically, should be taught and practiced at school. Children should learn at a young age that different people with different religious orientations coexist in Indonesia, and that such differences need not threaten their own religious, cultural or ethnic identities.

As such, one of the main goals of formal education should be to help children become aware of, appreciate and accept "otherness" in their local environment. They should be encouraged and not prevented -- as is often the case -- to have frequent contact with children of diverse backgrounds so as to recognize similarities with themselves and thus, realize that friendship does not preclude differences.

A few concrete changes can be made toward this end. Against current custom, children should be encouraged to congratulate each other at the occasion of their respective religious festivals and to share in celebrating different religions, as they should also share in common social and cultural activities. As they mature, they should be exposed to and discuss socio- political problems, including drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, democracy, human rights, minority rights and issues, social justice and poverty.

At the high school and university levels, students should receive some rudimentary knowledge about the beliefs and practices of all major faiths from competent and compassionate teachers.

Children and young people should be taught not to bully or despise children of minority groups, but to develop tolerant and responsible attitudes toward them. In the same way, they should also be taught to be sensitive and attentive to those who are less fortunate than they, such as people who are oppressed, disable, unable to defend themselves, and exploited or abused, regardless of religious or ethnocultural background.

Finally, religious education should include commitment to a principled renunciation of violence, even in the pursuit of noble aims, to instill a discipline of non-violence and civilized behavior.

How Indonesia manages her plurality will be of crucial importance for her future; Indonesia cannot be kept united by mere force.

We should learn our lessons from Aceh and Papua: Decades of military suppression could not win over the hearts of the Acehnese or Papuan people, and never will. Indonesia will only stay together if all her communities desire it, an end that requires that they all feel accepted and respected.

There is no alternative: Indonesia must develop into an open, tolerant, inclusive society.

She must say yes to her diversity.

The author, a Jesuit priest, is a professor at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Jakarta.