The problem of a 'clean environment'

The problem of a 'clean environment'

By Onghokham

JAKARTA (JP): Recently it happened again: people being accused of being tainted with leftism due to contamination through relatives or even friends connected with what used to be called the "old left", or communists or with the coup d'etat of Sept. 30, 1965.

This is not the first time that "cleanliness" of any kind of relationship with "leftists" or "rightists", such as the Darul Islam rebellion, has been called for by the authorities.

However, twenty years or more after the event, one wonders about the legitimacy of such calls, especially now, after all the revolutionary changes that have taken place in Eastern Europe and after the shrinking space and activity of communism around the world.

Of course, one knows that all this is politics: a way of purging enemies and undesirables. It is also a convenient way of doing it since in Indonesia's history of turbulence one can almost always find some kind of fault with almost anybody.

Nevertheless, this sort of accusation, especially when made against relatives of those "undesirables", is against the principles of human rights. It presumes guilt by association and rejects the idea of individual responsibility. It also rejects the idea of a group's or an individual's capacity to change and develop.

An individual, for instance, could have been on the "left" or "right" side during the Indonesian revolution for independence, and who was not on one side or the other? But persons and conditions change. Liken this with the acceptance of repentant communists or even former communist parties in the former Eastern Europe. Or compare this with the acceptance of descendants of former fascists in Europe. Societies seem to accept them and they have some legitimacy. Change and the development of parties, of individuals and of the world is possible.

The difference between these attitudes characterizes the difference between a bureaucratic culture and a liberal one. A bureaucratic culture tends categorize everything and bar the idea of change or development.

Police, intelligence agencies, agencies concerned with peace and order, or even with law and order, are bureaucracies and they keep special records, mostly of troublemakers. Take, for instance, people with tattoos, or with long hair, or people from certain regions or groups, such as Surabaya soccer supporters (perhaps with reason) or people from Surabaya in general. Or they could be people with special lifestyles, such as the warok of Ponorogo, which are men who because of their convictions practice homosexuality with young boys.

Then there are the undesirables of recent political history and almost every revolutionary period has yielded many of these suspected eternal (for the police) troublemakers. First among the ranks in Indonesia are communists and former politicians of the now-vanished Indonesian Socialist Party, as were the Babouf conspirators or the Jacobins or Bonapartists in Europe.

Some of those categories of undesirables in Indonesia date back to the days of colonial bureaucracy, since bureaucracies hardly change, whether they are colonial or national or whatever else. The Madiun-Ponorogo region, for instance, was regarded as a turbulent area by pre-colonial Mataram, our last Javanese monarchy, as well as by the colonial and post-colonial regimes. As it happens, many Socialists and Nationalists politicians were from this region.

Banten is another such region, perhaps with more justification than Ponorogo, although Ponorogo was economically of greater importance than Banten, which had no colonial plantations while coffee plantations thrived in the Ponorogo- Madiun region.

As far as blood or family relations are concerned, the Netherlands East Indies bureaucracy used to compile genealogies and genetic codes of the pangreh-praja -- members of the priyayi indigenous elite in its employ and whom it used in a system of indirect rule as described by J. Furnivall. The perceived political purity of priyayi families reminds us of the cleanliness of individuals in the present political order.

In the colonial period, every problem a Dutch official had with a local priyayi of the pangreh-praja (native civil servants) corps invited investigations into his ancestral and family past, even that of his wife. If necessary, that is if faults could not be found regarding the man himself, then in-laws or the mother's family might become subjects of investigation.

However, as is the case with accusations of "left" or "right" contamination, faults were usually found with the priyayi one wanted to purge. Priyayi families were not that numerous even in those days and they usually married among each other. Sometimes a rebel relative or ancestor could be found among them. In short, the "cleanliness" requirement has always been a good political device. And one should not underestimate the culturally deeply ingrained bureaucratic practices of categorizing enemies of the state.

The great political event in Java's colonial history was the Diponegoro rebellion (1825-30). It was the last great rebellion against the colonial order. The modern Dutch colonial system dated from after that war.

If at present the criterion for political "cleanliness" dates from the time of the communist coup of Sept. 30, 1965, then the Diponegoro revolt of 1830 was used as a criterion for loyalty to the Dutch crown. Descendants of Diponegoro were of course never accepted into the colonial civil service. They could never become a sultan (local ruler) or even brides of sultans and princes.

Several commanders of the rebel Prince Diponegoro, such as Ali Basyah and some of their descendants, deserted to the Dutch side in order to get appointed into the colonial civil service. However, if there was trouble, or if there was a conflict between one of them and the Dutch colonial authority, then their relationship to Ali Basyah would be cited.

On the other hand it must be said that the Dutch usually concealed blood relationships to rebels and this was only recorded in police reports or other official documents. Only in the case of the most serious misconduct, such as when their loyalty was questioned, did they get dismissed.

An even greater trauma for the colonial government where the question of political pollution might come up involved the so- called power blocks, whether they be government-appointed bupati (regents) or Chinese entrepreneurs who leased the colonial government's tax farms.

In recent studies on post-colonial countries, scholars have argued that most post-colonial countries have in many ways duplicated or continued the old colonial policies. I tend to agree with them. There can be no denying that colonialism has made a deep impact on our world.

I would argue that colonialist regimes are, or were, authoritarian governments. But in modern times authoritarian governments rely on a modern bureaucracy. Post-colonial states, are still very much authoritarian governments. To a great deal they depend on bureaucracies, although perhaps without the niceties and problems of outside control, such as in the Indonesian case by the Dutch parliament and other institutions.

Authoritarianism and oppression rather than the creativity of independence are perhaps the cause of the duplicity of colonial and post-colonial states.

The writer is a historian and former lecturer at University of Indonesia.