Rewriting the nation's history, how is it to be done?

JAKARTA (JP): History that serves only to glorify rulers should never again be allowed to prevail. Historian Arnold Toynbee's assertion that history is God's own footpaths is perhaps too ideal, but at least current demands to open up "the truth" behind versions taught in school should serve to remind history writers they are no longer the court historians of bygone kingdoms.

The Jakarta Post contacted writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, philosopher Mudji Sutrisno and historian Taufik Abdullah, to discuss whether history could indeed be written free of rulers' interests. Their reply: it's possible, but it's far from easy.

Taufik, a historian at the National Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said that the key factor in writing history was honesty, to express the truth.

"We cannot say that there is a certain method that historians can refer to when writing history. There is no such method. We historians only need honesty and willingness to find the true facts," he said.

There are different kinds of history, he said; historical facts and romanticization through stories and films.

There was no problem with romanticization, such as the G30S/PKI film, he said. "But if it is repeated several times like propaganda, (people will respond to it like) a myth; the next step would be that it could be considered a fact."

Taufik did not elaborate.

He cited three types of historical writing, academic books, popular books and textbooks for school children.

The first, he said, should be strictly based on historical facts, as they were for scientific purposes.

Popular books do not have to refer strictly to facts, as their aim is to entertain and to put across certain messages.

Textbooks should help students understand history. This type of historical writing, Taufik said, was very much influenced by what the government wanted the aim of history teaching to be.

This could be, for instance, the understanding of a country's history, or the introduction of a new interpretation, he said, again without elaborating.

"Generally speaking, the problems facing historians usually come from sources. These could be living witnesses, written documents or objects that could be used to explain the past.

Human beings tend to be subjective, written documents could be forged, and historical objects could be fake or damaged, he said of the three sources' respective weaknesses.

"Here in Indonesia -- I think this is also a problem -- historical writings after the 1950s were mostly written by political scientists instead of historians," Taufik said.

He said historians have had difficulty finding sources free of subjectivity to write the period following the 1950s.

It is no secret, Taufik added, that historians who have written official versions, have agreed more or less to toe the government line, or "followed the sponsors".

Pramoedya, one of the few Indonesian writers of world acclaim, also said history writing should be "scientific" and that it must side with nothing but the facts.

"So, we 'may' make mistakes in the matter of interpretation and materials, but we must always side with the facts," said the 73-year-old author of the renowned historical romance trilogy Bumi Manusia (This Earth of Mankind). Several of his books are still banned.

Allowing mistakes means that it is human nature, Pramoedya says, not what one can do as one pleases in compiling history. And facts develop, he added. New facts might just as well come out, say, 100 years after a certain chapter of history had been written.

Presently, to revise the current chapter of the nation's history -- especially regarding the post-1965 aborted coup blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) -- Pramoedya suggested a "Committee for the Revision of History". The government has recently set up a team to review the curriculum, including history.

"Its members should be chosen by the younger generation, as older experts would have vested interests," he said.

Pramoedya himself would be an unlikely choice; he was an actor in that controversial part of history. He was a leader of the left-leaning Lekra literary organization, which senior writers such as Taufik Ismail have testified waged ideological warfare through its members' writings.

Unless history writing sides with nothing but the facts, Pramoedya believed all efforts would only end up in "tragedy".

He said historians needed "intellectual courage" to challenge the usually offered version of history.

"Over the past 32 years, the nation has been cheated because our intellectuals lacked courage to challenge the official version," according to Pramoedya.

Philosopher Mudji highlighted a rather different point to show how history should be written. Instead of just "dead facts," he said, history should be written to tell the struggle of humankind, of civilizations, although those involved might only be ordinary people and not any political elite.

What also deserves attention, said Mudji, who lectures at the Jakarta Driyarkara Institute of Philosophy, is "a history of mentality".

The history of the Javanese's and Sumatra's Minang mentality, for instance, could be written to help serve as guidance to understand why a certain ethnic group in power tends to produce a certain type of political system, he said.

He cited that when the late Sukarno and Soeharto became old, they increasingly treated the country "like they were their own."

One would argue this was universal of leaders being too long in power but Mudji says an understanding of their cultural backgrounds might shed light on the phenomena. The benefit of such a study was apparent a few years ago when observers reviewing Javanese values came up with a host of "violations" and twisting of noble values by Soeharto.

This way of history writing could make history very exciting, Mudji said. He cited how one would be amazed when entering a Chinese temple to see different images of deities, some of which would be a little affected by Western characteristics.

"We would learn to recognize our nation as a nation whose mentality has developed through the years with all kinds of layers," Mudji said, referring to influences of pre-historic times and Hindu-Buddhism, China, Islam and the West.

Mudji suggests if history was taught to raise such an awareness, the nation would learn that to get rid of one certain element of society -- Chinese for instance -- would be tantamount to getting rid of an element that formed the mentality of the nation itself. (bnt/rei/aan)