Gus Dur bio fails to give full story

Gus Dur bio fails to give full story

Susanto Pudjomartono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Gus Dur: The Authorized Biography of Abdurrahman Wahid;
By Greg Barton; Equinox Publishing (Asia) Pte. Ltd.; Jakarta, 2002

Biographers know that they have their work cut out for them.
The famous, even extroverts, have their ways of concealing their
real selves from the intrusive public gaze.

They wear different masks all the time, in public and in
private. The duty of the writer is to unmask the figure, to paint
a complete portrait of their subject.

It means stripping the person bare of the legends and myths
(some of them self-serving) that have enveloped them to create a
public persona. A good biographer has to try to catch the subject
in unguarded moments, when the mask is briefly set aside.

Abdurrahman Wahid is undoubtedly a fascinating public figure,
possessing a magnetic personality that draws people to him.

He is also a man with great ideas; some have even called him
visionary. God has also bestowed him with a photographic memory
and the gift of articulateness that has made him a renowned
speaker.

As if that was not enough, it was also his destiny to be born
into a distinguished family. His grandfather was the prominent
founder of the country's largest Islamic organization, Nahdlatul
Ulama (NU), Kiai Hasyim Ashari, and his father was Wahid Hasyim,
who served as Indonesia's first minister of religious affairs.

Gus Dur, as he is affectionately called, is also an
intellectual, a liberal Muslim, a humanist and a nationalist. He
dreams and strives to build Indonesia into a pluralistic and
democratic society. He aspires to build a civic society with
freedom of expression and respect of human rights as its pillars.
It is this amalgam that makes him a great and unusual man.

On the other hand, for many, Gus Dur is a puzzling man. He is
usually jovial and considerate, but often mischievous and
reckless. Although he is a democrat, sometimes he is inclined to
resort to undemocratic steps.

Many considered him a changed man after he entered politics.
Most blamed his loss of eyesight and the series of strokes he
suffered as factors that further changed him.

His 20-month-long presidency proved to be disastrous and
revealed his many shortcomings. He turned out to be a poor
administrator; so erratic was his way of governing that even his
many friends turned against him and eventually helped unseat him.

The challenge of writing about this complex man was taken up
by Greg Barton, a senior lecturer in the School of Arts at Deakin
University in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. He makes a
commendable effort to portray Gus Dur and unfold the drama of his
rise and fall. (What is baffling is the term "authorized
biography", meaning that it is endorsed by the subject. Does it
imply that any other books, including those that will be written
in the future, are unauthorized? Does authorized mean it has
better and richer information than other biographies?)

In collecting and researching data for the book, Barton
closely observed and interacted with Gus Dur. He was given
remarkable access to Gus Dur throughout his political campaign
and his presidency. He acknowledges that he spent hundreds of
hours with Gus Dur and has come to know him well since first
meeting him in the late 1980s.

Nothing is wrong with Barton's approach, but there is always
the danger of fraternization, when an observer is too deeply
involved with his subject and inevitably becomes unable to
provide an objective view.

One may suspect that Barton has fallen into that trap. He
admits that he relied heavily on Gus Dur's own accounts without
bothering to do extensive research. That is really the weakness
of this book. Without comparative research, it gives us only Gus
Dur's version of more than half of his life story, until Barton
joins the picture.

From then on, Barton's story is rich with anecdotes, but in
the previous pages the effort to fill in the gaps is
insufficient. In the end, we feel that what we have are glimpses
of Gus Dur, but not the whole man.

Even Barton's description of Java, pesantren (Muslim boarding
schools), wayang (shadow puppets) and other aspects of Javanese
culture make us wonder whether he really understand them.
Barton's reliance on other Indonesianists in describing politics
in the country is also disturbing, as many of the accounts are
incorrect.

Gus Dur has practically lived in the public eye for the last
two decades. Despite the hundreds of hours he spent with him,
Barton never succeeds in unmasking and revealing Gus Dur in his
unguarded moments. And knowing Gus Dur's mischievous side, one
would suspect that he would sometimes amuse himself by trying to
outwit observers intent on finding out more about him.

What we also fail to find in this book is a satisfactory
explanation of "the other world" where Gus Dur also lives, the
world of mysticism. Barton notes that Gus Dur is a Sufi who loves
to visit graveyards and pray until dawn, but he falls short of
really delving into the importance of this in his subject's life.

Barton leaves us with unanswered questions. How does Gus Dur
interpret his "dreams"? How far does "guidance from above" help
him in making his decisions? Does he believe in divine
intervention in the shaping of his destiny?

Nevertheless, Barton does provide remarkable accounts of
events that he witnessed himself, such as his superb observations
of the last days of Gus Dur's presidency.

Ultimately, the puzzle of who is Gus Dur remains. Gus Dur
deserves more biographies, even unauthorized ones, to lift the
mask and reveal the man beneath.