Stuffy air in Indonesia's public world

Stuffy air in Indonesia's public world

Indonesian Images -- The Culture of the Public World;
By Niels Mulder; Kanisius Publishing House, 2000; 249 pp;
Rp 25,000

JAKARTA (JP) Vociferous protests are heard loud and clear.
Groups of people can easily turn into a mob, sometimes rowdy,
sometimes orderly. A small issue can spark a heated debate.

Headlines capture attention not for their content, but for
their sheer vulgarity. Goodbye politeness and farewell propriety,
it seems. This is Indonesia of today, its public world enjoying
seemingly complete freedom of speech, expression and assembly.

When Soeharto stepped down in May 1998, the door to freedom
was opened at a greater speed. When Soeharto's successor, B.J.
Habibie, was replaced by the most democratically elected
president, Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid, freedom seemed to be let
loose. Indonesia's public world is deliriously absorbed in its
long-lost freedom. For 32 years Soeharto and his New Order regime
muzzled critical mouths and stunted creative minds. For 32 years,
Indonesia's public world was tightly wrapped in the blanket of
darkness that was authoritarianism.

Mulder's book is interesting as it traces the development of
public discourse in Indonesia until just before the 1997 monetary
crisis, and considering that this Dutch anthropologist with a
special interest in Southeast Asian affairs has written a few
books about Indonesia (for example his Mysticism In Java/Ideology
in Indonesia). This crisis sounded the death knell for the New
Order regime, which collapsed following mass rallies by students
and laymen alike.

Reading the book through will allow a mosaic of events and
public figures to evolve before you, presenting a dark picture,
albeit with some optimism, of the country's public world in the
years preceding the collapse of the Soeharto regime.

The book is divided into seven chapters and discusses the
topics from what Mulder believes forms the basis of prevailing
ideas among Indonesians. So the book begins with a discussion of
social studies in elementary schools and senior secondary
schools. In these two chapters, Mulder critically looks at the
textbooks on social studies used in the schools. These books,
Mulder maintains, shape students' awareness of the outside world,
the world beyond schools and homes. Social studies introduces
students to ways of maintaining social contact and later placing
themselves in society.

Mulder notices the government's strong attempt in the books to
stress only ideal things: harmony and togetherness. Society must
be construed as a big family and harmony must be pursued in
social relations (including relations among different religions).
The state's principle of Pancasila has been considered a sacred
legacy, close to being made an amulet for the entire nation. It
has, according to Mulder, been made a shield against everything
that the state considers harmful to the people, or rather to its
own interest.

Persatuan and kesatuan (unity and integrity) are repeated much
too often, and "Society is not a field of contending interests
and values" with the result that one's place in society and
public life is unclear. The result is that "One had better go
one's own way -- unburdened by responsibility. Lu lu, gue gue.
(You for yourself, I for myself). It may follow that once the
door to openness is open, acts manifesting excessive freedom will
abound. This lack of social responsibility is behind such acts.
Schools which are expected to lay the foundation for the
students' social consciousness merely inculcate into their minds
slogans empty of significance.

In the next chapter Mulder dwells on Islam, the intelligentsia
and the state. In his opinion, there are two great camps in the
Islamic movement in Indonesia. One camp believes in promoting
Islam as a cultural activity while to the other camp, Muslims
must strive to place themselves among the country's political
elite so that they will have important sway in state matters and,
it follows, benefit Muslims in general. The first camp is
represented by Indonesia's President, and the other by Amien
Rais, the present speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly.
Interestingly, Abdurrahman is identified with Nahdlatul Ulama
(NU) and Amien with Muhammadiyah, both being the country's
largest Muslim organizations. In between these two camps are
other groups of Muslims in different degrees of proximity to the
state.

In the next three chapters, Mulder concentrates on the public
world and how it is manifested in mass media and novels. The mass
media, in Mulder's observation, cleverly made use of the little
room allowed by the ruling New Order regime; exposing the
regime's corrupt face without causing much offense.

When newspapers quote the words of one public figure and then
another public figure at different places, the criticism voiced
will not form a concerted public opinion and will therefore not
be harmful to the interest of the state.

In the chapter on "Images in Fiction", Mulder briefly
discusses five contemporary novels, each by Arswendo Atmowiloto,
YB Mangunwijaya, Sindhunata, Seno Gumira Ajidarma and Leila S.
Chudori. Although the novels are set differently and have their
own plots, Mulder can find a common theme: stifling of the mind
and the way to come to terms with it in order to survive. What
way is offered? Escape from reality, as Seno Gumira Ajidarma
advises in his Jazz, Parfum & Insiden or live in your own world,
as Sindhunata suggests in his Semar Mencari Raga. Or it can be
pasrah, resigning yourself to fate in the traditional way, as
suggested by Arswendo in his Canting or in the new style as Leila
proposes in her Malam Terakhir. In short, the public world Mulder
studies is one of gloom and stuffiness that one can only live in
as long as one can create one's own world and resign oneself to
fate.

The book concludes with a chapter on "Constructing the Public
World: the Discourse of the 1990s", which dwells on the public
discourse during the New Order regime. It was the time when minds
were stunted with the drone of Pancasila at schools and Pancasila
indoctrination at all levels of society.

Or in Mulder's words, "The thirty-two years since the coming
to power of the Generation of 1945 (there was) an attempt to
establish a corporate state that is at war with civil society".
That explains the gloomy public world that the New Order created
of Indonesia. It is in this light that Mulder's book is
illuminating for our understanding of present-day Indonesia.

-- Lie Hua