Sultan wants to assure peaceful transition

By Hartoyo Pratiknyo

JAKARTA (JP): If any person alive at present can be said to be living in the shadow of his forbears, Hamnegkubuwono X, ruler of the sultanate of Yogyakarta, certainly qualifies.

Tenth in a lineage of rulers known for their tradition of resistance against foreign domination, Sultan Hamnegkubuwono X counts among his forebears such illustrious national heroes as Sultan Agung Hanyokrokusumo (Hanyokrokusumo the Great), the third and greatest king of the old Mataram kingdom who is known primarily for his attacks on the Dutch stronghold at Batavia in the 17th century, and Prince Diponegoro, whose 25-year-long guerrilla war in the early decades of the 19th century inflicted great harm to the Dutch until he was tricked into surrendering.

His father and predecessor, Hamnegkubuwono IX, was named a national hero for the key role which he played in Indonesia's struggle for independence in the 1940s. But whereas Hamnegkubuwono IX earned his spurs mostly battling or restraining the colonial forces of the Netherlands and Japan, his successor, Hamnegkubuwono X, sees it as one of his foremost duties to see to it that Yogyakarta's transition from a traditional society into a modern one is not only successful, but peaceful.

That task is more complicated than it may seem. Ever since the 1930s the sultanate, and especially its capital, the city of Yogyakarta, has been known throughout Indonesia as a center of learning. It had what was for those years a respectable number of modern Western-oriented schools, many of whose graduates went on to become leading figures, either in public office or in the professions, after the country proclaimed its independence in 1945.

Ki Hajar Dewantoro, a pioneer of the national education system in Indonesia, set up the first indigenous Taman Siswa schools in Yogyakarta. Others, such as the Islamic-based Muhammadiyah, followed suit.

Today, Yogyakarta has more than a hundred different colleges and universities with students coming from all over the archipelago. Newcomers, business people, tourists and especially students from elsewhere in Indonesia outnumber the original local population.

Naturally, there is a good deal of intensive contact between ethnic groups in Yogyakarta, with consequences that have in the past not always been agreeable. From the 1950s on until well into the 1960s brawls between students of different ethnic groups were rather common. Today, that period of inter-ethnic strife is history.

In a recent press interview in Jakarta, Sultan Hamnegkubuwono X said he saw this trend toward inter-ethnic harmony in Yogya as a result of the cultural dialogue that has been going on between societal groups in the city for the past 30 or 40 years.

"It has always been my hope that this country's diversity will give this nation strength because even at the time when we proclaimed our independence on August 17, 1945, all of our ethnic communities were aware of this diversity," the 54-year-old Sultan said. "A bargaining process must of course take place, but the main point here is that not a single group, not even the most dominant, will try to dominate another."

"In order for all the ethnic groups to be able to contribute to the unitary state, I hope this diversity will not be merely treated as a symbol of unity in diversity, but as a determining factor in a strategy to attain true national integration. This means that even with the establishment of regional autonomy, a cultural dialog should be possible."

A cultural dialogue between communities, according to the Sultan, would also be a most effective way to overcome the mistrust that members of one community could harbor against settlers from another community, as may happen in some regions of Indonesia where the local population feels that newcomers are threatening their livelihood.

"It could be that in some areas no cultural dialog has ever taken place because no outsiders have even been there. The emphasis is on economic and cultural aspects. But increased mobility and economic advancement bring people from other ethnic population groups to the area. Since the emphasis has always been on the economic and political aspects of life, this could be seen as a threat. But a cultural approach would help the locals realize that they are all parts of the same republic and that mobility is something that must be accepted. Without this dialog will never take place, not to say transformation."

The problem, according to the Sultan, is that different conditions exist in different regions. In some regions conditions haven't changed, making it difficult for the people to take in the new values that could provide them with a base on which to build new patterns of thought and behavior.

"In Yogya I often meet with students from different provinces. I meet them at my office in small groups of maybe about five at a a time. They are mostly students who are just out of senior high school and want to continue their study at a university in Yogya. So, they are in a process of maturing.

"I ask them if they plan to go back to where they came from after they have graduated. Most of them say, no. I ask them why not, and they say that to go back would mean for them to return to backwardness.

"But in Yogya they meet with people from various different ethnic backgrounds and this has a certain impact on their budding mature character. The point here is that they are in the process of maturing, morally and in outlook. This means that if they go home they would be bringing with them a world outlook which they feel is more advanced than before, since at home there is no cultural dialogue with people from different ethnic backgrounds.

"This means they would be faced with two choices: Either they adjust to their surroundings, or their surroundings would have to adjust to them, which is impossible. This is what I mean when I say that the cultural dialogue between ethnic communities in this country is unbalanced.

The prospect of regional autonomy, as the Sultan sees it, could mean a greater mobility of people and greater synergy, but also sharper competition between provinces. In such a situation, a cultural dialogue between community groups is necessary, but always in the framework of diversity as a strategy to attain national integration.

"Unless this is properly done, the danger of disintegration would be even greater than it is at present. Autonomy must bring transparence. This means turning people from objects to subjects of development. In turn, this would encourage creativity and innovation, and eventually give rise to aspirations. And it is aspirations that produce democracy."