Two-way conspiracy
Having read Rahayu Ratnaningsih's two-part article entitled "It's time for Chinese-Indonesians to wake up" (Oct. 8 and Oct. 9), I would like to make a few comments.
In the first article, Rahayu suggested that Indonesian people today are not indigenous. I strongly disagree with this. I will point out a few examples of evolution of indigenous societies, as seen from a historical perspective.
The term indigenous is usually linked to a group of people characterized by a uniquely developed set of values, ideologies and cultures in a specific area. In Bali, for example, we can find Balinese who have maintained the Hindu religion and established an intricate irrigation system called subak. And in Aceh, we see the Acehnese as devout Moslems. Both the Balinese and Acehnese have perfected their own cultures, different from each other, for generations. So there is a spatial organization of human settlement pertaining to the perception of indigenous.
By and large, a whole world of indigenous societies in Indonesia encompass large and small, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, animists, wet rice growers, swidden cultivators, traders, tribal people and kin-groups. However, they share common historical experiences, artistic traditions and religious assumptions, albeit, each has its own integrity, distinct cultural tradition defined and enforced by its own language.
During the Dutch colonial period, it was the Chinese who economically benefited from the colonial government. So were they during the New Order era. Despite their supremacy economically, the Chinese have never really cared about the life of the indigenous people. The conspiracy between the indigenous elite and the Chinese to dominate the economy and politics has been the characteristic of the New Order.
The Chinese have become pariahs in politics and paragons in the economy, while the indigenous elite have become paragons in politics and pariahs in the economy. To make a good balance they protect each other, like patron and client. The Chinese become patrons in economics and clients in politics. The May riots and rapes of Chinese-Indonesians were signs that our society was fed up with this balance.
Total reform has not resulted in concrete measures against various malpractices. Even though our society can be transformed again to seize opportunities in facing the next millennium, this movement can transmit to another set back -- the military controls the government under the concept of being the savior of the nation.
HAFIANSYAH MEGE
Jakarta