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