Humanitarianism: Challenge and opportunity

Humanitarianism: Challenge and opportunity

Ignas Kleden
The Center for East Indonesian Affairs
Jakarta
ceia@centrin.net.id

Humanitarianism and humanism have been controversial ever
since post-modernist theorists tried to debunk the universality
of their values. This is demonstrated in that critique that the
conception of humanitarianism and humanism entails a wide range
of class, gender, educational and psycho-physical bias, which had
been forgotten because the conceptions have been taken as
something given without considering the historical context in
which they were produced.

Humanism of the Renaissance, for example, proposed to take man
as the measure of all things. The human was seen as opposed to,
or at least additional to the divine as the principle of moral,
artistic and political expression and as a repository of
virtues. The idea was further developed by 18th century
encyclopedia-philosophers in France who propounded forcefully
that men were the sole and sufficient source of all values. To
that extent the idea was not so much an opposition to the
religious values as a strong opposition to the belief that the
human condition was merely a fallen situation and therefore human
development and salvation could only be provided by a total
reliance upon religious devotion and dedication.

The modern idea of humanitarianism originates in some
philosophical thoughts both among the rationalists as well as
among the romanticists. Julien Benda, a philosopher of
intellectual betrayal, once reminded us to distinguish carefully
between the abstract notion of humanitarianism and the concrete
one. The first emphasizes the sensitiveness toward the whole form
of human condition, abstract virtue of duty toward one's
neighbors, and compassionate zeal toward humanity as a whole. In
contrast to that the concrete notion advocates love for a
concrete individual here and now, an idea which corresponds to
what we usually understand as charity.

The question is of course: who are men after all? The basic
tenet of renaissance-humanism says men are the measure of all
things. In this conception it is taken for granted that the
notion "men" automatically includes other notions such as women,
children, the senile, the handicapped, the marginalized, the
illiterate, the poor and the landless.

This, however, is not always the case. In reality, humanism
can easily discriminate against those who are not men in the
above sense. Men are male, well educated, landed or propertied
adults, who usually become part of political power, belong to a
certain social standing, and make up a social class based on
economic and cultural appropriation.

One of the temptations which usually make people neglect a
humane attitude toward other people is the orientation toward
identity. The acquaintance with the other can be conducted only
on the basis of one's name, the place one comes from, the
profession or job one is doing, or ethnic group one is supposed
to belong to and the role one assumes.

In Indonesia, another important item of one's identity is
one's religious or denominational affiliation.

Can we in hindsight speak of history of identity? During
colonial times the Dutch colonial government divided the
population of the Dutch East Indies into three main categories
with different privileges, namely the European and Euro-Asian,
the foreign oriental (Chinese, Indians, Arabs) and the pribumi or
indigenous people. This division of population implied a social
division of labor within trade, and a division of privileges
pertaining to civil rights and obligations. The remnant of this
ethnically stratified division of labor can be seen in the
present habit to look at Indonesian people as the pri (pribumi)
and the non-pri (non indigenous, mainly those of Chinese origin).

In the first postindependence years, Indonesian people used to
look at one another as those belonging to the co and non-co.
Whereas the co were seen as those who chose to maintain the old
status quo, while collaborating with the colonial government, the
non-co considered themselves revolutionary republicans who were
determined to say no to any kind of negotiation with the colonial
government and believed that an independent state was the final
goal of their struggle.

After the end of the Sukarno administration, the New Order
government divided people into two main categories, namely those
who were supposedly involved in the attempted coup of Sept. 30,
1965, and those who were allegedly "clean". This division had
terrible consequences, because the label terlibat (involved)
implied "civil death" of the persons concerned who were
practically put outside political and legal protection.

After political reform in 1998, the political division of the
population became more complicated. There is a division between
the followers of the New Order and the reformists in Jakarta,
there is also a division between locals and immigrants in
conflict-ridden areas, and there is a division and even
separation between Muslim Ambonese and Christian Ambonese in
Ambon.

Identity turns out to be not always a signifier of the rights
one is entitled to but also a signal for condemnation and
disapprobation one has unduly to bear. This becomes all the more
true if identity is treated as final, essentialist in nature, and
can be packaged in permanent stereotypes. Indeed, identity is
that which makes somebody what she or he is and not another
thing.

It differentiates, and makes one different from another.
However, this becomes a danger when identity metamorphoses into a
sort of pigeonholing complex, whereby you put someone into a
certain pigeonhole without providing him with the possibility and
freedom to get out of it.

In that connection, the identity politics in Indonesia should
be counterbalanced by a new humanism and humanitarianism, which
can turn around the significance of identity and identification.
It is not identity which makes a man and a woman human, but the
other way around, it is humanity which makes an identity a man or
a woman. Abstract as this may seem, it is very concrete in the
practical experience of everyday life.

If religious instruction in religious communities taught the
students to respect and to love other people not as human beings
in the first place but as members of their own community, this
would strengthen the sense of identity at the cost of the
compassionate zeal for humanity.

Since religion still assumes an important and strategic role
in Indonesian society, religious instruction determines to a
great extent whether respect for human beings becomes an abstract
matter or a concrete action, which contributes to the
establishment of everlasting peace or the waging of protracted
conflict.