Pancasila symbolizes religious harmony, American scholar says

By Prapti Widinugraheni

JAKARTA (JP): Pancasila, the Indonesian five-point state ideology, is a unique concept which stems from a culture of high religious tolerance, an American scholar says.

Douglas E. Ramage, a researcher from the Hawaii-based East- West Center's Program on International Economics and Politics, said he discovered from extensive studies and interviews with a wide range of Indonesian intellectuals that the core principle of Pancasila is religious tolerance.

"This is implicit in the first principle, Ketuhanan yang Maha Esa (Belief in One God), that Indonesians should respect one another regardless of their religion, and more importantly that all citizens should be treated equally by the government regardless of their religious or ethnic background. That is the way Pancasila is most commonly interpreted by most Indonesians," he said in an interview with The Jakarta Post.

During his two-year research in Indonesia from 1991 to 1993 for his dissertation on Pancasila, Ramage, a fluent speaker of Bahasa Indonesia, made an attempt to understand what Pancasila meant to Indonesians.

"I was initially interested in Pancasila because, as any visitor that comes to Indonesia can see, Pancasila is everywhere...I was always curious why," he said, explaining how he got involved in the subject.

Ramage received a bachelor's degree in Government and Politics in 1985 from the University of Maryland and later a master's and a doctoral degree in international studies from the University of South Carolina in 1987 and 1993, respectively.

He is currently serving as a project fellow in the Program on International Economics and Politics at the East-West Center. He is also researching political changes in Indonesia and Southeast Asia and is responsible for the conceptualization and administration of an East-West Center project on Indonesia's political economy. In January he will also become visiting assistant professor at the Asia Studies of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

In the Indonesian academic circle, Ramage is dubbed the student of Pancasila for his in-depth study of the state ideology.

Ramage acknowledged the important role of religious tolerance in Pancasila but thought it did not necessarily guarantee Indonesia freedom from religious conflict.

However, Indonesia, in comparison to many other countries in the world, has a generally good historical record in avoiding religious conflicts.

"Indonesia is doing very well, but whether this has anything to do with Pancasila, I'm not certain, but it certainly doesn't hurt to have a national ideology that supports tolerance," Ramage pointed out.

Pancasila, he said, to a certain extent reflects the cultural tendency towards religious tolerance, especially in Java, which is used to blending different religious and ethnic groups.

Pancasila was founded in 1945 by Indonesia's first President Soekarno who was of Javanese origin.

"Soekarno created and manipulated (Pancasila) to appeal to all Indonesians... It was a political compromise to allow all Indonesians to join together in one unitary state," he said.

Nonetheless, Ramage said Indonesian society is currently undergoing a process of polarization where a certain group of people tend to assert that some Indonesians are more deserving of particular rights or special treatment by the government because they are of a particular religion.

"But I think there is only a very small number of people (of this group) because Indonesia in fact has a long history of tolerance," he said.

This group, he said, consists of elite intellectuals who see the emphasis on religion or ethnicity as a way to justify demands for increased access to political power.

Ramage, who was recently in Tasikmalaya, West Java, to observe the national congress of Indonesia's biggest Moslem organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), said the congress reflected what he considered a genuine articulation of democratic aspirations and behavior.

He was uncertain however, whether it was a reflection of the Pancasila Democracy.

"The election process during the congress seemed very open, fairly conducted and, most importantly, secret as it was done by secret ballot, so in a sense NU did seem to be representing by its very behavior the essence of a democratic organization," he said.

The reelection of Abdurrahman Wahid -- more familiarly known as Gus Dur -- as NU chairman had an important role in establishing such an atmosphere in the organization.

"He is an extraordinary man ... He's both a political democrat as well as a highly knowledgeable religious leader. He's a kyai (Moslem leader) and a leader of Indonesia's democratization movement," he said, giving his impression on the leader.

Ramage said that despite what many people think, Gus Dur does not lead a "one man show" in NU because many of his followers, especially from the younger generation, have a similar, broad kind of vision as he does.

Islam and the role of religion in Indonesian politics are subjects which appear to have caught the fascination of Ramage, judging from the list of articles and books he has written. He wrote Religion and Political Discourse in Indonesia which will be published next year, and contributed to an article entitled Islam, Democratization and Religious Tolerance -- the Political Thought of NU's Abdurrahman Wahid in a book called Nahdlatul Ulama: Traditional Islam and Modernity, also to be published next year.

Asked whether he thinks Indonesians are obsessed with ideology, he said: "Only Indonesians can say whether the emphasis on Pancasila education is appropriate or not," he said.

"But as to whether or not other countries have intensive national ideological education programs like Indonesia, Indonesia probably is unique in that it has devoted so much energy and resources to the propagation and education of its citizens about the national ideology."