SECULAR, RELIGIOUS AND SUPERNATURAL – AN EASTERN INDONESIAN CATHOLIC EXPERIENCE OF FEAR (Autoethnographic Reflections on the Reading of a New Order-Era Propaganda Text)
Justin Laba Wejak
Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
2017
Faculty of Arts The University of Melbourne
Abstract
This thesis examines an Eastern Indonesian Catholic experience of fear by analysing how a New Order-era propaganda text dealing with the political upheavals of 1965- 66 triggers and maintains fear in one Eastern Indonesian Catholic reader – myself. It uses the methodology of autoethnography to examine the fears that I myself experienced in 2004 when encountering a 1967 Catholic propaganda text entitled, ‘Dari Madiun ke Lubang Buaya, dari Lubang Buaya ke…?’ [From Madiun to the Crocodile Hole, from the Crocodile Hole to...?]). By analysing my own experience of fear in reading the text, I argue that the Eastern Indonesian Catholic experience of fear involves three interlocking dimensions – secular, religious and supernatural. These three forms of fear are experienced simultaneously by the reader (myself). The From Madiun text is primarily a secular narrative of the 1965-66 events, but the reader brings his culturally-conditioned religious and supernatural fears when reading it. I argue that supernatural fear is the most unspoken but most powerful form of fear that I experienced when reading the text, and this reflects my membership of the Lamaholot community in which supernatural fear is pervasive. The thesis contends that in relation to 1965, the Catholic Church’s propaganda created an explicit secular fear of communists, an implicit religious fear of Muslims, and a hidden supernatural fear of ghosts. While secular fear represented the nemesis of secularization and a danger to the Indonesian nation-state and to the Catholic Church was the most overt form of fear that the Catholic Church directed against communists, the most profound fears which the Church was able to instill in its members were religious and supernatural forms of fear. These three forms of fear are experienced simultaneously, and the fear of 1965 is not therefore simply a matter of the past, but also of the present. Eliminating the secular threat of communism in 1966 increased the religious threat of Islam and multiplied the supernatural threat from ghosts, which remain very strong in contemporary Lamaholot society. The thesis thus relates the fear of 1965 to the cultural belief systems of my Lamaholot community, belief systems that maintain the fear of 1965 to the present day.
ii DECLARATION
This is to certify that:
• the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD, • due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, • the thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of bibliographies as approved by the Research Higher Degrees Committee.
Signature
Justin Laba Wejak
iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It has been a long journey to the completion of the thesis. In the face of personal circumstances such as death in the family and other important life commitments such as working to support a young family, there were times when I questioned my ability to complete the work. Sometimes I lost confidence and motivation in the process. Yet one thing that remained consistent throughout the journey is my passion for the research project. The thesis is about fear and my experience of reading a New Order propaganda text concerning the political upheavals of 1965-66 in Indonesia.
I would like to thank my supervisors: Dr Lewis Mayo, Prof. Richard Chauvel and Dr Muhammad Kamal for their guidance during the process. I found the numerous discussions with each of them very illuminating and thought-provoking. As a philosopher, Kamal provided significant comments and suggestions to improve the theoretical context of the thesis particularly with reference to Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of fear of the present. As a political scientist, Richard ensured that relevant details concerning Indonesia’s political history are included and accurate. As a historian and Asian Studies expert, Lewis enlightened me to explore the connections between the three dimensions of fear – secular, religious and supernatural. Lewis’ sharpness in identifying the connections was very helpful in the process of structuring the thesis to be an integrated and logical piece. Moreover, as my principal supervisor, Lewis showed unreserved belief in me that I would be able to complete the journey that I had started. Such belief was crucial in casting aside my sense of self-doubt. It was truly a rewarding experience of working with Lewis, Richard and Kamal. I am very appreciative and grateful of their willingness and time to journey with me in this challenging project.
Thank you also to the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute where I undertook my PhD project, particularly for the financial support to attend international conferences in Sweden (2017) and Singapore (2014). The conference at Lund University in Sweden on ‘Media and Fear’, in particular, has helped me realize even more about the importance of my study on ‘fear’. The contemporary world today has been filled with series of frightening events, and failure in managing one’s sense of fear – individually or collectively – can result in the destruction of our shared humanity.
I also sincerely thank Bradley Holland for proof-reading some of my earlier drafts, and Melinda who proof-read all the drafts, and who checked the accuracy of English translations of numerous Indonesian citations in the thesis. I greatly appreciated their time and energy to improve the linguistic credential of the thesis, without of course compromising the authenticity of my own work. To my colleagues and friends, wherever they may be, who have supported me in their own ways and forms throughout the journey, I would also like to say thank you. Just to mention some among many: Prof. Ariel Heryanto, Dr. Balthasar Kehi, Dr. Bruce Duncan and Dr. Val Noone.
I would also like to thank the two examiners of my thesis, Dr Philip Fountain and Prof. Pam Allen, for their willingness and time to assess my thesis. I greatly appreciate their attention to the details of the thesis, and their very positive feedback
iv on my work was encouraging. I have made minor amendments to some parts of the thesis in response to their comments and suggestions for the final submission of the thesis.
Last but not least, I thank my family: Melinda, Amadeus and Konstantyn, for their unconditional support, especially in keeping me motivated, creative and inspired throughout the challenging process of writing. Most of the thesis was written at home in our shared room when I learnt to become accustomed to the unavoidable background noises. There were many times when I chose not to play with them due to my priority focus on the thesis. I very much appreciated their patience and understanding in this regard. As an expression of appreciation I would thus like to dedicate this thesis to my family. They were my motivation for completing what I had started.
As this thesis is about fear, one thing that I learned from this process of writing is to not lose hope and courage, as implied in the theological viewpoint of Paul Tillich. With hope and courage one is able to confront whatever fear one may have, and not get entangled in fear that could, in turn, destroy self-confidence and passion. Where there is fear there is also hope and courage.
J L Wejak
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title i Abstract ii Declaration iii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents vi
INTRODUCTION 1
Prologue: Two experiences of fear 1 Fear experience one: Buang Duran, Adonara – fear and silence Fear experience two: A forgotten text , Yogyakarta – fear and propaganda 5 Political fear, existential fear, cultural fear 8 Proposition 10 Key definitions 13 The text and the reader 13 The forms of fear 14 Secular fear 14 Religious fear 14 Supernatural fear 15 Triggering and maintaining 16 Explicit, implicit and hidden 16 Beings and rivalry 16 Methodology: Autoethnography and reading experience 17 Outline 25
PART ONE: CONTEXTS OF STUDY 27
Chapter 1: THEORETICAL CONTEXT: FEAR, BEING, TIME (PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL APPROACHES) 28
Introductory Notes 28 Fear is universally human, and it is specifically religious 29 Fear has a time structure 31 Fear as a state of being 34 Fear always has an object 35 Fear is different from angst 38 Fear has three dimensions 44 Concluding Notes 46
Chapter 2: NATIONAL AND LOCAL CONTEXTS OF 1965-66: REVIEW OF SELECTED LITERATURE 47
Introductory Notes 47
NATIONAL CONTEXT OF 1965-66 50 Responsibility for the October 1, 1965 Coup: Five different narratives 50 The PKI was responsible (Nugroho Notosusanto) 51 The Indonesian Army was responsible (The Cornell Paper) 52 Progressive generals and the PKI were responsible (Harold Crouch),
vi Suharto was responsible (W.F. Wertheim) 53 Progressive Army officers and a section of the PKI leadership were responsible (John Roosa) 54 Narratives of locality and violence: Robert Cribb’s edited volume 1990 and the PhD theses of Sudjatmiko (1992) and Sulistyo (1997) 55 Theorizing violence in Indonesia – Robinson, Colombijn, Lindblad and Heryanto 61 Imagining and personalising the events of 1965-66: Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentaries 66
LOCAL CONTEXT OF 1965-66 (FLORES AND WEST TIMOR) 68 Local victims and perpetrators of violence of 1965-66 68 Flores: Victims, perpetrators and the stance of the Church 69 West Timor: Victims, perpetrators and the Church 75 Local responses to the violence of 1965-66: West Timor 78 Concluding Notes 79
PART TWO: THE TEXT AND THE READER 81
Chapter 3: THE FRIGHTENING TEXT 82
Introductory Notes 82 The production of the frightening text 86 The form of a frightening text 89 Analysis: The structure of a frightening text 97 A frightening title 97 A product of the frightening times: From Madiun and the fear of death 98 The rhetoric of the frightening text 99 Authority, mystery and fear: From Madiun’s use of sources 100 The frightening and frightened author(s): Pater Beek? 103 Concluding Notes 107
Chapter 4: THE FRIGHTENED READER 108
Introductory Notes 108 Questions 109 The reader’s autobiography and experiences of fear 109 The reader’s autobiography 109 Creating the frightened reader: Lamaholot cultural contexts 114 Creating the frightened reader: Family, childhood and educational contexts 116 Concluding Notes 120 Map of the Lamaholot region 121
PART THREE: FORMS OF FEAR 122
Chapter 5: SECULAR FEAR OF COMMUNISTS (The Explicit in the From Madiun Text) 123
Introductory Notes 123 The most explicit, but the least powerful fear 124 Definition 125 Propositions and questions 125
vii Secular fear and the reader’s personal experience 127 Fear and secular beings 130 The communists as atheists 130 The communists as cunning operators 138 The communists as propagandists 141 The communists as rebels 150 The communists as leftists 153 The communists as reds 160 The communists as demons 163 Fear and secular time 167 Fear and secular rivalry 168 Concluding Notes 179
Chapter 6: RELIGIOUS FEAR OF MUSLIMS (The Implicit in the From Madiun Text) 182
Introductory Notes 182 The implicit and the deeper fear 184 Definition 187 Core propositions 188 A mutual fear: Muslim-Christian relations in Indonesia 189 Fear and religious beings 198 Muslims as ‘setan besar’: Pater Beek 200 Muslims as tempters 205 Muslims as polygamists 211 Muslims as ‘marangele’ 216 Fear and religious time 219 Fear and religious rivalry 220 ‘Fanaticism’, an Islamic state and fear of hell 222 Islamic ‘fanaticism’ 223 Islamic politics 226 Concluding Notes 234
Chapter 7: SUPERNATURAL FEAR OF GHOSTS (The Hidden in the From Madiun Text) 237
Introductory Notes 237 The hidden and the deepest fear 237 Definitions 240 Supernatural fear 240 Ghosts and black magicians 240 Ghosts 240 Black magicians 241 Black magic 242 Proposition and questions 244 Ideas of death in Eastern Indonesia 246 Fear and supernatural beings 251 Fear and supernatural beings: Ghosts and black magicians 254 Fear and supernatural time 262 Fear and supernatural rivalry 264 Black magic versus white magic 265 Good and bad supernatural places 268
viii Concluding Notes 274
CONCLUSION 276
BIBLIOGRAPHY 281
ix
INTRODUCTION
Prologue: Two experiences of fear
This study of the Eastern Indonesian Catholic experience of fear and its connections with the Indonesian mass violence of 1965-66 has its origins in two personal encounters with fear in Indonesia in 2004. The first was the fear I sensed in the local people on the Eastern Indonesian island of Adonara when I asked them questions about Buang Duran, a local leftist leader who was murdered in 1966. The second was my own spontaneous fear reaction when I first discovered the text that forms the focal point of this thesis in a Jesuit library in Yogyakarta, an experience I still vividly recall.
Fear experience one: Buang Duran, Adonara – fear and silence
In January 2004, I went to the islands of Adonara and Lembata in Eastern Indonesia in the Lamaholot cultural region, from which I originate and where I was raised, to collect some preliminary data for a project on local memory and narratives of the
Catholic Church and the political upheavals of 1965-66 in Eastern Indonesia. At the time, I was particularly interested in asking the locals what they remembered about
Buang Duran, the local leftist leader of the Union of Indonesian Peasants (PKTI:
Persatuan Kaum Tani Indonesia) 1, who was murdered in 1966 during the anti- communist violence. I found that it was not easy at all to interview people about
Buang Duran: local interviewees were reluctant to speak to me about the man. The response to my questions was simply, “tidak tahu itu”, or “I don’t know about that”.
1 The PKTI was affiliated with the Indonesian Peasants’ Front (BTI: Barisan Tani Indonesia) and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI: Partai Komunis Indonesia).
1 This silence could be attributed to a combination of factors, including the idea that the subject matter was then still sensitive to some, my religious identification with
Catholicism, and my ethnic identity as a member of the Lamaholot community.
Perhaps local people did not want to revisit the wounds of the past because this might trigger further pain, guilt and embarrassment to their families and to the community. I left the place with a sense of frustration about the simple answer of the local interviewees, “tidak tahu itu”. What struck me, however, was not the reluctance of people to talk, but the sense of fear that seemed to be underlying it.
Who was this Buang Duran about whom people were so reluctant to talk?
Buang Duran was the subject of a 2003 article by the social anthropologist R.H.
Barnes, 2 entitled ‘Fransiskus/Usman Buang Duran; Catholic, Muslim, Communist’, an article I had read before undertaking my field trip. As reflected in his name,
‘Fransiskus Usman Buang Duran’, Buang Duran proudly presented himself as being three-in-one at the same time – Catholic, Muslim and communist. As mentioned above, Buang Duran was the leader of a communist affiliated organisation PKTI, which was first formed by him in 1947 in Witihama, Adonara. The Union was inspired by a Marxist ideology with strong political, economic, social and cultural goals; its membership had reached 700 by 1965 (Barnes, 2003:5).
Barnes tells us that Buang Duran was originally a trusted friend of the local
Catholic missionary of Dutch origin, Fr. Heinrich van der Hulst SVD, and was entrusted with the keys to the Catholic Church, becoming the head teacher in the local
Catholic elementary school in Witihama, Adonara. He was, however, sacked by the
2 Barnes is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford, where he also received his doctorate. He is a specialist on the anthropology of eastern Indonesia, and the author of ‘Kedang: A study of the collective thought of an eastern Indonesian people’ (1974), and ‘Sea hunters of Indonesia; Fishers and weavers of Lamalera’ (1996).
2 parish priest from these roles because of his involvement in a sexual scandal. A married Buang Duran had an affair with an unmarried local woman and got her pregnant. This incident was then perceived as a big social and religious scandal within the community which was then strong in both adat (customary law) and religion, especially Catholicism (Barnes, 2003:4). Barnes also tells us that Buang
Duran’s ancestor was a Muslim who was related by kinship with the Muslim rajas of
Adonara. Today some members of Buang Duran’s family are Muslims, and some are
Catholics.
According to Barnes, at the local level, Buang Duran (not Sukarno) was regarded as the real President of Indonesia, due to his strong interest in social justice.
Barnes quotes the Indonesian phrase, “sama rata sama rasa”, literally as “the same level, the same taste” (Barnes, 2003:10), to illustrate the communist aspiration for social and economic equality, articulated by Buang Duran and his local followers.
Buang Duran’s PKTI movement attracted many followers in the Lamaholot region, and had the qualities of a cargo cult:
Buang Duran told his followers that the end of time was coming and that a great ship would come, bringing food and weapons for the chosen in order to help them gain power and establish a Utopia. Thus they did not need to prepare fields on which to plant maize, like the others, as everything would come with the ship. Many believed him. They made no fields and laughed at those who did, since it was not necessary. They sold their tools, which were also not necessary. However, the harvest was poor that year, and hunger threatened even those who planted fields. Especially those waiting for the ship faced hunger and were in their turn ridiculed. The others gave them nothing to eat. ‘We worked’, they said, ‘but you had your ship!’ Some of the PKTI members responded by plundering and burning down granaries (Barnes, 2003:10).
When Buang Duran was killed in 1966, his third wife, Tupat, was also executed, an event intended, in the words of Barnes, “to inspire fear” (Barnes,
2003:24). According to Barnes, a local clerk, who was ordered to execute her, was so afraid of the supernatural consequences that “he barely cut her throat, and another
3 man had to finish the job” (Barnes, 2003:24). Tupat herself was not afraid to die and faced her fate with pride; she wanted to be united with her husband, Buang Duran, in the afterlife. Her body was then sliced up and her breasts cut off after her death
(Barnes, 2003:24).
The multiple issues and fear associated with Buang Duran and his murder could be seen as lying behind the silence of the locals in Adonara in 2004. This silence left me with no other option than to revise my original plan to study local memory and narratives of the Catholic Church during the political upheavals of 1965-66 in
Indonesia. Locals would not talk to me about these things; instead of memory and narratives there was silence. It should be added that silence on the topics of 1965 frustrates many people today. Those in Indonesia and abroad who are ready to confront the past by at least discussing the subject publicly, have found the constant control and restriction by the Indonesian government on public discussions of 1965 disappointing and discouraging. A few examples of this silence and silencing will suffice: In October 2015, hundreds of copies of the March 2015 edition of the student magazine, Lentera, produced by the Satya Wacana Christian University’s (UKSW)
School of Social and Communication Sciences, entitled ‘Salatiga Kota Merah’
(Salatiga, the Red City), were withdrawn from circulation due to pressure from state agencies, including the Indonesian police. This edition discussed the 1965-66 massacres, recounting stories about the massacre of alleged supporters of the
Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in Salatiga (The Jakarta Post, 20 October 2015).
Another recent example of the silencing of discussion of 1965 was in October
2015 when the Indonesian Writers’s Festival in Ubud, Bali was forced by the
Indonesian police to cancel a series of events that addressed the 1965-66 massacres.
4 The pressure was applied with a threat to revoke the festival’s permit. Amongst the events cancelled were the screening of Joshua Oppenheimer's award-winning documentary, The Look of Silence (2014), whose title alludes to silence surrounding
1965. A screening of The Look of Silence at the Jakarta Theological Seminary was also cancelled on the 30th of September 2015 when police claimed that there were thugs who had threatened to attack the screening. It is clear that even after 50 years, the subject of 1965 remains sensitive not only to talk about, but also maybe even to think about and to remember. Some might see the silence of people in Adonara when asked about Buang Duran as emanating from this wider culture of Indonesian silence about the events of 1965-66. As this thesis will argue, however, I believe that the silence of the locals in Adonara had deeper and more culturally complex roots.
Fear experience two: A forgotten text, Yogyakarta – fear and propaganda
After leaving Adonara in January 2004, I went to the Jesuit library in Yogyakarta to conduct some literature research. There I encountered an old text titled, ‘Dari Madiun ke Lubang Buaya, dari Lubang Buaya ke…?’ [From Madiun to the Crocodile Hole, from the Crocodile Hole to...?]. The text was old and had a dusty smell, and looked as if it had not been read by anybody for a long time. I was astonished to read the title of the text, and I spontaneously felt fear. In the next few days, I focused on the From
Madiun text – reading it and reflecting on it, and more importantly trying to reflect on why I was feeling frightened by the text.
From Madiun was published by the Indonesian Catholic Church in 1967 immediately following the massacres of 1965-66. Apart from wanting to understand the fear that I felt when encountering it, I had two reasons for taking an interest in the
5 text. One is that I thought it was a key early example of the way in which the Catholic
Church presented the 1965-66 events to Catholics.3 The other is that I suspected that the person behind the production of the From Madiun text was Pater (Father) Beek, a
Jesuit priest of Dutch origin, who was socially and politically active in Indonesia in the 1950s and 1960s; I had heard a little about Pater Beek and I wanted to know more about him. The text thus struck me as an important document for understanding the history and politics of the ‘national Church’ in Indonesia in the New Order era (1966-
98). It should be noted that I have no definite evidence that the text was, at the time, circulated and read in Eastern Indonesia, including in Adonara and Lembata, the
Lamaholot areas that are my own cultural homeland. For this reason, it remains difficult to say what impact the From Madiun text had on the community of Eastern
Indonesian Catholic readers from which I originate, including whether or not the text engendered fear in anyone of Lamaholot background who read it when it was first produced. This is not to say that the ideologies that the From Madiun text promulgates would not have been familiar to Catholics in Eastern Indonesia in the aftermath of the 1965-66 events. I know that the chair of the Indonesian Catholic
Party in the 1960s, Frans Seda of Maumere, Flores (which is part of the larger
Catholic Eastern Indonesian zone from which I originate), was closely associated with Pater Beek, and that he attended Pater Beek’s supervised month-long retreats
(khasebul: khalwat sebulan) in the 1960s during which some of the topics covered by the From Madiun text were thoroughly discussed. Indeed, it seems highly possible that the From Madiun text was known to many Catholic priests and to some lay
Catholics in Eastern Indonesia in the late 1960s.
3 I will discuss the From Madiun text in chapter 3 of the thesis.
6 When I encountered the From Madiun text, I thought of my own key experience with the propaganda of the New Order, the moment on the 30th of
September 1985 when for the first time in my life I watched a film. I was then training for priesthood, and together with hundreds of students and academics from the Catholic Institute of Philosophy in Flores, and, on the 20th anniversary of the 1965 coup, I attended a screening of the film ‘Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI’ [The betrayal of
30th September movement/the Indonesian Communist Party]. This film was scripted by Arifin C. Noer4 in 1984 and was based on the narrative of 1965 produced by the
Indonesian military historian Nugroho Notosusanto (1930-1985), “one of the most important propagandists of the New Order regime” ( McGregor, 2007:39). From the point when the film was made in 1984 it was compulsory for Pengkhianatan
G30S/PKI to be broadcast on all television stations for public view each year on 30th
September; this continued until Suharto’s downfall in May 1998. The film was a key part of New Order propaganda against communism, and it reflects the ability of the state to manipulate people’s fears.
It would have been considered subversive to refuse to view the documentary.
Students and teachers from junior secondary to tertiary levels throughout Indonesia were all obliged to watch it. Even though communism and the PKI had been officially banned in 1966 by Suharto’s New Order Government, the documentary was designed to be a reminder of the frightening past, and as a call to continue to combat latent communism.
4 Arifin Chairin Noer, who was born on 10 March 1941 in Cirebon, West Java and died in Jakarta on 28 May 1995, was an Indonesian poet, theater director and highly successful film producer. Noer's screenplays won numerous awards, and translations of his plays have appeared in several languages, including English, French, Swedish and Chinese. Noer received the S.E.A. Writers’ Award in 1990 and his most notable poetry works included Selamat Pagi Jajang (1979) and a collection of poetry published after his death, Nyanyian Sepi (1995). On Chairin Noer’s work see Harry Aveling (2001), Gabrielle Cody (2007), John H McGlynn (1990) and Korrie Layun Rampan (2000).
7 The force of this propaganda can be seen in the emotional effects that it had on me and on the other seminarians. The film made me feel afraid of, and angry towards, communist ideology – an atheistic and dangerous ideology, as I was told at that time. Through the film, I not only learned to fear the communists, but to hate them. My experience of the film was, I believe, symptomatic of how the official ideology of the Catholic Church in Indonesia was disseminated, and highlights how
Catholics and priests in particular were indoctrinated with fear-filled propaganda, both that of the state and that of the Church. Exposure to this propaganda was a key part of the experience of being Catholic in Indonesia during the era of Suharto’s New
Order, and its effects have lasted into the present, at least for my generation.
When I encountered the From Madiun text in Yogyakarta in Java in 2004 the emotions of fear and anger that I experienced in watching the Pengkhianatan
G30S/PKI documentary film in Flores in 1985 seemed to resurface. However, a sense of curiosity about the substance of the From Madiun text outweighed and overpowered the feelings of fear and anger I felt towards communists and their ideology. Through New Order propaganda, I was made to feel afraid of Indonesian communists whom I never encountered and of the purportedly atheistic nature of the communist ideology that they represented. Why had this fear lasted even when I no longer believed in the ideologies of the New Order state?
Political fear, existential fear, cultural fear
Fear is a universal human experience, and being afraid is among the most common of human emotions and is experienced at some level by everyone, regardless of ideology, gender, race and ethnicity (Scruton 1984). However, fear takes forms that
8 are historically and culturally specific.5 If fear is culturally and historically specific as well as universal, how important are details of Indonesian political history to understanding the fears which I experience when reading the From Madium text?
We can perhaps observe three different dimensions of fear that are at play in relationship to the From Madiun text’s account of the 1965-66 events, namely the fears that inspired those events, the fear-inspiring qualities of the events themselves, and finally the attempt to recreate fear through narration of what happened. This thesis does not, however, approach the From Madiun text primarily in terms of the fears that inspired the 1965-66 events or in terms of the fear-inspiring events themselves that the text narrates. Instead it focuses primarily on the question of how fear is recreated, or more specifically ‘triggered’ and ‘maintained’ in the reader after violent events have occurred.
In reflecting on experiences of fear in Indonesia, both my own personal experiences and those of my community, there is a combination of universal and existential fears that are not linked with the Indonesian political context, and also local fears that are of a cultural nature. In this thesis, particularly in chapter 1, I address some of these universal and existential fears with reference to ideas about the relationship between fear, beings and time, a conception which draws on the philosophical understanding of fear advanced by Martin Heidegger, the religious approach to fear put forward by Søren Kierkegaard, and the theological conception of fear articulated by Paul Tillich. The combination of this existential approach to fear with my autoethnographic reflections on the forms of fear that operate in Lamaholot
5 David Scruton’s edited work is probably the first systematic study on fear from an anthropological perspective. See David L. Scruton, (ed.) Sociophobics: The Anthropology of Fear. Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1984.
9 culture, differentiates my approach from more political and historical approaches to the fears associated with the 1965-66 violence in Indonesia (approaches that are discussed in chapter 2).
Proposition
As I have said above, in this thesis, I thus address both the fears in Eastern Indonesian
Catholic experience that are existential or universal and those that are politically, historically and culturally specific. I make the core contention that the fear that I experience when reading the From Madiun text is a combination of secular, religious and supernatural fears and that these fears are experienced by me simultaneously.
Each of these three types of fear – secular, religious and supernatural – involves particular types of beings that are the object of fear, particular types of dangers or threats and particular forms of time.
Secular fear is fear focused on this world. In secular fear the objects of fear are (secular) human beings, and to a lesser extent physical or natural forces. The dangers or threats that secular fear involves are threats to the mortal mind and body that come from human beings or from physical forces; in the case of the From
Madiun text the key threat is the communists, who represent a secular danger to the bodies and minds of Indonesian Catholics. The communist also represented the danger of secularisation – the threat that Indonesia would cease to be a society committed to religious beliefs and concepts.
Religious fear is fear focused on the next world, the world of the afterlife. In religious fear the objects of fear are both (religious) human beings and divine beings.
The frightening human beings in the religious fear structure that I analyse are
Muslims and the frightening divine beings are the three persons of the one God who
10 will judge the soul in the afterlife. The key threats or dangers in religious fear are dangers to the immortal soul, not threats or dangers to the mortal body and mind. The greatest fears are fears about the future, the fear that Muslims will in future turn
Indonesia into an Islamic state and destroy the Catholic religion and the fear of what will happen to the soul in the future after death, and in the eschatological future when the secular world has ceased to exist after the Last Judgment.
Supernatural fear is fear that is focused on the supernatural world, a world that coexists with this world, but is separate from it. In supernatural fear the object of fear is both human beings (those with supernatural powers) and supernatural beings; in the case of my Lamaholot reading of From Madiun the fear-inspiring human beings are the practitioners of black magic – which is known locally as ‘red magic’ – and the ghosts of murdered communists. The threats or dangers that these beings pose are threats to both the mortal body and mind and to the immortal soul. These threats come simultaneously from past, present and future. Where secular fear only acknowledges threats in this world that come from human beings and physical or natural forces that endanger the mortal soul and body; and religious fear gives ultimate emphasis to the dangers of the next world and the fate of the immortal soul in the next world where the greatest fear is punishment by divine beings; supernatural fear involves a plurality of dangers that involve both the time of this world and the time of eternity in the world of the afterlife. These fears are hidden in the From
Madiun text.
For me, secular, religious and supernatural fears are inseparable; they are experienced together at the same time by me when reading the From Madiun text.
Each dimension of fear contains a component of the other dimensions of fear: secular
11 fear contains religious and supernatural elements, religious fear contains secular and supernatural elements; and supernatural fear contains religious and secular elements.
For example, in the supernatural fear of ghosts there is also a degree of secular fear of revenge by the extended family of victims who were suspected communists and killed in 1965-66. At the same time, the secular fear of the communist past as the real and present danger of revenge by the family of victims is culturally rooted in the supernatural fear of communist ghosts.
Martin Heidegger’s argument is that one can only be afraid of the present, not of the past and the future. At a secular level, reminding people of frightening past events is an act of keeping the fear alive at present and through to the future. The
From Madiun text can be seen as maintaining fear in the present by retelling secular fear stories about the past political events involving communists who the text portrays as the most explicit threat to the religious and cultural identities of the Indonesian
Catholic Church.
The explicit existential threat that ‘Godless’ communists posed to Indonesian
Catholics, and which justified the killing of those communists was paralleled by an implied existential threat posed by rival religious beings – Muslims. The fear of this religious threat was focused on the future. At a secular level, Indonesian Catholics are fearful that Muslims, particularly the ‘fanatical’ (radical) ones, threaten their own existence and identity in a nation where the distinction between religious majority and minority is constantly emphasised. Indonesian Catholic fear is about the danger of losing a sense of Catholic power and identity in the face of an overwhelming majority population which adheres to a rival religion.
Key definitions
12 Many of the key terms and concepts used in this thesis have been discussed above.
However, to ensure that they are not misunderstood, I go over some of them in this section. These key terms and concepts include: ‘the text’, ‘the reader’, ‘secular fear’,
‘religious fear’, ‘supernatural fear’, ‘triggering’ and ‘maintaining’, and ‘explicit’,
‘implicit’ and ‘hidden’. I also examine the terms ‘beings’ and ‘rivalry’, which are used in the three core chapters in this thesis that address the theme of fear.
The text and the reader
The text refers to the 1967 Catholic propaganda text ‘Dari Madiun ke Lubang Buaya, dari Lubang Buaya ke…?’ [From Madiun to the Crocodile Hole, from the Crocodile
Hole to...?], which is primarily referred to in this thesis as From Madiun. I have emphasised that I see this text as a text of fear. It is the object with which I, 'the reader’, engage, and it is the target of my autoethnographic analysis. The dialogue between the subject (reader) and the object (text) is key to the constructon of From
Madiun as a text of fear. Clifford and Marcus assert that a text never stands in isolation, but is always in a constant dialogue with its audience (Clifford and Marcus,
1986:13; also Heintz, 2008:190). Moreover in Gadamerian hermeneutics it is through the reader that a text has meaning (Fay, 1996:136-141; Hirsch, 2000:65; Heryanto
1996; Rahardjo, 2007:54-59; Ogden and Richards 1972). While the text is an object, it gets its meaning from the interaction with the reader: reader and text and subject and object construct each other. ‘The reader’ refers to myself – an Indonesian by passport, Catholic by religion, and a Lamaholot person by ethnicity. These three contexts structure my reading of the From Madiun text, and they are contexts that I share with other Lamaholot people, who I would argue, feel the same pervasive fear
13 of ghosts and the supernatural world that affects me, and, in many cases, they will share my religious fears as well.
The forms of fear
I have stated above that the secular, religious and supernatural fears that I experience when reading the From Madiun text are inseparable; I experience them all at the same time. However, for the sake of clarity, I will set out the characteristics of each of the three forms of fear.
Secular fear
Secular fear refers primarily to fear that relates to the secular world, and secular events and beings, and it is also fear of secularism. As noted above, it is primarily fear of human beings and natural forces and the dangers that they pose to the mortal mind and body. In the case of the Indonesian Catholic Church, it is also fear of secularism, which, in the case of the From Madiun text, is the fear that communists were attempting to create a secular-communist state of Indonesia by means of physical and political violence. Because communism was an atheistic ideology, it was perceived as being against religion; the communists wanted to create a state without
God and religion.
Religious fear
Religious fear is fear that relates to the religious sphere. It is fear both of human beings associated with religion and of the power of divine beings, and while it is experienced in, and connected with, this world, it is primarily related to the next
14 world. I argue that for Eastern Indonesian Catholics since 1965-66 and perhaps before that time, religious fear involves both fear of what will happen to the soul in the afterlife, especially after the Last Judgment and fear of Muslims as a rival religion.
Religious temptation to change religion, to become a ‘murtad’ (apostate), for example, by converting from Catholicism to Islam, is believed to have eternal consequences for the soul at the Last Judgment. The souls of those falling into temptation, will be thrown straight into the hell of fire and suffering. So, unlike secular fear (of communists), religious fear (of Muslims) is about the future of the soul.
Supernatural fear
Supernatural fear is fear of the supernatural world and of supernatural beings, beings that are not human and are not restricted by the structures of mortality, but also beings that are not divine. It also includes those human beings who have powers to use supernatural forces. This fear is hidden in the From Madiun text, but is the most profound fear I experience when reading the text. The From Madiun text functions for me as a present symbol of the myths about ghosts and ‘red’ (black) magic that I was exposed to when growing up, and it maintains the fear I have in the key supernatural objects of fear, ghosts. Since the ghosts cannot be killed, even though the myths about them can be removed, it is impossible to remove completely the fear of ghosts.
Triggering and maintaining
15 ‘Triggering’ means that something causes a sudden fear reaction. ‘Maintaining’ means that a fear which has been created in the past is kept alive and preserved. In using the two terms ‘triggering’ and ‘maintaining’, I emphasise that the From Madiun text does not really produce new fears; it simply triggers and maintains a sense of fear in the reader (myself). I have suggested above that the perpetuation of fear can be seen as the idea of fear as an intrinsic part of being. The maintenance of fear is thus essential to being human, as well as in my case, being Catholic, being Indonesian, and being Lamaholot, all at the same time.
Explicit, implicit and hidden
In the From Madiun text, I distinguish between fear-inspiring phenomena that I consider to be explicit in the text (the things that the text discusses directly), fear- inspiring phenomena that I consider to be implicit (things that the text hints at or alludes to) and fear-inspiring phenomena that I consider to be hidden in the text
(things that the text does not mention, but which arise in my mind as a result of reading it). The movement from the explicit to the implicit to the hidden involves a movement from the text as the focus to the reader as the focus, and a movement from the secular to the religious to the supernatural. These three levels roughly correspond with the three parts of my identity – Indonesian, Catholic and Lamaholot.
Beings and rivalry
In my chapters on secular, religious and supernatural fear, I follow an analytical structure in which I explore fear in terms of a threefold structure of ‘beings, time and rivalry’. ‘Beings’ refers to entities, both of this world and of the worlds beyond it,
16 which inspire fear; these beings can be human, divine or supernatural. Rivalry refers to forces, structures or institutions, which in one way or another are rivals that cause fear to Eastern Indonesian Catholics. The noun ‘rivalry’ means “competition for the same objective or for superiority in the same field.” It also refers to “the act of competing for the same thing against another person or group” (Hawkins, 1986:600).
As a noun, the word ‘rival’ refers to “a person or thing competing with another”; or
“a person or thing that can equal another in quality”. As a verb, ‘to rival’ means, “to be comparable to, to seem or be as good as” (Hawkins, 1986:600). We can thus see communism as a secular rival to the Catholic Church, Islam as a religious rival to the
Catholic Church, and black (‘red’) magic as a supernatural rival to the white magic of the Catholic Church. These forces are all competitors with the Church over different terrains – secular, religious and supernatural – which inspire fear.
Methodology: Autoethnography and reading experience
Even though this thesis uses an historical text to investigate the issue of fear arising from, and connected with, the political upheavals of 1965-66, it is methodologically neither a textual and literary study, nor a historical and political one. Rather it is an autoethnographical reflection both on the topic of fear and on the experience of reading the From Madiun text. There is a constant and close dialogue between myself as a reader (subject) and the From Madiun text (object) on the fear associated with the political events of 1965-66.
Reading is very often an emotional experience, as it certainly is in the case of my experience of reading the From Madiun text, and rather than trying to suppress these emotions, I focus on them. The thesis thus attempts to do two things. First, it is
17 an attempt to explore the Eastern Indonesian Catholic experience of fear using the methodology of autoethnography. Second, it is an attempt to look closely at reading as an emotionally and culturally conditioned experience. In this sense, my work can be seen as part of the wider body of scholarship that examines the emotional aspects of literary reading and readers’ cognitive responses to texts (see Gavins 2007;
McAlister 2006; Robinson 2005; Schreier 2001; Stockwell 2009).
To take an autoethnographical approach means that my study of fear concerning the political events of 1965-66 is conducted by a form of simultaneous participation and observation. It is me who reads the From Madiun text, and it is me who observes my reading experience by looking closely at how I, as the reader
(participant and observer), react to the text emotionally.
Custer (2014) defines autoethnography as “a style of autobiographical writing and qualitative research that explores an individual’s unique life experiences in relationship to social and cultural institutions” (Custer, 2014:1). Furthermore, Jones
(2013), describing autoethnography as a powerful qualitative method, writes:
...autoethnography is not simply a way of knowing about the world; it has become a way of being in the world, one that requires living consciously, emotionally, reflexively. It asks that we not only examine our lives but also consider how and why we think, act, and feel as we do. Autoethnography requires that we observe ourselves observing, that we interrogate what we think and believe, and that we challenge our own assumptions, asking over and over if we have penetrated as many layers of our own defenses, fears, and insecurities as our project requires. It asks that we rethink and revise our lives, making conscious decisions about who and how we want to be. And in this process, it seeks a story that is hopeful, where authors ultimately write themselves as survivors of the story they are living (Jones et.al., 2013:10).
Broadly speaking, autoethnography is a form of qualitative reseach in which the writer uses self-reflection and writing to explore his or her own experiences and
18 relate them to an autobiographical story with a cultural meaning and understanding
(Ellis 2004; Marechal 2010). Marechal (2010) states that autoethnography is a method of research which involves self-observation and reflexive investigation in the context of the field of ethnographic research. Ellis (2004) defines autoethnography as research, writing, story and methods which connects autobiography and the personal with the cultural, social and political. However, it is not easy to attain clear consensus about what autoethnography is. In the 1970s, autoethnography was narrowly defined as ‘insider ethnography’, referring to studies in which the researcher was a member of that cultural group (Hayano 1979). According to Adams (2015), however, autoethnography is a research method which uses the personal experiences of the researcher to explain and critique the belief systems, practices and experiences of a particular culture. Acknowledging and assessing the relationship of the researcher with the other shows the process and efforts of people in finding out what must be done, how to live and how to find meaning in the struggles of their lives. Adams emphasises that social life is messy, uncertain and emotional, so research about social life should be undertaken using a research method that is able to acknowledge and accommodate things that are dirty and messy, chaotic, uncertain, and emotional
(Adams 2015).
We should stress that autoethnography is different from ethnography.
Ethnography is generally understood as a qualitative method in social science disciplines that describes human social phenomenon based on field research in a community to which the ethnographer is an outsider. Autoethnography embraces and emphasises the researcher’s subjectivity, as opposed to trying to limit it, as conventional ethnographic research does. An autoethnographer himself or herself is
19 the participant in or the primary subject of the research in the writing of personal stories and narratives, or, in my case, the analysis of an emotional reaction to the reading of a text. In other words, as Ellingson and Ellis (2008) have written, “whether we call a work an autoethnography or an ethnography depends as much on claims made by authors as anything else” (Ellingson and Ellis, 2008:449).
In embracing personal thoughts, feelings, stories and observations as a way of understanding the social context being studied, autoethnographers illuminate the interaction between the self and the social context by explaining each thought and emotion to the reader. This approach is clearly very different to research methods that examine theories and hypotheses. Here, Ellingson and Ellis (2008) view autoethnography as a social building project that rejects ‘the deep-rooted binary oppositions’ between the researcher and that being studied, objectivity and subjectivity, the process and the product, self and others, art and science, the personal and the political (Ellis, 2008:450-459).
Autoethnography tends to reject social science research concepts as objective and neutral knowledge produced by scientific methods which can be characterised and attained by a detached attitude of the researcher in relation to those who are studied. Here, autoethnography is an important solution to what Ellingson & Ellis call
“the alienating effects on both researchers and audiences of impersonal, passionless, abstract claims of truth generated by such research practices and clothed in exclusionary scientific discourse” (Ellingson & Ellis, 2008:450).
The anthropologist Deborah Reed-Danahay (1997) argues that autoethnography is a postmodern construction. She writes:
The concept of autoethnography...synthesizes both a postmodern ethnography, in which the realist conventions and objective
20 observer position of standard ethnography have been called into question, and a postmodern autoethnography, in which the notion of the coherent, individual self has been similarly called into question. The term has a double sense – referring either to the ethnography of one’s own group or to autobiographical writing that has ethnographic interest. Thus, either a self-(auto)ethnography or an autobiographical (auto-) ethnography can be signalled by “autoethnography” (Reed-Danahay, 1997:2).
Because autoethnography is so broad and ambiguous in practice, each autoethnography has its own emphasis in the process of research and writing
(graphy), culture (ethnos), and the self (auto) (Reed-Danahay, 1997:2). Ellingson and
Ellis (2008), suggest that autoethnographers have recently begun to distinguish between two kinds of autoethnography, that is, analytical autoethnography and evocative autoethnography. Analytical autoethnograpy is focused on the effort to develop theoretical explanations for social phenomena, while evocative autoethnography focuses on the study of narratives which open conversations and provoke emotional responses (Ellingson & Ellis, 2008:445). My thesis should be seen as an evocative rather than an analytical autoethnography, in terms of its focus on my emotional responses to the reading of the From Madiun text.
Autoethnography is still not considered a mainstream method by traditional ethnographers. It should, however, be noted that this approach has become increasingly popular recently, seen in the number of academic works on autoethnography, which vary in their focus and scope. Autoethnography in performance acknowledges that the researcher and the audience are of the same importance for research. To portray oneself in a performance through writing becomes the purpose or objective, in order to create a personal experience for the researcher and the reader. This area acknowledges inward and outward experiences
21 concerning ethnography, with reading/hearing/feeling (inward), and then having a reaction to them (outward), for example with emotion. In this instance, ethnography and performance work together to provoke emotion from the reader.
In my case, some of the crucial autoethnographic and emotional details that inform my response to the From Madiun text relate to my childhood experiences.
These experiences are extensively narrated in the body of the thesis – they include the ghost stories that were retold at nights before bedtime during my childhood, the stories of my father who unwillingly participated in the killing of local suspected communists in Lembata, the experience of witnessing friends being punished for using their left hand for writing and for having long hair, stories about ‘marangele’
(local head-hunters), stories and local beliefs in magic, especially black magic – all these were recorded in my memory and contributed to my fear reaction to the From
Madiun text. This is where the autoethnographic dimension is of key importance: the
From Madiun text could be read differently by someone else from elsewhere in
Indonesia, so my response to it is both a personal and a Lamaholot one. If my cultural context informs my reading of the text, it is equally the case that the text enables me to examine some of the deepest issues in my relationship to my own cultural backround. From Madiun serves as a vehicle for my autoethnographic reflection on the theme of fears connected with the events of 1965-66.
I should reiterate that this thesis is not a textual study of fear, but is rather an autoethnography of fear and text and of the experience of reading the From Madiun text. It does not fully engage the text in terms of analysing in detail the text’s content, language, style of writing and tone, as textual analysts would do. Nor do I attempt a historical study of 1965 and fear, even though the text studied is a historical text
22 about the historical events leading up to 1965. It does not enter into discussions about the accuracy of historical facts and details concerning the historical events of 1965-
66, as historians would do. What the text does is to remind me of very basic beliefs and emotions that are part of my life story and my cultural background, experiences that I might find it difficult to reflect on without the text.
However, even though the thesis is an autoethnography, emphasising my own beliefs and experiences, there is a good deal of discussion of the From Madiun text itself. There is a large amount of translation from the original Indonesian into
English, combined with my commentaries and analyses.6 Furthermore, my narration of the political events leading up to 1965 and the perceptions of them derive almost entirely from the From Madiun text, so my thesis can be seen as a retexted7 text of the From Madiun text; it contextualises my sense of the text as a fear text by exploring the supernatural fear of ghosts and the religious fear of Muslims that condition my reading, fears that the text triggers and maintains but which are not explicitly present in the text.
Although this thesis is ‘self-narrative’, it is not strictly autoethnographic in the sense of being an ethnographic autobiography, as there is an element in it that outlines the connection between anthropology and Indonesian cultural studies, and because it focuses on my experience as a reader. Autoethnography is used as a
6 I should note that the From Madiun text uses the old system of Indonesian spelling, and in this thesis all citations from the text have been changed to the new spelling system. For example, tj to c, ch to kh, dj to j, j to y, oe to u. This change only applies to spelling of words, without changing the content and meaning. I would also like to note that I translated the Indonesian originals of quotes in the thesis; and I am a native speaker of Indonesian and a language teacher.
7 For discussion about the texted and re-texted past, read Greg Dening, “Reflection: History As A Symbol Science”, in The Bounty: An Ethnographic History, The Melbourne University History Monograph Series, No. 1 (1988), 93-116. Dening presents his reflective view of history as a symbol science, in which he particularly argues that ‘histories are the texted past: not the past, but the texted past” (Dening, 1988: 97). It is in the illumination of Dening’s view that this thesis attempts to (re) text the past of four decades or so ago about Catholicism and Communism in the case of Indonesia.
23 method for undertaking reading of the From Madiun text, and as an approach in interpreting the political upheavals of 1965-66; I hope it adds a new dimension to the study of fear within the Indonesian Catholic Church, an area which is itself a little- studied field.
To sum up, in this thesis I do not intend to make generalisations about the
Eastern Indonesian Catholic experience of fear. Rather, it merely offers an example of fear experienced by one reader – myself – who is a member of one Eastern
Indonesian Catholic community – the Lamaholot – when reading one text, the From
Madiun text. However, even though my experience of fear is personal, I also believe that my fear is the product of my cultural background, and partly for this reason my fear can be seen as reflective of the culture of which I am part. This is most particularly so in relation to the supernatural fear of ghosts which is pervasive in the local cultural belief systems of my Lamaholot community. I am certainly aware of the problems in autoethnography due to its subjective and personal nature, and I myself as the researcher and writer am both the subject and object of study. For this reason, the approach I have taken could be vulnerable to criticism, but I have taken this autoethnographic approach knowingly, partly because this approach to 1965 has not been taken by any other researcher, but also feeling that it may supply some important new insights. Furthermore, I hope that this work may inspire others to reflect on their own fear experiences especially in relation to major political and historical upheavals.
24 Outline
The thesis contains an Introduction (this section), which describes the beginning of my research journey, the focus and scope of the thesis, its main proposition, key definitions, research questions, methodology, purposes, contribution, and outline. Part
One, Contexts of Study, outlines two contexts for the study: theoretical context
(chapter 1); and the national and local contexts of 1965-66 (chapter 2). Chapter 1 provides background to my understanding of fear by referring to some of the theological and philosophical approaches to fear taken by Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich,
Heidegger and Hans Küng. These scholars have a broadly shared notion about fear, namely that fear is concerned only with the present and relates to the secular domain of the mortal mind and body, although I see this as having implications for the religious domain, and the fear of the future that it entails. Chapter 2 provides the national and local context of 1965-66 for the study of secular fear and fear connected with secular events and secular time. This review of the literature on the political events of 1965-66 is partly intended to highlight the distinctiveness of my own study of fear, but it also provides a local context of 1965-66 particularly in Flores and West
Timor, Eastern Indonesia. Both of these chapters are primarily studies of the written work of other scholars, which have been selected because in one way or another they resonate with my own experience.
In Part Two, The Text and The Reader, there are two chapters: ‘The
Frightening Text’ (chapter 3) and ‘The Frightened Reader’ (chapter 4). In chapter 3,
‘The Frightening Text’, I examine how the text comes to function as a frightening text. In this chapter, I will describe the production of the From Madiun text, and analyse how it is able to function as a frightening text by looking closely at the
25 wording of its title, the timing of the production of the text, the presentation of the text, its sources, and its authorship. In chapter 4, ‘The Frightened Reader’, I explain my own personal history and my experiences of fear in order to highlight the idea of a dialectic between the reader (subject) and the From Madiun text (object) to help understand why I, as a reader, become frightened when I read the text.
Part Three, Forms of Fear, is comprised of three chapters: ‘The Secular Fear of Communists’ (chapter 5), ‘The Religious Fear of Muslims’ (chapter 6), and ‘The
Supernatural Fear of Ghosts’ (chapter 7). In these chapters, I argue that the supernatural fear of ghosts of murdered communists and black magic, and the religious fear of Muslims are the two forms of fear that ‘replaced’ the secular fear of the communists in the period after 1965-66. I argue that the reader’s sense of fear concerning the past political upheavals of 1965-66 is ongoing; it is real and present.
Part Three forms the heart of my thesis; it uses an analytical structure of beings, time, and rivalry to explain each dimension of fear (secular, religious, and supernatural).
These three chapters are rather symetrical as they follow the same structure, namely a
‘fear-beings-time-rivalry’ structure.
The thesis then concludes with a general Conclusion. It gives a general synthesis of the thesis that is intended to highlight the main points discussed throughout the thesis. I also draw attention to an aspect of fear concerning the past political upheavals of 1965-66 that ought to be investigated in the future, namely how the fears identified in the thesis – the fears of secular, religious and supernatural beings (forces), times and rivalries – are to be managed, such that fear is not to be feared, but will instead be faced with hope and courage.
26
PART ONE: CONTEXTS OF STUDY
27 Chapter 1 THEORETICAL CONTEXT: FEAR, BEING, TIME, (PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL APPROACHES)
Introductory Notes
In line with my autoethnographic methodology, this chapter engages with theories of fear that are meaningful to me because of my personal background. The main purpose of this chapter is to develop some conceptual approaches to fear using perspectives drawn from philosophy and theology. At one level, this chapter addresses the universality of fear; it discusses the relationship between fear and the ideas of being and time, arguing that fear, being and time are fundamentally inter-related. The key thinkers whose ideas inform my discussion are Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Paul
Tillich (1886-1965), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Hans Küng (1928-). These thinkers are all westerners, and are of different religious backgrounds. Kierkegaard was a Lutheran philsopher and theologian, Tillich was a Protestant theologian,
Heidegger was a Catholic/Protestant philosopher and Küng is a Catholic theologian. I myself completed my undergraduate degree in philosophy in Indonesia and theology in Australia, so using these philosophers’ ideas brings me ‘home’ to the areas of study
I am familiar with. By drawing on some ideas of these philosophers and theologians,
I attempt to set out some concepts that help me to reflect on my own experience of fear in relation to the events of 1965-66, and which shape my responses to the From
Madiun text. There are six aspects that I consider important in explaining my experience of fear. For me, fear is something that is both universally human and specifically religious; fear has a time structure; fear is a state of being; fear always
28 has an object; fear is different from ‘angst’ (anxiety); and fear has three dimensions namely the secular, religious and supernatural.
It should be noted, that even though I use philosophical and theological approaches to fear (particularly Heidegger’s philosophical account of fear) this thesis is neither a Heideggerian nor a theological-philosophical study of fear. Instead, these philosophical and theological approaches provide resources for my autoethnographic reflection on the experience of fear. To some extent, the philosophical and theological ideas of fear set out by the thinkers discussed in this chapter become less important as the thesis progresses in the subsequent chapters, and the autoethnographic component becomes more prominent. Furthermore, these philosophical-theological approaches to fear are not an absolute fixed framework through which every experience of fear must be understood; they are only used as a tool for me to think and reflect on my own experience of fear. I shall now explain the six aspects of fear respectively, arguing that taken together they assist me in conceptualising fear in ways that are useful for my autoethnographic reflections on my experience of fear in reading the From
Madiun text.
Fear is universally human, and it is specifically religious
We can argue that from a broad philosophical perspective Kierkegaard, Tillich,
Heidegger and Küng all hold the view that fear is something universally human. In different ways these thinkers all suggest that fear is an intrinsic part of being human, meaning that it is a universal phenomenon experienced by all human beings. To be human is to be afraid. No one is immune to fear. This philosophical or existential concept that fear is a human universal is, I would argue, a secular understanding of
29 fear, relating to the secular dimensions of human experience; it is of this world and focused on the mortal body and mind. Theologians, however, go beyond the assertion of the human aspect of fear emphasised by the philosophers. Kierkegaard (who was both a philosopher and a theologian), for example, claims that fear is not only an intrinsic part of being human, but is also (and more so) something intrinsic to being religious (Kierkegaard, in Evans and Walsh 2006). Küng (1990), drawing on Freud, holds a viewpoint similar to that of Kierkegaard, stating that fear has a very strong role in the lives of religious people, particularly Catholics, due to the strict system of dogmatism within the Catholic Church (Küng 1990). Küng and Kierkegaard seem to suggest that at some level to be religious is to be afraid. In this sense, fear is both a universal human experience and a specifically religious one.
I would observe that these scholars – who are all Europeans of Christian heritage – talk only about secular and religious fears; secular fears are experienced at some stage in their lives by all human beings, and religious fears are forms of fear that are experienced acutely by religious peoples. What they do not discuss is the form of fear that this thesis finds to be the deepest for a Lamaholot person – supernatural fear. The fears which I experience as a person with mixed identities –
Indonesian, Catholic and Lamaholot – are not just the secular and religious forms of fear discussed in the philosophical and theological perspectives on fear set out by
Kierkegaard, Tillich, Heidegger and Küng, but also (and more profoundly) the profound supernatural fear of ghosts and of ‘red’ (black) magic, a fear which is culturally determined. While I feel universal human fears – secular fears – and specifically religious fears – Catholic fears – I also have fears that I believe would not
30 be felt by Kierkegaard, Tillich, Heidegger and Küng – fears that are deeply rooted in my Lamaholot background.
While the discussion of these supernatural fears is a large part of my thesis, it is important here to emphasise the religious element in my experience of fear.
Because I myself am Catholic, having trained for priesthood for fifteen years from
1980 to 1995 in the seminary in Indonesia and in Australia, I know from experience that fear is a part of being Catholic. I have listened to numerous homilies during
Sunday masses that have strong fear overtones and nuances that are ultimately concerned with the idea of sin and salvation in the afterlife. These theologically- informed fears are a central part of my experience, and I would argue that they are fears which influence my reading of the From Madiun text, where a fear of the religious future is a core part of what I feel when reading the text.
Fear has a time structure
The second important point about fear, for me, is that fear has a time structure. It is concerned with the past, the future, and the present, even though fear is always experienced in a particular present. This is slightly different to the arguments of
Heidegger, who places considerable emphasis on the relationship between fear and time, but does not see fear as spanning past, future and present. According to
Heidegger, fear is always about the present; one cannot be afraid of the past, or of the future. One can only be afraid of the tangibility of the present, not of the past because the past is no longer tangible, nor the future because the future is yet to be tangible.
The past no longer exists in the present, and the future is yet to come into existence.
Heidegger talks about the present in terms of objects that may cause fear in the
31 present (Heidegger, trans. Macquarrie & Robinson 1978), and this relationship between time and objects of fear will be discussed in subsequent sections of this thesis. Fear, Heidegger suggests, involves threats that draw close at hand in the present. It is not something that is yet to come in the future or some future evil that makes us feel afraid, but something that is in our present (Heidegger, trans.
Macquarrie & Robinson, 1978:179-182; Heidegger, trans. Stambauch, 1996:131).
Like Heidegger, Kierkegaard and Tillich think that fear is always experienced in the present, but it also has a future dimension (Kierkegaard, trans. Lowrie 1946;
Kierkegaard, ed. Evans and Walsh 2006; Tillich 2002; Tillich 1952). In addition,
Küng, referring to Freud, thinks that fear is not just about the present, but is also (and even more so) about the past. The sense of fear that a person encounters in the present originates from the repressed past experiences of fear. Past fears must be treated in order to eliminate emotions of fear in the present (Küng 1990). In other words the role of the future and the past – and not just the present – in fear experiences is emphasised by Kierkegaard, Tillich and Küng, thinkers who combine philosophical (secular) and theological approaches to fear.
As I will explain later on in the thesis, each of the three modalities of fear – secular, religious and supernatural – involves a specific time structure in terms of objects of fear. Because the From Madiun text is primarily a narrative about historical events that happened prior to the time when it was written, the objects of fear that are explicitly addressed in it – the secular communists – are part of the past; we can argue that the secular fear in the text mainly involves the past (a different view of the relationship between time and fear from what is put forward by Heidegger). The religious fear in the text – the implicit level of fear –is primarily concerned with the
32 future – the eschatological fear of judgment in the Afterlife and the fear of the future threat of Muslim power in Indonesia. The supernatural fear of ghosts and ‘red’
(black) magic, fear which is hidden in the From Madiun text, involves the present. So the three dimensions of fear each have their own specific time dimension: fear of the past (secular), fear of the future (religious), and fear of the present (supernatural) – giving fear a different time structure from that put forward by the four philosphers and theologians discussed in this chapter.
However, these three modalities of fear are inseparable from each other; as a reader, I experience them all together at the same time in the present, albeit with different degrees of intensity. As a reader, I feel more profoundly frightened of ghosts and ‘red’ (black) magic than of the secular communists themselves, who are part of a past with which I never had personal contact. Likewise, fear of the future – religious fear – while strong, is less immediate and intense for me than supernatural fear. But overall, even though each type of fear is concerned with a specific time frame, and experienced by me as a reader of the From Madiun text with different levels of intensity, the secular, religious and supernatural entities in the text are all objects that
I experience as physically, spiritually, and emotionally threatening, and operating across time. I perceive the title of the From Madiun text, Dari Madiun ke Lubang
Buaya, dari Lubang Buaya ke…? [From Madiun to the Crocodile Hole, from the
Crocodile Hole to...?] as showing fear to be a process which moves from the past
(secular fear) to the present (supernatural fear), and through to the future (religious fear). The formula “dari” (from) ... “ke” (to) ... followed by the three dots and the question mark as in the title of the text highlights the idea of fear as a proces in the context of time – past, present, and future. To me, this conveys both the different
33 time dimensions that are involved in each modality of fear and the experience of all three types of fear operating simultaneously. As the next suggestion will propose, this perception of the relationship between fear and time is closely related to the question of fear as a state of being.
Fear as a state of being
I understand fear as a state of being. Following the terminology of Heidegger, I see fear as fundamentally connected with ‘being in the world’, or ‘Dasein’, a term that can be broadly equated with human existence. To Heidegger, the idea of fear and being human are inseparable. Fear is an unavoidable necessity that ensures the continuing existence of Dasein (being in and with the world). Indeed, fear entails the very survival of the being. However, being and fear are not two separate entities; they belong to one entity. To be is to be afraid. Without fear the survival of human beings is impossible to imagine. Humans need fear to survive: no fear, no being. One cannot think of fear without being or think of being without thinking of fear.
Central to the notion of fear as a state of being is the idea of fear as “a state of mind” (Heidegger, trans. Macquarrie & Robinson, 1978:179-182); or “a mode of attunement” (Heidegger, trans. Stambauch, 1996:131-134). In essence, this state of mind is an existential structure of being (sein), fundamental to how human beings continue to exist in the world temporarily, from the time of birth to the time of death
(Heidegger, trans. Macquarrie & Robinson, 1978:182). As a state of mind, fear is foundationally connected with the present; time and fear are essentialy linked in the structure of being.
34 Ontologically, it could thus be said that human beings are born to be afraid.
Nevertheless, I would argue that the degree and intensity of fear experienced by different people varies, and feeling afraid of certain things and certain people is something culturally and religiously conditioned. My own experience of fear is fundamentally related not only to my being a human, but also to my being a Catholic, and to my being a Lamaholot. The fears that I experience in the present are thus a necessity for the continuation of my being in its three dimensions – human, Catholic and Lamaholot – and the three types of time that these different kinds of being involve.
Fear always has an object
The relationship between fear and being, leads to the question of the relationship between fear and its objects. For me fear always has an object. Heidegger suggests that fear is always concerned with something tangible and specific, and that object is considered threatening. He states: “What is feared has the character of being threatening” (Heidegger, trans. Stambauch, 1996:132). Heidegger claims that fear is related to external threats which are encountered in the present; these threats are the tangible objects of fear. For example, a person can be afraid of a dog that is barking and looks as though it will bite, or they can be afraid when encountering a snake in their path. Dogs and snakes, in this regard, are tangible representations of external threats; they produce fear. Threat is intrinsic to the idea of fear. As Heidegger asserts,
“That in the face of which we fear can be characterized as threatening” (Heidegger, trans. Macquarrie & Robinson, 1978:179). Fear is always caused by something which is at hand or by something which is objectively present. In this regard, fear can thus
35 be described as the emotional product of a direct interaction between human being
(subject) and concrete objects that are deemed frightening. Heidegger speaks of fear in terms of subject-object interaction. There is a concrete object of which the subject or a person is fearful, and an object that represents a threat, or a danger. Heidegger thus suggests that an important question to be asked is: Of what are we actually afraid? Here Heidegger refers to objects that are, as mentioned, regarded as frightening cases that we encounter in the world as a consequence of being (being human) in the world. The fear that is intrinsic to being human is an emotion that is related to external and concrete threats – the objects of fear (Heidegger, trans.
Macquarrie & Robinson, 1978).
I have noted above that fear is the product of an interaction between what is feared (object) and the fearing (subject, or the person who feels frightened) together with the reasons for feeling fear. It is the reasons for feeling fear that I would like to emphasise, since this leads to the question of how fear is culturally structured, moving us beyond a purely secular approach to the idea of threats and objects of fear.
To return to the example of the dog and snake as objects of fear, seeing a dog or snake could elicit a different fear reaction and response in different people, depending on their experiences, beliefs and knowledge. For example, Australians might be generally afraid of spiders, and Indonesians might be generally afraid of snakes and wild dogs for reasons that are cultural and religious (Schürmann 2008). Some of my
Muslim friends in Indonesia are particularly afraid of dogs, not only because dogs may bite them, and it could be fatal, but also because of the religious concept of dogs being ‘haram’. Their identity as Muslims, which is closely associated with the idea of
‘halal’ and ‘haram’, seems to be under threat if and when they face perceived
36 ‘haram’ objects such as dogs and pigs: their reasons for fearing dogs are thus different from those whose fear of dogs is primarily secular.
This mixture of cultural and secular reasons for fearing particular objects can be seen in my own case. Personally, I am afraid of snakes, maybe because I was brought up in a village where there were many poisonous snakes around, and of course they were deadly dangerous. Children in the village were always warned to watch out for snakes especially because all children at the time had no sandals or shoes to wear to protect them from snakes or other dangerous objects, so in a secular sense, fear of snakes is related to the almost universal human fear of death as a result of a snake bite. However, in my local culture, snakes are also seen as a symbolic manifestation of ‘red’ (black) magic that could harm the living by supernatural means, rather than just being a secular, physical danger.
Thus a wild dog or a poisonous snake are not necessarily only representations of secular danger, but also signs of religious and supernatural threats. When I see a poisonous snake I am frightened and try to escape because it might bite me and cause my death: at that level the snake represents a secular threat. At the same time, I am also afraid of the snake in religious terms because it reminds me of the temptation story in the Book of Genesis when the serpent successfully convinced the woman to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. This temptation story is a reminder of a spiritual threat to my immortal soul. And, as noted, at the supernatural level, the snake can be seen as a manifestation of the power of ‘red’ (black) magic to harm me.
37 Fear is different from angst
The idea that fear always has a specific object is related to the distinction between fear as a phenomenon and 'angst' (anxiety). Heidegger argues that fear is caused by something definite and specific, something which is at hand or something which is objectively present, whereas anxiety is caused by something indefinite and abstract, something that is not at hand, or something that is not objectively present. Fear is an apprehension of an inner-worldly being, whereas anxiety is not. Fear causes flight from something at hand, or from something objectively present, while anxiety causes flight from Dasein itself. Heidegger says,
That in the face of which one is anxious is completely indefinite. Not only does this indefiniteness leave factically undecided which entity within-the-world is threatening us, but it also tells us that entities within-the-world are not ‘relevant’ at all. Nothing which is ready-to-hand or present-at-hand within the world functions as that in the face of which anxiety is anxious. Here the totality of involvements of the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand discovered within-the-world, is, as such, of no consequence; it collapses into itself; the world has the character of completely lacking significance. In anxiety one does not encounter this thing or that thing which, as something threatening, must have an involvement. Accordingly, when something threatening brings itself close, anxiety does not ‘see’ any definite ‘here’ or ‘yonder’ from which it comes. That in the face of which one has anxiety is characterized by the fact that what threatens is nowhere. Anxiety ‘does not know’ what that in the face of which it is anxious is. ‘Nowhere’, however, does not signify nothing (Heidegger, trans. Macquarrie & Robinson, 1978:231).
According to Heidegger, fear can be pinpointed. Fear has a concrete object, while anxiety does not have a clear object. We cannot point out the definite location of our anxiety in the way that we can pinpoint an object of fear. Anxiety is however a real experience, and it can even deepen the fear of an external object that has a threatening characteristic. In the case of anxiety, all of a sudden we feel alone; we feel that life has no meaning. We are anxious about the meaning of our lives: who am
38 I, where do I come from, where am I going, and is there a meaning behind this real life? We cannot decide when we feel anxious. It arrives suddenly and leaves without a message. In essence, anxiety is an emotion that is far more fundamental than that of fear. Furthermore, both fear and anxiety are states of mind and can mutually influence each other. For example, one is anxious about death as something that is inseparable from life. We know that one day we will die, but we do not know when and how exactly we will die. We are uncertain about it, and therefore we are worried about it, even without being aware of the fact that we are actually anxious about death. This sense of uncertainty deepens when, for example, we encounter a wild dog that seems ready to bite, which can have a fatal effect: existential anxiety about death aligns with fear of a present threatening object of fear. Because of the sense of vulnerability in the face of fatality we become even more threatened by the presence of the dog.
Human beings are thrown into the world when they are born, and are one day thrown out of the world when they die. According to Heidegger, death has no meaning; it is the end of everything. Humans are aware of the meaninglessness of death, and they are anxious. Yet, they are powerless in the face of death; this is an intrinsic part of life. According to Heidegger, human beings exist and their existence moves towards death, sein zum tode. Human beings are thrown into life and are also thrown into death, the two realities that are frightening (Heidegger, trans. Macquarrie
& Robinson, 1978).
Like Heidegger, Kierkegaard also claims that fear is different from anxiety.
Fear is a result of an actual threat, whilst anxiety remains within a person: that is to say, it is always there and deepens when one encounters some external threats.
Anxiety operates within the dimension of the self-insecure; and this sense of self-
39 insecurity is an emotion that one encounters all the time at various degrees, irrespective of one’s age and gender, religion and ethnicity (Kierkegaard, trans.
Lowrie 1946; Kierkegaard, ed. Evans and Walsh 2006). This self-insecurity helps to shape the experience of fear when one is confronted with a fearful object.
Kierkegaard also argues that a person’s freedom is the source of anxiety.
Kierkegaard asserts that “Dread is constantly to be understood as oriented towards freedom” (Kierkegaard, trans. Lowrie, 1946:60). For example, consider the situation where a person is standing right on the edge of a tall building or cliff. When that person looks over the edge, he or she is afraid of falling. At the same time, there is a frightening impulse within the person to deliberately throw himself or herself off.
That experience of a frightening impulse is what Kierkegaard calls anxiety or dread.
There is indeed a freedom of choice to throw or not to throw oneself off the edge.
One has the possibility and freedom to do something, regardless of how terrifying that something might be. According to Kierkegaard, that possibility and freedom trigger immense feelings of dread. In his words: "Dread is the dizziness of freedom"
(Kierkegaard, trans. Lowrie, 1946:55).
As is partly shown in the previous example, Kierkegaard claims that anxiety is an unfocused fear. As an illustration, Kierkegaard examines the biblical narrative of
Adam and Eve to explain the correlation between freedom and anxiety or dread. In the story, the individual freedom of Adam and Eve was tested. They chose to disobey the instruction of God regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Due to
Adam and Eve choosing to exercise their freedom to disobey, humankind was exiled from the Garden of Eden, where all their needs had been met and everything was certain. They were forced to live a life of hard work, suffering, insecurity and the
40 threat of becoming nothing. According to Kierkegaard, anxiety was born of people exercising their freedom. This religious anxiety is different from the religious fear examined in this thesis, which is fear of religious threats, above all those of divine punishment in the afterlife.
Paul Tillich also shared the views of Heidegger and Kierkegaard regarding fear and anxiety, but he also subdivides anxiety into types. According to Tillich, there is a distinction between existential anxiety and pathological anxiety. According to
Tillich, one major difference between existential anxiety and pathological anxiety is that “existential anxiety cannot be extirpated, but must be accepted through courage.
This existential anxiety cannot be removed because it is our ontological character”
(Tillich, 2002:48). One’s failure to accept this existential (basic) anxiety creates the so-called pathological anxiety, in which a pathologically anxious person develops a sense of unrealistic security (in relation to the anxiety of fate and death), a sense of unrealistic perfection (in connection with the anxiety of guilt and condemnation), and a sense of unrealistic certitude (concerning the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness). As a solution, Tillich simply suggests that medical healing can be applied to pathological anxiety, and religion or spiritual counseling is for basic
(existential) anxiety (Tillich, 2002:48-49).
Like Heidegger and Kierkegaard, Tillich claims that fear is different from anxiety because “fear has a definite object, which can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured” (Tillich, 2002:43; Tillich, 1952:36). Tillich asserts, “Fear is being afraid of something, a pain, the rejection by a person or a group, the loss of something or somebody, the moment of dying” (Tillich, 2002:43; Tillich, 1952:37). Whereas,
“anxiety has no object, or rather, in the paradoxical phrase, its object is the negation
41 of every object. Therefore, participation, struggle, and love with respect to it are impossible” (Tillich, 2002:43; Tillich, 1952:36). Furthermore, Tillich states, although there is a distinction between fear and anxiety, they are actually interrelated. Tillich says, “The sting of fear is anxiety, and anxiety strives toward fear” (Tillich, 2002:43;
Tillich, 1952:37). However, according to Tillich, anxiety cannot be extirpated and changed into fear simply because anxiety “belongs to existence itself” (Tillich,
2002:43; Tillich, 1952:39).
Tillich identifies three types of anxiety, namely the anxiety of fate and death, the anxiety of guilt and condemnation, and the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness
(Tillich, 2002:43-49). According to Tillich, the first type of anxiety is the most basic, universal and inescapable anxiety. There are four categories in relation to this first type of anxiety of fate and death, namely time, space, cause, and substance.
Concerning time and space, in particular, Tillich claims that time symbolizes human destiny, and space is where human temporal existence is present. Humans are deeply anxious about the fact that they have to die one day. Tillich states, the fear of death determines the element of anxiety in every fear. Anxiety, if not modified by the fear of an object, anxiety in its nakedness, is always the anxiety of ultimate nonbeing
(Tillich, 2002:44; Tillich, 1952:38). The second type of anxiety is the relative anxiety of emptiness and the absolute anxiety of meaninglessness. Tillich notes, “The anxiety of emptiness is aroused by the threat of nonbeing to the special contents of the spiritual life” (Tillich, 2002:46; Tillich, 1952:47). The threat of emptiness causes one to begin to doubt and to surrender oneself to authority. Concerning the nature of anxiety, Tillich’s first claim is that anxiety is, as in his words, “the existential awareness of nonbeing” (Tillich, 1980:35; Tillich, 2002:43). The term ‘existential’
42 does not refer to “the abstract knowledge of nonbeing which produces anxiety”; but rather it means “the awareness that nonbeing is part of one’s own being” (Tillich,
2002:43). Tillich describes anxiety as “finitude in awareness” (Tillich, 2002:43). He further states, “Anxiety is the self-awareness of the finite self as finite” (Tillich,
2002:43). This awareness is the source of the problematic characteristic of human existence.
As mentioned before, like Heidegger and Kierkegaard, Tillich regards anxiety as more fundamental than fear. This is why often an anxious person tries to find a specific object(s) to fear. Fear is a reflection and projection of anxiety. The conscious or unconscious effort of an anxious person to seek a specific thing (or specific things) to fear demonstrates at the same time their sense of courage. So there is anxiety and fear, but there is also courage. An anxious person who fails to take courage to deal with the anxiety would then become a victim of the anxiety and despair. The ontological anxiety must be overcome in order to find the courage that is required for the affirmation of one’s being (Tillich 1952).
According to Tillich, human spirituality is an ontological need, or what Tillich terms an ‘ultimate concern’, namely a need to have faith (Tillich 1957). In this sense,
Tillich’s identification of the anxiety of meaninglessness is connected with the apparent loss of spirituality in the modern world. According to Tillich, only through spirituality can one truly find the answer to the question of the meaning of life, the question that was central to Heidegger’s philosophy. The realisation that human beings alone are responsible for the values they make, and are free to make choices in life, without reference to God is indeed a recipe for anxiety, not a remedy for one’s ontological anxiety. In this regard, Tillich is rather similar to Kierkegaard in his view
43 of the importance of religious faith. For Tillich, faith is a matter of ‘ultimate concern’ as a way of dealing with a collective sense of mortality, and a belief in God is not a matter of a personal choice, but rather a collective one. Tillich is convinced that there is no personal God, but a shared God for the benefits of the community as a whole.
Tillich thus sees anxiety and religious belief as profoundly connected.
Although in this thesis I only deal with the idea of fear, not anxiety, I do not regard fear and anxiety as two contrasting phenomena. Both emotions are conceptually inter- related. They can be reflective of each other; fear is a reflection of one’s anxiety, and anxiety is arguably more fundamental than fear itself. The objects of fear are replaceable, and the experience of fear of certain objects can be temporary, but the sense of fear can be permanent, surviving when the objects of fear change. For example, the secular object of fear pre-1965 (the communists) is replaced with the supernatural object of fear of ghosts and the religious fear of Muslims post-1965-66.
This permanent state of fear, in my understanding, reflects the deep underlying relationship between fear and one’s anxiety about death physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and it is perhaps this anxiety which at a deep level underpins and unites the experiences of fear that this thesis examines, and links the secular, religious and supernatural dimensions of fear, all of which involve fear of death.
Fear has three dimensions
We can argue that in the philosophical and theological perspectives of Kierkegaard,
Tillich, Heidegger and Küng, the idea of fear primarily involves the secular dimension, namely the emotional and physical well being of the subject (human being), and is primarily this-worldly. In their thought systems, a thing can be
44 classified as an object of fear if that object is considered frightening in a secular sense, that is, as a threat to the physical or mental well-being of the person. Although
Kierkegaard, Tillich and Küng add a religious dimension to the experience of fear, this religious dimension is essentially still secular in terms of its secular consequences to the person who is frightened; they do not discuss the fate of the immortal soul in the afterlife as most traditional religious thinkers would. Furthermore, their discussion of fear is as a secular and a religious phenomenon, and does not mention the supernatural dimension.
The distinctiveness of my approach to the experience of fear lies in my emphasis on the interrelationship between the secular, the religious and the supernatural, with the latter dimension being the one that the philosophical and theological thinkers discussed in this chapter do not address; this supernatural dimension is significant in part because it challenges the boundary between life and death which is fundamental to the secular and religious understanding of fear. While the 'From Madiun' text is about death and killings of alleged communists, the thesis is not primarily about death. It is rather about fears of someone or an organisation who may physically kill the reader, in physical (secular) terms, fears of someone or an organisation who may destroy the reader’s salvation in the afterlife, from a religious perspective, and fears of powerlessness in dealing with the supernatural forces, in particular with the ghosts. These ideas will be outlined in greater depth in the chapters on secular, religious and supernatural fear.
45 Concluding Notes
In this chapter, I have argued that fear, being and time are fundamentally related. This proposition was explained with reference to the ideas of four different philosophers and theologians, Kierkegaard, Tillich, Heidegger and Küng. These thinkers all contend that fear is part of being human, while Kierkegaard, Tillich and Küng link fear to being religious. No one can escape the feeling of fear, and religious people experience it with extra intensity. I have sought to analyse six different aspects of fear
– the ideas that fear is universally human and specifically religious; that fear has a time structure; that fear is a state of being; that fear always has an object; that fear is different from ‘angst’ (anxiety); and that fear has three dimensions namely secular, religious and supernatural. I noted that these six categories are not an absolute fixed framework through which the thesis approaches the experience of fear. It is merely a background for some of my authoethnographic reflections on the experience of fear and reading the From Madiun text. The fears that I experience as a person with mixed identities – as an Indonesian, Catholic and a Lamaholot person – mean that my approach to fear is not just secular and religious as in the philosophical and theological perspectives of Kierkegaard, Tillich, Heidegger and Küng, but also, and more profoundly, involves the supernatural dimension. In subsequent chapters I will explain how I see the From Madiun text functioning as a frightening text, and why I as a reader am frightened of the text, but first I will address some questions associated with the secular context of the 1965-66 events, to provide a context for my analysis of the text and my experience of reading it.
46 Chapter 2 NATIONAL AND LOCAL CONTEXTS OF 1965-66: REVIEW OF SELECTED LITERATURE
Introductory Notes
The previous chapter discussed philosophical and theological works. It has helped me develop the approach to fear as a part of human experience, which informed my autoethnographic reading of the From Madiun text. In line with my autoethnographic methodology, the present chapter approaches some of the texts that have formed contexts for my reading of From Madiun, and that have influenced my attempts to understand my experiences of fear in relationship to the killings in Indonesia in 1965-
66. This chapter is a little different from a conventional literature review because it is quite selective. I pick out works – scholarly texts in English and Indonesian, propaganda, films and some non-scholarly or semi-scholarly writing – that have proven significant to me in my approach to From Madiun and to my attempt to understand the events of 1965-66 in Indonesia and in my own home region in particular. I have not attempted to be exhaustive in my account of the literature.
As someone heavily exposed to the propaganda of the New Order about the events of 1965-66 when growing up, but who has also been educated in Australia and who has been teaching Indonesian language and culture in Australian universities since 1990, I have been influenced both by the narratives about 1965 that were produced by the New Order itself and those by impartial or critical scholars who have sought a more neutral and ‘academic’ explanation for the events. I have sought to strike a balance between discussing works that resonate strongly with my own concerns as a Lamaholot Catholic and those, which align with my own training and
47 work as an academic at an Australian university. From a conventional point of view, there are no doubt many gaps in my survey, with some well-known studies perhaps being omitted or only treated in brief, but my choices reflect my sense of what has been illuminated for me in terms of understanding From Madiun and my own experiences of fear in relation to 1965.
The chapter is divided into two sections: the first section deals with a variety of works that relate to the events of 1965-66 and their aftermath at the national level in Indonesia and at a local level in places other than my home region of Eastern
Indonesia; the second section deals with works on the events of 1965-66 in Eastern
Indonesia, focusing on places that are near to my own Lamaholot cultural zone. The first section of the chapter examines a succession of different kinds of narratives of
1965 – narratives that attempt to assign responsibility for the coup attempt in Jakarta; narratives that attempt to provide contexts and explanations for killings at a local level; narratives that attempt to theorise and explain violence in Indonesia; and finally narratives that attempt to imagine and personalise that violence. The second section deals with different approaches to the events of 1965-66 in Eastern Indonesia, concentrating on works that appeared after the end of the New Order; this includes accounts of how many people were killed, who was killed and why, and what role the
Catholic Church played in the events and how the role of the Church in the killings in the 1960s has been discussed in Eastern Indonesia in recent years.
Indeed there is an extensive literature on 1965-66 produced by both
Indonesian and foreign scholars from a range of disciplines, but mainly by those in the fields of history and political science.8 I argue that this vast literature generally
8 Key works on the 1965 events include Scott (1965), Kroef (1965, 1966, 1970, 1971), Hindley (1968), Ruth (1968), Anderson & McVey (1971), Mortimer (1972, 1974), Crouch (1973), Ricklefs
48 perceives the events of 1965-66 as secular events with secular consequences; the scholarly writing on this topic provides secular explanations of the processes, facts, motives and effects of the events of 1965-66. They are concerned with what happened, why the events took place, and who was responsible for what happened in
1965 and 1966. It is much less concerned with how the events inspired particular kinds of emotional responses, or the cultural frameworks within which these events were interpreted. A small amount of work, such as the writings of Robert Cribb and of Ariel Heryanto, discusses the culturally-specific and emotionally-defined causes and consequences of the 1965 events (and these works will be discussed in this chapter), but even these works generally adopt what I would see as a secular approach, defining the events as the products of secular processes, in which religious and supernatural factors and forces (in particular) are not extensively examined.
NATIONAL CONTEXT OF 1965-66
Responsibility for the October 1, 1965 Coup: Five different narratives
From Madiun is an account of the events leading up to the coup attempt in Jakarta on
1st October 1965 that adheres to the official New Order interpretation of those events that the coup was the product of a conspiracy by the Indonesian Communist Party
(PKI), a conspiracy that dated back to the Madiun uprising in 1948. To understand the narrative that From Madiun presents it is helpful to look at other accounts of those events, so that when we come to look at the text itself we have some sense of how its
(1991), Webb (1986), Cribb (1990), Cribb & Brown (1995), Sulistyo (1997), da Cunha et.al (1999), Farram (2002, 2010), Barnes (2003), Roosa, Ratih & Farid (2004), Budiawan (2004), Farid (2005), Roosa (2006), Coppel (2006), Luhulima (2006), Wardaya (2006), McGregor (2007), Boden (2007), Pour (2010), Kammen & McGregor (2012), Madung & Prior (2015) Among these, works that focus on eastern Indonesian Catholicism and 1965 include Madung & Prior (2015), Barnes (2003), da Cunha et.al (1999), Farram (2002, 2010), Webb (1986).
49 account is constructed. In the following section, I examine five different works – the
‘White Books’ (‘Buku Putih’) by Nugroho Notosusanto (1968, 1973, 1974, 1978,
1994), the ‘Cornell Paper’ (1971), and the books of Harold Crouch (1978), W.F.
Wertheim (1979), and John Roosa (2006) – which I see as offering different interpretations of the events and who it was that was responsible for the coup attempt of 1st October 1965. These works extend from the 1960s to the early 21st century and cover a variety of perspectives, from those of the New Order state, which came to power in response to the Coup attempt of 1965 to those of its foreign critics and opponents to those of more neutral scholarly observers.
Before examining these different interpretations of who it was that was responsible for the coup, it is helpful to look at a short account of the 1965 coup attempt and its significance in Indonesian history. The publishers’ blurb for John
Roosa’s 2006 book sums up the events as follows:
In the early morning hours of October 1, 1965, a group calling itself the September 30th Movement kidnapped and executed six generals of the Indonesian army, including its highest commander. The group claimed that it was attempting to preempt a coup, but it was quickly defeated as the senior surviving general, Haji Mohammad Suharto, drove the movement’s partisans out of Jakarta. Riding the crest of mass violence, Suharto blamed the Communist Party of Indonesia for masterminding the movement and used the emergency as a pretext for gradually eroding President Sukarno’s powers and installing himself as a ruler. Imprisoning and killing hundreds of thousands of alleged communists over the next year, Suharto remade the events of October 1, 1965 into the central event of modern Indonesian history and the cornerstone of his thirty-two- year dictatorship.
The key areas of debate amongst the major writers on the subject relate to the identity and motives of the participants in the September 30th Movement, and the extent and nature of their connections with the Indonesian Communist Party. The position that one took on these questions had a direct relationship with the legitimacy of the New
50 Order state, which justified its existence on the grounds that it had saved Indonesia from a communist conspiracy. In the following section I start with the official narrative of events produced by the New Order’s representatives, and then move on to alternative explanations produced by a variety of non-Indonesian scholarly observers.
The PKI was responsible (Nugroho Notosusanto)
The official version of the 1965-66 events promulgated by Suharto’s New Order government was put forward in what are known in Indonesia as the ‘White Books’
(Buku Putih), produced by the military historian Nugroho Notosusanto and his associates. These books, which get their name from the first in the series ‘Buku Putih
G.30.S./PKI’ (‘White Book of G.30.S/the Indonesian Communist Party’), appeared between 1968 and 1994. These works put forward the contention that Suharto had used as a justification for the suppression of the PKI and for the killing of communists and others deemed hostile to the regime: the attempted coup of 1st
October 1965 was the work of the Indonesian Communist Party. As Kate McGregor
(2007) has observed, Nugroho’s interpretations were a critical part of the New
Order’s regime legitimacy; they became the basis of propaganda films (such as the one that I saw in Flores in 1985), public memorials and commemoration and the P49 civic education programs. Those growing up in Indonesia in this period were all exposed to the Nugroho interpretation of the 1965-66 events, whether directly by reading the ‘White Books’ themselves, or by being exposed to them through the wider system of public propaganda. From Madiun can be seen as part of the same
9 P4 is an acronym for ‘Pedoman Penghayatan dan Pengamalan Pancasila’ (Guidelines for Instilling and Implementing Pancasila).
51 tradition as the ‘White Books’ in terms of its promulgation of the idea that a PKI conspiracy lay behind the 1st October 1965 coup attempt.
The Indonesian Army was responsible (The Cornell Paper)
Perhaps the most important early challenge to the official New Order government account of the events in 1965 that placed the blame for the coup on the PKI was A
Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesia, produced by two scholars from Cornell University, Benedict R. Anderson and Ruth McVey, as part of
Cornell University’s Internal Report. This text, known subsequently as ‘The Cornell
Paper’, was prepared soon after the events, but not officially published until 1971.
The Cornell Paper claimed that the coup carried out by the September 30 Movement was the climax of an internal conflict within the Indonesian Army. On its opening page it states:
The weight of the evidence so far assembled and the (admittedly always fragile) logic of probabilities indicate that the coup of October 1, 1965, was neither the work of the PKI nor of Soekarno himself. Though both were deeply involved, it was after the coup plans were well under way. They were more the victims than the initiators of events. The PKI was entangled before it knew what was happening; Soekarno mistakenly attempted to take advantage of the situation created by the death of six of his top Generals. The actual originators of the coup are to be found not in Djakarta, but in Central Java, among middle-level Army officers in Semarang, at the Head-quarters of the Seventh (Diponegoro) Territorial Division (Anderson and McVey, 1971:1).
The authors of the Cornell Paper took the view that discontented officers in the
Diponegoro division had attempted a coup against opponents within the military who they thought were leading the Indonesian revolution in the wrong direction. These discontented officers did not act under the direction of the PKI, or of Sukarno, who were caught up in the events rather than causing them. The PKI were thus victims
52 rather than perpetators of the events. Needless to say, the narrative of The Cornell
Paper is at complete odds with the account of the events leading up to the killings of the generals at The Crocodile Hole that is given in From Madiun.
Progressive generals and the PKI were responsible (Harold Crouch), Suharto was responsible (W.F. Wertheim)
The Cornell Paper was produced very soon after the events of October 1965 with very limited sources. While the line that the PKI was responsible for the coup remained the official orthodoxy in Indonesia under the New Order, in the 1970s foreign scholars researching Indonesian politics and society, while not endorsing the view that the September 30th Movement was a communist conspiracy, came to conclusions about who was responsible for the coup that differed from those of the
Cornell Paper. In his 1978 book, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, Harold Crouch claimed that it was likely that the 1st October 1965 coup was not solely the work of discontented members of the Army and that it was very likely that the PKI was involved in the coup, although “the precise nature of the ‘involvement’ was still subject to varying interpretations” (Crouch, 1978:109). Crouch was neither a supporter nor an open opponent of the New Order regime, and based his judgments on careful consideration of the available sources; he believes that conflict in the Army was a key cause of the coup, but the PKI was at least partially involved.
A very different interpretation was put forward by the Marxist scholar W.F.
Wertheim in his 1979 book, Whose Plot? New Light on the 1965 Events. According to Wertheim, even if the PKI was ever involved in the ‘movement’, they played only an additional role, and were definitely not its masterminds. Wertheim (1979) strongly believed that Suharto, the main victor of the events of 1965-66, was the key person
53 responsible for the coup attempt. The events of 1965 enabled Suharto to take control of the Army, and to ban the PKI in 1966. In Wertheim’s view it was Suharto, and not the PKI or the progressive Army officers, who had been responsible for the killings of the generals at the Crocodile Hole: this view is the antithesis of what is presented in
From Madiun.
Progressive Army officers and a section of the PKI leadership were responsible (John Roosa)
With the fall of the New Order in 1998, it became possible to discuss the events of
1965-66 publicly in Indonesia, even though there were many in Indonesian society who continued to believe that the PKI was behind the September 30th movement. This changed environment facilitated more open discussion within Indonesia, and new opportunities for foreign researchers working on the events of 1965-66. One of the most important works to appear in English in this post-New Order era is the 2006 book of John Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and
Suharto’s Coup d’Etat in Indonesia. Although critical of Suharto and of the New
Order system, Roosa argues that there is no evidence to suggest that Suharto was responsible for the murder of the Generals on 1st October 1965, as alleged by
Wertheim. According to Roosa, a section of the PKI leadership was indeed involved in the September 30th Movement and this involvement was used by Suharto as a pretext for the anti-communist mass violence during 1965-66. Suharto’s aims then were clear: to suppress Indonesian communism, to topple Sukarno, and to seize power (Roosa 2006). Through a thorough analysis of written archives and oral history, Roosa concludes that there were five key persons involved in the September
30th Movement – Lieutenant Colonel Untung and Colonel Abdul Latief (of the
54 Jakarta Army garrison), Major Sujono (of the Halim Air Base guards), and two civilians, who were members of the PKI, Sjam (the head of the Special Bureau) and
Pono (a member of the Special Bureau). Because the ‘Movement’ consisted of these five individuals, of whom only two were part of the PKI, blaming the entire party leadership and membership of the PKI and its affiliated organisations and justifying their extermination on that basis, had no justification. At the same time, Roosa is critical of the view that some army generals were antagonistic towards Sukarno and were conspiring with the United States to replace Sukarno (Roosa 2006).) Roosa’s work represents the depth of historical information about 1965 that is now available to a reader such as myself. Given this depth of knowledge how can my deep emotional response to the anti-communist propaganda of From Madiun be explained?
Furthermore, how do we explain the violence that spread across Indonesia in the wake of the killing of the generals in Jakarta by the September 30th Movement?
Answering these questions is part of what my reading of the literature surveyed in this chapter attempts to do.
Narratives of locality and violence: Robert Cribb’s edited volume 1990 and the PhD theses of Sudjatmiko (1992) and Sulistyo (1997)
Because From Madiun concentrates on the actions of the PKI leading up to the events of 1965, it was helpful to look at how different writers have sought to explain who was responsible for the September 30 Movement. However, because my response to the text and my own fears are structured not by the power struggle at the top level, but by what happened in my own region, it is helpful to look at the attempts by different writers to explain the causes and dynamics of the killings of the alleged communists at a local level. This is what I undertake in this section, which studies
55 three works that appeared in the 1990s (when the New Order was still in power) – an edited volume produced by the historian Robert Cribb and two PhD theses by
Indonesians studying outside Indonesia, Iwan Gardono Sudjatmiko (1992) and
Hermawan Sulistyo (1997). I have chosen these works because they represent early attempts to go into depth about the dynamics and causes of violence in the core areas of Indonesia – Java and the places close to it, most notably Bali.
As noted above, over the last few decades scholars have begun to argue that it is essential to approach the killings in 1965-66 with reference to the situation at the local level, rather than simply focusing on the top-level power struggles. One of the first works in English to take this approach was Robert Cribb’s 1990 edited book, The
Indonesian Killings 1965-1966 Studies from Java and Bali. In his introduction, which provides his own interpretations of the violence as well as summarising the work of the other contributors to the volume, Cribb highlights the complex social, economic and cultural tensions that led to violence in different parts of Indonesia in the 1965-66 period. He observes that different local conditions produced different patterns of violence in different parts of Java and Bali (and in nearby regions).
Cribb argues that a key cause of violence was land disputes that arose in many regions throughout Indonesia as a consequence of the PKI land reform campaign – aksi sepihak or unilateral actions. These PKI actions were strongly opposed by landlords who lost their power and wealth, triggering conflicts at the grassroots level that were as important if not more important than the national level conflicts in giving rise to violence (Cribb, 1990:21-22). Cribb follows earlier scholars who emphasised ethnic conflict, some of it arising from migration and land disputes that this migration caused, as a key source of the violence, in which killers and victims came from
56 different ethnic groups: in Lombok, for example, the killers were the Muslim Sasaks, and their victims were Balinese and Chinese, while in West Kalimantan, the victims were mostly Chinese, and the killers were Dayaks (Webb, 1971:110-113; Coppel,
1983:145-149; Van der Kroef 1971:110-113). In the province of Lampung, Cribb observes, the victims were actually the Javanese transmigrants, and their killers were the local Muslims (Cribb, 1990:23). In highlighting ethnic divisions and conflicts,
Cribb draws attention to problems that resulted from national level structures, such as the new national economy (represented by transmigration), producing changed conditions at the local level.
But in the core areas that Cribb’s volume surveys, Java and Bali, killers and victims did not come from different ethnic groups or from different religious backgrounds. Cribb notes that on Java, the worst killings occurred and it was Army units and the local youth groups who were members of anti-communist political parties who were the main killers. ANSOR, the Moslem youth group of the Nahdatul
Ulama, played the most important role in the massacres (Cribb, 1990:26-27). As many other scholars of Java and the violence of 1965-66 have observed, in Central and East Java the killings seem to have been directly linked with cultural-religious tension, between the abangan and the santri, that is between traditionalist Muslims and Muslims with stronger commitments to the purification of Islam (Hefner 2000;
Woodward 1989). In Bali, where killings also took place within the same religious group, Cribb (summarising the chapters of the volume’s Bali-focused contributors) observes that the violence seems to have been associated with “the defence of
Hinduism and with long-standing rivalries between patronage groups” (Cribb,
1990:27).
57 In terms of the concerns that I address in this thesis, one of the most important contributions of Cribb’s volume is its attention to cultural factors in the 1965-66 violence. Cribb suggests that the murders at the Crocodile Hole were used as evidence of the violation of social and political norms by the PKI; this spread out to the rest of the country, through what Cribb calls, a “collective running amok
(mengamuk)” (Cribb, 1990:33). Cribb also suggests that cultural factors might explain the supposed passivity of alleged communists, pointing to the symbolic meaning of the left hand side (evil, passive, loser: victims) and the right hand side
(good, active, winner: victimiser) in wayang kulit shadow puppet play (Cribb,
1990:34-35). Of particular importance to my own research is Cribb’s invocation of the key word ‘fear’ (Cribb, 1990:15), and his reference to cultural notions of ‘left’ and ‘right’ (Cribb, 1990:34-35) since these core cultural ideas are discussed extensively in the main body of this thesis.
We can see Cribb’s volume as part of a series of works published in English in the 1990s (before the fall of the New Order) that sought to go into depth on the local dynamics that operated in the events of 1965-66. A good example of this is
Iwan Gardono Sudjatmiko’s 1992 Harvard doctoral dissertation, The Destruction of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) – A Comparative Analysis of East Java and
Bali. Sudjatmiko’s work appeared very soon after the Cribb volume and, like the
Cribb book, focused on Java and Bali. Sudjatmiko’s concern is to explain why the
Indonesian Communist Party in East Java and Bali was destroyed in the 1965-66 period. He argues that, on the one hand, the PKI in that area was wiped out because there was no support whatsoever from the central PKI leadership in Jakarta, and on the other because there was strong opposition from the Army and religious forces
58 (Islam and Hinduism) at the local level. At a wider level, Sudjatmiko asserts that the destruction of the PKI resulted from the failure of the PKI’s own programme of social revolution: the mobilisation strategy of the PKI created social polarisation, and non- communists were provoked to quickly respond to the PKI’s mobilisation in a violent action against alleged communists when the opportunity arose. Sudjatmiko thus suggests that because the PKI was the mobiliser in this failed social revolution it must itself be blamed for the post-coup mass violence of 1965-66 (Sudjatmiko, 1992:233).
Sudjatmiko’s work is essentially a conventional political science narrative which stresses organisational structures and social conflicts rather than local cultural structures; I see it as significant because it draws attention to local social conflicts and because it draws attention to how religious forces and the PKI were in conflict with each other in areas where communists and non-communists shared the same religion.
Hermawan Sulistyo’s 1997 Ph.D dissertation (1997), The Forgotten Years:
The Indonesia’s Missing History of Mass Slaughter (Jombang-Kediri, 1965-1966), concludes that the mass killing in Jombang and Kediri in East Java was the logical consequence of local conflicts between various factions in the society. These conflicts had a long history, and the massacre was unsystematic and uncoordinated. Sulistyo offers some inter-connected interpretations that may explain the causes of the killings. Significantly, among other factors, he regards the massacre in the areas of
East Java that he studies as at least partly related to religious conflict, being presented as a Muslim holy war. Some of the participants studied by Sulistyo felt that it was
God’s will to slaughter the communists, the infidel: Islam had to be defended. Like many other scholars who have studied the violence in the Muslim areas of Java, he
59 examines directly the involvement of santri (NU)10 youth in the mass slaughter.
These young men, the killers, were serious about their Islamic beliefs and their purity; their victims were abangan, the non-practising or nominal Muslims.
However, while acknowledging its importance, Sulistyo suggests that this religious motive was not the only or even the primary motive for the killings. He emphasises that the massacre was a result of revenge by the Army against those who were perceived to be its enemies. He notes that by slaughtering the communists, the
Army was understood as having played a heroic role in avenging the deaths of the generals killed in the 1965 coup. Even so, in the case of Jombang and Kediri, it was the local civilians, rather than the Army, that took the most active role in the massacre. But this does not mean that the military were not involved in the killings – it was the consent of the Army that permitted the massacres to take place.
Paralleling the comments of Cribb, Sulistyo sees class conflict as a key causative factor involved in the massacres. He shows that the PKI attracted many followers, especially among peasants and sugar plantation workers by use of the political jargon of class conflict, however Sulistyo argues that these class conflicts assumed a more horizontal pattern of conflict among members of the same economic class, the middle class. Furthermore, in the case of Jombang and Kediri, Sulistyo finds that the killings were undoubtedly driven by political affiliation: the killings were also a product of local aliran politics in which reciprocal victimisation was common. I see Sulistyo’s work as providing a broad sense of the social dynamics that influenced the killings in different parts of Indonesia that helps to contextualise my own work, and even though my own analysis of the conflicts in Catholic areas of
10 NU is an acronym for Nahdlatul Ulama. Established in 1926 as a traditionalist Sunni Islam movement in Indonesia, NU quickly became the largest Islamic organization in the world.
60 Eastern Indonesia does not attempt to uncover the class dynamics of the killings of
1965-66.
Theorizing violence in Indonesia – Robinson, Colombijn, Lindblad and Heryanto
The above works represent attempts in the 1990s, that is in the later years of the New
Order, to try to uncover the social factors that led to violence in 1965-66 at a local level in Indonesia; the works cited established what happened and why in the regions that they studied. The works surveyed in this section of the chapter represent attempts to theorise violence in Indonesia at a higher level and are not restricted to the 1965-66 events. Although one work, Robinson’s 1995 study of the history of violence in Bali was produced when the New Order was still in force, the other works studied were produced after the New Order fell and to some extent are attempts to understand violence in Indonesia both before the establishment of the New Order and after it collapsed.
Geoffrey Robinson’s 1995 book, The Dark Side of Paradise – Political
Violence in Bali, situates the killings in Bali in 1965-66 (in which approximately
80,000 people or about 5 percent of the population of Bali of under 2 million at that time were killed) in a wider historical context; he explores the ‘dark side’ of Bali by examining political violence in Bali from the late colonial era onwards. Robinson
(1995:273) claims that the 1965-66 massacre was a joint operation between the Army and the local leadership, and was politically and economically motivated, and neither culturally nor religiously driven. Both communists and non-communists were overwhelmingly Hindu Balinese. Although Robinson does not deny the role that some religious leaders played in supporting the massacre, he asserts that their
61 involvement in the killings was determined by political and economic goals
(Robinson 1995:275). He argues that the Balinese were not simply provoked to kill the communists on the basis that their imagined collective core cultural and religious values were under attack, but claims instead that class conflicts between Balinese aristocrats and commoners were core causes of tension.
Challenging the traditional premise that Bali is “essentially harmonious and apolitical”, Robinson argues that, “violence and conflict are integral parts of Balinese history” (Robinson 1995:xii). Bitter conflicts occurred long before the massacre in
1965-66, including conflicts among the Balinese during the National Revolution and ongoing caste conflicts. Robinson observes that in these cases of violence before the mass killings of 1965-66, periods of political violence were often forgotten, or simply seen as historical deviations from the cultural and religious norm of collective harmony.11 The value of Robinson’s work comes from his attention to the wider historical and social context that shaped the violence of 1965-66 in Bali, helping to situate these events in a more long term history of violence and conflict, something that I have found illuminating in thinking through the causes and legacies of the events of 1965 in my own region.
We can see the interest in trying to develop long-term perspectives on violence in Indonesia and to theorise violence that is manifested in Robinson’s book in the work of Freek Colombijn and J. Thomas Lindblad in their co-edited volume,
The Roots of Violence in Indonesia – Contemporary Violence in Historical
Perspective, published in 2002. Like Robinson they argue that present instances of
11 For the idea of the culture of collective harmony and order in Indonesian Culture, see Hildred Geertz, The Javanese family: A study of kinship and socialization (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961). See also Koentjaraningrat, Kebudayaan Jawa (Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1984).
62 violence in Indonesia are historically rooted, and that violence in Indonesia goes back far beyond Suharto’s New Order regime – violence also occurred during the Old
Order of Sukarno (1945-65), and in colonial and pre-colonial times. Colombijn and
Lindblad assert that since its independence, Indonesia has constantly experienced violence, and that this violence has been geographically spread throughout the archipelago. Armed struggles resulting from the Darul Islam and PRRI/Permesta’s attempt to contest the government in 1958, separatist movements in East Timor,
Aceh, and West Papua, religious conflicts in Maluku and Poso, ethnic violence in
Sambas, the violence of Madiun in 1948, the Tanjung Priok massacre in 1984, the terror of the Petrus killings (Penembakan Misterius, ‘Mysterious Shootings’ – government sponsored violence towards criminals) and the mass killings of 1965-66 point to a perpetual chain of violence in Indonesia that seems difficult to bring to an end (Colombijn and Lindblad, 2002:2).
Colombijn and Lindblad make several overall points about the history of violence in Indonesia. First, violence in Indonesia is perceived to be legitimate and necessary under certain circumstances, as in the case of the mass violence of 1965-66, which was both endorsed and sponsored by the state. Second, victims of violence are frequently constructed as outsiders, or sub-human, for example in the constructed difference between the so-called ‘indigenous Indonesians’, or ‘pribumi Indonesia’, and ‘orang Cina’ (pejorative term for ‘Chinese’), with the latter being cast as outsiders or sub-human. Third, the violence in Indonesia is gendered. It involves almost exclusively young males, with some females as an exception. Violence is a sub-culture of Indonesian young men, a culture that may originate from the revolutionary time of 1945-49. Fourth, violence in Indonesia is often a joint action
63 between the state and gangs. Crime and the state reinforce each other. Fifth, the state allows open violence against its own citizens. Sixth, recent violence in Indonesia has become more overtly communal violence, so that it is difficult to explain the direct involvement of national actors especially the Army.
For me, the most important idea about violence in Indonesia in the theorising of Colombijn and Lindblad is their discussion of the constructed nature of the concept of ‘outsiders’ versus ‘insiders’. The worldview of the local people in my home region in 1965 could conceive of only two groups – communists (outsiders), and non- communists (insiders). To a great extent it was the violence itself that created this distinction, rather than the distinction that created the violence. I would observe that the alleged communists were cast as outsiders when they were slaughtered or victimised: the victims were the perceived outsiders, and the perpetrators were perceived insiders. Communists were slaughtered simply on the basis that they were alleged to be communist, and whether those killed actually were communists (in the sense of being members of the PKI) remains debatable today. There was, however, no unambigious distinction between insiders and outsiders, non-communists and communists, as it could simply be asserted that someone belonged to one group or to the other. In this sense, we can argue whether one was the victim of violence (the outsider) or the perpetrator (the insider) decided whether or not was a ‘communist’.
Those who were killed became ‘communists’, regardless of whether or not they were communists.
For me, however, the most important work on the theorisation of violence and on the relationship between fear and state power in Indonesia to appear in recent years is Ariel Heryanto’s excellent 2006 book, State Terrorism and Political Identity
64 in Indonesia: Fatally Belonging. Heryanto examines the relationship between the state terrorism and political identity in Indonesia during the New Order, a relationship he describes as ‘fatal’. He defines state terrorism as “a series of state-sponsored campaigns that induce intense and widespread fear over a large population”
(Heryanto, 2006:19). Simply put, Heryanto argues that there was an inseparable connection between terror and violence and political identity during the era of
Suharto’s New Order. I certainly see Heryanto’s argument that the New Order’s campaigns induced “intense and widespread fear over a large population”, as the best way of understanding the reasons for the From Madiun text. Heryanto’s work has had a great influence on my thinking about the phenomenon of fear in New Order
Indonesia.
Heryanto’s reflections on state terror were continued in a 2012 article in the
Indonesian national magazine, Tempo, entitled ‘Film, Teror Negara, dan Luka-Luka
Bangsa’, (translated as ‘Film, State Terror, and the Nation’s Wounds’), an article which was published along with forty others in a special October 2012 edition of
Tempo that coverred the events of 1965-66 by examining the perpetrators of violence in different regions in Indonesia – this is reflected in the general title of the edition,
‘Pengakuan Algojo 1965’, which can be translated as ‘Executioners’ Confessions’.
His article is thus part of the intellectual conversation that has been happening within
Indonesia about the events of 1965-66 in recent years.
Several points in Heryanto’s article are worth noting (some of which have already been alluded to in the introductory chapter of this thesis). These points both resonate with my own thoughts and experiences and point to areas that many
Indonesians overlook. One is his statement that the massacre of 1965-66 is the
65 dominant factor in the creation of the character and the wounds in the social life of
Indonesia today. Second is Heryanto’s observation that despite the seriousness of the tragedy of 1965, a politics of silence was constructed during Suharto’s New Order regime that kept people from contesting the official narrative of 1965, meaning that the post-1965 generations in Indonesia (of which I am a member) became the victims of a politics of silence. In the words of Heryanto, they are ‘buta sejarah’ (historicially blind) (Heryanto, 2012:118).
It is particularly significant that Heryanto’s article focuses on the film, The
Treachery of the September 30 Movement/PKI, the film I discussed in the introduction to this thesis and the first film that I ever saw. Heryanto sees this film as having been one of the most powerful tools of New Order propaganda (Heryanto,
2012:119-121), and an instrument of the state terror and a creator of the culture of fear, that induced terror in the Indonesian population. I have noted the enormous impact that The Treachery of the September 30 Movement/PKI had on me when I first watched it, and Heryanto’s theorisation of that film and its relationship to fear has had a great influence on me and on how I approach From Madiun; a text, which I see as belonging to the same New Order culture of fear.
Imagining and personalising the events of 1965-66: Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentaries.
Heryanto’s attention to the importance of the relationship between film and fear in the New Order links in my mind with two very influential and well known works on the events of 1965-66 – the documentaries on the killings made by the
American Joshua Oppenheimer. If the works discussed in the previous section enable us to theorise the 1965-66 violence in Indonesia, the films of
66 Oppenheimer make it possible to imagine that violence by directly showing us people who were involved in it; they bring us into the violence at a personal level.
Oppenheimer’s 2012 documentary film, The Act of Killing (Jagal), depicts the experiences and the feelings of the perpetrators of the 1965-66 violence, and in the film many of these perpetrators speak proudly of their involvement in the killings.
The key figure on whom the film focuses is a man named Anwar Congo who killed about 1,000 people in the North Sumatran city of Medan. Of particular importance to me is that by focusing on the memories and emotions of the executioners such as
Anwar Congo in the present, Oppenheimer’s film is in fact more about the present than the past. This dialogue between past and present is what I experience when reading From Madiun, and watching Oppenheimer’s film also caused me to think about those I know, including my own father who was involved in the killings.
Oppenheimer made a second documentary in 2014, The Look of Silence (Senyap), that tells the story of the family of Adi Rukun, a survivor of the killings of 1965-66.
The older brother of Adi Rukun (an optometrist from a village in North Sumatra) was a victim of the purges. Adi too became a victim of the past as he had to live through pain, anger and trauma due to his older brother’s dehumanising death. The documentary reveals the identities of the killers of one of Adi’s brothers, and confronts them. This is truly a difficult experience both from the perspective of Adi
Rukun, and for the audience.
67 LOCAL CONTEXT OF 1965-66 (FLORES AND WEST TIMOR)
Watching the perpetrators and victims in Oppenheimer’s films makes me think of my own experiences with those caught up in the events of 1965-66 in my home area in
Eastern Indonesia. As a little child growing up on Lembata and Flores, I remember some villagers spoke about their involvement in the killings with pride, and some others were reluctant to speak about it. For some, there was a sense of being heroic for their participation in the violence, and for others there was a sense of guilt and fear that the blood of the victims would follow them and their families for generations, as in their local belief systems. As this thesis will argue, these local belief systems were central to how the events of 1965-66 were interpreted and to how
I myself experienced the communal memory of those events, and interact with the secular and religious forms of fear that inform my reading of the From Madiun text
(1967), and which also affect the members of my community. In this section of the thesis, I examine some of the literature that has been produced about the events of
1965-66 in Eastern Indonesia, which is critical to understanding how I understand
From Madiun and how I interpret my fear response to that text.
Local victims and perpetrators of violence of 1965-66
With the fall of the New Order at the end of the 1990s it became possible for people within Indonesia – albeit within circumscribed limits – to publish accounts of the violence of 1965-66 and to conduct research that challenged the New Order orthodoxy. This was particularly important in the case of the Catholic communities of
Eastern Indonesia. The material below discusses some of the fruits of this writing, making occasional reference to work on Eastern Indonesia and the killings of 1965-
68 66 published outside Indonesia both before and after the fall of the New Order.
Works surveyed include those by local Christians (such as Ignas da Cunha, Mery
Kolimon and Otto Gusti Madung12), foreign priests who were long-term residents of the region, such as John Prior and Nicolaas Jozef Boumans (both of whom published in Indonesian), and the works of non-Indonesian scholars such as Paul Webb (whose work was published when the New Order regime was still in power).
In the following section, I examine how these various works discuss the events of 1965-66 in the two cases of Flores (the area of which the Lamaholot region from which I originate forms a part) and West Timor, an area which is also part of the
Catholic (or in broader terms Christian) zone in Eastern Indonesia. I discuss what has been written about the killers and victims involved in the violence at a local level, the nature of the Church’s involvement in the events, the political makeup of the region both before and after 1965-66, and how the Church has responded to the events. I deal with what has been written about Flores first, followed by West Timor.
Flores: Victims, perpetrators and the stance of the Church
One concern in the post-New Order Indonesian language literature on Eastern
Indonesia is to outline how many people were killed in 1965-66, who was killed and by whom and for what reasons. These issues remain controversial. This can be seen with regard to the question of how many people were killed. In the introduction to a key work published not long after the fall of the New Order – Berpastoral di Tengah
Badai: Potret Gereja Maumere 1956-1969 (Ministry in the Midst of Rage: The
12 Mery Kolimon's research on 1965-66 has focussed mainly on West Timor, even though she made some references to other parts outside West Timor. She is a Protestant academic at a local theological college in Kupang, West Timor. Ignas da Cunha is a local lay Catholic, while Otto Gusti Madung is a local Catholic priest from Flores and an academic at the School of Philosophy in Ledalero, Flores.
69 Portrait of the Church in Maumere 1956-1969), published by Ignas da Cunha and others in 1999 – it is stated that in the Maumere (Flores) region alone, between
February and May 1966, there were between 800 and 2,000 deaths (da Cunha, et.al.
1999). Mery Kolimon et.al (2015:94) estimate the death toll for the whole province of
Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT) at 3,000 people.
There is general agreeement, however, that on Flores the victims of 1965-66 were mostly local Catholics, and the executioners (algojo) were also local Catholics.
These killings were done under the direct instruction of the Army and were locally known in Flores as KOMOP as part of the KOPKAMTIB (Komando Operasi
Pemulihan Keamanan dan Ketertiban, Operational Command for the Restoration of
Security and Order) (da Cunha, et.al. 1999:6). Even though it is clear that both the victims and the perpetrators of the killings on Flores were both Catholic, some of the recent writing has suggested that the local Church was rather sympathetic towards the communists during and after the military (KOMOP) operation, from February to May
1966. They also mention the division within the local Church on the actions of the
KOMOP (da Cunha, et.al.,1999:94-106). It is possible, in my view, that this division was partly due to the realisation that it was difficult to identify accurately who the communists were. The same person could be both a communist and Catholic. The local Catholic hierarchy, at the time, could only advise Catholics to be careful of any political influences, and advise that any suspected persons from outside who tried to enter the community must immediately be reported to the parish priests through the parish or station councils.
There is thus little agreement amongst those discussing the killings in Flores and the islands that neighbour it (including Adonara, Solor and Lembata) about
70 whether or not those killed were actually PKI members or affiliates, or if they were, whether they were actually orthodox believers in Marxist doctrines. The case of
Buang Duran is perhaps the best documented example of a local leftist victim of the violence, and as the work of Barnes (2003) cited in the introduction to this thesis makes clear he was a complex figure, whose ideas contained many elements other than secularist communism, and much of his local charisma was dependent on his promise of a coming golden age of material prosperity. Paul Webb (1986) narrates a similar story about a ‘cargo cult’ on the island of Solor involving members of the PKI in 1965:
Again on the island of Solor, off the coast of East Flores, in early 1965, there were a few local ‘communists’ who spread their own brand of communism. Those Catholics who would not contribute to the new mosque were severely beaten, the reason given being that under communism everyone must help each other. The communists were of course Catholics, and at the same time they loudly proclaimed that when the PKI took over, there would be food for all. It was maintained that a ‘great ship’ would also arrive with goods and food for everyone (Webb, 1986:156; also cited in Barnes, 2003:10).
Webb (1986) and Barnes (2003) both suggest that the support for the PKI in the region grew in the years before the 1965 coup, that is during the era of the Guided
Democracy regime (1959-65). Webb (1986) claims that in some cases both Christians and communists actually tried to, as he writes, “flavour, colour and influence each other” (Webb, 1986:94). Both parties tried to ‘convert’ each other and recruite new members. The result was that some Christians actually became members of the PKI on the basis that, for some, communism was not necessarily, as in the words of Webb,
“the archetypal enemy of Christianity” (Webb, 1986:94). This finding thus challenges the orthodox view of the theist – atheist dichotomy. It seems simplistic to assert that the communists were atheists and were therefore against religion. The PKI problem
71 was much more than simply about God and religion. The arguments that will be advanced later in this thesis will suggest that fear of communism at local level was not a clear-cut fear of a secularist political movement, but may have had much more to do with local fears, especially those associated with supernatural danger.
The exact nature of the involvement of the Church in Flores in the events of
1965-66 is also a matter of controversy or at least of ambiguity in the post-New Order literature. The account of da Cunha and his co-authors seems to acknowledge a degree of guilt within the local Church about their ‘involvement’ – directly and indirectly – in the killings, and a realisation that the only way to move forward is to reconcile with the past by acknowledging the failures on the part of the local Church to protect the communities from the violent and deadly operations by the KOMOP. It could also be argued that the Church’s sense of guilt reflects the trauma felt more broadly in the Catholic community. Da Cunha and his fellow writers claim that even though with much fear for their own fate, some Catholics actually tried to protect some of the alleged communists by hiding them from military arrests, and to defend the rights of the PKI prisoners and their family members to care and fair treatment as human beings (da Cunha, et al., 1999:94-106). In Flores, there is also information that some church buildings, seminaries and presbyteries were used as places to hide the suspects who could become the victims of the KOMOP operation. This suggests that local people knew who in the community had association with the PKI and its affiliated organisations, and that they took steps to defend them. It also suggests that the Church took some steps to protect alleged communists (da Cunha, et al. 1999).
However, the Church did not directly challenge the Army, even in religious matters. There were cases of Catholics who were accused of being communists
72 having their religious rights to receive the sacrament of confession and the Last Rites denied to them by the Army. An example of this was a local victim by the name of
Jan Djong as noted by Madung and Prior (2015: xv-xvi;). He was arrested and detained due to his association with the PKI: Jan Djong was a district leader (camat) and a former representative of the PKI in the DPRD (the council of the local peoples’ representatives). Jan Djong had suffered from wounds because of torture, and died in a detention house (rutan: rumah tahanan) in Maumere on 1st March 1966. The Army authority rejected the victim’s request for the Last Rites and absolution of sins from a
Catholic priest, Father Franz Conelissen SVD, and he was left to die in prison without receiving the Last Rites and absolution of sins.
The question of the wider relationship between the clergy and the activities of
KOMOP, and how far the Church assisted in the campaigns to apprehend suspected communists have been addressed by the Catholic priest of Dutch origin, Fr. Nicolaas
Jozef Boumans SVD, in his autobiography published in 2005. He mentions that the
KOMOP’s presence on the island was strongly felt and disturbing. He writes, “Sering mereka mengganggu aktivitas kami” (Boumans, 2005: 99). [Often they disturbed our activities]. There were ongoing interogations of certain priests and brothers by the
Indonesian Army concerning the possible involvement of Catholics in hiding the alleged communists. Father Boumans notes that many, including himself as a foreign priest, became a target of suspicion by the Army (Boumans, 2005:99-100). The fact that the foreign priests were particularly targeted in the context of Flores, in my view, raises issues of identity politics and the dichotomy of domestic (insiders) versus foreign (outsiders), communists – non-communists, theists – atheists. Even a priest
73 could be seen as a foreign outsider, and under suspicion of being involved with communism.
The experience of the Church in Flores in the period is discussed by one foreign priest, John Prior, in his 1999 article, ‘Terobosan Pastoral di Tengah Badai
Zaman’ [The Pastoral Breakthrough in the Midst of Rage of Time], which discusses in detail how the local Church responded to the crisis in a pastoral sense. Prior states that after the KOMOP massacre there was a time of calm. Yet, according to Prior, this ‘time of calm’ was only on the surface; underneath there was much pain and brokenness (Prior, 1999:201). During this difficult time at the end of the 1960s, Prior notes that the priests in the Maumere area were at a loss to know what to do. In response, the Archbishop of Ende, Gabriel Manek SVD, appointed Father Hendrik
Djawa SVD as the first indigenous Dean of the Ende Archdiocese.13 It should be noted that prior to this, leadership positions within the local power structure of the
Catholic Church were dominated by foreign clerics from Western nations such as
Holland, Germany, England and America.
After Father Hendrik Djawa came to power, the local Catholics in Maumere
(Flores) became active members of the Catholic Party (Partai Katolik). A small minority joined the PNI (Partai Nasional Indonesia, Indonesian National Party); according to John Prior, people joined the PNI because they felt that the Catholic
13 It should be noted, due to his various and important roles within the leadership structure of the local Catholic Church, Father Hendrik Djawa SVD, in my view, played a key role at the time. I suspect, he knew in detail the action of KOMOP (February-May 1966) and the list of victims in Flores, especially in Maumere. In 1966, Pater Hendrik Djawa was appointed Dean of Maumere by the Archbishop Gabriel Manek. Before then, in 1963, he was Director of the office of the Indonesian Bishops’ Association in Jakarta, as well as being a moderator of Catholic Youth in Sikka. In 1962, he was spiritual director for Persatuan Guru Katolik (PGK: the Catholic Teachers’ Association) in Sikka, and for the ‘Curia Legio Maria’ in Maumere. Pater Hendrik Djawa was born in Bo Kua, Bajawa (Flores), in 1928; he died in 1996 in Malang, and was buried in Ende on 21 November 1996 (da Cunha, et.al. 1999).
74 Party was dominated by the elite of the Kingdom of Sikka or because they were critical and had leftist leanings (Prior, 1999:204)). In other words, the Catholic identities of people in Flores were intensified after the killings, in part because membership in the Catholic political organizations became more significant. This tallies with arguments that I will make in the body of the thesis about religious identities getting stronger after the elimination of the PKI.
West Timor: Victims, perpetrators and the Church
Unlike Flores, as noted, in West Timor where about half of the population were
Protestants, the majority of victims and perpetrators of violence of 1965-66 were
Protestants and local Timorese. The executioners in West Timor, according to
Kolimon (2015), were mainly police officers and local youths. Kolimon (2015) writes,
Most of them were Timorese people. Few originated from outside this island, but they had long been residing in Timor. Generally they were young at the time, aged in their 20s to 30s. Some of them were police officers, and some were from youth organisations. The involvement of police officers in massacres at the time was due to their job. While the youths were recruited by the local police to participate in arrests, detentions, and killings (Kolimon, 2015:71).14
Kolimon (2015; 2014) also states that in some places in West Timor, there is information about a number of Protestant Ministers (Pendeta) who joined with the local Army to arrest, detain and even to execute the victims who were suspected
14 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Sebagian besar mereka merupakan orang Timor. Sebagian kecil berasal dari luar pulau ini, tetapi sudah lama menetap di Timor. Pada umumnya mereka berusia muda waktu itu, sekitar 20-30an tahun. Ada di antara mereka yang merupakan anggota polisi, yang lain adalah anggota organisasi pemuda. Bagi para anggota polisi, keterlibatan mereka dalam pembantaian waktu itu adalah bagian dari tugas mereka. Sedangkan para pemuda direkrut oleh pihak kepolisian untuk turut bersama melakukan penangkapan, penahanan, dan pembunuhan (Kolimon, 2015:71).
75 communists. Some church buildings in West Timor were even used as places to detain and torture the victims. Some would see this as being in contrast to the situation in Flores where Catholic churches were used as places to hide victims.
Kolimon (2015) has done much to document how local people in West Timor remembered or conceptualised the massacres. She writes that even though the victims were then portrayed by the state as ‘orang jahat’ (evil people) and ‘berbahaya’
(dangerous), the local executioners did not think they were bad people at all. They
(the victims) were recalled as having been good people; they commited no crimes of which they were accused. Kolimon also explicitly states that not all victims were members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and even if they were, the party was then a legal party, so logically it should not have been a crime to be a member of the PKI. But Kolimon says that overall the local communities in West Timor, could not say a word in protest of the accusation and violence due to fear; people were afraid for their own lives. The executioners (algojo) had only two choices:
“Membunuh atau dibunuh” [to kill or to be killed] (Kolimon, 2015:74). Her accounts also show the effects of the fear-filled propaganda of the state in convincing local youths in West Timor to participate in the killings of suspected communists as the only way to protect the nation state from the perceived atheistic power of communism. Kolimon, citing her informants, writes, “The PKI people were atheists.
They did not believe in religion ... They wanted to carry out a coup against the government, they frightened people with threats so people would join the PKI”
(Kolimon, 2015:74).15 Aside from the ‘religious justification’ of the killings, there
15 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: “Orang PKI itu adalah orang-orang yang tidak ber-Tuhan. Mereka tidak percaya pada agama... Mereka itu mau coup pemerintah, mereka buat rakyat takut dengan ancam-ancam orang supaya masuk bergabung” (Kolimon, 2015:74).
76 was also ‘a moral justification’. Kolimon suggests that the prevailing attitude at the time was that the victims (the suspected communists) deserved to be killed because they ‘polluted’ the morality of the local communities in ways such as their alleged involvement in free sex, and the stealing of pigs, cows, chickens, fruits, vegetables, and even land (Kolimon, 2015: 75). They (the local suspected communists) who were mostly (if not all) males were regarded as ‘womanisers’ and thieves; they were immoral, and their immorality justified their killings.
With regard to the concept of ‘victimhood’ in the local context of 1965-66 in
West Timor, Kolimon also argues that not only the killed, but also the killers, were victims of the violence of 1965-66. As a crime against humanity it dehumanised both
– the killed and the killers (Kolimon 2015). In this sense, one could conclude that the mass violence of 1965-66 was an act of dehumanisation of Indonesians by the state, and the only way to reconcile with such a dehumanising past is to provide opportunities to all in the communities – the families of the killed ones and the killers both as victims of the violence of 1965-66 – to share their testimonies based on what they remember, their feelings and vision for the future as individuals and as community members, and as citizens of Indonesia. In and through this way the healing process can truly begin to take place. Kolimon states that the interviews that she conducted with the perpetrators in West Timor often turned out to be a meaningful process of healing for them (Kolimon 2015; 2014); they were given the opportunity to revisit the past in terms other than those of the New Order era’s fear- filled propaganda and the religious and moral justifications given by the state for the killings of 1965-66.
77 Local responses to the violence of 1965-66: West Timor
On the question of ‘silence’, Kolimon (2015) states that some people within the local
Church in West Timor regarded the massacres of alleged communists and the banning of communist teaching as God’s way to help the Church. This theological perception motivated the Church as an institution to choose silence rather than speaking out against the massacres. Kolimon suggests that the silence of the Church clearly indicates that the Church lost its voice – the Church was no longer the voice of the voiceless – against injustice and violence by the state. In the midst of the state terror and intimidation, according to Kolimon, the Church chose the safest option – silence – rather than being publicly vocal in defence of the defenceless in the communities. Moreover, as noted by Kolimon, the Church consciously or subconsciously had adopted and confirmed the ‘master narrative’ of the state concerning the tragedy of 1965-66 that the victims (those who were killed and to be killed) were atheists, and so their death was justifiable. Kolimon further notes that those within the Church who were sympathetic towards communism or who were suspected communists were isolated – some were killed, and some were simply marginalised in the Christian community. The suspects who survived were banned for the rest of their lives from positions of leadership within the Church – for example as penatua (synod) and pendeta (minister). Kolimon thus concludes that the Christian leadership in West Timor during Suharto’s New Order was a leadership that fully supported the ‘master narrative’ of the New Order concerning 1965-66. There are many more negative consequences for the suspects who remained alive post-1965-66 and for their family members, such as public confession of sins, not being allowed to receive communion, and their children not being allowed to be baptised years after
78 1965-66 (Kolimon, 2015: 92-93). This overall religious and political atmosphere is one that I recognise from my own upbringing in the region.
Concluding Notes
The first part of this chapter reviewed the different interpretations that have been given of who was responsible for the killings of the generals at the Crocodile Hole on
October 1, 1965, suggesting that these different narratives provide a context for the reading of From Madiun whose narrative insists that the PKI was entirely responsible. Next I examined scholarly attempts to understand the local level causes of the violence in areas of Indonesia other than the Catholic zones from which I originate. This was followed by a discussion of attempts to theorise violence in
Indonesia and in particular to discuss the culture of fear created by the New Order and its propaganda. This section of the chapter finished with a discussion of the emotional impact of the documentary films by Joshua Oppenheimer that show perpetrators and victims of the violence of 1965-66 in contemporary Indonesia.
The second part of the chapter focused on some of what has been written on the 1965-66 events and their causes and effects in Flores and West Timor. I focused on several questions: Who were the victims of the mass violence of 1965-66 in Flores and West Timor, and how many were there? Who were the perpetrators? How did the local communities, particularly the Church community, respond to the violence of
1965-66? The evidence suggests that the Church was involved in the killings, directly and indirectly, but it was ambivalent about its involvement in the killings, and gave some support to victims. The local Catholic Party was the strongest political force in the area prior to 1965, but it was facing competition from the PKI in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Catholic identity and the Catholic Party became much stronger after
79 1965-66. I also noted there has been some post-Suharto reflection and more open discussion of the killings of 1965-66. The Church’s limited engagement with the full scale of its responsibility for the events, however, suggests that there is remaining trauma in the broader local Catholic community. These factors contribute to my culturally conditioned response to the From Madiun text; I deal with the text and its production and my response to it as a reader in the next two chapters.
80
PART TWO: THE TEXT AND THE READER
81
Chapter 3 THE FRIGHTENING TEXT
Introductory Notes
For me, as a reader of a given culture (Lamaholot) and religion (Catholicism), From
Madiun is a frightening text. However, in this chapter, I suggest that the frightening quality of the text is not simply a matter of the reader –myself – projecting his fears onto the text. I suggest that at some level the text is part of what Heryanto (2006) has defined as the attempt of the New Order to induce fear in the Indonesian population through its propaganda. In other words, I argue that the text is intended to frighten; it reflects frightening (and frightened) times and transmits the fears associated with those times.
In this chapter I look closely at the From Madiun text to see how its frightening narrative is constructed. I examine key features of the text, including its title, its structure, its content, language, tone and its style of presentation. I argue that despite the apparent concentration on facts and events the From Madiun narrative has a frightening effect. I will also examine the context of the production of the text, what sources it purports to draw upon and also its authorship in terms of it being both a text that induces fear and the product of fear-filled context.
I argue that From Madiun is best read as a text that sought to frighten its readers and that projected the fears of its authors, rather than being, as it appear to be on the surface, a factual narrative about the Indonesian communists and the 1965-66 events. While my contention that From Madiun is a frightening text mainly involves the role of the reader as an interpreter of the text, I also suggest that text frightens
82 me because of something internal to the text itself that is related to the context of its production and to the mindset of its authors.
For anthropologists, questions concerning who reads, who speaks, who writes, when and where, with or to whom, and under what institutional and historical constraints, are important ethnographic issues (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Heintz
2008). Commenting on the textual presentation and authorial style and representation of reality, Clifford and Marcus (1986) assert that while the voice of the author is always manifested through the textual presentation and reading, there is no guaranteed connection between authorial style and the reality represented
(Clifford and Marcus, 1986:13). Heintz (2008) stresses the importance of ‘mind- reading’ as a cognitive process in the analysis of beliefs, intentions, desires and feelings of both the author of the text and the reader (Heintz, 2008:190). This ‘mind- reading’ of the beliefs, intentions, desires and feelings of the author of From Madiun is partly what I engage in this chapter, and how I analyse it as a frightening text.
(The reader’s role in making the text frightening is discussed in the next chapter).
The meaning of the From Madiun text is, of course, something relative and subjective, and dependent on the interpretation of the reader. Nevertheless, the subjectivity and relativity of its meaning does not necessarily negate the idea that the author(s) of the text intended it to have a specific meaning. There is something internal to the From Madiun text that contributes to my experiencing it as frightening. My contention is that the text is intended to frighten its readers: I attribute this intention to the author. This is what is contended by those scholars whose approach to texts is referred to as intentionalist. To intentionalists, the author
(or authors) of the text always has (or have) an intention to inject meaning into the
83 text, and the reader also interprets the author’s intended meaning when reading the text.
This line of argument contrasts with that of Gadamerian hermeneutics, which claims that the meaning of a text is not something that is internal to the text itself, but is externally and solely given by its reader(s). The reader, not the author, constructs the meaning of the text. According to Gadamerian hermeneutics, meaning is constantly searched for, constructed and reconstructed by the reader. This means that the meaning of a text is never fixed, but always changes, depending on who the reader (interpreter) is, and how and when he or she reads the text. There is no fixed meaning for a text; meaning varies from one reader to another. In Gadamerian hermeneutics, context is very important in determining the meaning of a text (Fay,
1996:136-141; Hirsch, 2000:65; Heryanto 1996; Rahardjo, 2007:54-59).
However, for many scholars, the meaning of the text does not lie solely either with the intentions of the author or with the interpretations of the reader, but is given by both the author and the reader (Ogden and Richards 1972). Indeed, I follow both intentionalism and Gadamerian hermeneutics in approaching From Madiun. In the light of Gadamerian hermeneutics, I see myself as a reader who actively constructs the meaning of the text on one hand, and on the other, in line with the intentionalist approach, I can also see the role of the author(s) in constructing the meaning of the text through the language, tone and style they deploy. While it is possible that the
From Madiun text would not be frightening to a different reader, who could treat the text simply as a secular text whose author(s) had no intention whatsoever of triggering and maintaining a sense of fear in the reader, I contend that the text is frightening for me not simply because of my own fears (particularly religious and
84 supernatural fears) but because it was produced as part of the overall project of New
Order propaganda to induce fear in Indonesian citizens, and that this was part of the background motivation of the author(s).
The production of the frightening text
The From Madiun text was produced in Jakarta in 1967 by the National Secretary of the Catholic Mission, which was at that time run by the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits were known during the the Cold War period as the ‘think tank’ of the Indonesian
Catholic Church on political and social matters, and they were also very much behind the Indonesian Catholic Party, Parkat (Partai Katolik), providing it with spiritual advice and guidance. The key figure working for the Jesuits in the National
Secretary of the Catholic Mission at that time was Father Josephus Gerardus Beek
SJ (1917-1983), popularly known in Indonesia as Pater Beek. Pater Beek played a key role in the creation of Suharto’s New Order regime (Mount 2012); and Pater
Beek will be discussed in greater depth later in this chapter. Pater Beek had many close followers amongst Indonesian lay Catholics including Harry Tjan Silalahi,
Jusuf Wanandi, Sofyan Wanandi, Anton Moedardo Moeliono, Soedjati Djiwandono, and Kadjat Hartojo. The close relationship of these lay Catholics with Pater Beek is often mentioned in public conversations in Indonesia, with these Catholics being described as the ‘kaki-tangan’ (literally, ‘the feet and hands’) of Pater Beek. David
Bourchier notes the shared interests in anti-communism and fear of political Islam that were held by Beek’s ‘anak buah’ followers and by their non-Catholic associates such as Ali Moertopo and Benny Murdani, who were part of the most influential network in the early New Order government (Bourchier, 2015:170-171).
85 Even though From Madiun does not contain an explicit statement of authorship, it reflects much of Pater Beek’s broader political agenda in the early years of the New Order, and there are good reasons for attributing it to him and to his group. Even if the text was not written solely by Pater Beek, it is almost unquestionable that it was written by people closely associated with him. It is explicitly stated in From Madiun that the text was produced with permission from the top leadership of the religious order of the Jesuits: the second page of From
Madiun text carries the Latin words “Cum permissu Superiorum” (From Madiun,
1967:4), which means ‘with permission from the superior’.
In addition to this explicit endorsement of the text by the Jesuits, I argue that there are five main reasons for my suggestion that Pater Beek was involved in the production of the text. First, some citations in Soedarmanta’s 2008 biographic account of Pater Beek are taken from the From Madiun text, and Soedarmanta states that those citations are the original writing of Pater Beek. The second indicator that
Pater Beek was the author of From Madiun is that the text was discussed during the month-long ‘khasebul’, Catholic youth retreats of which Pater Beek was the main director (Soedarmata, 2008:179-211). Third, from 1961 onwards Pater Beek worked in the Catholic Documentation bureau in Jakarta that produced the From Madiun text. The Documentation Bureau was Jesuit-initiated centre for information and communication concerning social and political processes in Indonesia; it produced a newsletter distributed to all Catholic activists involved in the ‘Pancasila Front’, which was created by Pater Beek in response to the establishment of the National
Front, of which the PKI was a member (Soedarmata, 2008:135-173). Fourth, I would argue that at that time, only Pater Beek, who had the detailed knowledge of, and
86 interest in, Cold War politics, had the confidence and courage to produce a text of this nature, a text that is rich in detail and full of anti-communist propaganda. Fifth,
Pater Beek was at that time the moderator of the PMKRI (The Union of Catholic
University Students of the Republic of Indonesia),16 and From Madiun was basically written for the purpose of alerting Catholic youth to the danger of the Indonesian
Communist Party and communism.
I would argue that the khasebul retreats for Indonesia’s Catholic elite are particularly important for understanding the context in which From Madiun was produced and for understanding the outlook of its authors. The khasebul were initiated by Pater Beek, and the first camp was held at the end of 1966, just after the killings in 1965-66 and just before the publication of From Madiun. In principle, the khasebul was a spiritual learning activity with a focus on prayer and meditation, as well as on teaching the participants to be sensitive to concrete situations in the communities where they would live and work. The social teachings of the Catholic
Church, including the implementation of the encyclical Rerum Novarum were also part of the discussion in the retreats. The khasebul was intended for character building including aspects such as self-awareness, courage, ascetism, and participation in community life. Pater Beek divided up the tasks with the twenty-five participating students who included Soedjati Djiwandono, Anton Moedardo
Moeliono, Harry Tjan Silalahi, Jusuf Wanandi, Kadjat Hartojo, Sofyan Wanandi. As a priest, Pater Beek was responsible for spiritual activities like prayers and
16 The PMKRI was first formed in Yogyakarta in 1947 with the blessing of Bishop Albertus Soegijapranata SJ. Pater Beek encouraged all Catholic students to participate in the PMKRI. In theory, the PMKRI should not be seen as a political organisation, but rather as a social organisation (ormas). Its main objective was to provide training and guidance for the Indonesian Catholic students in their search for community welfare, peace and social justice (Soedarmanta, 2008:114). However, it came to have quite a political character before and after the establishment of the New Order.
87 meditation, while Soedjati provided input on the political party system; Harry Tjan
Silalahi organised the political parties including the Catholic Party; and Jusuf
Wanandi communicated specifically with Golkar (Golongan Karya, the party of the functional groups),1 the party that was politically associated with Suharto’s New
Order government (Soedarmanta, 2008:181). This khasebul can be seen as a leadership training program preparing young people for leadership in the community
(Soedarmanta, 2008:181). Through the khasebul Pater Beek provided guidance and input as to how to be proactively involved in society, but above all, how to be an agent of social and political change. Soedarmanta (2008) argues that what Pater
Beek meant by ‘change’ was the elimination of communism in Indonesia; Pater
Beek wanted to ensure that Indonesia would neither fall into the leftist extreme
(communist) nor the rightist extreme (Islamist) (Soedarmanta, 2008:216).
Ideologically, khasebul was an indoctrination course, and was conducted like a military-style camp. The training was very physically and mentally challenging for the participants. The ordeal appeared to cause a significant emotional, physical and mental drain on each of the participants. It was in close connection with this fear- filled world that From Madiun was produced.
The form of a frightening text
The From Madiun text is one hundred and forty four pages long. It is written using the old Indonesian spelling system.17 The text is in a narrative style recounting political events between the period of Indonesian independence and the 1965 coup,
17 As noted earlier in the introduction, all direct citations from the From Madiun text have been changed to the current Indonesian spelling system. For example: the letters j as in the word jang are changed to y as in yang (that, which) in the new spelling system; dj as in sadja will be changed to j as in saja (only, just), et cetera.
88 combined with commentaries about the political events during that era. It consists of eight main chapters, excluding the foreword. The first two pages (pages 5-6) serve as a foreword, and explain the objectives of the production of the text. It states that the text was mainly intended to encourage people especially Catholics to learn from the past so that the mistakes of the past would not be repeated in the future: these
‘past mistakes’ are the political events of Madiun in 1948 and the Crocodile Hole in
1965. The creation of the new era under Suharto in 1966 is described in the text as a positive sign of hope for a more stable Indonesia ideologically, politically and economically.
In order to avoid a repetition of the Crocodile Hole tragedy in the future, the
PKI’s political, economic, social, cultural and ideological strategies must be avoided completely (From Madiun, 1967:6). For this reason, the text states that it aims to provide information to all Catholics about the strategies and tactics that the PKI had used to gain popularity and influence. From Madiun sets out to chronicle the attempts of the PKI to ‘communise’ Indonesia by first seizing state power. The text portrays this frightening communist ambition for power as being most explicitly demonstrated in the events of Madiun in 1948 and the Crocodile Hole in 1965. At the same time, as stated in the last paragraph of the foreword of the text, the text is also intended to convince Indonesian Catholics to remain loyal to the Pancasila as their only guiding principle, as stated in the Preamble of the 1945 Constitution. The first of the five principles of the Pancasila: Ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa, or belief in one God, recognises the importance of religion and God in the society, so the foreword presents an opposition between the frightening ambitions of the communists for power and the need for Indonesians to maintain their core belief in
89 One God. In discussing the need to strengthen the will and desire to implement the
1945 Constitution and the Pancasila, the text states,
Hopefully, the aspiration of this small book is achieved, namely to arouse a strong will to truly implement the 1945 Constitution that is based on the Pancasila. We cannot compromise on this merely for tactical advantage nor temporarily abandon the very principle and basis of our nation! All(!) The principles of the Pancasila are a guide for the life of our nation and state that cannot be questioned! (From Madiun, 1967:6).18
Having set out its objectives in the Foreword, the text then moves on to tell the story about the 1948 Madiun affair in the first chapter (pages 7-21), with a rather provocative title ending with a question mark “Dari Madiun Mulai Kemenangan?”
[“Did victory begin after Madiun?”]. The text shows that after the Madiun affair of
1948, the PKI began their efforts to regenerate and develop the party: the communists are shown as a frightening force whose ambitions were not stopped with their defeat at Madiun. The result of the party’s regeneration and development was evidenced in the 1955 and 1957 elections, at which the PKI became one of the major winning contenders. This is discussed in chapters two, three and four of the text (pages 22-60): a sense of mounting danger is recounted in these chapters, as the strength of the PKI is shown as building through the 1950s. Chapter five of the text
(pages 61-85) shows the PKI enjoying more power partly due to its close alliance with President Sukarno during the era of Guided Democracy (1959-65), and the overall effect of a force that is increasing in power and becoming more menacing to
Indonesia. Chapter six of the text examines the coup attempt by the PKI in 1965 and
18 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: Semoga cita-cita buku kecil ini tercapai, yaitu membangkitkan tekad untuk betul-betul melaksanakan UUD’45 yang dijiwai Pancasila. Kita tidak boleh tawar-menawar demi keuntungan taktis belaka atau untuk sementara meninggalkan prinsip serta dasar negara! Semua(!) Sila dalam Pancasila adalah pedoman kehidupan bangsa dan negara yang tidak boleh diragukan! (From Madiun, 1967:6).
90 the counter-coup by the non-communist forces in response to the PKI’s leadership coup. The title of this chapter is ended with a question mark: “Coup or Counter- coup?” (pages 86-114), adding to a sense of uncertainty and danger. Chapter seven provides a narrative account concerning the tragedy of the 1st October 1965 (pages
115-130), bringing the narrative to its frightening climax. The final chapter (chapter eight) explains the connection between the 1948 Madiun affair and the tragedy of the 1st October 1965 (pages 131-139). This final chapter suggests that what happened in 1965 was simply a repetition or reproduction of the 1948 Madiun affair.
The text thus ends by asking whether or not the communist threat is a cyclical one, destined to reappear in the future.
Some sense of the overall message of From Madiun can be gained by looking at the very beginning of the text and the very end. The opening paragraph says,
The 30th of September Movement – a big disaster … The revolutionary climate which was created and ignited by the PKI was already ripe, so it was inevitable that the PKI would take over the government (From Madiun, 1967:5).19
The recent events of the 30th of September are presented as a great disaster for Indonesia, the product of years of PKI plotting to create a revolutionary situation. Having begun with this foreword setting out the danger of the PKI, and after a lengthy story about political events which forms the body of the narrative, the text concludes with a paragraph to make a specific call to all
Christians to continue the effort to promote prosperity and social justice as
19 The quotation in original Indonesian is: “Gerakan 30 September – malapetaka hebat … Situasi revolusioner yang diciptakan serta dikobar- kobarkan PKI sudah sedemikian matang, hingga tidak mungkin tidak PKI pasti akan mengambil-alih pemerintahan” (From Madiun, 1967:5).
91 an intrinsic part of being Christian. Here the authors mix the narratives and ideologies of Indonesia’s New Order and the Second Vatican Council. To be
Christian is to respond to God’s call in action to make the world a better place to live, where there is justice and peace and prosperity:
It is our task to realize a just and prosperous society. Reluctance to carry out that task means that we refuse God’s own command! “Christians, who forget their worldly tasks, neglect their responsibility towards their fellowman and even God himself as well as endanger their eternal salvation. Christians should rejoice, because they can follow in the footsteps of Christ who also worked as a carpenter. By carrying out all their earthly activities, they integrate all the charity work, namely breadwinning, career, social and technical dimensions, into a vital whole with religious values. And under divine guidance all this is for the glory of God”. (Decree of the Vatican Council II, The Church in the modern world. No.43) (From Madiun, 1967:139).20
What is particularly notable here – but almost hidden in the text – is that at the very end of the text the idea that “Christians who forget their worldly tasks…endanger their eternal salvation” is presented. In other words, the fight against communism in Indonesia is framed by the danger that
Christians will face in the afterlife if they do not engage in the defence of the
Indonesian state and Pancasila.
The closing paragraph cited above actually comes after a paragraph that explains the roots of communism, namely that communism, according to
From Madiun, emerged in response to the existing structural poverty in
20 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Adalah tugas kita untuk merealisasikan suatu masyarakat yang adil dan makmur. Enggan melaksanakan tugas tersebut berarti menolak perintah Tuhan sendiri! “Umat Kristen yang melupakan tugas-tugas duniawinya, berarti melalaikan kewajiban terhadap sesama dan malahan Allah sendiri serta membahayakan keselamatan kekalnya. Orang Kristen hendaknya bergembira, sebab mereka dapat mengikuti jejak Kristus yang telah bekerja sebagai seorang tukang. Dengan melaksanakan seluruh kegiatan duniawi, maka mereka mengintegrasikan segala tindak ‘welas-asih’, usaha-usaha sandangpangan, karier, sosial dan tehnik ke dalam perpaduan yang vital dengan nilai-nilai keagamaan. Dan di bawah bimbingan ilahi semuanya itu diarahkan kepada kemuliaan Allah”. (Dekrit Konsili Vatikan II, Gereja dalam dunia modern. no. 43) (From Madiun, 1967:139).
92 Indonesian society. Communism continues to exist when there is poverty, so the only way to eliminate communism is by tackling the root causes of poverty. The same paragraph thus makes an appeal to all Indonesians to continue to combat communism by creating a healthy society, where there is justice, democracy and prosperity. This mission is framed by the frightening spectre of a communist takeover. But this is not a simple secular problem of the well-being of Indonesian citizens and the opportunity that poverty gives to communists. According to the text, God is the only point of reference in this call. It says,
Poverty is communism’s close friend. Let us build a healthy community; fair, where basic rights are guaranteed, work receives a proper reward; democratic, where the voice of the people is heard and considered; prosperous – God created our country with abundant resources, where no one lives in want, so long as they are willing to work diligently! (From Madiun, 1967:138).21
God has given Indonesia abundance; to let Indonesia become poor and to let in communism is to deny God’s will at two levels, both by squandering his gifts and by letting in anti-religious forces. Indonesian Catholics should be frightened of both prospects.
Overall, the From Madiun text presents the events that unfolded between the late 1940s and the mid 1960s in Indonesia as a sustained development of communist power. It makes an explicit historical connection between the Madiun affair of 1948 and the Crocodile Hole tragedy of 1965. The Crocodile Hole was merely another
Madiun, and similar incidents of the same nature will reoccur if people are
21 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: Kemiskinan adalah sahabat karib komunisme. Marilah kita bangun suatu masyarakat yang sehat; adil, di mana hak-hak asasi dilaksanakan, bekerja mendapat balas jasa yang layak; demokratis, di mana suara rakyat diperhatikan dan dipertimbangkan; makmur – Tuhan telah menciptakan tanah air kita dengan kekayaan yang berlimpah-limpah, di mana setiap orang hidup dengan layak, asal mau bekerja dengan giat! (From Madiun, 1967:138).
93 complacent. In the text, the Crocodile Hole is declared to be the second Madiun,
“Madiun ke-II”. One chapter in the text is in fact entitled, ‘Mengapa sampai terdjadi
Madiun ke-II?’ [Why did the second Madiun occur?] (From Madiun, 1967:131).
The fear of a third Madiun, “Madiun ke-III”, or the second Crocodile Hole incident, is also explicitly referred to in the text: “Kelalaian dan kesemberonoan kita berarti melicinkan jalan ke Lubang Buaya ke-II!” [Our neglect and recklessness would mean to smooth the road to the second Crocodile Hole] (From Madiun, 1967:137).
This succession from the first to the second to the possible third Madiun constitutes a sequence that seems calculated to frighten the reader. Second, the communists are the masterminds behind both Madiun in 1948 and the Crocodile Hole in 1965. The text states that D.N. Aidit, the chair of the PKI at the time, was the intellectual instigator of the G30S or the Crocodile Hole incident; while the 1948 Madiun affair was masterminded by the communist Muso, who was suspected to have had close networks with Russia. With regard to Madiun and the connection to what followed it the text states,
As a continuation of the efforts of Muso and Amir, …………………., D.N. Aidit, former Minister of Economy/Deputy head of the Provisional Peoples Representative Council wanted to take revenge as a result of the defeat of the PKI in 1948. He was the one who planned and mobilized the 30th September coup. However these efforts failed disastrously. And finally, like his Madiun colleagues, Aidit also died by a bullet, after being arrested in the village of Sambeng, to the west of Solo. The 18th September 1948 and the 30th September 1965, two fatal blows by the PKI to the lives of Indonesia! Will this September coup be repeated for the third time in the future? (From Madiun, 1967:9).22
22 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Demikian sebagai penerus usaha Muso dan Amir, ………………, D.N. Aidit, ex Menko/Wakil Ketua MPRS mau mengadakan pembalasan terhadap kekalahan PKI tahun 1948. Dialah yang merencanakan serta menggerakkan coup “Gerakan 30 September”. Namun usahanya inipun hancur berantakan. Dan akhirnya, seperti kawan-kawan Madiun, Aidit pun mati ditembus peluru, setelah ia tertangkap di desa Sambeng, sebelah barat Solo. 18 September 1948 dan 30 September 1965, dua tikaman parah dari PKI terhadap kehidupan bangsa Indonesia! Akan terulangkah “coup September” untuk ketiga kalinya di tahun-tahun mendatang? (From Madiun, 1967:9).
94
Much later on in the text, Adit and the PKI are presented as the masterminds of the
G30S on 1st October 1965. It states,
If we would like to dig into the deepest roots, there is a lot of evidence that the coup was planned and carried out by the PKI or at least by Aidit and his special bureau with the knowledge of the CC PKI (From Madiun, 1967:112).23
These communist leaders are portrayed as frightening conspirators who have continually plotted against the Indonesian nation.
The last five pages of the text (pages 140-144) contain a list of bibliographic references that were used in the production of the text. One would expect that, as a standard practice in non-fiction books, especially those of a broadly academic nature such as the From Madiun text, sources for the text are listed, demonstrating its factuality. Significantly, the bibliography states that in the production of the text, the author(s) referred to books by scholars from Cornell University in the United States,
Indonesian books, as well as the writings of PKI figures. It is notable that the
‘Cornell Paper’, (discussed in the previous chapter), which set out a view of the
1965-66 events which was critical of the New Order, was only published in 1971, while the From Madiun text was published in 1967. I thus assume that the basic contents of the ‘Cornell Paper’ were known to the authors at the time when From
Madiun was written and that the authors of the text knew about its basic contents; it is also possible, but less likely, that the writers of the From Madiun text had some
23 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: “Kalau kita mau menggali sampai akar-akarnya yang terdalam, masih banyak bukti bahwa coup direncanakan dan dilaksanakan oleh PKI atau sekurang-kurangnya oleh Aidit dan Biro Khususnya dengan sepengetahuan Politbiro CC PKI” (From Madiun, 1967:112).
95 connection with authors of the ‘Cornell Paper’.24 In my mind, this appearance of factuality adds to the authority of the text, and to its capacity to frighten.
Analysis: The structure of a frightening text
There are a number of important aspects internal to the text that ought to be analyzed in order to answer the questions of why and how the text is frightening.
They include the wording of title of the text, the timing of its publication, its presentation, its sources and its authorship.
A frightening title
I have already noted that the wording of the title of the text, ‘Dari Madiun ke
Lubang Buaya, Dari Lubang Buaya ke …?’ [From Madiun to the Crocodile Hole, from the Crocodile Hole to …?] is worthy of comment, as an example of how a sense of fear was inserted into the narrative of the text. The title on its own invokes a profound sense of fear. The ‘dari-ke’, or ‘from-to’ formula is essential to analysing how this fear narrative is constructed, because it suggests a direct connection between Madiun and Lubang Buaya, or the Crocodile Hole. As noted above, the title raises the prospect that tragedies similar to that of Madiun and the Crocodile Hole may reoccur in future. Two places, Madiun and the Crocodile Hole, are constructed as locations of fear. These places are to be feared, especially by the community of
24 It should be noted, Pater Beek and his ‘anak buah’ (followers) had most likely known of the authors of the Cornell Paper. The Cornell Paper was circulated confidentially for several years before it was published in 1971. According to the Cornell Paper, the coup was principally an internal army conflict – Untung against the senior Generals (Dewan Jenderal). According to Kate McGregor, the English language version of ‘Nugroho/Pusat Sejarah ABRI’ account of the coup was published to counter the Cornell Paper argument. Pater Beek clearly had access to the confidential version of the paper.
96 believers, and particularly Catholics, because they represent dangers and threats of communists and communism to the God-based society of Indonesia.
A third place is implied in the preposition ‘ke‘, or ‘to’, followed by three dots, and by a question mark – an unnamed place in the future. There is a real sense that while the location of this future place remains unknown, an overwhelming sense of dread is elicited by this unknown place and time in the person who has read through the description of the events that occurred at Madiun and the Crocodile Hole: this unnamed future place is deeply frightening.
A product of the frightening times: From Madiun and the fear of death
The date of the publication of From Madiun, 1967, is also crucial to understanding the nature of the text. The text was produced soon after the Crocodile Hole tragedy on 1st October 1965. Many Indonesians were at the time living in fear of death. They were worried about their own lives and about their close families; many feared that they would become targets in the state-sponsored killings. This fear shaped the atmosphere in which the text was produced. We can observe that the fear of death, encountered by many in Indonesia at the time, resonates with what Paul Tillich says about the fear of death in relation to the anxiety of meaninglessness. Tillich refers to this as the idea of ‘ultimate concern’, claiming that the ultimate concern of people is death. In dealing with this sense of anxiety of meaninglessness, or the fear of death,
Tillich stresses the importance of maintaining religious spirituality that gives people a sense of comfort and certainty about life after death (Tillich, 2002:46; Tillich,
1952:99). This broader existential and religious fear, I would suggest, informs the narrative of From Madiun. We have noted above that the text suggests that Catholics
97 will endanger their ‘eternal salvation’ by not being vigilant against the causes of communism, and we can argue that the text is informed by the eschatological teaching of the Church, which means that death is not the end of one’s life, but that one’s life will continue in the other world, the spiritual world. It was noted earlier in this thesis that according to Heidegger, death is the source of the sense of meaninglessness as there is nothing beyond death, and human beings are thrown into the world, and are thrown out of it when they die. Unlike Tillich, Heidegger does not offer religious comfort in dealing with this existential fear of death, and it may be that this existential fear of meaninglessness at some level affects the authors of the text, despite their religious commitments. I would suggest that the Catholics who lived during the time of the 1965-66 events and who were both the readers and the authors of From Madiun saw the deadly political events of the recent past as a reflection of the broader problem of death; they either saw the need for comfort and certainty after death (following Tillich) or they saw emptiness and meaninglessness
(following Heidegger). From the perspective of time, it could be suggested that the author(s) of the text narrated their fears for their own safety in the face of the explicit threat of communism in the past and the implicit future threat of Islam, and they sought to induce a sense of fear into the minds of their readers, and also to remind the readers of the frightening times in which they were living, to ensure that those frightening times would not be repeated.
The rhetoric of the frightening text
From Madiun is dependent on a number of rhetorical techniques to instil fear in its readers. One of these is the use of exclamation marks to stress the importance of its
98 statements – exclamation marks are used for imperatives to action or emphasised words of caution, both of which create an atmosphere of urgency and fear. For example, it states: “Maintain a theistic country but do not establish a religious state!
The true meaning of tolerance must be upheld!” (From Madiun, 1967:137).25
We should point out that despite the emphatic tone of the text it draws on a set of underlying uncertainties about the events of 1965-66 to create a sense of fear.
The lack of factual details about the coup, details confirmed beyond doubt, helps to create a wider anxiety about the events. Lack of clarity about the factual details concerning the events of 1965-66, in my view, probably makes the PKI even more frightening, and the text draws on this at a deep level. This builds on a strong sense that despite the success of the action against the PKI, communism is a danger that never goes away. It was an aspect of Nugroho’s thesis that the PKI had been allowed to rebuild after Madiun and this should not be allowed after 1965-66. From Madiun is part of a propaganda apparatus that both creates and reflects this fear.
Authority, mystery and fear: From Madiun’s use of sources
The use of imperatives and other rhetorical devices, and the fears those devices induce and refer to, are not the only way that From Madiun functions as a frightening text. In my view, the sources of reference that appear at the end of From
Madiun are also important as they can be seen not only as a statement of acknowledgment of what the text is based upon, but also a statement that holds persuasive power for the text’s targeted readers about the essential credibility of the
25 The quotation in original Indonesian is: “Pertahankanlah negara yang ber-Tuhan tetapi janganlah mendirikan Negara Agama! Toleransi dalam arti yang benar harus dijunjung tinggi!” (From Madiun, 1967:137).
99 text. This adds to the power of the text to frighten. In fact, From Madiun is now the only documented secondary source among the missing or out of circulation materials which detail Catholic responses to the political events from the late 1940s to the late 1960s. Through the invocation of sources, the text maintains its power to frighten because there is a mystique that many of the historical references the text cites have been censored or even destroyed. When the text was written, the invocation of sources by the authors gave the text the frightening power of factuality. In that sense, the Catholic system was both attempting to underline its power, and at the same time strengthening its credibility. In particular, mention of the use of sources produced by scholars from Cornell University gives the text more credibility and make it look more impressive, which in turn, can be seen as a way to convince the targeted readers of the high standard of production of the text, and that all the data and information presented and analyzed in the text were thoroughly researched. This makes it more frightening. The fact that the text refutes or ignores the finding of the so-called ‘Cornell Paper’ that clearly questioned the allegation that the PKI was the mastermind behind the events of 1st October 1965, gives it greater force, by making it seem more objective. The text includes a brief citation from the
Cornell Paper without further explanation, stating that: “The October 1st coup was essentially an internal army affair, stemming from a small clique in the Diponegoro
Division…” (From Madiun, 1967:113-114), a view that invokes the basic arguments of the Cornell Paper, it goes on to link the Cornell Paper to other leftist papers such as Harian Rakyat (People’s Daily) and Warta Bhakti, as well as the official statements of the Special Committee of the PKI (CC PKI) who attempted to deny that they had any involvement in the coup. By deploying this strategy, the text
100 seems to display the objectivity of acknowledging alternative viewpoints, but in fact dismisses them, giving the text a fearsome authority, in which criticism is invoked but shown to be without substance.
The practice of referring to documents that are said to exist but are inaccessible gives the text extra power and makes it more frightening, because the danger of the communists is shown to be real (because it can be found in documents) and the text gives the impression of its authors having access to a hidden and mysterious archive. On the one hand, the fact that PKI materials which are not publicly available are cited and referred to in the From Madiun text means that these references cannot be cross-checked for accuracy or for clarification. I have searched for these texts, and found no evidence that they in fact are ‘out of circulation’, or that they indeed exist. On the other hand, the unavailability of materials produced by
PKI figures adds to the secrecy and mystery surrounding the motives and the intellectual actors involved in the events of 1965-66, adding both to the frightening power of these actors as the text presents them, and to the power of the authors of the From Madiun text, who appear to the reader to be in possession of secret knowledge. The New Order state deliberately kept secret many details about the masterminds and motives behind the 1965-66 events, adding to the fear that was associated with these events and the fear of those who were supposedly plotting to take control of Indonesia. This mystery has lasted into the present.
There is perhaps a religious dimension to this. The idea of mystery is intrinsic to all religions, and is particularly important to the Catholic Church. The mystery of God’s will and human destiny, for example, is simply seen as a matter of religious faith, it cannot be fully comprehended by the power of one’s intelligence,
101 and is frightening. The Catholic Church is often understood by Catholics to be the possessor and representative of this mystery. Catholic readers in Indonesia would be likely to look at the From Madiun text and probably not question the accuracy of the data, information and analysis, partly because the text was written under the close supervision of the Jesuits as an institution, believed to be the source of knowledge and wisdom, knowledge and wisdom which is endowed with the power of mystery and thus frightening. In its presentation of the simultaneously revealed and concealed sources relating to the events of 1965-66, the From Madiun text communicates the frightening and mysterious power and knowledge of the Catholic writers who produced it.
The frightening and frightened author(s): Pater Beek?
I have already noted that the name of author(s) is not given in the From Madiun text.
I have also argued above that the text is probably the work of the Jesuit Pater Beek, a figure I find frightening, but someone who was perhaps also himself frightened, inhabiting a world in which senior Catholics felt insecure about their position within the Indonesian state. In this section I consider how recent debates about Beek’s career help to illuminate his status as a mysterious and frightening presence, and how this contributes to the status of From Madiun as a frightening text.
J.B. Soedarmanta (2008) and Frank Mount (2012) have produced excellent discussions of Pater Beek and his social-political roles during the time in Indonesia.
Many things about Pater Beek seem to be hidden; this in my view helps to make him frightening. This sense of Pater Beek’s connection with things that are hidden or covered is invoked in Soedarmanta’s introduction to his biography of Pater Beek
102 which uses a biblical quote, (Matthew 10:26) that, significantly, contains the word
‘fear’. This quote appears to be intended to highlight the courage of Pater Beek in dealing with fear and his encouragement to all Catholics to remain optimistic and courageous in the face of the unknown. The passage reads, “So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known” (NRSV Bible, 1989:10) (Soedarmanta, 2008: no page number).26
It should be noted, however, that Pater Beek’s exact role in the New Order is still unclear. Between the 1960s and the present, it has often been alleged that Pater
Beek was an agent for the CIA. This suspicion forced the chair of the PMKRI,
Cosmas Batubara – one of the many Catholic followers of Pater Beek in the 1960s and someone intensively trained by Pater Beek at the khasebul – to defend him publicly: In 1995 Batubara produced an article with the title ‘Pater Beek bukan
Agen CIA’ [Pater Beek is not a CIA agent]. In contrast to Batubara’s defence of
Pater Beek, George J. Aditjondro, in his manuscript titled, ‘Pater Beek SJ: Bapak
Anti PKI’ [Pater Beek SJ: Father of the Anti-PKI], is critical of Pater Beek’s involvement in politics, especially in his attempts to counter the Indonesian communist threat. Aditjondro refers to a meeting called at the office of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta, on 3rd September 1996, to discuss the accusation made during the general election by a senior Jakarta journalist
Panda Nababan that during the New Order many important political decisions were made at the CSIS. Nababan states that many of these decisions remain problematic today. Nababan’s allegation provoked discomfort and even anger amongst some of
26 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: “Janganlah kamu takut terhadap mereka, karena tidak ada sesuatu pun yang tertutup yang tidak akan dibuka dan tidak ada sesuatu pun yang tersembunyi yang tidak akan diketahui” (Soedarmanta, 2008: no page number).
103 the attendees at the 1996 CSIS meeting, many of whom happened to be the followers of Pater Beek. This discomfort suggests a lingering fear on the part of
Pater Beek’s associates about his exact role in the New Order. We can argue that this reflects the fear-filled atmosphere of Beek’s circle before and after 1965-66, in which the danger of communism and of other threats to Indonesian Catholics was constantly stressed, and that the From Madiun text emanates from this fear-filled elite Catholic world, and projects its fears.
Aditjondro points out that Silalahi fails to mention that many followers of
Pater Beek, including Silalahi himself, were actually already involved in a special political operation (Opsus, Operasi Khusus) led by Ali Murtopo before the formation of the CSIS in 1971. Aditjondro suggests that the CSIS should be seen as a continuation of the Opsus under Ali Murtopo. According to Aditjondro, in an interview on the 13th of October 1996, published in Bali in the daily Nusa Tenggara,
Silalahi ‘washed his hands’ of any involvement in the political behaviours of the
CSIS during the time of Ali Murtopo and the Catholic army general L.B. Murdani.
According to Aditjondro, Silalahi never mentioned the involvement of Pater Beek in the formation of the CSIS. Aditjondro notes Beek’s deep connection with the training of the Catholic youth and students in the month long khasebul retreats at
Realino in Yogyakarta and at Klender in Jakarta, which were discussed earlier in this chapter These activities, according to Aditjondro, were the object of suspicion by the chair of the Body of the Intelligence Centre, BPI (Badan Pusat Intelijen),
Subandrio. Pater Beek was then forced to leave Indonesia just before the Lubang
Buaya tragedy on 1st October 1965. Pater Beek returned to Indonesia after
Subandrio was arrested and the BPI was banned.
104 Citing stories from a number of Catholic priests in Indonesia, Aditjondro depicts Pater Beek as a figure linked to international forces, both overseas anti- communists and even to the imagined global network of the Jesuits, organised around the sinister figure of the ‘Black Pope’. (These narratives of Pater Beek reflect a much older set of images of a world-wide Jesuit conspiracy). Aditjondro states that
Pater Beek worked together with a priest and a Chinese observant, named Father
Ladania in Hong Kong, and that the anti-communist activities of Pater Beek and
Father Ladania were funded by the CIA. He also contends that some priests in
Indonesia suspected Pater Beek’s role as an agent for the ‘Black Pope’ in Indonesia.
The ‘Black Pope’, according to Aditjondro, was a Jesuit cardinal who chaired the political operation of the Catholic Church across the globe – a contention that strongly resembles the idea of an international Jesuit conspiracy, an idea that is widespread even amongst non-Jesuit Catholics. Aditjondro states that many people, including Catholic priests, do not know about the position and roles of the ‘Black
Pope’ whose operation remained secret. We can see these ideas as both reflecting and helping to create an image of the people who were behind the production of the
From Madiun text as frightening beings.
Aditjondro asserts that the operation of Pater Beek as the agent of the ‘Black
Pope’ became known to the Chancellor of the University of the United Nations in
Tokyo, Dr Sudjatmoko, when he visited the Vatican. Aditjondro claims that according to Dr Sudjatmoko, a cardinal at the Vatican seemed to know a great deal about the political situation in Indonesia, leading him to the conclusion that there must be an agent in Indonesia who regularly kept the Vatican informed of new political developments – by inference, Pater Beek. Moreover, after his return to
105 Indonesia when he retired as Chancellor of the University of the United Nations in
Japan, Dr Sudjatmoko was approached by the Catholic newspaper Kompas to assure him of financial support. This offer of financial support by Kompas was, to Dr
Sudjatmoko, a clear indication of an operative residing in Indonesia.
Whatever the truth of Pater Beek’s involvement with the CIA or with the
‘Black Pope’ the fact that his associates are suspected of such connections arguably demonstrates that for many Indonesians they are frightening figures. Furthermore, the anti-Communist programmes with which Beek was associated, primarily what was taught in the khasebul, were characterised by an atmosphere of fear, and this, I suggest, is what shaped From Madiun.
Concluding Notes
This chapter has examined the construction of the From Madiun text as a frightening text, referring to the wording of the title of the text, the timing of production of the text, the presentation of the text, the sources of reference, and its authorship that it is both frightening and frightened. This chapter has mounted an argument for seeing
From Madiun as a text, which frightens both through its content and style and because its authors were frightening (and frightened) individuals. In the next chapter, ‘The Frightened Reader’, I shall reflect on my upbringing and my personal experiences of fear in general, and of 1965 in particular, that have contributed to my reading experience and to my interpretation of the From Madiun text as a frightening text.
106 Chapter 4 THE FRIGHTENED READER
My life began with fear. I was born when the killings of communists in 1965-66 took place. My father was forced to become an executioner of alleged local communists on the island of Lembata where I was born and grew up. I still feel my father’s sense of fear and guilt as a result of his unwilling involvement in the execution of communists. These emotions of fear and guilt have a great impact on me emotionally in the present. Now I feel like I am a fearful person, something which is reflected in my immediate emotional reaction to the From Madiun text, the text that narrates the bloody cruelty of the past. Reading the text I am reminded of my father’s forced involvement in the executions, his fear and his guilt.
Introductory Notes
In chapter 3, The Frightening Text, I explained the production of the From Madiun text, particularly analysing how the text is able to frighten me as a reader. I examined the wording of the text, the timing of its production, its presentation, its sources of reference, and its authorship. In this chapter, The Frightened Reader, I shall reflect on personal experiences that have contributed to my experience of reading of the From
Madiun text as a text that causes fear. In other words, this chapter is about how I was constructed culturally, religiously and politically to be a frightened reader.
In this chapter, I first outline some questions relating to what kinds of personal and cultural experiences might have contributed to my fears. I then describe my life, including the community in which I grew up and the educational and cultural experiences which I had in both Indonesia and Australia that have brought me to the point of writing this thesis. Next, I outline some features of the Lamaholot world that
I think contribute to fears which people of that cultural background experience. After that I detail some of the fears that I believe I derive from my upbringing and my training in the Catholic Church. Some of these fears are overtly connected with the events of 1965-66 and some of them are more indirectly linked to these events. I
107 finish the chapter with some concluding remarks and outline how this chapter will connect with those that follow it.
Questions
This chapter involves several questions: How does my personal story make me into a frightened reader of the From Madiun text? What connection is there between the environment in which I was brought up and the fears that I experience when reading the text? Are there broader features of my experience as a Lamaholot Catholic person that affect my fears? How does my personal story connect with the deep fears that I feel when thinking about 1965 and the murdered communists, people who I never met? How will the outlining of my personal story and my fear experience contribute to the analysis of the three forms of fear – secular, religious and supernatural – that are the core issues that this thesis analyses?
The reader’s autobiography and experiences of fear
The reader’s autobiography27
I was born and raised on the small island of Lembata in the Eastern Indonesian province of Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT). I grew up in a village on the island of
Lembata. I went to a primary school in the village. At the age of twelve, I left my village for my junior high school studies in the coastal town of Lewoleba, also on the island of Lembata.
Lembata has a land area of 1,339 square kilometres, and in 2010 had a population of 121,012. Some modern observers divide the Lembata population into
27 For the longer version of my autobiography, see Wejak Justin L., “Life is a Journey”, in Tuti Gunawan and Iip Yahya (editors), Footsteps of Indonesians in Victoria, Melbourne: IKAWIRIA, 2016.
108 two main ethnic groups, the indigenous (suku asli) and the new comers (suku pendatang) (Making 2013). The indigenous group to which I belong refers to itself as
Lamaholot. ‘Lamaholot’ refers to the culture and language of people who inhabit the islands of Adonara, Lembata, Solor, Alor, and the eastern part of the island of Flores.
28 (A map of the region appears at the end of this chapter). My native language – the so-called Bahasa Lamaholot – is spoken in Adonara, Solor, Lembata, and eastern
Flores, but with some variety in intonation, words and meanings in the forms of the
Lamaholot language spoken in these places. (Nagi Malay, or Melayu Nagi, which is the local dialect of Malay, is also widely spoken in the region).
In traditional terms, the Lamaholot speaking-region is defined by four volcanoes – Ile Ape and Laba Lekan in Lembata ('Ile' means mountain, 'Ape' means fire; 'Laba' means an axe, 'Lekan' means to chop); Ile Boleng in Adonara ('Boleng' means round), and Ile Mandiri in east Flores, situated above the main town of
Larantuka ('Mandiri' means autonomous, self-sufficient). The oral traditions of
Adonara hold that the Lamaholot ancestors originate from these volcanic mountains, while other origin myths include the belief that the ancestors of the Lamaholot simply emerged from a hole in the ground or that the ancestors sailed to the area from parts unknown.
Both my parents were farmers, and I have five siblings. Two of my siblings died before I was born, and one other sibling died in 2002. My mother also passed away in 2006. In fact, I spent most of my childhood with my paternal grandmother; she raised me as both my parents spent most of the week days on the farm. Growing
28 Some of the major scholarly works on the ethnography of Eastern Indonesia, particularly of the Lamaholot community, include Barnes (1968, 1972, 1974, 1980a, 1980b, 1982, 1996, 2003); Fox (1980a, 1980b, 1988); Graham (1985, 1991, 1996, 1999); Lewis (1988, 1995, 1996); Lutz (1986); Vatter (1932); Keraf (1978); Fernandez (1977).
109 up in an agrarian community, we relied on the land, the climate and hard work for survival. There was no electricity, running water or telecommunication, nor were there any motor vehicles or proper roads to other villages or to the town. It was a generally cashless economy, with many farmers making a weekly trek to town to barter for goods that could not be grown in the village. This meant that we grew up with a constant fear for survival.
Most Lamaholot people are poor economically. Their poverty is due to combined factors including the geographical remoteness of their region, lack of infrastructure such as roads and bridges, lack of electricity and clean water, unemployment, and expensive adat and religious ceremonies. While some Lamaholot people are employed in teaching, in the government bureaucracy, or are engaged in small-scale commerce, most Lamaholot people gain their livelihood from dry-field cultivation (involving corn, tapioca, sweet potato, candle nut, coconut, cocoa, cashew nuts, vegetables, fruit, rice, as well as coffee and tobacco). The province of Nusa
Tenggara Timur, of which the Lamaholot region is a part, is known as one of the poorest provinces in Indonesia. (According to the Indonesian Central Bureau of
Statistics (BPS), in 2015 there were 1,159,000 people in the province of Nusa
Tenggara Timur who were poor).
The problems associated with poverty are both caused and intensified by ecological and geological instability of the zone in which Lamaholot people live.
There is one active volcano, Ile Boleng on Adonara, and this mountain and the geological structure of which it is a part is a source of potential danger to the region.
Ile Boleng last erupted in December 1982, but it remains active and could (re)erupt anytime. The region is also subject to earthquakes and landslides, which often cause
110 major damage. A landslide in February 1979 from the mountain of Ile Mandiri in eastern Flores, for example, caused the loss of many lives and destroyed much of the town of Larantuka. Later that year, in July 1979, in Lembata, the combined effects of volcanic activity at sea, sinking of land and tidal waves, claimed several hundred lives in three villages on the island (Barnes 1982). Severe earthquakes in 1982 and
1983 caused further damage and loss of life in eastern Flores. An earthquake that hit the island of Solor in 1983 toppled the remains of the sixteenth century Portuguese fort at Lohayong in Solor. Severe earthquakes in 1992 again caused the loss of many lives, and destroyed many houses in the region. Ever since, local people have been struggling to rebuild and regain confidence in life in the face of endless natural disasters.
It is a sign of the economic difficulties in the region more broadly that when I left my village to study at junior high school in Lewoleba at the age of 12, my dad went to work as a labourer in Malaysia in order to pay for school fees. He spent about fifteen years working in Malaysia. In total, I spent only the first twelve years of my life with my family in the village. I then went to Flores for senior high school in the
Seminary of San Dominggo, Hokeng. I spent four years at the seminary in Hokeng before entering noviciate with the Society of the Divine Word Missionaries (SVD), a
German-based religious order. After a year in the noviciate I began my study in philosopy at the Catholic Institute of Philosophy in Ledalero, Maumere, Flores as part of the process of becoming a Catholic priest. All together, I spent ten years in the seminary in Flores.
After completing my S1, equivalent to a Bachelor Degree, in philosophy at the Catholic Institute of Philosophy in Ledalero, Maumere, Flores, I came to
111 Australia in February 1990. Two fellow students from the Institute came together with me to Australia, one from the island of Palue, and the other from Kefamenanu in
West Timor, as part of the OTP (Overseas Training Program). Under the OTP, we were seminarians studying for the priesthood in the Catholic Church, and spent our first eight months in Australia learning English before resuming theology study at the
Yarra Theological Union campus of the Melbourne College of Divinity (MCD), now the University of Divinity. I completed my Bachelor of Theology in 1994, then a
Graduate Diploma in religious education in 1995.
Unlike my two fellow seminarians, I decided to leave the seminary, meaning I would no longer continue to prepare myself for priestly ordination. As I reflect on that now, it was not an easy decision, yet I quickly came to be at peace with it. At that time, I had spent approximately fifteen years in the seminary starting from high school to tertiary education both in Indonesia and Australia. I felt as though I might need the next fifteen years to undo the religious lifestyle to which I had been accustomed. After switching from a religious journey to a more secular one, I began to study anthropology at the University of Melbourne. I completed my Master of Arts in anthropology. My thesis focused on the idea of status and power in the context of marriage rituals in Lembata. I then undertook further study in education at Monash
University.
My experiences over the last twenty-five or so years in Australia have been very positive. They have significantly contributed to my growth and development both as a person and as a professional in the field of education. Over those years, I have encountered many people from different paths of life and different cultures.
These encounters have made me more aware of what and who I am in terms of my
112 nationality as an Indonesian, of my ethnicity as a Lamaholot person, and of my universal humanity. I have met many people who are atheists, or who are theists but not religious. Sometimes I found those who are atheistic and less religious to be much more humane than their religious and theistic counterparts. These experiences made me realize that moral values such as generosity, forgiveness, care and peace are universally human values, rather than exclusively belonging to religion. My sense of religiousness has changed; I have come to value the importance of universal humanity much more than ever before. For me now, to be good is really to be humane, and to be religious is to be humane. Secular Australia has taught me something deeply spiritual that essentially centers around our humanity.
Although I have resided in Australia since 1990, that is over twenty-five years now, I have had several home visits. My study experiences in the seminary mean that
I understand the culture of fear within the Catholic Church. For this reason, the choice of autoethnography as a method of this study of fear is not accidental or arbitrary but a conscious choice as it enables me to reflect on the experiences of fear I share with other Eastern Indonesian Catholics.
Creating the frightened reader: Lamaholot cultural contexts
Religiously I am Catholic, and politically I am an Indonesian who grew up during the time of President Suharto’s New Order regime (1966-98). Culturally, I am a
Lamaholot person of the eastern Indonesian island of Lembata who also shares strong local systems of beliefs and practices with other Lamaholot people. As a Lamaholot person I am part of a cultural group that has both Christian and Muslim members. In religious terms, most Lembata people are Catholic. Yogi Making (2013) states that
113 most people residing in the interior of the island, locally known as ‘ata kiwan’, embrace Catholicism, while their coastal counterparts, ‘ata watan’, mainly embrace
Islam. (The same pattern of Muslims tending to live in coastal areas, Christians occupying the interior areas is found in other Lamaholot regions such as Adonara.)
Citing data from the Department of Religion, Making asserts that in 2012, from a total population of 124,736, there are 87,271 Catholics, 35,469 Muslims, 1,920
Protestants, 73 Hindus, and 3 Buddhists in Lembata (Flores Bangkit, 3 October
2013).
Overall, I would observe that despite their religious and ethnic differences, the people of Lembata generally live side by side harmoniously. They work together helping one another, for example in building churches and mosques, and in co- creating a peaceful atmosphere for religious celebrations such as Christmas, Easter,
Ramadhan and Idul Fit’ri. However, latent fear of Islam, as this thesis will observe, is an important and often unspoken current in Catholic Lamaholot society.
For Lamaholot people, there is also a level of unease and even fear associated with the blending of Catholic commitments with the observance of traditional
Lamaholot spiritual practices. Combining going to church on Sundays for worship with placing offerings in rumah-rumah adat, or traditional houses, for example, was previously condemned by the church hierarchy, especially in the pre-Vatican II era, as a form of dualism and even paganism. This dualism, we might argue, helps to shape the local experience of fear; neglect of ancestors and neglect of Catholic duties are equally troubling for local people.
There are also other fears that afflict the community that are connected with the precarious physical environment in which Lamaholot people live. Overall, the
114 Lamaholot region is ecologically rather fragile, and economically poor (as I have noted). It has been hit by a number of natural disasters over the years. With unpredictability stemming from climate change, it has been difficult for the locals to rely on the land for livelihood. The population continues to grow rapidly, and there are not many employment opportunities with reasonable income. These factors have arguably all contributed to the local fear of the present. The thought of natural disasters occurring at any time, and the struggle to sustain the local economy in the face of rapid demographic growth is a real challenge that is ‘objectively’ frightening.
In response to these threats, both the local religious elite and their congregations, especially those of the Catholic Church and Islam, have been working together to manage this collective sense of ecological fragility and economic poverty. Inter- religious participation in local social movements to protect the communities from manipulation and exploitation by the local government in Lembata, for instance, is an example of inter-faith collaboration and dialogue at the grass-roots level. Even so, I would reiterate that I feel that latent fear of Islam is an important, albeit often unspoken, feature of Catholic Lamaholot culture.
Creating the frightened reader: Family, childhood and educational contexts
In the introduction, I mentioned some of the things that I feel have shaped my personal fears and which affected me when growing up and which contribute to the fears I experience as a reader of From Madiun. In the later chapters of this thesis, especially in the chapters on religious and supernatural fear, I will discuss these fears in more depth, but here I will outline some of them in brief.
115 Some of my personal fears were shaped by things that happened before I was born, things I have either been told about or which I have sensed in those around me.
Most significant is my father’s unwilling participation in the slaughter of the suspected local communists in the late 1960s. Like many others at the time, he was forced to take part to prove that he was not a communist, and to avoid being murdered as a consequence. Hearing his story for the first time I felt scared, and even today I still feel the fear of my father’s fear every time I recall the story. As I have already suggested and will explain in greater depth later on, the From Madiun text makes me remember those fears, together with the broader fear of communists and communist ghosts which was instilled in me as a child in the village.
A very strong fear of communists was planted in me and all young people throughout my childhood, adolescence and during my education in Indonesia. As children, we were afraid that communists, who were locally identified as ‘marangele’ or headhunters, could kidnap us, behead us and use our heads in the foundations of bridges and large buildings such as churches. As ‘marangele’ or head-hunters, the communists were a threat to the community. (This will be discussed further in later chapters). In addition to being afraid of the idea of communist ghosts and marangele, children in my village were also influenced to be afraid of being labeled as communists from a very young age. For example, within the family, if a child was naughty or rebellious, they were asked by their parents if they were communists because only communist children were then considered naughty. It is interesting to see the constitution of a local sense of morality and ethics. An example of how frightened children were of being called communists was that to convince us to have painful injections, we were told that it was a mark to prove that we were not
116 communist. To the community, the concept of a communist represented a cursed category in which all things evil dwelled.
These childhood fears of communism are mixed in my mind with a profound sense of the cycle of revenge and fear associated with my image of the events of 1965 and what created them. When thinking about those events, I see a whole network of stories about fear, aggression and violence being used as a means to gain political power. This chain of aggression and violence terrifies me, as there would, I believe, be no peace should violence be avenged with violence. My fear of this kind of cycle of violence has much to do with the forced involvement of my father in 1965-66 in the slaughter of those accused of being communists.
In my mind, the political events of Madiun in 1948 and the Crocodile Hole in
1965 are frightening because Indonesians were then divided into two categories – communists (atheists) and non-communists (theists) – making the wrong choice carried a fatal consequence, especially after the Crocodile Hole tragedy in 1965. I am frightened by the thought that the vast majority of the victims in these massacres, including those alleged to be communists, were ordinary Indonesians; I see them as being very probably naïve and innocent. Naivety worries me as those who are naïve usually became a soft target for propaganda and brainwashing by those in power. The powerless ordinary Indonesians became victims partly because of their lack of knowledge of the political systems and ideologies of the time. Thinking about those people fills me with fear.
An equally powerful source of my fears, fears that affect me when I read
From Madiun, is the fact that I spent fifteen years in the Catholic seminary, starting from my secondary schooling up until tertiary education, spending the first ten years
117 in Flores, Indonesia, and the last five years in Melbourne. During this time of training to priesthood in the Catholic Church I took almost everything I was told as literal truth. I was trained to question nothing about the Church’s teaching on moral issues, for example, because questioning was then regarded as indicative of a lack of faith in
God, and a lack of religious vocation. For example, the Catholic Church continues to teach that having sex outside marriage and sex for no reproductive purpose is a sin. I used to believe in all of these aspects of Church teaching without questioning. I thought the celibate life-style was the best and purest one to have as it would take me straight to ‘heaven’ when I died. I was born to die one day, and I must prepare for it when the time comes. Fears about my salvation were a very important part of my experience during my training for the priesthood.
Outwardly it appeared that I was uncritically following Catholic teaching, but deep down I was and continued to question many things including the authoritarian power structure within the Catholic Church. Finally, I decided to leave the celibate- religious lifestyle in the Catholic Church. I felt that I could no longer be happy with the lifestyle imposed on me, as well as with the authoritarian nature of leadership within the Church. Authoritarianism and dogmatism truly scared me because I felt that my sense of freedom and creativity were taken away from me. The From Madiun text is frightening precisely and partly because of its dogmatic and authoritarian nature. It reminds me of the experiences that I had in the priesthood that caused me to leave that system.
118 Concluding Notes
In this chapter, I have outlined aspects of my personal history and features of the world in which I grew up that I believe have made me a ‘frightened reader’. The
Lamaholot cultural zone in which I was born is poor and there are uncertainties in the physical and cultural worlds that Lamaholot people live in that create fear. I was also exposed to fears associated with the social environment of New Order Indonesia and with the experience of training for the Catholic priesthood. Specifically, I was brought up with a strong idea of communists as a source of danger and threat. In part because of my own father’s frightening experience as an unwilling participant in the killing of the alleged communists in 1965-66 and in part because of my own sense of those frightening times I am frightened by the idea of the 1965-66 events. I also have a strong sense of fear associated with the power of the Catholic Church as an institution, which reflects my decision to leave the priesthood when I moved to
Australia.
In the next part of the thesis, namely Part Three, Forms of Fear, I will examine the three dimensions of fear – secular, religious and supernatural – that I believe affect my reading of the From Madiun text. The discussion will highlight the idea of fear as an ongoing process, and therefore it is at one level always about the present. I seek to analyse both the distinctiveness of and the commonalities between the three modalities of fear. I will further provide in-detail analysis about the dialectic between myself as the frigthened reader and the frightening text, particularly focusing on how the From Madiun text triggers and maintains the deepest intrinsic fear within myself, namely the supernatural fear of ghosts.
119 Map of the Lamaholot region29
29 The map of the Lamaholot region is taken from: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Map+Lembata+Adonara&client=firefox- a&rls=org.mozilla:en- date accessed October 9th, 2016.
120
PART THREE: FORMS OF FEAR
121 Chapter 5 SECULAR FEAR OF COMMUNISTS (The Explicit in the From Madiun text)
When I read the From Madiun text I feel afraid of the secular-communist past. The graphic description of the cruelties in 1965-66 in the text truly fill me with fear. Reading through the From Madiun text causes me to imagine the past, a past that I did not experience directly, a past that was filled with fear of cruelty and death. The text also reminds me of the story of my father and others who were forced to execute the alleged communists in Lembata. I imagine what it was like to be in the position of the executioner and the executed. I feel the fear of both parties. I feel their sense of powerlessness in the midst of the crisis. To execute or to be executed – without doubt it was a question of life and death for them.
Introductory Notes
This chapter reflects on the secular fear of communists, the least of the fears that I experience when reading the From Madiun text. At one level, I experience this fear less intensely, because it is concerned with the secular-communist past that unfolded in the years before I was born. Because I have had almost no direct contact with the
Indonesian communists, this fear is more remote from my experience than religious or supernatural fear. Fear of communists should logically have been eliminated when the communists were killed and the party was banned in the 1960s, but this fear has not disappeared at all. When I read From Madiun, fear of the secular-communist past is present in my emotions and in my imagination. This fear can be understood both as fear of the imagined and as fear of what is explicitly narrated in the text – the details of the history of the communists as a secular movement seeking political power and seeking to secularise Indonesia. From Madiun implies that the communists could come back anytime to threaten anyone who opposes their ideological objectives. The text suggests that the secular danger of communism is ongoing, and might recur in the future if people are not vigilant. In other words, by taking the reader back into a
122 frightening secular past the text maintains fear in the present and even projects this fear into the future.
The most explicit, but the least powerful fear
In the main body of this chapter, I identify and discuss portions of the From Madiun text that produce a sense of secular fear in me as a reader. In line with my autoethnographic methodology, my reading of the text is selective. I do not undertake a systematic textual analysis, but instead pick out particular parts of the text that have a strong effect on me. In some cases it is simply an individual word that incites my fears; the associations that the word has for me rather than what is directly said in the text are what make me feel afraid. These are not necessarily words or passages, which would stand out for another reader (especially a ‘secular’ one). Some features of the text that I discuss, such as the representation of communists as atheists or as propagandists or as rebels and troublemakers, would no doubt be visible to other readers of the text. In the case of other words that have a strong effect on me, such as
‘merah’ (red), ‘kiri’ (left), and ‘setan’ (demons), it is the way that these words resonate with experiences of danger and fear that are connected with my local cultural context that makes them stand out for me, even though this means sometimes focusing on the words themselves, rather than on exactly how they are used in From
Madiun.
I shall begin with a brief explanation of secular fear as the form of fear that is related to what is explicitly present in the From Madiun text, followed by a definition of secular fear. I then outline the chapter’s main propostions and questions, and then discuss my own personal experiences of secular fear. The chapter then moves to
123 outline the division between secular beings (communists), secular time (past), and secular rivalry (organisation).
Definition
As explained earlier in the introduction of the thesis, I define secular fear as a form of fear that relates to the secular world, and to secular history. It involves fear of dangers to one’s mortal body and mind and also fear of secularism as an ideology. For me, this specifically involves the fear that I experience when reading about the pre-1965 communist past – a fear, which the From Madiun text triggers and maintains in the reader (myself) in the present – even though the text is primarily about the past. At one level, as a reader I am brought back to (or brought into) a past that I did not experience directly, a past that was filled with physical violence and dangers – dangers to the mortal body and mind. This fear also involves imagining what it would be like if I myself were in the positions of both the victims and the perpetrators of the
1965-66 violence. There is also fear of what would have happened if the Indonesian communists had created a secular-communist state in Indonesia, a fear that the New
Order state (1966-98) sought to sow in the minds of Indonesians, and it was a fear that was a key part of my own experience of being an Indonesian Catholic growing up in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Propositions and questions
This chapter advances three propositions. The first one is that the secular fear of communists can be seen as the fear of the past, albeit a past which the text keeps alive in the present. The communists are seen as representing the nemesis of secularisation
124 and the danger to the Indonesian nation-state and to the Catholic Church that this secularisation presents. On the surface, the idea of the secular fear of communists being fear of the past seems to contradict the Heideggerian theory of fear discussed in chapter two. According to this theory, fear is always about the present. I suggest that
From Madiun takes the reader from the present back into a frightening secular past, and also brings that frightening secular past into the present. This projection of the reader from the present back into the past and the bringing of the past into the reader’s present is, in my case, also affected by my own cultural and local context. As later sections of this thesis will emphasise, in the Lamaholot concept of time there is no clear distinction between past, present and future. Thus when a Lamaholot reader such as myself reads about a frightening secular past they do not experience that past in quite the same way as a secular reader probably would.
The second key point is that this secular fear of communists is the most concrete and overt form of fear that the Catholic Church attempted to conjure up in its anti-communist propaganda. The capacity of the From Madiun text to create and trigger my own secular fears is a product of its success as a work of propaganda.
Because I had no direct contact with the communists my fear of them does not arise from any personal memory. Rather the secular fear I experience when reading the text results from a mixture of imagining and the triggering of my other fears (particularly the supernatural fears) by the text’s depiction of the events in the secular past. There is a further concrete aspect to the secular fear of the communist past in the present and future in the form of fear or possible revenge. Those who were involved in the killing of communists during 1965-66 still fear that they could be physically attacked
125 by the family members of those killed; there is danger to their mortal bodies and minds.
The third important point is that the secular fear of communists is mainly related to the perception of communist ideology as atheistic and secularising: communism is presented in From Madiun as a form of thought which acknowledges no reality other than the secular reality of this world. According to this ideology, one should not be afraid of God because God simply does not exist. As a result, one should not be afraid of not having a religion. The idea that one could have ‘no fear of
God’ was a deeply frightening one for religious Indonesians such as Catholics and
Muslims.
Secular fear and the reader’s personal experience
I have noted above that I had no direct contact whatsoever with the communists. I only ever heard oral stories about them, but none of the stories actually described the communists as violent and frightening. In fact, my first sense of fear of communists originated from the story of my own father and some of his friends who were forced by the Army to act as ‘algojo’ or executioners in Lembata in the late 1960s.30 I also sensed the fear of a man in the village of my father’s age who was chased by the
Army from Jakarta in the late 1960s due to his alleged association with the
30 For further reading, refer to two recent articles about 1965 from Maumere, Flores. These articles, published in a special coverage by Tempo, edition 1-7 October 2012, tell stories of the involvement of locals in the slaughter of alleged communists. The first article titled, ‘Komando Operasi, Tuhan Allah di Maumere’ [Operation Command, God in Maumere], pages 84-85.. The second article titled, ‘Keluarga Pun Harus Dibunuh’, translated as ‘family also had to be killed’, page 86. This article tells a story of a man, a local prisoner, who acted as an executioner in the region of Sikka, Flores, due to the pressure from the army.
126 Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Ever since, this man has been living in paranoid fear about his own past, and almost everyone in the village knows about it.
The fear experienced by my father and this man relates to their own memories of the past as a series of secular events; they are people who had experienced this past directly. These memories are frightening for them personally, and they have to live with them; but these personal memories have become part of a social memory that continues to have effects on members of the local community including myself. The experience of watching the three documentary films about 1965 and 1966 in 1985, and again in 2012 and 2014 that I mentioned in the introduction to this thesis, brought to my mind a sense of my father’s fear and of the fear of the old man in the village, which I recalled from childhood. Their memory of the violent secular past seems to be a frightening present for them, and I sensed this.
My relationship to the secular fears presented in From Madiun is not simply about these community memories of the violence and the traumatic effect it had on those caught up in it. They also relate to fear deriving from my own secular experiences, in particular experiences of institutional power that related in one way or another to the anti-communist ideology and practices that operated throughout
Indonesian society in the New Order era (1966-98). For example, when little I was often told that using the left hand for writing or for giving and receiving was bad because the word ‘left’, or ‘kiri’, was then identified with communists. Left-handed people were then regarded as communists. I witnessed some of my school friends in the village being forced by the teachers to use their right hand for writing. Often they became the target of ridicule and physical punishment by teachers during the process of changing to the right hand and practising writing with it. Similarly, we were told
127 that boys who had long hair were bad because only the communists had long hair. As a result, everyone was then expected to have short hair. Students who failed to comply with the expectation were physically punished and their hair was messily cut as a form of punishment. Even today, I am sometimes labelled a ‘communist’ by a close friend of mine in the village simply because I often have long hair. When I was growing up there was strong social control on, and expectations about, how one should think, how one should behave and what one should say. If one failed in fulfilling all these expectations and rules, one was simply labelled as ‘pembangkang’, or a rebel, and therefore a ‘communist’, because the communists were the prime example of rebels, just like in the From Madiun text studied.
My experiences of fear of communists during my childhood and adolescence also had something to do with the problem of resisting the temptations of the secular world. During my years at school in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the temptation to keep my hair long was difficult to resist. Some teenagers, who gave in to this temptation, were verbally labelled ‘dasar komunis’, literally ‘typical communist’, and the usual ritual of hair-cutting was performed by a teacher as a double punishment. Social control was so strong then that in response, teenagers were often tempted to rebel against it. Personally, I valued freedom and creativity from a young age, and the temptation to become a free-spirited person was real. At that time, the idea of the ‘free-spirited’ person was associated by people in society with the
‘communists’ – a simplistic perception at the time was that only communists liked to be free to do anything.
Having discussed some key aspects of the personal dimensions of my fear of communists, I now turn to the From Madiun text to explore how the text portrays the
128 Indonesian communists as threatening beings. In so-doing I will use the basic structure of analysing being, time, and rivalry to explain secular fear. The object of fear is secular beings (communists); these beings are connected with a specific time
(the communist past); there is rivalry or competition that positions the communists as secular rivals to Catholics.
Fear and secular beings
As explained earlier in the thesis, the theoretical framework that I am deploying holds that fear always has an object. The object of fear is invariably a being. In the case of fear of a secular character, the object of fear is secular beings, which, in the context of this thesis, are the communists. My reading of From Madiun focuses on how
Indonesian communists appear in the text as different kinds of threatening secular beings – I see communists being depicted in the text as atheists, cunning operators, propagandists, rebels, leftists, reds, and demons. Furthermore, three key words in the
From Madiun text, – kiri’ (left or leftist/s), ‘merah’ (red), and ‘setan’ (demons or demonic) – make the communists particularly frightening, in part because these words connect not simply with secular fears, but with religious and supernatural fears. Below I discuss each of these images of the communists one by one, focusing on how they are built up in From Madiun and how I as a reader respond to them.
The communists as atheists
A central part of From Madiun’s construction of the communists as frightening secular beings is the presentation of the communists as atheists. Atheism is perhaps the ultimate form of secularity, since atheism denies the existence of any reality other
129 than that of the secular world. For religiously-minded Indonesians, the atheistic denial of non-secular reality, is deeply frightening. From Madiun identifies Indonesian communists as atheists on page 27, when it discusses the communists’ attempts to change the public perception of communists being atheists:
The Party propaganda used a thousand and one tricks to create the impression that PKI was a party that was tolerant and friendly towards religious groups. And the PKI succeeded in convincing quite a lot of Muslims and Christians, that Indonesian communists were not atheists (From Madiun, 1967:27).31
From Madiun presents the PKI’s claim that the communists were not atheists as mere propaganda. In Indonesia during the New Order and in the years preceding it, there was a widespread belief that the Indonesian communists fundamentally denied the existence of God (Badri 1997; Romly 1997; Mintz 2002).
‘Atheism’ is conventionally defined as “a belief that there is no God” (Cowie,
1989:63). Alan Bullock and Stephen Trombley have, however, observed that the meaning of atheism is ‘context-specific’ and is “determined by the dominant forms of religious belief in any particular time and place” (Bullock and Trombley, 1999:54).
There is added ambiguity when we discuss atheism in an Indonesian context, especially with regard to the history of Indonesian communism. Some scholars in contemporary Indonesia suggest that there is generally no clear-cut relationship of communism to atheism (Budiawan, 2004:3-4), as the Indonesian communists generally adhered to a particular religious belief such as Islam, Christianity,
Hinduism or Buddhism. In fact, many of the PKI members in the early years were
31 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Propaganda Partai berusaha dengan seribu satu tipu muslihat untuk menciptakan kesan, bahwa PKI adalah suatu partai yang toleran dan ramah terhadap golongan-golongan agama. Dan PKI berhasil meyakinkan cukup banyak orang Islam dan Kristen, bahwa orang komunis Indonesia bukanlah atheis (From Madiun, 1967:27).
130 also members of the Islamist nationalist organisation, SI (Sarekat Islam) (Kroef,
1965:3-5; Purwadi 2003). In this sense, it could be said that the theistic-atheistic dichotomy did not hold, at least in the early years of the PKI’s existence. Most communists in Indonesia at the time were actually practising Muslims. They strictly followed Islamic rituals such as praying five times each day, giving the impression that they were ritualistic Muslims. Semaoen, the first chairman of the PKI, is quoted as mentioning God’s name, an indication that communism in Indonesia cannot simply be identified with atheism (Purwadi 2003).
Michael C Williams too notes that the communist ulamas (Islamic teachers) in
Banten, in their attempt to establish an Islamic state in the 1920s always cited the
Koran passage, “With God’s help everything can be achieved” (Williams, 1990:195).
This citation of the Koran appears to indicate a shared belief among those communist ulamas including, for example, the Bantenese leader Haji Achmad Chatib and the leader of the communist movement in Surakarta Haji Mohammad Misbach that there was fundamental compatibility between Islam and communism. This was a quite commonly held belief during the Dutch colonial era. Williams asserts that in the early twentieth century Islam and nationalism were considered to be the same entity, while colonialism and capitalism were regarded as synonymous (Williams 1982).
It is these ambiguities about the relationship between communism and religion that the From Madiun quote above seems determined to counteract. The text contends that the communists were antagonistic to the state ideology of Pancasila because they were essentially atheists. As observed above, the From Madiun text asserts that the
PKI’s acceptance of Pancasila was merely propaganda in order to obtain public
131 support, especially from the religious communities and the nationalists.32 The text states,
Because of the rejuvenation of the Party, the leadership tried with all its strength to give a new face to its party: The PKI had to come out from its isolation and become a party for the masses! They spread very sly propaganda to give the impression that the PKI was a national party which respected religious conviction, upheld the interests of the people and struggled democratically and responsibly (From Madiun, 1967:26).33
The communists are portrayed in the From Madiun text as posing a serious threat to the existence of religion and the state ideology of Pancasila that constituted the very foundation of Indonesia’s nationhood. The Church in Indonesia has always given unconditional support to Pancasila, because it establishes the legitimacy of
Catholicism as one of the permitted religions of the Indonesian Republic while also stipulating that all Indonesians must have a religion.
The atheism of the PKI seems to be linked in From Madiun with the PKI’s power to mobilize mass support, a power that makes the communists exceptionally frightening. The text uses the word ‘menakutkan’, or ‘frightening’, to describe the
32 It should be noted that the growing popularity of the PKI was gained as a result of their active propaganda and mobilisation of masses. For example, the PKI gained more new members, particularly approaching the Crocodile Hole tragedy of 1st October 1965. According to the From Madiun text, in 1965, the PKI membership was estimated at 3,000,000 (From Madiun, 1967:37). In addition, Donald Hindley (1964) and Rex Mortimer (1974) assert that at the end of 1950, the PKI members numbered around 3,000 to 5,000 in total. In 1960 there were about two million PKI members, and in 1965 its membership increased to over three million, which made the PKI the largest communist party in the world, outside the communist countries. There were also approximately fifteen to twenty million supporters through membership of the PKI-affiliated mass organisations, including trade unions, peasant leagues, teacher associations and women’s and youth bodies. The PKI was indeed one of the major legitimate forces in Indonesian politics throughout the 1950s and the early 1960s. The PKI became highly regarded by President Sukarno, partly as a result of its ongoing support for the government policies like Nasakom (Hindley 1964; Kroef 1965; Mortimer 1974; Penabur, 6 Oktober 1963).
33 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: Karenanya sesudah peremajaan Partai, pimpinan berusaha dengan sekuat tenaga untuk memberi wajah baru kepada partainya: PKI harus keluar dari isolasinya dan harus menjadi partai massa! Mereka menyebarkan propaganda yang sangat lihai untuk memberi kesan, bahwa PKI adalah partai nasional yang menghargai keyakinan agama, menjunjung tinggi kepentingan rakyat dan berjuang secara demokratis serta penuh tanggung jawab (From Madiun, 1967:26).
132 action of the PKI-affiliated mass organisations (ormas) such) in promoting the party at the grassroots:
Aside from that, mass organisations continued to produce new members for the PKI. In the months approaching the coup, those mass organisations were active in mobilising the masses that truly frightened the opposition and gave the impression that the vast majority of people supported the PKI (From Madiun, 1967:40).34
The power of the PKI is presented in the text as having grown at alarming speed in the late 1950s, when Sukarno proposed the idea of including the communists into his cabinet in 1957 under the rubric of his ‘Konsepsi Presiden’ (the concept of the President). The PKI’s success in manipulating the political system is contrasted with the difficulties that the Catholic Party and the other religious parties – those connected with a theistic as opposed to an atheistic worldview – faced in the politics of this period. These problems were intensified in the early 1960s, when in 1960
Sukarno announced his policy known as Nasakom, namely the union of nationalists, religious people and communists. The Nasakom policy was seen by the military and religious communities, including the Catholic Church, as offensive, largely because of the apparent legitimacy it gave to the PKI and, by implication, to its underlying atheism.
Paul Webb (1986) claims that the Christian churches viewed Sukarno’s
Nasakom as naïve and unworkable: the Indonesian Catholic Party decided to withdraw from Sukarno’s cabinet because of the inclusion of the communists into the
Nasakom cabinet. Webb claims, however, that some Church people actually
34 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Selain itu ormas-ormas terus menghasilkan anggota-anggota baru bagi PKI. Pada bulan-bulan menjelang coup, ormas-ormas itu sangat giatmenggerakkan massa yang benar-benar menakutkan lawan dan memberi kesan, seakan-akan sebagian besar rakyat mendukung PKI (From Madiun, 1967:40).
133 supported the Nasakom ideology simply because they believed that Sukarno was the protector of Christianity in Indonesia. Some university lecturers and Protestant school-teachers in villages in West Timor, for example, supported Nasakom. Their reasoning was that it would have been disloyal and subversive to oppose Sukarno’s idea. Sukarno as the President of Indonesia was ‘Bapak Bangsa’, the Father of the
Nation; and as ‘Bapak’, he deserved support and loyalty from his ‘children’ (Webb,
1986:97,99; Farram 2002).
The success of the purportedly atheistic PKI in the political life of this period is that the PKI presented itself as a standard-bearer of nationalism. One key reason for the Catholic Church’s fear of the communists was that while the Indonesian communists were making themselves appear more ‘nationalistic’ in the 1950s and early 1960s, the Catholics were made to look ‘foreign’. The revolutionary propaganda against colonialism which circulated throughout the late 1940s and 1960s contributed to this sense of the ‘foreignness’ of the Catholic Church: communism was identified with anti-colonialism, while Catholicism was simplistically associated with colonialism. Hindley (1964), Kroef (1965) and Mortimer (1974) discuss how in this period communism in Indonesia was identified with a stance that was ‘pro- nationalist’ and opposed to ‘Western imperialism’. These authors argue that because of this emphasis, communism in Indonesia was different from communism in China and Russia. For example, Hindley speaks of the PKI leader Aidit’s concept of an
‘Indonesianised Marxism-Leninism’, which meant that the concrete situation of
Indonesia had to be the basis of the party’s policy and tactics (Hindley, 1964:47).
Furthermore, Hindley notes that in gaining power D.N. Aidit applied the ‘united front strategy’. In Aidit’s assessment, as described by Hindley, this was an effective tool,
134 as it was in line with the social and economic conditions and aspirations of the majority of Indonesians (Hindley, 1964:47). Similarly, Mortimer also observes that communism in Indonesia was ‘typically Indonesian’ in that it was pragmatic, especially in its attitudes towards other competing political currents, rather than being ideological as communism generally was in other parts of the world. Mortimer describes Indonesian communism as “a specific response of Indonesians to
Indonesian conditions and aspirations” (Mortimer, 1974:26).
Emphasising the atheism of the PKI was one way in which the Church could challenge the view of some Indonesian nationalists that Catholicism is no more than a foreign and colonial product. Because anti-colonial sentiment in Indonesia was still very strong in the early period after independence in 1945, being labelled foreign or colonial put the Church in a very precarious position. We can see these fears about the Catholic Church being seen as insufficiently nationalistic in From Madiun. The text presents the PKI as spreading rumours that anti-communists were actually anti- national and claiming that the communists themselves were the most nationalistic group:
After ten years the situation completely turned around from after Madiun. The PRRI rebellion gave an opportunity to the PKI for years to spread the talk that anti-communists were anti-national. And the PKI also sold its own slogans by ballyhooing, that the communists themselves were the one and only truly national group. But after G30S it became clear, that for several reasons, the cause of the PRRI rebellion35 could actually be justified, for example, the politics of Sukarno which tended too far to the left and the national economy which was destroyed by incapable people in the Central Government. It is very possible that the group that was struck down in 1958 was precisely the group that intended to direct the pure
35 I should note that many of the PRRI Permesta leaders had also used exactly the same argument as in the citation above to justify their revolt against the Government. It is important to bear in mind that the Muslim party Masyumi was banned because some of its leaders were involved in PRRI (Ricklefs 1991; 1982).
135 aspirations of the people. However, the winner was instead the group that wanted to sell the Pancasila Nation through Nasakom to communism. But history did not allow it! (From Madiun, 1967:56- 57).36
The key thing, according to the text, is that the PKI’s nationalism was a cover for its hidden atheistic agenda, and that it was manipulating Sukarno with the goal of implementing this agenda. The emphasis on the atheistic nature of the PKI in From Madiun reflects both a deep fear of a secular non- religious view of the world and also a sense of the danger to the Church’s position in Indonesian society. Catholics, insecure about their position in the
Indonesia nation state, are confronted with the frightening spectacle of an organisation whose secular orientation might endanger the identity of
Indonesia as a Pancasila state founded on belief in God.
In the next sub-section, I shall discuss another important identification of the communists that also reflected a great sense of fear for the Catholic Church, namely Indonesian communists as cunning beings.
From Madiun depicts the communists as frightening because of their unpredictability. Politics is frequently characterised by unpredictability and the communists seemed to know how to play the politics of manipulation particularly well.
36 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: Sesudah sepuluh tahun situasi samasekali berbalik daripada sesudah Madiun. Pemberontakan PRRI memberikan kesempatan kepada PKI untuk bertahun-tahun mengkecapkan, bahwa kaum anti-komunis itu anti-nasional. Dan PKI juga menjual slogan-slogannya sendiri dengan menggembar-gemborkan, bahwa komunislah sebagai satu-satunya golongan yang paling nasional. Tapi sesudah G30S bertambah jelas, bahwa beberapa alasan, yang menyebabkan pemberontakan PRRI itu memang dapat dibenarkan, misalnya saja politik Sukarno yang terlalu cenderung ke kiri dan ekonomi nasional yang dirusak oleh oknum-oknum yang tidak becus dalam Pemerintahan Pusat. Mungkin sekali yang dipukul pada tahun 1958 itulah golongan yang hendak mengarahkan cita-cita bangsa yang murni. Namun, justru yang menang malahan golongan yang mau menjual Negara Pancasila melalui Nasakom kepada komunisme. Tetapi sejarah tidak mengijinkannya! (From Madiun, 1967:56-57).
136 The communists as cunning operators
The From Madiun text describes the communists as cunning political tacticians; their tactical abilities are frightening for the non-communist forces, including the Catholic
Church, and this political cunning, we can argue, reflects the essentially secular character of the communist movement and the secular challenge that they present – not being constrained by any kind of non-secular (religious) morality, the communists are willing to use any possible deception to secure their goals. A key example of this cunning that From Madiun presents is the support of the communists for Sukarno’s political manifesto (Manipol), which was proclaimed in 1959. Through cunning manipulation, the text suggests, the PKI were able to use Sukarno’s Manipol to spread their own ideology and to silence opposition. It states,
In the years 1964/5 the developments had gone so far, that it was nearly impossible to say anything against the communist conceptions, because it was easy to be branded as being counter- revolutionary, fake Manipolist or anti-national. Indeed, Manipol was the root of Nasakom and Nasakom gave birth to Gestapu. Even more than that, Manipol, ideologically, had weakened the elements of Nationalism and Religion. Because, the Nationals and the Religious were forced to swallow the forcibly given poison of communism that was contained in Manipol. The element of communism easily gained the consequence of hitting whoever opposed communism (From Madiun, 1967:88).37
Another example of the text’s portrayal of the communists as cunning operators is in relation to their presentation of their solidarity with ordinary Indonesians. From
Madiun presents the communists as cunningly demonstrating their grass-roots support
37 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Dalam tahun 1964/65 sudah sedemikian jauh perkembangannya, sehingga hampir-hampir tidak mungkin lagi mengatakan sesuatu melawan konsepsi komunis, karena mudah dicap sebagai kaum kontra-revolusi, Manipolis gadungan atau anti-nasional. Memang, Manipol adalah biangkeladi Nasakom dan Nasakom melahirkan Gestapu. Malahan lebih dari itu, Manipol secara ideologis sudah melemahkan unsur Nasionalis dan Agama. Sebab, kaum Nasionalis dan Agama terpaksa menelan cekokan racun komunisme yang sudah terkandung dalam manipol itu. Unsur komunis dengan mudah menarik konsekwensi guna memukul siapa saja yang melawan komunisme (From Madiun, 1967:88).
137 by organising social actions. The text gives evidence of the Church’s fear of the solidarity the communists were building up with ordinary people; it displays jealousy of the PKI’s success and their anxieties about the danger that more ordinary
Indonesians would be more attracted to join the PKI than the Church itself:
In the general view, PKI was considered the defender of the little people, because it repeatedly threw criticisms at unnatural situations and sometimes pioneered social actions. Since Amir Syarifuddin in 1948 was demoted from Prime Minister to Defence Minister, the PKI had not held a seat in government anymore.38 This situation was more advantageous to the PKI for attacking corruptors, the NewRich (OKB), Bureaucratic Capitalists (Kapbir) and landowners with demands that were actually fair (From Madiun, 1967:27).39
From Madiun presents the PKI as knowing exactly how to handle its own weaknesses and defeat – evidence of its political cunning. For example, it states that when the PKI realised it was not strong enough to fight outside of parliament, it not only tried to be democratic, it tried to appear as the guardian of the parliamentary system (From Madiun, 1967:27). The text states that it was to the benefit of the PKI that all the other political parties had been in constant conflict with each other over matters of principle since the establishment of independence. The text describes the political conflict that lasted for several years after the founding of the Indonesian
38 As noted earlier, Nasakom notwithstanding, the PKI did not hold any cabinet positions under Guided democracy. With respect to Amir Syarifuddin this quote is misleading. Amir was Defence Minister in the Syahrir Cabinet then Prime Minister in his own Cabinet, July 1947 – January 1948. Amir and the Cabinet resigned because of criticism of the Renville Agreement, which Amir’s Cabinet had negotiated with the Dutch. Amir, who acknowledged his membership of the PKI after he resigned as PM and was involved in the Madiun rebellion then killed by a policeman, along with other PKI leaders, in December 1948. These details about Amir do not undermine my arguments about the text, but do remind us that as political history the From Madiun text is not particularly accurate – it is clearly a political propaganda, and not an academic study.
39 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Di mata umum, PKI dianggap sebagai pembela rakyat kecil, karena ia melontarkan kritik pedas terhadap keadaan yang tidak wajar dan kadang-kadang memelopori aksi-aksi sosial. Sejak Amir Syarifuddin pada tahun 1948 jatuh sebagai Perdana Menteri merangkap Menteri Pertahanan, PKI tak pernah menduduki kursi pemerintahan lagi. Keadaan ini lebih menguntungkan PKI untuk menyerang koruptor, Orang Kaya Baru (OKB), Kapbir dan tuan-tuan tanah dengan tuntutan-tuntutan yang sebenarnya memang adil (From Madiun, 1967:27).
138 republic – on one side of this conflict were Masyumi, PSI, Parkindo and the Catholic
Party; and on the other side were PNI, PKI and several small Islamic parties that were searching for freedom from Masyumi.
In its discussion of the manoeuvring of the PKI in this period, the text presents the PKI as having been still small, weak and just gaining trust and friends at the time when the Masyumi Cabinet fell at the beginning of 1951. However, From Madiun shows the PKI as having cleverly sniffed out its future servant – the PNI – at this early stage. The text’s image is that in the field of politics, the PNI was much stronger than the PKI, but it was very weak in the field of ideology. From Madiun suggests that the PNI leadership did not realise this and so the PKI later grew and became a very dangerous competitor. It presents PNI efforts to free itself from this competition, for example, at the time of the General Elections of 1955-1957, as having been too late and to have failed, causing cracks in the body of the PNI itself from 1964-66, and it was only towards and after the collapse of the Sukarno government, that several branches of the PKI started to fall off (From Madiun, 1967:29). The cunning of the
PKI is expressed in having been able to review its tactics after the serious wounds of
Madiun to suit the contemporary situation of the time in Indonesia (From Madiun,
1967:30). The communists are frightening to the Church because their cunning ability to remake themselves and to change tactics means that they can adapt to circumstances and reappear, even when they seem to have been defeated. In the next sub-section, I will discuss From Madiun’s identification of Indonesian communism as a propagandist organisation, something that is closely related to their portrayal as cunning operators, being linked to the common element of having the frightening power to deceive and to manipulate.
139 The communists as propagandists
The third role that the From Madiun text ascribes to the communists is that of
‘propagandists’, one of the frightening secular powers of the PKI. The text presents communist propaganda as something powerful. If communists took charge of the state, it was suggested, they would use this position to spread propaganda that would threaten Indonesian Catholic identity and the place of Catholics in the Indonesian nation.
The critique of the communists as propagandists in From Madiun is, however, complex because the Catholic Church itself uses the word propaganda to describe the dissemination of its teachings. However, Catholics distinguish between propaganda dedicated to the strengthening of Catholic doctrine and that with other purposes
(especially secular ones). In our analysis, we need to distinguish between the critique of propaganda made by From Madiun and the fact that the text is itself a piece of propaganda, designed to instil fear of communism.
A good general definition of ‘propaganda’ is that it is “publicity that is intended to spread ideas or information which will persuade or convince people” (Hornby,
1989:999). Writing from a Catholic perspective, the Jesuit theologian, John A.
Hardon, defines the word ‘propaganda’ as “the deliberate and systematic attempt to influence and change the ideas, attitudes and beliefs of others” (Hardon, 1985: 350).
Citing an official Catholic document, Communio et Progressio of 1971, number 29,
Hardon further asserts: “A propaganda campaign, with a view to influencing public opinion, is justified only when it serves the truth, when its objectives and methods accord with the dignity of humans, and when it promotes causes that are in the public interest” (Hardon, 1985:350).
140 A non-Catholic approach to the idea of propaganda can be found in the work of Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham (1998), and this sheds light on From Madiun as a propaganda text. According to them,
Propaganda is the deliberate attempt at persuading people, either as individuals or in groups to accept a particular definition of the situation by manipulating selected non-rational factors in their personality or in their social environment, the consequent effect of this attempt being to change and mould their behavior into a certain desired direction (Evans and Newnham, 1998:451).
Evans and Newnham also emphasise the importance of technology in propaganda (Evans and Newnham, 1998:451-452), and we can argue that the From
Madiun is an example of the use of the technology of print to spread propaganda.
Evans and Newnham explain three main techniques used by propagandists. The first technique is to simplify issues. The second one is to try to be in line with a given culture in order to ensure acceptance of the message. The third technique is to sensationalise issues (Evans and Newnham, 1998:452). At the height of conflict situations, for instance, a propagandist can effectively manipulate common stereotypes against certain targeted groups in the society. The image of the
Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) being advocates of an atheistic ideology, and therefore against religion and the state ideology of Pancasila that is promoted by
From Madiun, can be seen as an example of this manipulation of stereotypes.
As mentioned, From Madiun itself frequently uses the term ‘propaganda’ to designate the actions of the PKI and its affiliated mass organisations such as the
Indonesian Peasants’ Front (BTI) and the All-Indonesia Trade Union Federation
(SOBSI). From Madiun focuses on the fact that the PKI had a systematic propaganda apparatus to design strategies and activities for agitation. The PKI had a special
141 secretariat for ‘Agitation and Propaganda’.40 In the text’s depiction of the PKI promotion of its ideology in the 1950s and 1960s, the role of the communist media, in particular the re-issuing of the Bintang Merah (Red Star) magazine, is emphasised.
As noted in the citation below, the text sees the communist media as having been primarily used to criticise the former leadership and to expand group networks to support the party in this period.
The preoccupation with the PKI propaganda system can arguably be seen as reflecting a perception of the communists being an organisation that parallels and rivals the Catholic Church. The Church too has a special department to carry out the task of propagation of faith. The Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide, whose official title is ‘Sacra congregatio christiano nomini propagando’, is the department of the pontifical administration assigned with the task to spread Catholicism to non-
Catholic countries.
From Madiun presents propaganda as having been an essential element in the communist strategy to achieve power, which, the text suggests, culminated in the events of 1965-66. It depicts the PKI as having used very cunning propaganda in its attempts to convince people that the PKI was indeed a nationalist party. In addition to portraying itself as nationalist, the PKI would have to appear to value religious conviction, because this was intrinsic to being an Indonesian nationalist. This propaganda was then deemed necessary by D.N. Aidit when he took over the leadership, in order to promote the Party to the grassroots, and ultimately to obtain victory. The text states,
40 This is an important point in that the From Madiun text is part of propaganda contestation between the Church and the PKI, even if the PKI was no longer in a position, at the time the text was published, to counter the arguments in the text.
142 When Aidit took over the leadership, the Party was still small and was labelled as being a betrayer of the nation. In this situation it was not possible to obtain victory. Because of this, after the rejuvenation of the Party, the leadership tried with all their strength to give a new face to their party: “The PKI has to leave its isolation and must become a mass Party!” They spread very cunning propaganda that gave the impression that the PKI was a nationalist party that valued religious conviction, upheld the interests of the people and worked democratically and responsibly (From Madiun, 1967:25-26).41
The text goes on to depict the propaganda of the Indonesian communists as having actually been successful – something that makes that propaganda all the more frightening. It presents the coup attempt on the 1st of October 1965 as a result of the terror sowed by the propaganda of the communists from which the latter harvested a crop more horrifying than what had unfolded in the 1948 Madiun Affair. The text asserts that in order to be considered nationalist and patriotic, from 1950 onwards the communists used their propaganda to spread the idea that the events of Madiun in
1948 were actually provoked by Hatta and Sukarno, and that they had engaged in this provocation to annihilate the PKI. It states that communist propaganda claimed that the PKI was a party of peace; it never rebelled and did not believe in violence as a means of attaining power. The text states,
So that they could be considered nationalist and patriotic, the root of the curse of Madiun first had to be destroyed. From the month of September 1950 onwards they spread a new idea: Hatta and Sukarno deliberately organised provocation to annihilate the PKI. The friends of the old leadership had never proclaimed a “Soviet Republic”; they merely defended themselves against the attacks of the “white terror”. What Sukarno named a “national tragedy” was
41 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: Waktu Aidit mengambil-alih pimpinan, Partai itu masih kecil dan dicap pengkhianat bangsa. Dalam keadaan ini kemenangan tidak mungkin diperoleh. Karenanya sesudah peremajaan Partai, pimpinan berusaha dengan sekuat tenaga untuk member wajah baru kepada partainya: PKI harus keluar dari isolasinya dan harus menjadi Partai massa! Mereka menyebarkan propaganda yang sangat lihai untuk memberi kesan, bahwa PKI adalah partai nasional yang menghargai keyakinan agama, menjunjung tinggi kepentingan rakyat dan berjuang secara demokratis serta penuh tanggung jawab (From Madiun, 1967:25-26).
143 really a dirty game of the military and fanatical Islamic groups. The Party never rebelled and didn’t know violence. “But, if the end of a bayonet is stretched out towards us and bullets are whizzing around us as in the Madiun affair, and also in that affair itself, we will not and did not bare our chests to be stabbed with the bayonets or pierced by the bullets of the counter-revolutionaries’. That propaganda was successful for the communists, until the 1st of October 1965 when they sowed terror and harvested a crop more horrifying than that of 1948 (From Madiun, 1967:26).42
From Madiun goes on to state that in order to support its self-proclaimed nationalist identity and to assert that it was the most nationalistic force in Indonesian politics, the PKI tried to brand the anti-communist groups as anti-nationalist. The text then specifically accuses the Indonesian communists of being liars: through their propaganda they were trying to create a public impression that the PKI was religiously tolerant and was not an atheistic party. As a result, the text states, many
Muslims and Christians were convinced of the religious and theistic nature of the
Party:
The Party propaganda with a thousand and one tricks tried to create the impression that PKI was a party that was tolerant and friendly towards religious groups. And the PKI succeeded in convincing quite a lot of Muslims and Christians, that Indonesian communists were not atheists (From Madiun, 1967:27).43
42 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Agar dianggap nasionalis dan patriotism maka kutukan Madiun harus dilenyapkan dulu. Sejak bulan September 1950 PKI menyebarluaskan issue baru: Hatta dan Sukarnolah, yang dengan sengaja mengadakan provokasi untuk memusnahkan PKI. Kawan-kawan pemimpin yang dulu tidak pernah memproklamirkan “Republik Sovyet”. Mereka hanya sekedar membela diri terhadap serangan “teror putih”. Apa yang dinamakan Sukarno “tragedi nasional” itu sebenarnya adalah permainan kotor kaum militaris dan Islam fanatik. Partai tak pernah memberontak dan tidak mengenal kekerasan. “Tetapi, kalau kepada kami disodorkan ujung bayonet dan didesingkan peluru seperti dalam peristiwa Madiun, juga seperti selama peristiwa itu, kami tidak akan memberikan dada kami untuk ditembus bayonet dan ditembus peluru kaum kontra-revolusioner”.42 Propaganda itu membawa sukses besar bagi komunis, sampai pada tanggal 1 Oktober 1965 sekali lagi mereka menaburkan terror dan memetik hasil yang lebih ngeri lagi dari pada tahun 1948 (From Madiun, 1967:26).
43 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Propaganda Partai berusaha dengan seribu satu tipu muslihat untuk menciptakan kesan, bahwa PKI adalah suatu partai yang toleran dan ramah terhadap golongan-golongan agama. Dan PKI berhasil meyakinkan cukup banyak orang Islam dan Kristen, bahwa orang komunis Indonesia bukanlah atheis (From Madiun, 1967:27).
144
A few pages later the text outlines the connection between propaganda and indoctrination:
In April 1952 the Agitation and Propaganda Secretariat CC PKI stated that the Party must form mass organisations under the Party’s own leadership. Apart from that, the PKI wanted to cooperate with other parties as much as possible, specifically with “progressive” powers. Anti-communist groups had to be isolated. To carry out these plans required time, high discipline and quality indoctrination in the Party. A quick victory was impossible (From Madiun, 1967:32).44
The text then provides more details about the challenge of propaganda and the involvement of the PKI’s affiliated mass organisations, such as the BTI, in the provocation attempts undertaken by the communists. The text also talks about the benefits of the propaganda. The PKI propaganda was beneficial, as evidenced in the national elections of 1955 and provincial elections of 1957. The PKI became one of the major winners. I should add that, in fact, the PKI was the only one of the four major parties of 1955 – PNI, Masyumi, NU and PKI – to increase its support in the provincial elections of 1957, especially in central and east Java (Feith 1957).
Thousands of Javanese villages, particularly in the area of Klaten-Solo-Boyolali in
Central Java, were under the communist influence. According to the text, these villages were then used by the communists to move underground or in a guerilla war
(From Madiun, 1967:43).
Having discussed these developments, the text proceeds to outline how the PKI had carried out their propaganda campaigns, for example, by providing cheap reading
44 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: Pada bulan April 1952 Sekretariat Agitasi dan Propaganda CC PKI menyatakan, bahwa Partai harus membentuk organisasi-organisasi massa di bawah pimpinan Partai sendiri. Selain itu PKI ingin bekerjasama dengan partai-partai lain sejauh mungkin, khususnya dengan kekuatan-kekuatan “progressif”. Golongan anti-komunis harus diisolir. Untuk melaksanakan rencana ini dibutuhkan waktu yang agak lama, disiplin tinggi dan indoktrinasi bermutu dalam Partai. Kemenangan cepat merupakan kemustahilan (From Madiun, 1967:32).
145 materials and training programs for potential leadership cadres. It adds that other political parties including the Catholic Party had failed to do this. From Madiun presents the Catholic Church as wanting to do exactly the same kind of mobilisation and propaganda work, but to take a more holistic approach, one which would involve both the material and the spiritual dimensions:
Other parties did not pay so much attention to the education of their cadres and leaders. They were not as good at creating cheap and simple reading materials that were easy to understand with the aim of deepening the political awareness of the wider community. Indeed the skill of the PKI in this regard is worthy of imitation, but only materially. It is very important to have a systematic and step- by-step education to prepare intelligent, courageous and dedicated politicians. Ormas (mass organisations) often “live” only on paper. The interests of the members they represent are given less attention than their leaders. Labour unions prioritize the party rather than the labourers. With industrialisation, our country will experience big problems with labour. If unions do not fight for the rights of labourers, it is most likely that they [the labourers] will tune their ears again to the radical propaganda of the PKI. The same will occur with farmers and fishermen who are sucked dry by the “nationalist bourgeoisie” (From Madiun, 1967:44-45).45
The text asserts that the PKI seemed to run out of options other than to praise
Sukarno’s Guided Democracy by using all of its propaganda tools, suggesting that
PKI propaganda was at that time merely used by the Party to please President
Sukarno for its own power gains. From Madiun goes on to present the PKI as tirelessly continuing to use all its propaganda powers to impose Sukarno doctrines –
45 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Partai-partai lain tidak begitu memperhatikan pendidikan kader dan pemimpin mereka. Mereka kalah dalam menjanjikan bahan bacaan murah dan sederhana serta mudah dimengerti untuk memperdalam kesadaran politis rakyat banyak. Memang keuletan PKI patut dicontoh, tapi secara lahiriah saja. Adalah sangat penting pendidikan sistematis dan tahap demi tahap untuk membina politikus-politikus yang cakap, berani dan penuh pengabdian. Ormas-ormas sering “hidup” di atas kertas saja. Kepentingan anggota-anggota yang mereka wakili kurang diperhatikan daripada keuntungan tokoh- tokoh pemimpin saja. Serikat buruh lebih mengutamakan partainya daripada perbaikan kaum buruh. Dengan industrialisasi, negara kita akan mengalami persoalan-persoalan besar dalam bidang perburuhan. Kalau tidak ada serikat-serikat yang memperjuangkan nasib buruh, kemungkinan besar mereka melekatkan telinga lagi pada propaganda radikal dari PKI. Hal yang sama berlaku untuk kaum tani dan nelayan yang dihisap terus oleh para “borjuis nasional” (From Madiun, 1967:44-45).
146 including Nasakom – into the minds of all people. In return for this favour, the PKI leadership demanded that the Nasakom principles had to be implemented in all areas, which, the text asserts, meant that the communists would participate in all areas of
Indonesian political life, even in the Armed Forces:
Maybe Sukarno was of the opinion that Nasakom was the most precise formula to cause the communists to join as well as to serve his revolution. And indeed, the PKI did not tire of using all its propaganda abilities to force this teaching of Sukarno’s into the minds of all people. In return for the favour, the PKI leadership demanded the implementation of Nasakom principles in all areas: From the centre and to the villages, even in the Armed Forces! A third of the power must belong to the PKI! From 1963 this demand of the PKI became increasingly sharp and conspicuous, with mass demonstrations, the press and slogans on the roadside (From Madiun, 1967:68-69).46
The next reference to propaganda in the text occurs in relation to the claim that President Sukarno and Foreign Minister Subandrio needed a lot of help in the form of propaganda and money to ensure success in the area of foreign policy: Before continuing the PKI attacks against its opponents, we now mention the success of the PKI in foreign politics. Sukarno and Foreign Minister Subandrio needed a lot of help in the form of propaganda and money to fund foreign politics which were full of personal ambition. After receiving 815 million dollars from Russia to return West Irian, now it was China’s turn to give a loan. Mao wanted to give money, but on this condition: Indonesia was forced to be isolated from the Western world, be neutral as well as to fight for the interests of China (From Madiun, 1967:71).47
46 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Mungkin Sukarno berpendapat, bahwa Nasakom adalah rumusan paling tepat yang menyebabkan komunis dapat ikut serta melayani revolusinya. Dan memang, PKI tanpa mengenal lelah menggunakan seluruh kemampuan alat-alat propagandanya, untuk mencekokkan ajaran Sukarno ini ke dalam benak semua orang. Sebagai balas-jasa, pimpinan PKI menuntut pelaksanaan prinsip-prinsip Nasakom dalam segala bidang: Mulai dari pusat sampai ke desa-desa, bahkan dalam kalangan Angkatan Bersenjata pun juga! Sepertiga kekuasaan harus untuk PKI! Sejak tahun 1963 tuntutan PKI ini makin meruncing dan terus ditonjol-tonjolkan, baik dengan demonstrasi massa, pers maupun coretan-coretan di jalan (From Madiun, 1967:68-69).
47 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: Sebelum melanjutkan serangan-serangan PKI kepada lawan-lawannya, kita singgung di sini sukses PKI dalam politik luar negeri. Sukarno dan Menlu Subandrio membutuhkan bantuan banyak berupa propaganda dan uang untuk membiayai politik luar negeri yang penuh ambisi pribadi itu. Setelah menerima 815 juta dollar dari Rusia untuk mengembalikan Irian Barat, kini giliran RRT yang member
147
Here the text presents PKI propaganda as linked to a plan to move Indonesia into the orbit of communist states, a sign of the global ambitions of the party, and the global nature of the forces behind the PKI, things that help to make its propaganda more frightening.
Overall, From Madiun can be seen as engaging in a kind of ‘propaganda war’ against the imagined ongoing effects of communist propaganda. The fact that after
1965-66 the Catholics remained cautious and afraid of the latent danger of the PKI indicates a deep preoccupation with the success of communist propaganda, and perhaps of its secular and secularising powers.
The khasebul (khalwat sebulan), or the one-month retreats, discussed earlier in this thesis, that were convened by Pater Beek and his allies to equip Catholic youth to prepare themselves mentally for the challenges that faced them can perhaps be seen as another indication of how threatening communist propaganda was perceived to be.
As has been argued above, From Madiun functions as a propaganda text which aims to perpetuate the sense of fear that had gripped the Catholic Church during the time in which the PKI was active, a sense of fear which is documented by the text.
From Madiun’s image of communists as propagandists is strongly linked to its portrayal of them as atheists and as cunning operators. For instance, in trying to convince religious peoples, particularly Muslims and Christians, to join the Party, the communists were propagating the idea that they supported religious freedom, and that the PKI was indeed a theistic party. The Indonesian communists are also portrayed in the text as cunning in their approach to President Sukarno by appearing to be
kredit. Mao mau memberi uang, tetapi menuntu syarat: Indonesia dipaksa terpencil dari dunia Barat dan netral serta memperjuangkan kepentingan RRT (From Madiun, 1967:71).
148 unquestionably supporting Sukarno’s Guided Democracy (1959-65) and his Nasakom doctrine. According to From Madiun, all these actions were mere propaganda, but this propaganda, was, like the identity of communists as atheists and as cunning operators, something that made the communists an object of fear. I shall now move on to discussing the next label used to designate the Indonesian communists and characterise them as frightening secular beings, that of rebels.
The communists as rebels
‘Pemberontak’, or rebels, is a key label that From Madiun uses for the Indonesian communists. Part of what makes the PKI frightening is their identity as a force of secular disorder and trouble. The communists are shown as constantly undermining
Indonesian political order through rebellious actions as evidenced in the PKI’s involvement in the events of Madiun in 1948. This was the best example of the PKI undermining the national interest and political order. Another example of the communists acting as rebels or troublemakers presented in the text are the strike actions that the communists undertook to disable the transport sector in 1951, even though strike actions in key economic sectors had actually been banned by the then government. The PKI also announced on the 10th August 1951 their intention to celebrate the anniversary of the Independence Day on its own, despite having been banned from the celebrations by Sukiman, the then Indonesian Prime Minister. From
Madiun presents these actions as emblematic of the rebelliousness of the PKI. It states,
From the month of June in 1951 onwards Dar’ul Islam gangs, both in Sulawesi and West Jawa became active again. This situation gave the workers’ societies under the PKI the courage to undertake strike actions to disable the transport sector. At the time strikes in key sectors were banned. The strike actions were carried out under the
149 pretext of asking for a larger bonus at Lebaran. On the 15th of August 1951, at Tanjung Priok, a conflict between workers and police occurred. Later at Bogor, a hand grenade exploded and wounded 80 people. On the 10th of August 1951 the PKI announced that it would celebrate Proclamation of Freedom Day on its own and not heed the ban of Sukiman (From Madiun, 1967:30).48
In response to the rebellious determination of the PKI, Sukiman took strong action. The text recounts how, on the 1st August 1951, 600 ‘trouble-makers’ in the plantations of East Sumatra were captured. Four days later, the text states, 15 members of the DPR, the majority of whom were communists, were detained. The
Secretariat of the PKI Special Commission and SOBSI were also raided. On the 16th of August 200 people from East Jawa and 50 from West Java were detained. On
Independence Day in 1951, and on the 10th of November President Sukarno himself justified these police actions. The result was that 15,000 people from extreme groups, both left and right, were detained (From Madiun, 1967:30-31; For a scholarly depiction of these events see Feith, 1964:187-192).
From Madiun asserts that strong actions by Sukiman weakened the SOBSI strikes. The PKI was then forced to go underground. Alimin sought refuge at the
Chinese embassy. Aidit, Lukman and Nyoto hid themselves. PKI cadres who had not yet been detained were disabled by the fear of a second Madiun. The communists were effectively isolated for the second time after Madiun in 1948. The PKI’s
48 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Sejak bulan Juni 1951 gerombolan Dar’ul Islam baik di Sulawesi maupun di Jawa Barat aktif lagi. Situasi ini menyebabkan serikat-serikat buruh di bawah naungan PKI berani melancarkan pemogokan untuk melumpuhkan bidang transport. Pada saat itu pemogokan dalam bidang vital dilarang. Aksi pemogokan itu diajukan dengan dalih minta tambahan hadiah lebaran. Pada tanggal 15 Agustus 1951 di Tanjung Priok terjadi kerusuhan antara buruh dan polisi. Kemudian di Bogor, sebuah geranat meledak dan melukai 80 orang. Tanggal 10 Agustus 1951 PKI mengumumkan, bahwa ia akan merayakan hari Proklamasi Kemerdekaan sendiri dan tidak akan mengindahkan larangan Sukiman (From Madiun, 1967:30).
150 development was hindered, and until 1953 it was difficult for it to advance quickly
(From Madiun, 1967:31).
According to the text, the time when the PKI was forced to bury itself really was a good opportunity for its leaders to scrutinize the Party’s political strategies. The events that occurred towards the formation of the Sukiman Cabinet and also the
‘August Raids’ showed that there was not a single party or political power in the country that was willing to fight together with the PKI in a single united front or to help the PKI, so that it could take part in government. ‘The People’s Front’ along with other groups under the leadership of the PKI, had not yet been realised. Because of this, the PKI itself had to build a front. In this front, all progressive elements of all the people had to be represented by PKI-controlled organisations. At that time it was very advantageous to the PKI that the majority of the people had not yet been organised, and had even been ignored by the other parties. This was a great opportunity for the PKI to develop itself for power contest in the future (From
Madiun, 1967:32). In order to realise this, the text states, the PKI needed to apply all possible methods (From Madiun, 1967:32). From Madiun presents these actions by the PKI as part of a co-ordinated and determined strategy of rebellion by the PKI, a strategy whose culmination was the frightening events at the Crocodile Hole. The communists are portrayed by the text as a dangerous, destabilizing beings determined to rebel against the Indonesian state and its institutions.
The image of the communists as rebels is closely linked to another key label that the From Madiun text uses to portray the Indonesian communists as a source of instability and extremism, that of ‘kiri’, or ‘leftists’. Below I discuss the use of the word ‘kiri’ for the communists and how the connotations of this term make
151 communists appear especially dangerous and frightening, both ideologically and politically and also in relation to deeply held Indonesia fears of things associated with the left hand.
The communists as leftists
At one level, From Madiun text’s use of the term ‘kiri’, or ‘leftists’, to refer to the communists simply reflects the fact that communism was a leftist ideology, whose values contrasted with the ideologies of those who see themselves as being at the centre of the political spectrum. In the text, ‘kiri’ constantly connotes extremist or anti-moderate political positions; it is part of portraying the communists as frightening secular extremists.
The word kiri’ is used numerous times in the text in reference to certain organisations or individuals who had close association with the PKI, in particular the
People’s Democratic Front (FDR: Front Demokrasi Rakyat, formed in June 1948 by the leftist Amir Syarifudin), President Sukarno, some teachers from the Teachers’
Union of the Indonesian Republic (PGRI), and the Indonesian Air Force. The text first refers to the FDR as a left-wing organisation in its account of the FDR’s opposition to the Hatta government’s signing of the Renville Agreement49 with the
Dutch government on 17 January 1948 (For academic accounts of these events see
Kahin 1952; Agung 1973; Reid 1974; Dorling 1996). In this context, the term ‘kiri’, or ‘left’, is connected with the idea of extremist opposition to the government’s moderate policies and agendas:
49 The Renville Agreement was negotiated and signed by the Amir Syarifuddin government, which resigned in face of criticism of the agreement and the resignation of Masyumi and the PNI from the cabinet. Hatta was appointed by Sukarno to be Prime Minister in a Presidential Cabinet (Anak Agung pp 39-40). It should be mentioned that as I am not discussing the text as a history of the period, but it is useful to identify where the text differs from the academic accounts.
152 There were government policies that were rejected by the FDR, including the Renville Agreement, whose author was it should be noted Amir himself! However Hatta held fast to the Renville Agreement, because he was of the opinion that Renville was no more than the basis for solving the problems of Indonesia which were still in legal dispute with the Netherlands, and paved the way to achieve the United States of Indonesia as quickly as possible. This compromise step was rejected by the left wing. And as we saw later during the Guided Democracy period, President Sukarno harshly criticised Hatta’s politics. However, if we view the situation objectively at that time, Hatta was quite realistic, because he always had his feet planted in the present reality, namely, to earnestly maintain the regions of the Republic of Indonesia so as to later develop a greater idea: The United States of Indonesia. So, the Renville Agreement was simply a political tactic! (From Madiun, 1967:11-12).50
The text goes on to emphasise leftist extremism in describing how the left wing (sayap kiri) expressed their disapproval of government policy relating to the Renville Agreement, when the left demanded that the Hatta Cabinet, the then official government cabinet, be replaced with a new cabinet, a National
Front Cabinet. It was proposed that the left wing would hold key positions within the new cabinet. From Madiun portrays the left wing as a demanding and forceful being in its demand for a change of government (From Madiun,
1967:12-13).
The text deploys the term ‘kiri’ again in specific reference to the FDR’s manipulation of the problems relating to the Renville Agreement in order to
50 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Adapun kebijaksanaan pemerintah yang ditolak FDR antara lain perjanjian Renville, yang notabene arsiteknya adalah Amir sendiri! Namun Hatta tetap berpegang pada ketetapan Renville, karena ia berpendapat bahwa Renville adalah tidak lebih daripada dasar untuk menyelesaikan soal Indonesia yang bersengketa dengan Belanda, dan meratakan jalan untuk secepat-cepatnya mencapai Negara Indonesia Serikat. Langkah kompromi ini tidak diterima oleh sayap kiri. Dan seperti kita lihat pada jaman Demokrasi Terpimpin, Presiden Sukarno pun mengecam dengan pedas politik Hatta itu. Namun kalau kita teropong situasi objektif pada waktu itu, Hatta cukup realistis, sebab ia selalu berpijak pada kenyataan yang ada, yaitu mempertahankan daerah R.I. dengan sungguh-sungguh dan kemudian mengembangkan ide yang lebih luas lagi: Negara Indonesia Serikat. Jadi, perjanjian Renville hanyalah taktik politis belaka! (From Madiun, 1967:11-12).
153 discredit the government, highlighting the destructive influence of the left in destabilising the government for its own power gains. In this context, the word
‘kiri’ is therefore associated with the fear that the power of the FDR created within society because of the left’s opposition to the government’s position of compromising with the colonial Dutch in the Renville Agreement. The Renville
Agreement gave the Dutch some control over Indonesia despite the country having proclaimed independence on 17 August 1945. The FDR completely disapproved of the Renville Agreement (From Madiun, 1967:13). Clearly, the idea of ‘kiri’ is related by the text to the stance of being against the government and against moderation and compromise.
The text then labels Sukarno’s National Party (PNI) as leftists, and discusses their links with communism. Yet, the text states that the leftist forces were rather diplomatic in expressing their criticism of the importance of the ‘God element’ (ke-
Tuhanan) in the state ideology of Pancasila:51
“Revolutionary-progressive, a true Manipolist, centred around Nasakom, socialist and left”, these were the political slogans that were full of adventure and fatal. The PNI’s ideology, that is, Marhaemism, was a syncretism which reeked of historical- materialism. Sukarno’s leftism and the PNI were always opened to the influence of communism, assuming that other elements (such as the element of ke-Tuhan-an – belief in God) were not openly attacked. In the PNI the PKI found a friend with whom over time it could push aside from political life moderate leaders and those who aimed to engage in construction. By this they succeeded in placing the country in an unstable, and ultimately, chaotic, situation. It is just such a situation that the communists had been waiting for in order to take over power (From Madiun, 1967:28-29).52
51 This quote is discussing the PNI during the Guided Democracy period. The previous paragraph is about Renville, which is a decade earlier.
52 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: “Progressive-revolusioner, Manipolis sejati, berporoskan Nasakom, sosialis dan kiri”, inilah slogan- slogan politik yang penuh petualangan dan fatal. Ideologi PNI yaitu Marhaenisme merupakan suatu synkretisme yang agak berbau materialisme-historis. Kekiri-kirian Sukarno dan PNI selalu terbuka untuk pengaruh komunis, andaikan unsur-unsur lain (misalnya unsur ke-Tuhanan) tidak diserang
154
Asserting that the aim of the PKI was to create an unstable, and ultimately, chaotic, situation that would enable it to gain power, the text associates the left with disorder, confusion and the overthrow of the state. From Madiun then goes on to stress the dangerous impact of Sukarno’s leftist tendencies upon the PNI:
Since 1951, a road that hindered the development of Indonesia for decades began to be followed, and also split the PNI from within and ended the presidency of Sukarno and brought the second, much more serious, destruction of the PKI. This road was not followed just by chance. It was the leftist attitudes of “Mr Marhaenism” which were inherited by the PNI which nearly dragged the PNI and the nation into the grip of the communists (From Madiun, 1967:29).53
Several pages later, the text presents both the ‘left’ (the communists), and the
‘right’ (radical Muslims) as equally anti-democratic forces, which should both be banned. It is asserted that the competition between the left and the right was ably manipulated by the PKI to spread its influence. The text states,
...Therefore democratic principles demand that anti-democratic parties, both from the left and the right, be banned. In democracy conflict between political parties indeed does occur. But this competition must be based on the desire and conviction to build the nation and not to gain personal victory or gain. Because the parties neglected that principle, the PKI received a good wind (From Madiun, 1967:36).54
secara terang-terangan. Dalam PNI itulah PKI menemukan kawan yang cocok untuk lama-kelamaan menyingkirkan dari kehidupan politis pemimpin-pemimpin yang moderat dan mau membangun. Dengan demikian mereka berhasil menempatkan negara dalam situasi yang labil dan akhirnya kacau. Justru keadaan seperti itulah yang dinanti-nantikan komunis untuk mengambil-alih kekuasaan (From Madiun, 1967:28-29).
53 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Sejak tahun 1951 mulai ditempuh jalan yang menghambat pembangunan Indonesia untuk puluhan tahun, tapi juga memecahkan PNI dari dalam dan mengakhiri masa jabatan Presiden Sukarno serta membawa kehancuran kedua yang jauh lebih parah bagi PKI. Jalan itu tidak ditempuh secara kebetulan saja. Sikap kekiri-kiran Bapak Marhaenisme yang diwariskan kepada PNI inilah yang hampir menyeret PNI dan negara ke dalam cengkeraman komunis (From Madiun, 1967:29).
54 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: ... Maka prinsip demokrasi menuntut agar partai-partai yang anti-demokratis dilarang baik yang berhaluan kanan maupun kiri. Dalam demokrasi memang terdapat persaingan antara partai-partai politik. Tapi persaingan itu harus berdasarkan pada hasrat serta keyakinan untuk membangun Negara
155
The text further emphasises Sukarno’s close association with the ‘left’. It states that on the 9th April 1957 when Sukarno announced his new cabinet (which no longer relied on a majority from the DPR, the people’s representative council), five of his 25 cabinet ministers were leftists – Sudibyo (Information), Sarjowo (Agriculture),
Chaerul Saleh (Veteran) and Hanafi (Development) (From Madiun, 1967:54).55 The text goes on to state that in the years leading up 1965 Crocodile Hole tragedy, it became clearer and clearer that Sukarno’s politics were leaning too far to the left.
The text presents the communists as being in full support of Sukarno’s
Nasakom policy; the communists even labelled those who were opposed to Sukarno’s
Nasakom as sufferers from ‘communist-phobia’. Due to the close relationship between the communists and Sukarno, the communists were then accused of being
Sukarno sycophants:
Whoever doubted the effectiveness of Nasakom was considered by the Sukarno sycophants as suffering from communist-phobia and obstinate. People like this had to be purged, because they hindered the revolution (From Madiun, 1967:68).56
In discussing Nasakom, the text builds up a picture of the left – both Sukarno and the PKI – as being extremists who opposed moderation and who were intolerant of opposition.
dan bukan untuk mencari menang serta keuntungan sendiri. Karena partai-partai melalaikan prinsip itu, maka PKI mendapat angin baik (From Madiun, 1967:36).
55 It must be noted, however, that there is no evidence to confirm that those five cabinet members mentioned in the From Madiun text were actually members of the PKI.
56 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Siapa yang meragukan keunggulan Naskom dianggap oleh penjilat-penjilat Sukarno menderita penyakit komunisto-phobi dan kepala batu. Orang-orang seperti itulah yang harus diretool, karena mereka menghambat Revolusi (From Madiun, 1967:68).
156 Later, the text uses the word ‘left’ to describe teachers, particularly those associated with the Teachers’ Union of the Indonesian Republic (PGRI). The text describes how the leftist groups within the PGRI separated themselves and established a rival organisation called the Indonesian Teachers’ Association unaffiliated. Significantly the From Madiun text contends that this leftist teachers’ group was distinguished by its hostility to religion; it claims that the communists and a number of people from Murba, specifically Minister Priyono intended to push forward the idea of the High Principle (Panca Tinggi) and the Principle of Love
(Panca Cinta) as the ‘moral substance’ of the Panca Wardhana. In essence, the Panca
Wardhana sidelined the first principle of Pancasila, Ketuhanan Yang Mahaesa, Belief in One and Only God. In other words, From Madiun is suggesting that the leftist teachers were trying to undermine the theistic basis of Pancasila and to replace it with a more general concept, which the text implies, was atheistic. The text states that the full extent of PKI activities amongst teachers became clear after 1965-66 when approximately twenty five thousand teachers were sacked and about ten thousand killed as a result of their association with the PKI (From Madiun, 1967:84). This is one of the few cases where From Madiun explicitly refers to the killings of leftists in the aftermath of the 1965 coup attempt.
The text also presents the Air Force as having leaned heavily to the left in the
1950s and early 1960s. It asserts that many high-ranking Air Force officers were involved in the 1965 coup:
The Air Force leaned heavily to the left. Suryadarma’s replacement, Laksamana Madya Omar Dani, greatly assisted the G30S, in the form of weapons, vehicles, housing, trained soldiers and daily orders that supported the movement... Indeed, many high ranking
157 Air Force officers were involved in the bloody adventures of G30S (From Madiun, 1967:96).57
Overall, the text presents the leftists as having had a widespread presence in
Indonesian institutions in the years before 1965. Leftists are one of the many types of fear-inspiring secular beings that the text constructs – atheists, cunning operators, propagandist and rebels – all of whom are held to be engaged in the destabilisation of the Indonesian state and in a quest to seize secular power and to secularise Indonesia.
It must be noted that aside from its political significance, ‘left’, or ‘kiri’, also has strong cultural and religious meaning in Indonesia. There are strong negative associations with the things that are associated with the left. Culturally, it is well known, that it is a form of Indonesian politeness that people are told to always use their right hand in giving and receiving things. The left hand is only used in wiping oneself after going to the toilet. In the 1970s I often witnessed left-handed pupils in my home village primary school violently forced by teachers to use only their right hands for writing. Being left-handed was almost like a curse; it was as if the teachers were trying to remove the curse of being left-handed for the benefit of the students themselves and the community. The left hand was perceived to be evil, and evil had to be banished from society. Religiously, particularly in the case of Christianity, the word ‘left’ also implies evil that is to be destroyed. The Bible uses the dichotomy of
‘left’ and ‘right’ with reference to the Last Judgment at the end of the world
(Matthew 25:1-46); the left hand is where the goats are, and the sheep are at the right
57 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: ... AURI sangat condong ke kiri. Pengganti Suryadarma, Laksamana Madya Omar Dani, sangat memberi bantuan pada G30S, berupa senjata, kendaraan, perumahan, perwira-perwira pelatih dan perintah harian yang mendukung gerakan itu... Memang, banyak perwira-perwira tinggi AURI tersangkut dalam petualangan berdarah G30S (From Madiun, 1967:96).
158 hand. The goats are the bad ones who are to be punished; the sheep are the good ones who will receive heavenly rewards.
Against this background, the text’s association of communism and the communists with the word ‘kiri’ (left, leftist/s) leads to the idea that communism is an evil ideology that should be eliminated, and the communists should be punished, like the goats on the left hand. Although the leftists are objects of secular fear, it is perhaps these cultural and religious associations with the category of ‘kiri’, or ‘left’, that make leftists beings that are the object of fear. The next label carrying strong cultural resonances that the text uses to designate the Indonesian communists is ‘red’, or ‘merah’. I shall discuss this in the next section.
The communists as reds
‘Merah’, or red, is one of the terms that From Madiun uses to label the Indonesian communists that has the most complex fear-inspiring resonances for me as a reader.
In Indonesia, the colour red officially signifies ‘bravery’; it is one of the two component colours of the Indonesian flag, the other being white, which refers to purity and sanctity. Bravery is a positive quality, but at the same time being brave can be risky and dangerous. However, in From Madiun, ‘merah’ signifiies – for me at least – a dark and destructive force simply because of its connection with the
Indonesian Communist Party.
More significantly, in my local belief system the colour red is often associated with those who practise ‘black magic’, those who have the power to cause accidents, illness and even death. I have at times been warned that certain people in my village are dangerous because it is assumed that they practise black magic. These black magicians are often described in my local language as ‘uwur mera’, literally ‘red
159 bottom’. The close connection between the colour and word ‘red’ and black magic will be dealt with in depth later on in this thesis in the chapter on supernatural fear, where it is a core idea.
To return to the text, From Madiun uses the word ‘merah’ in a number of contexts to refer to the PKI and the communists. Early on it is used to designate the communist troops, who are referred to as ‘pasukan merah’, or the red forces. The red forces are described as aggressive, but their aggression results in counter action from the non-communist forces. The key part of this portrayal of the red forces relates to the events of Madiun in 1948:
...Without further thought, the lives of these high ranking officials were cruelly ended. This happened in the month of November in 1948 at Ngawi, a teak forest area, after the red forces were hit all over and now they carried out ambushes and terror (From Madiun, 1967:8).58
Straight after this passage the text presents the ‘red army’ as rebellious. They are detained because of their rebellious acts and are subsequently executed by a firing squad:
At the end of November (1948) 1500 red army members had been detained. And coinciding with the Second Dutch Aggression in the village of Ngalihan, in the Regency of Karang Anjar Solo, Amir59 along with his red gang leaders Suripno, Jokosujono, Maruto Darusman, Haryono and their other friends, suffered the death penalty in front of a firing squad (From Madiun, 1967:8).60
58 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: ...Tanpa pikir panjang lagi, pembesar-pembesar dihabisi nyawanya dengan bengis. Ini terjadi pada bulan Nopember tahun 1948 di Ngawi, daerah hutan jati, setelah pasukan merah terpukul di mana- mana dan kini mereka melakukan penghadangan-penghadangan serta teror (From Madiun, 1967:8).
59 This is the From Madiun text’s account of the execution of former PM Amir Syarifuddin mentioned earlier in the chapter.
60 The quotation in original Indonesian is: ...Pada akhir bulan Nopember (1948) sudah ditawan 1500 tentara merah. Dan bertepatan dengan agressi Belanda ke-II di desa Ngalihan, Kabupaten Karang Anjar Solo, Amir bersama dengan pentolan-pentolan merah Suripno, Jokosujono, Maruto Darusman, Haryono serta kawan-kawan lainnya menjalani hukuman mati di depan regu penembak (From Madiun, 1967:8).
160
Later on page 21 the communists are presented as attempting to establish a National
Front government, which is described as being the same as a ‘red government’. This red government is presented as frightening. In order to inject more fear into the spectre of a red government the text tries to convince its readers that it is not a matter of if but when such a government will be established; it is a dangerous future prospect:
...But they admitted that their aim was to establish a National Front government, which, it should be noted, was the same as a red government. So, whether today or tomorrow or the next day, the PKI will surely clutch at the government, although under the pretext of “correcting” the national revolution (From Madiun, 1967:21).61
To add even more ‘flavour’ to the fear of ‘reds’, the text specifically mentions the
1964 experience of a Catholic priest, Father Peter Wang, in the city of Malang in
East Java. The text states that the priest was slandered by some communist organisations as being an agent of the Chinese Nationalists, the Kuomintang:
In the month of May 1964, in Malang, the PKI mass organisations slandered Peter Wang as an agent of Kuo Min Tang. Because, Peter Wang expelled one of his students who like to wag and by coincidence, this student was a member of IPPI. On the 13th of June 1965, 3000 red youths and farmers attacked the Islamic Students Mental Training Course (PII) at Kanigoro, East Jawa, and trod on the Al Quran and destroyed the caderisation materials (From Madiun, 1967:83).62
61 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: ... Tetapi mereka mengakui bahwa tujuan mereka hendak mendirikan pemerintah Front Nasional, yang notabene sama dengan pemerintah merah. Jadi, entah sekarang atau besok atau lusa PKI pasti akan merebut pemerintahan, meskipun dengan dalih hendak “mengoreksi” revolusi nasional (From Madiun, 1967:21).
62 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: Pada bulan Mei 1964, di Malang, ormas-ormas PKI memfitnah Pater Wang sebagai agen Kuo Min Tang. Sebab, Pater Wang mengeluarkan seorang muridnya yang suka bolos dan kebetulan anak itu anggota IPPI. Pada tanggal 13 Juni 1965, 3000 pemuda dan petani merah menyerbu tempat Kursus Mental Training Pelajar Islam Indonesia (PII) di Kanigoro, Jawa Timur, dan menginjak-injak Al Quran serta merampas bahan-bahan kaderisasi (From Madiun, 1967:83).
161 In summary, the association of the PKI with the colour ‘red’ in the text combines the idea of bravery with that of danger and fear. From Madiun presents the
‘reds’ as frightening beings because of the social and political actions and movements in the pursuit of secular power. However, because of the cultural associations of the word ‘merah’ for me as a reader, the fear and danger that the communists represent has supernatural overtones. In the next section, I will consider this implicit supernatural dimension further by discussing the connection of the PKI with the idea of demonic beings, reflected in the word ‘setan’. For me, this conjures up the broad sense of the communists as evil beings. This partly results from my mental association of the text with statements of Pater Beek – the probable author of the text
– that relate to various competitors of the Catholic church being referred to as ‘setan’.
The communists as demons
The word ‘setan’, or demon, with its strong supernatural overtones, is the least secular of the words that I class as being associated with the portrayal of communists as secular beings in From Madiun. As I have noted above, it is the associations of this word for me, rather than how it is literally used in the text, that leads me to see it as part of the structure of secular fear; this fear overlaps with my sense of religious and supernatural fear, and I will discuss these things in more depth in the following chapters. As with the ideas of ‘left’, ‘red’ and ‘demon’, which a secular reader with a different cultural context might see as only a metaphor, they have strong cultural meanings for me, and they inspire fear.
‘Setan’ appears in three different places in the From Madiun text. Significantly the text does not actually present the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as a satanic or demonic party, but rather as a party that actually had the power to expel the
162 demons. Nevertheless, in my own Lamaholot cultural context, those who have the ability to expel the demons must also have the same kind of supernatural power as demons, and may even have this power to a greater degree than the demons themselves. My cultural logic makes me think that if they can expel demons the communists must be ‘demons’, or ‘setan’, and indeed the ‘setan besar’, or the
‘greater demons’, in the terminology of Pater Beek.
The first quote in From Madiun in which the word ‘setan’ appears refers to the communists’ own program to expel the ‘seven village demons’, a programme of radical agrarian reform:
In February 1964, several communist organisations under Aidit’s leadership organised visits to villages to study the situation in the regions. With the pretext of fighting for farmers’ rights, especially farmworkers, with the plan to break through the standstill in the implementation of the Agrarian Act and the Profit Sharing Act of 1960, and helping to prepare for land reform and expelling the “seven village demons”, so from 1964 onwards, the communists, the BTI in particular, succeeded in creating disturbances in the area of agriculture (From Madiun, 1967:79).63
The communist campaign to expel the ‘seven village demons’ is presented as
‘creating disturbances in the area of agriculture’. Although the communists are supposedly ‘expellers of demons’ they actually create disorder and a frightening situation through their radicalism.
The second mention in From Madiun of ‘demons’ in connection with the communists relates to events on the 29th September 1965, the day before the
63 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Pada bulan Pebruari 1964, beberapa organisasi komunis di bawah pimpinan Aidit mengadakan turba ke desa-desa untuk mempelajari situasi di daerah. Dengan dalih memperjuangkan kepentingan kaum petani, terutama buruh-tani, dalam rangka mendobrak kemacetan pelaksanaan Undang-Undang Pokok Agraria dan Undang-Undang Pokok Bagi Hasil tahun 1960, menolong mempersiapkan landreform dan mengusir “tujuh setan desa”, maka sejak tahun 1964, komunis, khususnya BTI berhasil menimbulkan huru-hara dalam bidang pertanian (From Madiun, 1967:79).
163 occurrence of the attempted coup of 30th September. According to the text, the PKI leader Anwar Sanusi asserted that there were a number of ‘demons’ threatening the safety of the motherland, or ‘Ibu Pertiwi’, as well as the baby, which would be born of her. Here the text cites the Indonesian communists’ depiction of themselves as the saviour of the heavily pregnant ‘Ibu Pertiwi’, and her baby yet to be born:
On the 29th of September 1965, a day before the coup occurred, Anwar Sanusi announced before the Sukarelawan Bantuan Tempur BNI: we are now in the situation where Motherland {Indonesia} is heavily pregnant. The Midwife is already prepared with all the equipment required to ensure a safe birth for the long-awaited baby. The baby to be born from Motherland’s womb is a political force which has already been determined in Manipol, that is, the power of mutual cooperation based on Nasakom. The Midwife is the Manipolist people who are increasingly incessant in carrying out revolutionary-offensives in all areas. The volunteer movement is an important tool in the hand of the Midwife...! Anwar Sanusi said that there are a number of demons that have threatened the safety of Motherland and the baby which will be born of her. Therefore, for the sake of the safety of her baby, the Midwife must first expel those demons... (From Madiun, 1967:92-93).64
Again the text reproduces the communists’ own representation of themselves as expellers of demons; the Midwife must keep the mother and her unborn baby safe from demonic attack. This, the text suggests, is the motive for the communists in launching the coup in 1965. In claiming to expel demons, the communists themselves appear as a demon-like force; as I have noted above,
64 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Pada tanggal 29 September 1965, sehari sebelum terjadi kudeta, Anwar Sanusi mengatakan di hadapan Sukarelawan Bantuan Tempur BNI: ... kita sekarang berada dalam situasi Ibu Pertiwi sedang dalam hamil tua. Sang Paraji, sang bidan, sudah siap dengan segala alat-alat yang diperlukan untuk menyelamatkan kelahiran sang bayi yang sudah lama dinanti-nanti. Sang bayi yang akan dilahirkan dari kandungan Ibu Pertiwi itu adalah sesuatu kekuasaan politik yang sudah ditentukan dalam Manipol yaitu kekuasaan gotong-royong yang berporoskan Nasakom. Sang Paraji, sang bidan, adalah massa Rakyat Manipolis yang makin gencar melaksanakan offensive-revolusioner di segala bidang. Gerakan sukarelawan adalah salah satu alat yang penting di tangan sang bidan itu...! Dikatakan oleh Anwar Sanusi, bahwa ada segelintir setan yang mengancam keselamatan Ibu Pertiwi dan sang bayi yang akan dilahirkannya. Maka demi keselamatan sang bayi yang akan dilahirkannya, lebih dahulu haruslah sang bidan mengusir setan-setan itu... (From Madiun, 1967:92-93).
164 for me, someone who can expel demons has some connection with the demonic world.
The last quote in which the word ‘setan’ is used in From Madiun relates to imperialism and imperialists. The text presents the communists’ own rhetoric about the possibility of expelling the ‘demon of imperialism’ from Indonesia, as the
Chinese workers’ and farmers’ militia did when they expelled the demon of imperialism from China. Here the imperialists are cast as demons, while the communists are again presented as exorcists:
In April 1965, in the celebrations surrounding the decennial Africa- Asia Conference in Bandung, Zhou Enlai repeated his proposal to organise compulsory military training for all Indonesians to President Sukarno himself. According to Mr. Zhou, in the People’s Republic of China, workers’ and farmers’ militia gained a shining outcome when they expelled the “demon of imperialism”. Because the militia was intended to be its own armed force, therefore it was called the Fifth Force. When Sukarno suggested the formation of a Fifth Force to the four Armed Forces commanders, they all rejected it, except for Omar Dani. They stressed that to arm the masses of famers and workers could be diverted towards a second Madiun (From Madiun, 1967:98-99).65
In summary, references to the word ‘setan’ in the From Madiun text are almost all presented as citations from communist rhetoric; the demonic beings are the opponents of the communist forces such as imperialism and imperialists. The text alludes indirectly to Indonesian Catholicism’s struggle against the negative association of the Church with western (Dutch) colonialism and imperialism in
65 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: Pada bulan April 1965, dalam pesta pora Dasawarsa Konperensi Afrika-Asia di Bandung, Chou Enlai mengulangi anjurannya untuk mengadakan wajib latih militer bagi semua rakyat kepada Presiden Sukarno sendiri. Menurut Tuan Chou, di RRT milisia buruh dan tani memperoleh hasil yang gemilang waktu mengusir “setan imperialisme”. Oleh karena milisia itu dimaksudkan sebagai angkatan tersendiri, maka disebut Angkatan ke-V. Ketika Sukarno mengusulkan pembentukan Angkatan ke-V itu pada empat panglima Angkatan, mereka semua menolak, kecuali Omar Dani. Mereka menekankan, bahwa mempersenjatai massa buruh dan tani dapat diselewengkan menuju peristiwa Madiun II (From Madiun, 1967:98-99).
165 radical nationalist rhetoric. One can imagine how frightened the Catholics were in the era before 1965, when they were politically being labelled by the communists as demons.
Fear and secular time
Having discussed the relationship between fear and secular beings, I now turn to the relationship between fear and secular time in the text. The fear of communists that is summoned by From Madiun primarily involves the past; the text transports the reader back into this past, a secular past that involves the events that led up to the coup of
1965. The text provides a narrative of secular events in the past, and the fear that the text inspires involves a reader imagining what it was like to live in those frightening times. The first four labels that I see the text as using to create an image of communists as frightening secular beings – atheists, cunning operators, propagandists and rebels – can be thought of as connected with a secular sense of time; the text gives a narrative of how communist atheism, communist cunning, communist propaganda and communist rebellion were linked to specific secular events and actions in the years between the 1940s and 1965. The fear associated with these events is firmly connected with the secular historical past. With the last three labels – leftists, red and demons – the relationship between the sense of division between past, present and future is less clear-cut. For a reader such as myself, the labels leftist, red and demon do not simply involve the past and the secular world, but the present and the future and the religious and supernatural worlds. For me, as the following chapters will discuss, these labels not only maintain the latent fear of communists
(which I experience when reading the text and imagining myself living in the
166 frightening world of the years before 1965), they also trigger new fears of Muslims and of ghosts, which will be discussed in the next two chapters of the thesis.
We have seen in the theoretical chapter of this thesis that for Heidegger, fear is always caused by something which is at hand, or by something which is objectively present. Like Heidegger, Kierkegaard regards fear as being the product of an actual threat that is present before someone. We can argue that if one feels afraid of the past it is because that past is somehow present. At the secular level, the fear I feel when reading From Madiun results from imagining myself as if I was present in the past, and I suggest that this is what the authors of the text intended. However, when reading what is at the explicit level a secular narrative about the past, I experience two other types of time and two other types of fear: fear of the future (religious fear) and fear of the present (supernatural fear). For a Catholic such as myself, there is a belief that failure to fear God – a failure, which characterises the supposedly atheistic communists – will have a consequence in future, in the afterlife. For a Lamaholot person such as myself, the present is not simply a secular reality filled with secular beings and secular dangers, but is also a supernatural reality filled with supernatural beings and supernatural dangers. For me, the From Madiun’s narrative of the events that occurred prior to the 1965 coup is thus not simply about secular fears and secular time, but involves other types of fear and other forms of time.
Fear and secular rivalry
In the section on fear of secular beings reference was made to the power of the communists as a secular and secularising force; one which challenged the power of the religious communities in Indonesia between the 1940s and the early 1960s. In this section, I discuss how From Madiun projects fear of the communists as a secular rival
167 to the Catholic Church, while also discussing the broader Catholic fear of communism as a rival to the Church in the domain of secular life – in the sphere of politics and in society.
In the decades after Indonesian independence, the communists were widely regarded by the religious communities, including the Catholic Church, as representing a secular ‘rival’ to religion in general. Catholics saw this rivalry as being particularly strong; the communists offered a vision of the world that rivalled and challenged the vision put forward by the Church. Catholic fear of the communists was a result of the fact that the communists competed with the Church over similar territory, the areas extending from sexuality to politics. To see how this rivalry operates, we can examine the difference between Catholic and communist views of sex. According to Catholic teaching, sex is restricted to committed partners by marriage. In theory, the communists would claim that one is free to have sex with anyone she or he likes even if they are unmarried. Another example of this rivalry is that the communist teaching suggested that one should not be afraid of God. For the communists, there is no such thing as a life after death, so one should concentrate on enjoying life on earth to the full. Another dimension is intellectual rivalry: in secularism, intellectual debates and arguments are generally thought to be important and are encouraged, while Indonesian Catholics often find this approach threatening.
It is sometimes argued that Catholic dogmatism reflects a fear of the Enlightenment to which critical thought and critical ideas as well as freedom of expression are essential. The critical attitude of communists towards established ideas is often seen as an expression of the freedom of thought that is held to characterise the
Enlightenment. A final dimension of Catholic rivalry with the communists was
168 institutional or organisational rivalry. In the years leading up to 1965, the Indonesian communists were renowned for being an ‘organised force’; their organisational skills were a threat to Catholicism as an institution.
Because Catholic fear of communists was generally concerned with the worldly domain, it was not a spiritual-religious fear. Instead it was fear of beings that sought to create a world in which there were only secular realities. As secular beings, the communists emphasised the importance of creating a world without fear of religious or supernatural punishment for transgressions. In such a world there would be freedom; there would be no restrictions at all in areas such as sexual expression and encounters. This of course is opposed by Catholicism and by Islam as well.
(Differences between Catholicism and Islam on sexual matters will be discussed in the chapter on religious fear). Additionally, the Catholic fear of communists as secular rivals is connected with secularist attitudes towards the power of death. For the secularists (communists), death is the end of one’s life on earth, so they do not have to deal with the burden of hope for another life after death. This communist- secularist lifestyle free of fear of the life after death is a source of temptation for
Catholics. Indonesian Catholics were rather frightened of falling into such a temptation which is clearly against Catholic teaching.
One of the key concerns of the Catholic propaganda circulating in the years before 1965 was to create fear about the likelihood of Indonesia ever becoming a communist state, because it would tempt Catholics to follow this rival secular lifestyle. It was feared that this communist temptation to forsake a Catholic life for a secular one would be even greater if Indonesia became a communist state. In this regard, I should point out that there are strong grounds for arguing that in the local
169 context of Lembata, secular fear of communism was something that had to be cultivated from sources outside of local experience. There is little evidence that the
Lembata locals understood what communism or the PKI really stood for. The
Catholic Party was the only political party that the local Catholics knew of, due to its association with certain symbols such as the rosary beads, and with certain figures in the Catholic hierarchy such as bishops and priests. For this reason I would argue that fear of communism did not have a true local basis. Instead, this fear was injected into the local communities as part of a national and global campaign against global communism.
From Madiun, I argue, both reflects these fears of the communists as a secular rival and intersects with them, triggering these fears in the mind of the reader. Much of what the text narrates about the communists relates to its power as a secular organisation; the text presents the rapid development of the PKI, especially after the
Madiun incident in 1948, as something deeply frightening. In terms of membership,
From Madiun states that in September 1950 there were about 100,000 members of the PKI. In January 1952, after the cleaning-up attempts in August 1951, the total number was reduced to only 7,910 members. Within only about five months the number climbed again to reach 100,000 by May 1952. In March 1954, the text recounts, there were 165,000 members, and in September 1955, when the first public election was held, the PKI received a total of 6,100,000 votes. In 1957, as evidenced in the election of regional PKI representatives, the number increased to 8,000,000.
However, on the occasion of the PKI’s 45th birthday in 1965 it was estimated the PKI membership was down to 3,000,000 (From Madiun, 1967:37).66
66 The figure provided by the From Madiun text is contestable. It is important not to equate people who vote for a party in an election with members. The 6,000,000 and 8,000,000 people who voted the
170 From Madiun makes it clear that the Catholics were frightened by the fact that the PKI was becoming very influential in the 1950s and 1960s as reflected in the increase of its membership. Moreover, the text suggests that the methods used by the
PKI in increasing their membership were also frightening to the Catholic Church, not because they were violent in nature, but because it was systematic and powerful, attesting to the secular strength of the communist movement and its appeal. The text presents the attempts of the PKI leadership to promote the party through education, the production of pamphlets, magazines and newspapers (echoing my discussion of the communists as propagandists in the section on fear and secular beings):
The PKI leadership tried to build the quality of the party and systematically intensified the education of its members. To fulfil this need, aside from pamphlets, translations, magazines and newspapers, which had increasingly large quotas, staged education for cadres was also established in 1952 (From Madiun, 1967:37- 38).67
The powers of the communists as secular organisers are displayed in the text’s portrayal of how, in a short period of time, the new and young PKI leadership succeeded in articulating a clear programme which brought results in the subsequent years for the Party, which had been in disarray as a result of the Madiun affair of
1948. The text suggests that prior to the coup in September 1965, there apparently were no internal conflicts within the PKI that questioned the credibility of Aidit’s leadership. In this period the PKI became a party for the masses, known for its
PKI in 1955 and 1957 were a much greater number than the party and the PKI’s-affiliated organisations (ormas) membership. The membership of the PKI in 1965 was generally thought to be considerably higher than any other party.
67 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Pimpinan PKI berusaha membangun mutu partai massal dan mengintensifkan pendidikan anggota- anggotanya secara sistematis. Untuk kebutuhan ini selain pamphlet-pamflet, terjemahan, majalah- majalah dan surat kabar yang jatahnya kian tambah besar, pendidikan bertahap bagi kader-kader pun didirikan sejak tahun 1952 (From Madiun, 1967:37-38).
171 discipline and the quality of its indoctrination, successfully creating quite a number of umbrella organisations; through the stage of working together with the ‘national bourgeoisie’ (to use the communists’ own terminology) the PKI attained a dominant position in the years from 1963 to 1965. The text warns that even though the Party had been banned since March 1966, its ideas and practices still continued to be used
(From Madiun, 1967:35-36). From Madiun’s emphasis on the importance of discipline, indoctrination, and the formation of umbrella organisations that were still being applied by the PKI even after the banning of the PKI in 1966 can be seen as a way in which the text perpetuates the sense of fear and anxiety about the secular power of the communist movement, which had seriously challenged the Catholic
Church prior to 1965 and continued to have an effect at the time of writing.
Apart from the PKI’s strengths and progress, the text suggests, the faults of the anti-PKI groups during the period of 1950-1952 were many: it argues that although it had been clear since Madiun that the PKI always prioritised communist interests rather than national interests, the PKI had not been disbanded. The text goes on to tell its readers that, in democracy, parties or groups that do not accept the democratic system or support the democracy only for their own selfish agenda, should not be given a place in the cabinet. The text presents the communists as being dogmatic and authoritarian in what they taught (From Madiun, 1967:36).
Concerning education, the text states that the PKI systematically trained its leadership cadres through schools and universities, courses, seminars, conferences, and study clubs. The PKI often used publications to explain its key concepts to ensure that its members understood what the PKI was after politically and ideologically:
Only after the Three Year Plan, that is since August 1956, the education of the cadres advanced smoothly. The number of quality
172 leadership candidates grew thanks to the schools, courses, seminars, conferences, study clubs, “going to the grassroots” movements and educational work carried out by the cadre candidates amongst the ordinary members. Through publications, which increased in number, the leadership tried to plant its conceptions in its cadres. Since 1958 the Peoples University (Unra) opened courses in Jakarta, Yogyakarta and after 1963, 17 other cities had those courses. Although it met many obstacles, the Peoples University greatly helped the Party in educating its members and sympathisers to deepen Marxism, translation and journalistic techniques (From Madiun, 1967:38).68
The text goes on to say that unlike the PKI the other parties at the time ignored the importance of the education of cadres; they were more interested in politics. The
PKI had meanwhile gained mass support and had also built a core body of cadres consisting of thousands of people, and that this organizational power had survived until the time of writing in 1967, even after the killings of 1965-66. The remaining communists and their sympathisers, according to the text, were operating underground:
At the same time as other parties were busy fighting over seats in parliament until they ignored the education of cadres, the PKI had already gained mass support and also built a core body or cadres consisting of thousands of people who had formerly been uneducated. How far or how many cadres became victims of the cleansing actions of 1965-1966 cannot yet be told with any certainty. What is clear is that up until now (1967) they still continue to spread their network of party cells underground (From Madiun, 1967:39).69
68 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: Baru sesudah Rencana Tiga Tahun, yakni sejak Agustus 1956, pendidikan kader berjalan dengan teratur. Jumlah calon-calon pemimpin yang bermutu bertambah banyak berkat sekolah-sekolah, kursus, seminar, konperensi, studi-club, gerakan turba dan karya-karya pendidikan yang dilaksanakan para calon kader di antara anggota-anggota biasa. Melalui publikasi-publikasi yang terus bertambah, pimpinan berusaha menanam konsepsinya dalam kader-kader. Sejak tahun 1958 Universitas Rakyat (Unra) membuka kursus-kursus di Jakarta, Yogyakarta dan sesudah tahun 1963, 17 kota lain memiliki kursus-kursus tersebut. Meskipun menemui banyak rintangan, Universitas Rakyat ini sangat membantu Partai dengan mendidik anggota dan simpatisannya untuk memperdalam Marxisme, tehnik menterjemahkan dan jurnalistik (From Madiun, 1967:38).
69 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Pada saat partai-partai lain sibuk berebutan kursi pemerintahan hingga mengabaikan pendidikan kader, PKI sudah merenggut dukungan massa dan sekaligus membangun suatu badan inti kader yang terdiri
173
The text suggests that part of the great organisational power that was manifested in the years up to 1965 and which was still in effect after the killings lay in the tactical skills of its leadership. The text suggests that the PKI is a powerful secular rival to the Church; one whose frightening organizational capacities were such that it could maintain itself even after it had lost so much of its membership.
The core of the PKI’s success in building up its organizational strength in the
1950s and 1960s came from emphasising the party’s nationalist character, which had been done by the leadership of D.N. Aidit. It suggests that to Aidit, this was the main way to increase the PKI’s popularity amongst the people that would be needed in its future contest for power:
It has been mentioned that Aidit worked hard to give a new, acceptable face with a nationalist character to the PKI. This was the one and only way to turn the PKI into a mass party, by which it could grab power. But having millions of members did not yet mean it held a strong share in achieving its aspirations. Because of this, a network of mass organisations was established, which were directly lead by party cadres. This effort resulted in millions of PKI sympathisers (From Madiun, 1967:40).70
As has been noted already above, the text stresses that in order to increase its chances of gaining power the PKI emphasised the role and the importance of a solid structure of mass organisations (ormas), emphasising its status as a major rival to the
Church and other non-communist organisations in Indonesia. The text claims that
dari ribuan orang yang dulu tak berpendidikan. Sampai ke mana atau seberapa besar kader-kader menjadi korban dalam aksi-aksi pembersihan tahun 1965-1966 belum dapat dikatakan dengan pasti. Yang jelas sampai sekarang (1967) mereka terus memasang jaringan sel-sel partai di bawah tanah (From Madiun, 1967:39).
70 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: Sudah dikatakan, bahwa Aidit berusaha keras memberi kepada PKI wajah baru yang dapat diterima dan berciri nasional. Inilah satu-satunya jalan untuk menjadikan PKI suatu partai massa, dengan mana dapat merebut kekuasaan. Tetapi memiliki jutaan anggota belumlah merupakan saham kuat untuk mencapai cita-cita itu. Karenanya didirikan suatu jaringan organisasi massa, yang langsung dipimpin kader-kader partai. Usaha ini menghasilkan jutaan simpatisan PKI (From Madiun, 1967:40).
174 prior to 1965 the role of the PKI-affiliated organisations (ormas) was not given sufficient attention by non-communist sections of Indonesian society. They were simply regarded as ‘social groups’ that struggled for the interest of certain segments in the community. The PKI, by contrast, knew the importance of mass organisations, that they could be used as party promotion tools, particularly to the grassroots (From
Madiun, 1967:40). From Madiun states that the social actions of these PKI backed organizations were, “benar-benar menakutkan lawan”, or very frightening for their opponents, (From Madiun, 1967:40).
The text presents the All-Indonesia Trade Union Federation (SOBSI: Sentral
Organisasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia) as the most important organisation (From
Madiun, 1967:41). SOBSI was established in 1946 as a revolutionary trade union under the leadership of the communists and the non-communist left, especially the
Indonesian Socialist Party (PSI). According to the text, many SOBSI members were involved in the events of Madiun in 1948, but the government did not ban it. As a result, many non-communists left the trade union and the communist elements became the dominant force. The text notes that in 1949/1950 there were 25 trade unions under SOBSI, and its membership reached 2.5 million people. In 1952 the membership increased to a total of 3.27 million (From Madiun, 1967:41). With reference to the PKI organisations in the agricultural and transmigration sectors, the text presents the Indonesian Peasants’ Front (BTI) as the most important, and states that the BTI often acted in defence of the interests of poor farmers against corrupt officials and plantation owners (From Madiun, 1967:43). The PKI still had other organisations that sheltered under it. For example, the Institute for People’s Culture
(Lekra), the People’s Youth and the Indonesian Womens Movement. Concerning
175 Lekra, the text highlights its very intensive activities in the fields of organisation and education that attracted a very large mass of sympathisers. Moreover, the communist cadres became more disciplined. The text states,
By very intensive activities in the fields of organisation and education, by using full timers, the press and agitation in all fields, the PKI succeeded in attracting a very large mass of sympathisers. From year to year the mass that was influenced by the PKI increased in number and communist cadres were increasingly disciplined. The tactics employed were increasingly sharp and aggressive. It was time that severely trained and enlarged the PKI. However, is it true that millions of members were true communists or was it only because of dissatisfaction with life that they tried to find advantage for themselves? Although the PKI was finally destroyed, it does not mean that the methods for building the party were wrong (From Madiun, 1967:44).71
The text goes on to discuss how the PKI used the economic crisis in Indonesia since the West Irian Freedom Liberation campaign to attack the government. The PKI also demanded that it be included in the parliament on the pretext of improving the situation in West Papua (From Madiun, 1967:65-66). With regard to the PKI’s criticism of the government, the text states that the communists became even more explicit in criticising purported corrupt practices, mismanagement, and the ‘hidden cronies amongst the imperialists’. It observes that sometimes the communists quoted
Sukarno’s long speeches to attack their opponents. The text states that the PKI simply used Guided Democracy (1959-65) as a means to attain power without genuinely
71 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Dengan kegiatan-kegiatan yang sangat intensif dalam bidang organisasi serta pendidikan, dengan menggunakan fulltimer, pers dan agitasi dalam segala bidang, PKI berhasil menarik massa simpatisan yang sangat besar. Dari tahun ke tahun massa yang dipengaruhi PKI bertambah banyak dan para kader komunis semakin terlatih. Taktik yang digunakan semakin runcing dan agresif. Waktulah yang menempa dan membesarkan PKI. Akan tetapi, benarkah jutaan anggotanya itu komunis sejati atau hanya karena rasa tidak puas terhadap kehidupan yang menyebabkan mereka mencari keuntungan bagi dirinya sendiri? Meskipun PKI akhirnya hancur, namun tidak berarti bahwa metode untuk membangun partainya itu salah (From Madiun, 1967:44).
176 supporting the political system that was introduced by Sukarno (From Madiun,
1967:65).
The text then reiterates its earlier points about the determination of the PKI to remain afloat even after it was officially banned in 1966:
The remnants of the PKI did not remain idle, after their organisations were disbanded. They formed the shadow PKI Special Committee, a seven- layered network of cells as well as shadow Regional Committees, spread brochures and official news the People’s Forum, Indonesian Youth Fire, and set forces within society against one another with false issues. In Central Java, the PKI used sorcery to spread its influence (From Madiun, 1967:39, footnote 3).72
On the one hand, this shows the Church’s perception of how determined and committed the PKI were. It also shows how the danger of the Church’s secular rivals, the communists, did not end with the killings in 1965-66 and the banning of the PKI in 1966. The underlying fear of communists as frightening secular beings and threatening secular rivals clearly remained alive in the years after 1965-66. It is also important to note that this is one of the few cases where the text makes an explicit connection between the PKI and sorcery. In so doing it brings up the connection between the communists as secular rivals to the Catholic Church and the religious and supernatural rivalries that will be discussed in the following chapters. We can suggest that this shows that the text hints at deeper levels of fear associated with communism than those that relate to the secular domain.
72 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Sisa-sisa PKI tidak tinggal diam, setelah organisasi-organisasi mereka dibubarkan. Mereka membentuk CC PKI bayangan, jaringan sel-sel sampai tujuh lapis serta Comite-Comite Daerah bayangan, menyebarkan brosur-brosur dan berita-berita resmi (Mimbar Rakyat, Api Pemuda Indonesia) dan mengadu-domba kekuatan-kekuatan dalam masyarakat dengan issue-issue palsu. Di Jawa Tengah PKI mempergunakan ilmu klenik untuk menyebarkan pengaruhnya (mBah Suro, Heru Cokro) (From Madiun, 1967:39, footnote 3).
177 Concluding Notes
In this chapter, I have attempted to analyse the fear connected with From Madiun’s narrative of the secular-communist past using the structure of ‘being-time-rivalry’ to explain the dynamics of this secular type of fear. My reading of the text’s presentation of the communists as dangerous secular beings addresses the key categories of atheists, cunning operators, propagandists, rebels, leftists, reds, and demons. I have argued that this secular fear of communists is what the From Madiun text explicitly discusses. I have also suggested that this form of fear is related to the danger presented by secular beings and secularisation. Catholics feared the communists because they assumed that they were attempting to create a society without God and religion, a society in which there would only be fear of secular dangers. The secular dangers that the From Madiun text explicitly presents are connected with the past that is with the chain of political events leading up to the coup in 1965.
At the national level, the PKI and its affiliated social organisations (ormas) are presented by From Madiun as being dangerous and frightening ideologically, politically and culturally. Ideologically, the Indonesian communists are shown to be frightening because of their perceived atheistic and anti-religious nature. Politically, they are shown to be frightening because of their ambition to take complete charge of the state. Culturally, the communists are presented as frightening because they threatened the perceived cultural purity and harmony of Indonesian society. As explained, the Catholic Church’s underlying fear – the fear that is reflected in From
Madiun – is that the state ideology of Pancasila that supports religious freedom would be under threat should the communists ever be in charge of the state. Culturally, the
178 social actions of the PKI-affiliated organisations (ormas), such as the unilateral actions (aksi sepihak) and the expropriation of foreign companies that these leftist organisations engaged in were perceived by the Church as bringing discomfort, instability and disorder. Words in the From Madiun text, such as ‘ateis’
(atheistic/atheists), ‘kiri’ (left), ‘merah’ (red), and ‘setan’ (demon), that have frightening resonances for me and possibly for other Indonesian Catholic readers create the image of communists as secular beings that are dangerous and frightening ideologically, politically and culturally. The text presents these images of communists arguably to maintain and trigger fear, and perhaps to provide a justification for the killings; we may also see these images as expressing the fears that lay behind the massacre of communists in 1965-66. Although the From Madiun text narrates the past and inspires fear by transporting the reader back into a frightening secular past, it is read in the present, and so the secular fear of the communist past is in fact experienced in the present by the reader, even by a reader with no experience of the communists in the pre-1965 era. The text triggers fears that I have imbibed by hearing the stories of my own father and others, who were forced to be executioners and thus directly caught up in the frightening secular events that From Madiun narrates.73
In the subsequent chapter, I discuss religious fear, which was in one sense the new dominant form of fear that affected Catholics after the communists were killed in
1965-66; the fear-inspiring beings in the realm of religious fear were Muslims.
Religious fear is linked with the identity of fear as an ongoing phenomenon, which, in
73 I should note that much of the From Madiun text I have discussed in this chapter is its interpretation of Indonesia's political history since independence constructed in such a way as to depict the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as treacherous, atheistic and evil. It is perhaps ironic that, leaving aside the strongly negative normative judgements made of the PKI, the From Madiun text identifies the political, strategic and organisational skills developed under Aidit to rebuild the party after Madiun.
179 the theoretical framework that this thesis deploys, is always concerned with concrete and present objects. Muslims, the new focus of fear that emerged with greater prominence after the events of 1965-66, a fear that is hinted at in the text, connnected with a broader sense of religious fear in areas such as fear of the danger of hell in the afterlife. In this sense, unlike the secular fear of the communist past, the religious fear of Muslims relates to fear of the future. This essentially eschatological fear is something that I experience at a deep level when reading the From Madiun text.
180
Chapter 6 RELIGIOUS FEAR OF MUSLIMS (The Implicit in the From Madiun text)
When I read the From Madiun text I immediately felt afraid of Muslims. As the text was written for Catholics, it could be said that the production of the From Madiun text in 1967 was implictly intended to remind the Catholic readers of their identity, and more importantly to inject the sense of religious fear of Muslims amongst Catholics. At the secular level, there is fear that the Muslims may try to create an Islamic state of Indonesia post-1965. There is also fear that the Muslims may allow the Indonesian communists, many of whom were executed in 1965-66, back to operate in Indonesia, as implied in the From Madiun text. At the religious level, I feel as if the Muslims are trying to take over heaven by taking full control of the state. There is fear of islamisation of the state in secular terms, and fear of islamisation of heaven in religious terms. Both state and heaven would become islamised, which would mean that the non-Muslims may not be allowed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven when they die. Eschatologically, I feel as if my salvation in the afterlife is under threat. Indeed I am afraid of the uncertainty of my religious future in relation to my fate in the afterlife, and the religious temptations such as not following my own religious values in the present.
Introductory Notes
In the previous chapter, I discussed the fear of communists as fear of the danger that the nemesis of secularisation and secularism presented to the Indonesian nation-state and to the Catholic Church, and how I see this fear as being present in the account that the From Madiun text gives of the actions of the communists in the years leading up to 1965. My reading of From Madiun focused on words that seemed to me to convey a strong sense of secular fear. From Madiun explicitly builds up a picture of the communists as cunning propagandists intent on seizing political power through rebellion with the aim of setting up an atheistic state; a state, which would not be ruled by god-fearing people. In general, the communists presented the religious communities (including both Catholics and Muslims) – with what could be called a secular temptation, and these communities were apparently very afraid of this temptation – the idea that one should not be afraid of God because God simply does not exist, and the idea one should also not be afraid of not having a religion. We can
181 suggest that fear of this secular-communist temptation was one reason why the communists were killed, in the hope that this secular fear would also be eliminated.
After the communists had been largely eliminated, there were different beings and different rivals for Catholics to fear. A revised fear of religious others was then constructed by the Catholic Church, a fear in which the frightening beings and frightening rivals were ‘fanatical’ (radical) Muslims.74
In this sense, the discussion on religious fear is particularly important. In my discussion of the fear of communists, I have noted that the arguments of the From
Madiun text are similar to the Nugroho orthodoxy promoted by the New Order state.
This is less obvious in the case of the text's evocation of religious fear of Muslims.
The Army had been responsible for the repression of the Darul Islam revolts in the early 1960s, and while the Army had cooperated and co-opted Muslim groups in the killings of communists in 1965-66, Suharto had moved quickly to marginalize
'political Islam' in the early New Order. Nevertheless, the evocation of fear of
Muslims is a critical part of the From Madiun text, in that the Church as the institutional representative of a religious minority has, since 1945, had to negotiate a position in a Muslim majority state in which Muslim Indonesians would dominate any likely government, authoritarian or democratic. These contexts greatly affected
Catholics living in New Order Indonesia and helped to create their religious fears.
When reading From Madiun the secular fear of the communist past that the text
74 It should be noted that the From Madiun text uses the term ‘fanatisme’ as in ‘fanatisme agama' (religious fanatism), presumably referring to Muslims and particularly the Masyumi. It is thus appropriate to use the term in the context of the text's evocation of fear about Muslims and an Islamic state, explaining why the term ‘fanatic’ is used in this thesis. In this regard, the From Madiun text needs to be understood as a piece of partisan propaganda reflecting the politics of the early New Order period. This partisan propaganda character is also evident in the text's depiction of Muslims and the Masyumi, as I discuss in this chapter. The textual portrayal of Islamic fanaticism will be explained later on in the chapter. It is important to see what the text actually says about it, and the context.
182 explicitly narrates merges in my mind with religious fear involving Muslims and the future, fear that I see as being implicit in the text.
The implicit and the deeper fear
In moving into the analysis of religious fear and its relationship to my experience of reading the From Madiun text, my analysis shifts from the explicit to the implicit level. It deals with deeper fears and more involvement of the reader (myself) in the reading of the text. Although the text does not explicitly direct its readers to fear
Muslims in the way that it directs them to fear communists, as the text was written for
Catholics, it could be said that one reason for the production of the From Madiun text in 1967 was to remind the Catholic readers of their Catholic identity in the ideologically Pancasila-based state, which contributed to a strong awareness of the relationship between Catholicism and Islam. I read From Madiun as hinting or implying that the threat to Catholics that is posed by Muslims after 1965-66 parallels the threat of the communists before 1965. Overall it can be said that the religious fear that is implicit in the From Madiun text constitutes a deeper layer of fear than the explicit and secular fear that is visible on the surface of the text; it involves my own fears, and that of Indonesian Catholics in general, fears that have lasted into the present.
I should stress that the religious fear of Muslims that I experience when reading the text is not fear of Muslims in general – it is fear of ‘fanatical’ (radical)
Muslims. The ‘fanatical’ (radical) Muslims that inspire my fears are primarily the
Muslims who want to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state, and I would suggest that this might also be true for the authors of From Madiun. As the analysis below will
183 show, ‘fanaticism’ is a word that is used in From Madiun, although quite indirectly, to designate religious extremism or radicalism, and I use this loaded term because I think it conveys Indonesian Catholic fears; obviously it is not a word that can be used in serious or sober academic discourse. William Cavanaugh (2011), in his article,
“The Invention of Fanaticism”, explains how fanaticism evolved from a response to heretics into an idea of intolerance and from a judgement of false prophecy and belief to a jugdgment of someone as irrational, passionate and violent in their beliefs and behaviour. His work also shows that ‘religious fanaticism’ can trigger secularist rationales for violence against religious believers.
The text’s discussion of religious issues deals with how, in the late 1950s, radical Muslims supported the idea of establishing an Islamic state in Indonesia.75 At one level, the support for an Islamic state can be seen as ‘secular’ in nature because it affects one’s worldly life; but it can be argued to have a religious effect in the afterlife, one that would frighten Catholics who would fear the danger to their
75 In order to place the Masyumi attitude to an Islamic state, it is important to look at its role in the Constitutional Assembly, 1955-59. In this context, the Masyumi supported the establishment of an Islamic state; but the proposal for an Islamic state was in fact defeated in the Assembly. Masyumi also opposed Sukarno’s Guided Democracy, as did the Catholic Party. Masyumi’s position in the late 1950s was complex in that some of its leaders, like Natsir, argued against Pancasila and for an Islamic state in the Constitutional Assembly. Some Masyumi leaders including Natsir also supported PRRI-Pemesta, which included Christian leaders in Sumatra and Sulawesi. It would seem that the Masyumi’s commitment to oppose Sukarno was stronger than its support for an Islamic state (Steenbrink 2015; Feith 1962). It should also be mentioned that there is no evidence to support the Catholic claim as represented in the From Madiun text that the Masyumi Muslims tried to create an Islamic state in Indonesia, beyond the unsuccessful advocacy in the Constitutional Assembly. They did not seek to do so; but what some Masyumi politicians did was support the PRRI-Pemesta (Ricklefs 2008; Doeppers 1972; Feith and Lev 1963; Mossman 1961) in the late 1950s and the early 1960s to establish an anti- communist regime in Jakarta. In fact, as noted above, one basis of support for Pemesta came from Christian majority Minahassa. Only the Darul Islam (DI) sought to establish Indonesia as an Islamic state since the late 1940s, when, on 7th August 1949, Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosuwirjo (Van Dijk 1981), openly declared that he was the imam of Negara Islam Indonesia (NII), and that the Darul Islam (DI) sought to change the basis of the state to one based on Sharia (Jackson 1980). According to a preliminary document produced in 1948, it states: “Islam was the foundation and legal basis of the Islamic State of Indonesia, the Koran and Tradition constituting the highest authorities” (Van Dijk, 1981:93). The DI revolts were defeated by the early 1960s.
184 immortal souls if they were not able to practice their religion. I outline the nature of these fears about the afterlife in the body of this chapter.
I should point out that my description of religious fear of the idea of
‘fanatical’ Muslims does not reflect my own view and personal experience of Islam in
Eastern Indonesia in the years after 1965-66. Some of my close family friends in
Lembata are Muslims. My older brother’s middle name, Muda, was given by a local
Muslim elder called, Bapa Muda. This man, who is dead now, was known to the locals as a magician. There were stories about him being able to free himself from the attacks of his enemies. Growing up in Lembata and years of study on the island of
Flores I witnessed many examples of positive collaboration between Catholics and
Muslims such as in building projects of churches and mosques, and in local adat affairs like weddings. My experience of interactions with the local Muslims in the
Lamaholot community where I grew up then had clearly been a positive one.
This chapter follows the previous chapter’s basic structure: it examines the relationship between fear and beings, time, and rivalry. Religious fear is seen as involving religious beings who are objects of fear (‘fanatical’/radical Muslims). It is seen as involving religious time, (whose focus is the future), and it involves a religious rivalry that is concerned with a rival religious force – ‘fanatical’ (radical)
Islam – which competes with the Church, both for power in Indonesian politics and society in the New Order era, and over the fate of the immortal soul in the afterlife.
Religious rivalry involves the question of salvation, or who has the right to be in heaven – the Muslims or the Catholics. It should be emphasised that this chapter does not discuss in detail local Lamaholot fear of Muslims, but rather presents how the
From Madiun text, representing the national power struggle, triggers the fear of
185 Muslims in the reader (myself), who is Indonesian by passport, Catholic by baptism, and a Lamaholot person by cultural upbringing.
In this chapter, I first give a definition of religious fear, followed by a statement of the chapter’s key argument, and then by a discussion of some of the literature on the Christian-Muslim relationship in Indonesia and elsewhere.
Subsequently I will explain the ideas of religious being, religious time and religious rivalry with reference to the From Madiun text. In the discussion of fear and religious beings, I will examine perceptions of Muslims as fear-inspiring beings – as
‘marangele’, or headhunters, as tempters, as polygamists, and as ‘setan besar’ or the greater devils (in the terminology of Pater Beek). In the discussion of religious time,
I examine fears relating to the future, not simply of Indonesia and the fear that it will become an Islamic state, but also fears about salvation in the next world. In the discussion of fear and religious rivalry, I will look at how the depiction of Islamic
‘fanaticism’ in the From Madiun text draws attention to the perception of ‘fanatical’
Muslims as a dangerous force whose plan to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia is feared as having religious consequences for Catholics in terms of salvation in the afterlife.
Definition
Religious fear is defined here as a form of fear relating to dangers presented by religious ‘others’ and as a form of fear that relates to the fate of the immortal soul.
As should be clear from the previous chapters, for Indonesian Catholics the religious
‘others’ who are the object of this religious fear are Muslims. I argue that this religious fear of Muslims is focused on the future. This has two dimensions: one is about the future of Indonesia and the possibility that it might become an Islamic state,
186 which is something that frightens Indonesian Catholics; the other dimension involves the future of the soul after death, something that is also connected with eschatology and the fate of individuals and of humanity as a whole at the Last Judgment. There is fear that the Catholics who convert to Islam or who support the idea of an Islamic state voluntarily or involuntarily will be thrown straight into hell when they die. It is these fears about salvation that underpin the fear of Muslims that arises in my mind when reading From Madiun.
Core propositions
The chapter argues that religious fear of Muslims – a new object of fear that emerged in the post-1965-66 era after the communists had largely been eliminated as an organised force – is something implicitly alluded to in the From Madiun text. Unlike the secular fear of communists, which involves the past, this fear is about the future: not just the future in the secular time of this world, but the future in religious time – the afterlife. It is a core belief of Indonesian Catholics that in order to avoid being thrown into Hell in the afterlife a Catholic person must maintain his or her loyalty to
Catholicism to death. Indonesian Catholics such as myself are affected by the fear that living in an Islamic state would mean that Catholics could easily fall into the religious temptation to neglect Catholic teachings (such as those on polygamy and sex), end up in Hell. In this sense, it could be argued that while the fear of an Islamic state is secular in its form, its consequence in the afterlife is religious, and therefore the fear of Muslims can be classified as essentially religious. There are secular aspects in the religious fear – there is fear of physical death at the hands of ‘fanatical’
(radical) Muslims who will eliminate those who reject their value system – but for
187 Catholics, as I understand it, this secular death of the mortal body has an impact on spiritual death in the afterlife – the death of the immortal soul.
For Catholics, the fear that if Indonesia were to become an Islamic state, the principles of religious freedom and pluralism stated in the 1945 Constitution and the state ideology of Pancasila would be compromised, is combined with deeper anxieties about dangers to the salvation of the soul if Catholics had to live in an Islamic state.
These religious consequences in the afterlife are far more frightening to Catholics than the threat of pain, guilt and death in the secular world. In the previous chapter, I argued that the secular fear of communists pre-1965 was related to the idea of
Indonesia becoming a Godless state. Both Catholics and Muslims found this a threat to their religious identity. In this chapter, I argue that after 1965-66 the worldly fear of secularisation and secularism was no longer the main fear for Catholics; instead the main fear became fear of what would happen in the afterlife, manifested in the religious fear of Muslims, with whom there was a kind of competition over entry into heaven.
A mutual fear: Muslim-Christian relations in Indonesia
Before going on to discuss how the religious fears that the reading of From Madiun triggers in me, I wish to make some general points about the role of fear in Muslim-
Christian relations in Indonesia. There is a vast literature about the interaction dynamics between Christianity and Islam in Indonesia and elsewhere in the world.
Some of the key works on Muslim-Christian relations in Indonesia are Khalil (2013),
Arifianto (2009), Crouch (2007), Mujiburrahman (2006), Husein (2005), Aritonang
(2004), Van Klinken (2003), Mulyadi (2003), Kim (1998), Ropi (1998, 1999),
188 Steenbrink (1998; 2015), and Shihab (1995). The religious fear of Muslims by
Catholics that this thesis examines can be seen as being one part of the wider inter- religious encounter between Catholics and Muslims, and it is explored by some of these works, but, as I explain most of these works deal with Muslim-Christian relations in secular terms as political and social questions.
While this chapter focuses on Catholic fears of Muslims, it should be pointed out that the fear of religious others is not solely the province of Indonesian Catholics
– Indonesian Muslims also feel threatened by Christians. Just as Indonesian
Christians fear Islamisation, Indonesian Muslim communities fear Christianisation (as will be discussed below). Fear of religious otherness is indeed a mutual fear. I argue that the religious fear is best understood as a mutual rather than a one-way fear experience; I do not treat this fear as being primarily a matter of a religious minority feeling threatened by the majority and vice-versa. Rather I argue that the real foundation of religious fear is the theology of reward in the Final Judgment. There is a belief that those who are faithful to their religion to death will be rewarded with heavenly life, and those who are not will be thrown into hell as a punishment. This fear afflicts both Catholics and Muslims in relation to each other’s religions.
Muslims who fear the Christianisation of Indonesia think that Christian missionaries are actively trying to convert other religious peoples including Muslims to Christianity, particularly Catholicism. The Chair of MUI (Majelis Ulama
Indonesia, the council of Muslim scholars), KH Ma'ruf Amin, as reported in a
Muslim online media, Republika, dated 9 December 2014, stated that there have been
Christianisation efforts in Indonesia for a long time. This Christianisation, he claims, is very dangerous and threatening to Islam and must therefore be resolved legally. He
189 states that informal solutions through dialogue have not been the most successful approach; formal-legal approaches need to be applied in order to end such a threatening endeavour of Christianisation. More explicitly, KH Ma'ruf Amin considered Christianisation as a violation of law, namely the SKB (Surat Keputusan
Bersama, a joint decision) of the Minister of Religion and the Internal Minister
Number 1, Chapter 4, Year 1979. He demanded that the Indonesian government be proactive in resolving the problem of Christianisation, while also alerting all Muslims in the country to the threat of Christianisation. At the same time, KH Ma'ruf Amin emphasised the importance of education and dialogue in interactions with religious otherness, including Catholics. Muslim leaders, in particular, must develop collaboration with other local religious figures in order to establish a harmonious co- existence.
An Islamic discourse about attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity identifies ten methods of Christianisation of Indonesia – Christianisation through building of churches, both legally and illegally, for evangelisation purposes;
Christianisation through education; Christianisation through social aids and actions;
Christianisation through Politics; Christianisation through entertainment;
Christianisation through violation of Islam and manipulation of versions of the Al-
Quran and Al-Hadits; Christianisation through false claims that several Muslim figures have converted to Christianity; Christianisation through fabrication of ‘aliran sesat’, or ‘false teachings’; Christianisation through mixed-marriages;
Christianisation through the use of black magic and hypnotism.76 The latter is
76 I visited the website on 8 February 2015, 3:30PM Melbourne time, http://www.nahimunkar.com/waspadai-10-modus-kristenisasi-yang-menggerogoti-umat-islam- indonesia/.
190 particularly interesting from the point of view of the arguments of this thesis about supernatural fear.
It is interesting that these ten methods of Christianisation of Muslims parallel the methods that Christians (Catholics) see Muslims using to Islamise Christians
(Catholics). During my school years in Flores we often heard about the ways the
Muslims were trying to convert Christians to Islam. For example, public education in
Indonesia was then seen as a way for the state to Islamise the education system, and in turn to convert non-Muslims to Islam. As a result, many Catholic schools at the time refused to become public schools because of the suspicion that their Catholic identity and teaching would be lost under the state (Islamic) system. Concerning mixed relationships, especially marriage, Catholics were told by priests and nuns to be cautious of Muslims. In particular, Catholic women were constantly reminded to avoid Muslim men so that they would not fall victim to sexual harassment, pregnancy, and conversion to Islam. Catholic marriage and education, at the local level, were seen at that time as two very important aspects that needed to be maintained as a way to maintain Catholic identity.
The politics of religious affiliation in Indonesia, particularly converting from one religion to another, is indeed a sensitive issue. We can argue that this reflects the mutual fear held by Catholics and Muslims in Indonesia that each religion is trying to take over the other, and that each religion is under threat from the other. The Muslim perception that Christian missionaries in Indonesia are trying to convert as many
Muslims as they can to Christianity (Catholicism) may have some basis in historical fact. In analysing the effects of the 1965-66 trauma on Indonesian politics, Robert
Cribb (1990) identifies one clear result of the massacre as being a massive religious
191 conversion to Christianity amongst former leftists, many of them ‘abangan’ Muslims.
According to Cribb, there were two main reasons for this conversion. One was the need for leftists to have a religious identity so as not to be linked to communism; and the second reason was a response to the active pastoral work of Christians. Cribb writes,
The scale of conversion, however, suggests that the political trauma of 1965 shook many people loose from their previously held values and world views, making them receptive to new messages and new spiritual solutions. Christianity was especially well-placed to benefit from this shaking loose because, unlike Islam, it had remained relatively aloof from the political confrontation before 1965 and from the killings themselves, although as Kenneth Orr and the Gadjah Mada team report Christians were involved in the killings in some regions. Far more than Islam, too, the Christian churches carried out energetic pastoral work amongst prisoners, their families and remnants of the Left in general. As Bu Yeti’s reminiscences reveal, this work, disregarding the official ostracism of the Left, won Christianity much respect amongst groups who would previously have had little time for it (Cribb, 1990:40).
It is a sign of the complexity of the situation in Indonesian after the events
1965-66 that the Catholic Church actively provided pastoral care to political prisoners and their families. An example of this is the foundation Realia that was established by
Jesuit priests in Yogyakarta to provide pastoral assistance for the victims of 1965-66.
Cribb (1990) suggests that this brought many leftists into Catholicism, and this produced genuine respect for Christianity. Yet in the case of Adonara in Eastern
Indonesia, as noted by Barnes (2003), many people did not actually voluntarily join a religion, such as Catholicism or Islam, of their own free choice after the events of
1965-66. Instead, they were forced to affiliate with a ‘registered’ religion, especially
Catholicism, out of fear of being stamped as ‘communists’.
One potential implication of Cribb’s work on the conversion of former leftists to Christianity, or Barnes’ observations about people in Adonara registering as
192 Muslims or Catholics in order not to be labelled as communists, is that religious conflicts and identities in Indonesia after 1965-66 took over more secular identities and conflicts that had dominated Indonesian politics in the 1950s and early 1960s.
While my thesis argues that the Catholic religious fear of Muslims post-1965-66 is a remodified fear of secularism and secularisation at the hands of the Indonesian communists, and that instead of fear of secularisation there is fear of Islamisation, my focus is on the religious dimensions of the Catholic fear of Muslims rather than on its secular dimensions, such as competition for political power. What interests me is how the Catholic fear of losing one’s Catholic identity is associated with specifically religious concerns, in particular those connected with the immortal soul. I understand this fear in specifically religious terms.
The work in which the theme of fear in Muslim-Christian relations appears most directly is that of Mujiburrahman77 (2006). Mujiburrahman explores the nature of the relationship between Islam and Christianity in Indonesia during the era of
Suharto’s New Order by closely investigating certain discourses developed by
Muslims, Christians, and the state, and how those discourses influenced social and political practices. He suggests that Christian and Muslim discourses from 1945 to
1998 were mostly defined by mutual fear. The Muslims were afraid of
Christianisation, and the Christians were afraid of an Islamic state. Mujiburrahman claims that Muslim fears were twofold. First, the Muslims were afraid of Christian evangelisation of the Muslim population, and second, the Muslims were also afraid of
Christian opposition to their efforts to apply Islamic law and values in Indonesia.
Indonesian Muslims generally saw Christianity as an agent of Dutch colonialism. In
77 The title of Mujiburrahman’s work is: ‘Feeling threatened: Muslim-Christian relations in Indonesia’s New Order’. The work was a PhD dissertation completed in 2006 at Utrecht University of the Netherlands.
193 the postcolonial period, there were thus suggestions that Christians would seek to continue the colonialist agenda of making Indonesia truly a Christian nation that
Indonesian nationalists attributed to the Dutch.
As noted, Mujiburrahman sees Muslim fears of Christians as being partly based on the perception that Christians were trying to oppose efforts to apply Islamic law and values in Indonesia. In this chapter, I will emphasise that a key element of the religious fear of Islam that I feel is implicit in From Madiun is the idea that
‘fanatical’ (radical) Muslims will seek to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia, and that this will endanger Catholics’ quest for salvation in the afterlife. To understand the context for this fear it is helpful to look at the entity mentioned in From Madiun that is most profoundly associated with the attempt to set up an Islamic state in
Indonesia –Masyumi (Majelis Syuro Muslimin Indonesia, Council of Indonesian
Muslim Associations), a major Islamic political party in Indonesia in the early years of the republic.
The name Masyumi was given to an organisation established by the occupying Japanese in 1943 in an endeavour to control Islam in the archipelago
(Ricklefs 1991). After the declaration of Indonesian independence in 1945, Masyumi became a remodeled organisation, and it quickly became one of the largest political parties in Indonesia. Its membership included those from Nahdlatul Ulama and
Muhammadiyah.78 During the era of liberal democracy in the early to mid 1950s,
78 It should be noted, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, The Revival of the Islamic Scholars), was established on 31st January 1926 by Hasyim Asyari as a response to Muhammadiyah. Muhammadiyah was established in 1912 by Ahmad Dahlan in Yogyakarta as a reformist movement. It promotes individual interpretation of Qur’an and Sunnah (ijtihad). This approach clearly challenges the more dogmatic- orthodox approach in the interpretations of Qur’an and Sunnah by the ulama (taqlid), as in the teaching of the NU. Muhammadiyah is the second largest Islamic organisation with approximately 29 million followers (Burhani 2005, 2010). The NU is an organisation for orthodox Muslims, and is thus related to a more traditionalist Sunni Islam. The NU is one of the largest independent Islamic organizations in the world. It is worth noting that the NU regarded the war against the Dutch colonial forces during the
194 Masyumi79 gained seats in the People’s Representative Council (MPR), and some of the prime ministers as well as many senior ministers like Muhammad Roem during the time were from the Party, including Muhammad Natsir and Burhanuddin Harahap
(Simanjuntak 2003). In fact, Masyumi won the second most amount of votes in the first public election of 1955. It gained 7,903,886 votes, representing 20.9% of the popular vote, resulting in 57 seats in the parliament (Feith 2007). In 1958, some members of Masyumi joined the PRRI rebellion against Sukarno’s government. 80
Consequently Masyumi was banned by Sukarno in 1960 (Ricklefs, 1991:256). After the ban, Masyumi members and followers formed the Crescent Star Family
(Indonesian: Keluarga Bulan Bintang) as a political means of campaign for Shariah
Law and teachings. There was an attempt to resurrect Masyumi in the late 1960s, but it was unsuccessful. In 1998, after the fall of Suharto, another attempt to revive the party was made, and the Crescent Star Party (Partai Bulan Bintang) was established;
Perang Kemerdekaan, or the war of independence, in Indonesia in the late 1940s as a holy war. It was religiously justifiable to all Muslims to participate in the war to defend the country and Islam (Ricklefs 1991; Barton and Fealy 1996; Feith 2007; Schwartz 1994).
79 It needs to be noted that there was a split between Masyumi and NU in 1952. They then competed against each other in the 1955 elections. NU was much more ambivalent about an Islamic state than Masyumi.
80 PRRI, an an acronym for Pemerintah Revolusioner Republik Indonesia, or the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia, was an alternative government that was set up in Sumatra in 1958. The main purpose of its establishment was to oppose the Central Government in Jakarta. The PRRI was allied with the Permesta rebellion in Sulawesi on 17 February 1958 (Ricklefs, 1991:299). Permesta is an acronym for Piagam Perjuangan Semesta (Universal Struggle Charter), and it was declared by civil and military leaders on 2 March 1957. It was based in Manado, North of Sulawesi, and was led by Colonel Ventje Sumual. On 17 February 1959, the Permesta separatists joined forces with the PRRI rebels to fight against the forces of the central government (Ricklefs, 1991:299). The central government forces were able to take control of the Permesta capital of Manado at the end of June 1958. This defeat did not seem to stop the Permesta rebels from guerrilla fights until 1961.
195 it became a contestant in the legislative elections in 1999, 2004 and 2009 (Setiawan
& Nainggolan, 2004:54-55).81
It should be mentioned that in the 1950s Masyumi and the Indonesian
Catholic Party were allies in a shared struggle against the supposedly Godless communists and their cronies. From Madiun describes this as follows:
It was an advantage to the PKI that since the beginning of independence the other parties were in conflict over matters of principle. This rift occurred for several years: On one side was Masyumi, PSI, Parkindo and the Catholic Party. On the other side were the powers of the PNI, the PKI and several small Islamic parties (From Madiun, 1967:28).82
David Hindley (1964) asserts that in the late 1950s alliance between
Masyumi, Syahrir’s Socialist party (PSI), and the Protestant and Catholic parties was strong. In March 1956, the Catholic Party supported Masyumi’s participation in a new cabinet formed by Ali Sastromijoyo of the National Party of Indonesia (PNI)
(Van Der Kroef 1965). In early 1957, party representatives of Masyumi, NU,
Protestant and Catholic parties met with Sukarno to express their concerns about
Sukarno’s concept, ‘Konsepsi Presiden’ in which the communists were to be included in the new cabinet. The concept was strongly rejected by the Masyumi Muslims and
Catholics (Van Der Kroef, 1965:85,89,90).
Specifically, Ignatius Joseph Kasimo, the then chair of the Catholic Party, uncompromisingly rejected Sukarno’s concept, arguing that the Indonesian communists were Godless peoples, and therefore should not be allowed at all to
81 It should be mentioned that PAN (Partai Amanat Nasional: National Mandate Party), founded in 1998, because of its Muhammadiyah links, was also thought of having Masyumi heritage.
82 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Adalah keuntungan bagi PKI, bahwa sejak permulaan kemerdekaan partai-partai lain saling baku hantam secara prinsipiil. Keretakan itu berlangsung beberapa tahun: Pada satu pihak Masyumi, PSI, Parkindo dan Partai Katolik. Di lain pihak terdapat kekuatan-kekuatan PNI, PKI dan beberapa partai Islam kecil (From Madiun, 1967:28).
196 participate in the running of the God-based State. Yet Kasimo was not the only political party figure who opposed President Sukarno’s proposal: Mohammad Natzir of Masyumi also opposed the inclusion of PKI into the cabinet. At the time, it was only Masyumi and the Catholic Party who explicitly opposed Sukarno’s concept of the PKI inclusion in the cabinet. Some other party representatives supported
Sukarno’s concept, while others remained undecided (Kompas & Gramedia,
1980:83-87).
If the Catholic Party and Masyumi were once close allies in the late 1950s, why did Catholics become afraid of the Masyumi Muslims and, after Masyumi was banned in 1960, of other strongly Islamic political groups? This question will be examined in detail in the section of this chapter on religious rivalry, but we can suggest that the last part of the title of the text, ‘From the Crocodile Hole to...?’ provides a clue. The title suggests that there was another enemy to be feared and fought after the communists were slaughtered, and this chapter argues that after the plan of the communists to establish a secular state in Indonesia had been defeated, the key anxiety for Catholics was that ‘fanatical’ Muslims would attempt to establish a religious state. Fear of secular beings (communists) was continued on with fear of religious beings (Muslims). In the next section, I discuss some of the images of
Muslims as frightening beings that appear in my mind when reading From Madiun.
Fear and religious beings
By fear of religious beings I refer to fear of beings who have a clearly marked religious identity, beings who are feared by the religious believer, largely because they are perceived as constituting a threat to one’s immortal soul. In the case of From
Madiun, the beings who are perceived in this way are Muslims. I use the word
197 ‘perceived’ because I personally do not really experience the Muslims as frightening beings, and, as noted, have many positive experiences of interactions with Muslims.
Nevertheless, there was a widely-shared perception in my community when I was growing up that religious others, above all ‘fanatical’ Muslims, were to be avoided. I grew up in a very Catholic village not knowing what Islam really was and what
Muslims were like as individuals. All I knew, as I was told at the time, was that the
Muslims were ‘different’ without even knowing what that really meant, and Catholics were not allowed to interact with them. The Muslims were then locally identified as tempters, polygamists, and as marangele or headhunters. In this section of the chapter, I discuss how my fears of Muslims as threatening religious beings were structured. These three local labels for Muslims and Pater Beek’s representation of
Muslims as ‘setan besar’, or the ‘greater devils’, a term that relates to the political danger of extremist Islam in Indonesia after 1965-66, also suggests a deeper religious fear linked with the afterlife. These religious fears help perhaps explain some of the fears surrounding the figure of Buang Duran, and might perhaps explain Buang
Duran’s own fears.
For me, Buang Duran’s three contrasting identities make him exceptionally powerful and frightening. In fact, the locals were rather hesitant to oppose Buang
Duran. They were frightened of him in a secular sense; but in a deeper, religious sense, as a Muslim Buang Duran represented the eschatological fear of danger in the afterlife amongst the Eastern Indonesian Catholics. It might be argued that Buang
Duran’s choice to be Catholic, Muslim and communist was his way of managing his own religious-eschatological fear. As a secular-communist, he tried not to worry about the afterlife but at the same time he sought at the religious-spiritual level what
198 was necessary for the salvation of his soul in the afterlife. The fact that he chose both
Muslim and Catholic identities suggests that he did not follow the orthodox notion that one had to choose one of the two paths to ensure salvation. Having outlined the broad structures of the fear of religious beings that affects me when I read From
Madiun, I will now go on to discuss the four images of Muslims as frightening religious beings that condition my response to the text, being with the idea of
Muslims as ‘setan besar’.
Muslims as ‘setan besar’: Pater Beek
In the previous chapter, I discussed how the word ‘setan’ (‘devil’ or ‘demon’) appeared in the From Madiun text. I suggested that even though the text referred to the idea of demons primarily through quotations from communist propaganda, for a
Catholic reader, such as myself, it inspired a fear of demonic beings. As mentioned in an earlier part of this thesis, Pater Beek83, the probable author of the From Madiun text, once used the term ‘setan besar’, or ‘the greater devils’, as a label for Muslims and for ‘fanatical’ Muslims in particular. Pater Beek also referred to the Indonesian
Army as ‘setan kecil’, ‘the lesser devil’. A detailed account of Pater Beek’s views on the Indonesian Army and Muslims being two ‘devils’ or enemies that should be feared by Catholics is explained in a manuscript produced in 2008 by George Junus
Aditjondro. Aditjondro suggest that, for Pater Beek, after the Army defeated the
83 The recent book of Islamic Populism in Indonesia and the Middle East by Vedi R. Hadiz (2016) makes an interesting comment on page 106 about Soeharto's relationship with Pater Beek, and Pater Beek’s importance for the New Order. It is important to mention as evidence for why the From Madiun text studied in this thesis is important and how it fits with the secular power structures of Suharto’s New Order (1966-1998). Hadiz’ book also shows that a recent work on religion and politics in Indonesia has drawn attention to the putative author of the From Madiun text. Mujiburrahman too, in his Utrecht PhD thesis included a chapter on ‘Against the Islamic State’, explaining on pages 105- 156 the role of Pater Beek in the construction of the Catholic-Military alliance post-1965 (also see, Mount 2012; Soedarmanta 2008).
199 communists in 1966 there remained two devils or threats to be confronted by the
Catholic Church in Indonesia. Pater Beek then instructed his Catholic followers to embrace the Army as the ‘lesser devil’, and to use them to deal with Islam, the
‘greater devil’.
It is asserted that after the events of 1965-66, Pater Beek believed that extremist Muslims demanded too great a reward for their role in the counter-coup, and wanted more key positions in the state power structure. Both the government and the Army were unwilling to share the type of power requested by Masyumi.84 This conflict of ambition for power between militant Islam on one side, and the Army and the government on the other hand, caused the Catholic Church under the New Order regime to apply Pater Beek’s ‘lesser devil theory’, namely to simply use the Army against Islam. These issues are discussed by a number of authors such as Hadiz
(2016), Mount (2012), Soedarmanta (2008), and Mujiburrahman (2006).
In addition, as mentioned, the political ambition of Ali Murtopo and his strong antagonism to political Islam during the early years of the New Order provided an opportunity to the followers of Pater Beek, who collaborated with Ali Murtopo to deal with the threat of militant Islam, especially Islamic figures like Sarwo Edhy and
Sumitro who had ambitions to become Indonesia’s President. At the time, the
Catholic Army General, L.B. Murdani, who was an important figure in President
Suharto’s circle, was then a Consul General in South Korea. Reportedly, many in the
KOSTRAD (the Army Strategic Command) knew of the silent power contest between
Ali Murtopo and General Murdani, since they were together in the KOSTRAD during the 1963-1964 Crush Malaysia campaigns. According to Aditjondro, both Murdani
84 Masyumi was banned in 1960.
200 and Murtopo had equally strong ambitions for power, but differed in style and approach. Murtopo had ambitions to hold substantive power himself, whilst Murdani simply liked to be in control of the person(s) holding substantive power. Aditjondro contends that Murdani once stated, “There is no need to be in a position of power when without risks we can control those in power” (Aditjondro, 2008: no page number).85
General Murdani was a committed Catholic, and it is widely believed that he personally hated Islam. Murdani’s hatred of Islam smoothed the way for Murdani and the CSIS (Centre for Strategic and International Studies) to collaborate in their response to Islam, the ‘revised’ threat after Indonesian communism was defeated. The
CSIS was then like an ideological home for Murdani, and the ‘think tank’ of
Indonesian Catholicism. Murdani even had an office at the CSIS headquarters. It is widely believed that Murdani certainly knew how to manipulate President Suharto.
He silenced anyone who tried to challenge Suharto, and for this reason the President became very dependent upon Murdani and even trusted him.
In this sense, Aditjondro observes, Murtopo and Murdani were different from
Pater Beek. According to Aditjondro, Pater Beek selected the best Catholic youth and students for training. His objective was to ensure that those cadres with their abilities could control others in order to achieve the targets set by Pater Beek himself. The majority of Indonesians are Muslims, and so, according to Pater Beek, Catholics should not even dream to hold key posisitons of power. Murdani knew of this, and therefore he only wanted to become a so-called ‘king maker’. General Murdani was then instructed by Pater Beek to control the Muslims who were in positions of power.
85 The quotation in original Indonesian is: “Buat apa jadi orang berkuasa jika bisa dengan tanpa resiko kita mengontrol orang yang berkuasa” (Aditjondro, 2008: no page number).
201 This partly explains why General Try Sutrisno was promoted by Murdani to become the Minister of Defence and Security (1988-93), and Deputy President to Suharto
(1993-98).
According to Aditjondro (2008), Murtopo and Murdani selected people to hold key positions of power in the state who had weaknesses so that they could be easily controlled, those who were involved in for example scandals, corruption and rebellions. This inclination of Murtopo and Murdani partly explained why they seemed to work well with the cadres of Pater Beek. In the hands of Murtopo and
Murdani the aspirations and plans of Pater Beek were successfully carried out.
Tragically so, but this also explains why those who actually implemented the anti-
Islamic policies in Indonesia have been the ones who were not even aware that they were actually being used by Murtopo and Murdani for their own ambitions for power.
It is clear that after the defeat of the common enemy, the Indonesian
Communist Party (PKI), in 1966, the Catholics quickly turned their suspicious eyes on Islam, the next major constructed enemy of the Catholic Church. Pater Beek, who supposedly played an important role in the creation of Suharto’s New Order regime, regarded Muslims, especially the Masyumi86, as the ‘greater devils’ to be feared and fought. According to Pater Beek, in order to do this successfully the Catholic Church had to work together with the Army, or as expressed in Indonesian, “rangkul tentara untuk lawan Islam”, literally translated as, “embrace the army to fight Islam” (Hadiz
2016; Mount 2012; Soedarmanta 2008; Mujiburrahman 2006). Hadiz (2016) argues that Pater Beek succeeded in distancing Suharto from Islam. In so-doing the
86 It is important to bear in mind that Suharto did not permit the re-establishment of a Masyumi like party after 1965. Suharto was keen on neither supporters of regional rebellions nor supporters of an Islamic state.
202 Indonesian Catholics felt protected under Suharto, particularly from the threats of the
Muslim majority, which in the context of my argument, are secular threats that have a religious dimension. The political strategy used by Pater Beek in the ongoing
Catholic struggles against Islam after 1965-66 can be referred to as the domestication of Islam by the Catholic Church. Direct confrontation with Islam was impossible, and the threat that Islam posed to the Church could only be managed through collaboration with the Army (the lesser devils) and through education and inter-faith dialogue (Hadiz 2016; Mount 2012; Soedarmanta 2008; Mujiburrahman 2006).
If we reflect on this wider strategy of fostering dialogue between Muslims and
Catholics through education, we can note that there are many Catholic schools, colleges and universities in Indonesia that have been attended by Muslims. The
Muslims who have enjoyed Catholic education have generally expressed their appreciation for, and recognition of, the high standard of Catholic education in the country with a Muslim majority. Unfortunately, despite the public recognition of the standard of Catholic education, there is a negative feeling among some Muslims about Catholic education and the inter-faith dialogue promoted since post-Vatican II
Council in 1965. They have implicitly labelled these as a way to domesticate the
Muslims. The word ‘domestication’, in this sense, could imply conversion to
Christianity; it could also refer to the weakening of ‘political Islam’ in the society, in which the Muslims could be influenced to abandon their religious convictions about certain aspects of morality and ethics. In sum, it seems that the Catholic Church, universally known as one of the most structured religious institutions in the world seems to have been convinced that the only way to deal with the ‘greater devil’ of
‘fanatical’ Islam in Indonesia was through a systematic and structured approach that
203 would keep the frightening devil under control (Hadiz 2016; Mount 2012;
Soedarmanta 2008; Mujiburrahman 2006).
Muslims as tempters
For me, as a reader of From Madiun, the idea of Muslims as the ‘greater devils’ is linked at some level with an idea of Muslims as tempters. In the Bible, Satan or the devil, is a tempter, someone who tempts believers away from the way of God. In the village context where I grew up, the minority Muslims are generally and implicitly regarded as ‘tempters’. In the local Lamaholot world, there is fear that the Muslims are trying to seduce Catholics, especially Eastern Indonesian Catholics, into temptations that include practising free sex (sex that is not subjected to the same rules and controls that govern the sexual lives of Catholics), having no fear of God, and having no fears about life after death, and practising black magic. These local cultural ideas about Muslims as tempters are somehow linked and mixed with the idea of the communists as a source of secular temptation. In the minds of many Eastern
Indonesian Catholics, the line between Muslims and communists are blurred, and so many of the features that are ascribed to communists are also ascribed to Muslims.
An example of how Lamaholot Catholics associate Muslims with sexual temptation, and in particular of how black magic is used to seduce others for sexual intercourse, is the Catholic reaction to the story of a Muslim man named Buasir Nur
Khotib from East Java, widely known as the ‘Kolor Ijo’ man (literally ‘green underpants’). Several media outlets, including the local newspaper of Pos Kupang in
204 Eastern Indonesia, published the stories87, which deeply shocked many people throughout Indonesia, but which had a particular effect on Eastern Indonesian
Catholics. According to the report, the man allegedly used black magic to plunder and have sex with women. Thirty-one rape cases had been reported to police, and the
Kolor Ijo man admitted himself to police investigators that he had sex with thirty-one women. According to the man’s own testimonies, he performed black magic rituals to help him in his seduction efforts. After spying on his target’s home for two days, the man would supposedly toss charms and walk around the house to induce a soporific spell on the occupants which allowed him to enter the locked house with ease. He then carried his female victims outside and had sex with them in a paddy field or outside the house. It is reported that after sex, the man would desert the victim by placing a stone on the victim’s body. This ritual act is believed to prevent the victim’s cries from being heard by other people. He was arrested by police in the East Java town of Probolinggo on 30th January 2014 for the alleged rapes, and was expected to be sentenced to up to twelve years in prison if found guilty of the alleged rapes. The name Kolor Ijo man has stirred fear since 2004. Even though he was arrested in late
January 2014, people remain shaken and deeply frightened today; whereas the Kolor
Ijo man will be perceived in Muslim areas (such as East Java where he was active) as a rapist, a seducer or a black magician. In Catholic areas of Eastern Indonesia, it is his
Muslim identity that is focused on. While the fear of the Kolor Ijo man and his sexual seduction is essentially secular, I would argue that this fear does have a religious- eschatological dimension, especially for Catholics. Being involved in ‘free sex’
(unmarried sex in this case) as a perpetrator or victim is regarded as sin, and therefore
87 This case has been reported in several media outlets including Kompas (30 January 2014), Detik (31 January 2014, 11 February 2014) and Pos Kupang (31 January 2014, 1 February 2014, 6 February 2014, 17 February 2014), as well as discussed widely in social media.
205 it has consequences for the fate of one’s soul after death. One will be thrown into hell in the afterlife if he or she does not receive the sacrament of confession or reconciliation in accordance with Catholic teaching. For Indonesian Catholics, the temptations of sex – with which Muslims are stereotypically associated in Lamaholot and other Indonesian Catholic communities – are inextricably linked with the future of the immortal soul, and what will happen to it after death.
We have noted above that religious fear, like secular fear, is concerned with death. Catholics fear the threat of being killed or at least injured for ideological reasons – whether communist or Islamic. While these fears of death are secular in nature, death is an issue that for Catholics is intrinsically religious because it involves the fate of the soul in the afterlife. Eastern Indonesian Catholics believe that once you are baptised Catholic you remain Catholic forever; once born (or reborn) as a
Catholic, you are expected to die as a Catholic. Changing one’s religion, which is seen as reflecting one’s weakness in resisting temptations such as the ‘free sex’, which Eastern Indonesian Catholics see as being offered by Islam, has consequences in how one’s soul will be judged after death.
It is believed that God will judge everyone accordingly and punish those who failed to maintain their obedience to their God and their religion. To an extent, it should be noted, this religious fear of Muslims may be secular in form because it is concerned with the worldly-political present. The consequence of being under Islamic rule means that Catholics may be tempted to compromise their Catholic teaching on matters such as polygamy, which would bear a consequence in the Final Judgement.
For this reason there is a real concern about one’s journey to the afterlife – whether it be to Heaven, or to Hell, or to Heaven but through Purgatory, the transit place.
206 My own anxieties about hell and the dangers of punishment in the afterlife combine elements derived from my reading of the Bible and from images of hell that
I acquired from my upbringing. Passages in the Bible that relate to fear of the Final
Judgment and eternity include: “Everyone will exist eternally either in heaven or hell” (Daniel 12:2-3; Matthew 25:46; John 5:28; Revelation 20:14-15); “Heaven or hell is determined by whether a person believes (puts their trust) in Christ alone to save them” (John 3:16, 36); “Hell was designed originally for Satan and his demons”
(Matthew 25:41; Revelation 20:10). “Hell will also punish the sin of those who reject
Christ” (Matthew 13:41, 50; Revelation 20:11-15, 21:8). Hell is also portrayed as conscious torment, for example, in Matthew 13:50, it says, “furnace of fire ... weeping and gnashing of teeth”. In Mark 9:48, “Where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched”. In Revelation 14:10, “He will be tormented with fire and brimstone”. Hell is also portrayed as eternal and irreversible, for example, in
Revelation 14:11, it says, “The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever and they have no rest day and night”. Again, in Revelation 20:14, it says, “This is the second death, the lake of fire”. These frightening Biblical images of hell are balanced by other elements in the scriptures that seem to contradict them. For example, there is belief that a loving God would not send people to a horrible hell. “God has provided the way of salvation to all” (John 3:16-17; 2 Corinthians 5:14-15; 1 Timothy 2:6;
4:10; Titus 2:11; 2 Peter 3:9). “Even those who haven’t heard of Christ are accountable for God’s revelation in nature” (Romans 1:20). “God will seek those who seek Him” (Matthew 7:7; Luke 19:10). “Therefore God doesn’t send people to hell, they choose it (Romans 1:18, 21, 25). “What is unfair and amazing is that Christ died for our sin and freely offers salvation to all” (Romans 2:4; 3:22-24; 4:7-8; 5:8-9).
207 Despite the objections to the biblical view of a frightening hell, where theologically God’s love and mercy has the power to eliminate that fear, personally my fear of hell, as described in the Bible, is deeply rooted within me. When I was little, religious education placed a strong emphasis on the idea of sin and hell. We were taught that hell was nothing but a place of eternal suffering and starvation; there is no water to drink, but just burning fire. Our childhood was filled with frightening stories and thoughts about hell as an eternal punishment to sinners. My understanding of sin then was simply related to failure to follow God’s ten commandments,
Culturally fire is seen as a symbolic representation of hell, where there is pain and suffering for eternity. I recall that when a little boy in my village fell into a burning fire in his kitchen and suffered terribly from burns all over his body, locals believed that the event was a warning sign of hell on earth.
Furthermore, in order to follow the ten commandments, we had to remember the content of each of them accurately. In almost every religion lesson we had to recite the ten commandments correctly, just the same as reciting the five principles in the Pancasila, the state ideology, in order to avoid punishments and ridicule. This approach was then considered necessary to ensure obedience to the religious and political doctrines respectively. Religiously, those who failed to follow them, and failed to cleanse themselves through the sacrament of confession or reconciliation, will be punished in the afterlife. This idea of sin and hell was frightening for me and children in general in my village. I now know that as children we were denied our rights to be children, to enjoy our childhood with all its consequences, including making mistakes. It was as though we were not allowed to ever make mistakes; we had to learn to be perfect children religiously and socially. Our parish priests as well
208 as other religious instructors in the village such as teachers were then treated as the living symbols of God’s presence on earth to help us obey his commandments, in order to avoid eternal punishment in hell in the Final Judgment. To be religious, or to be Catholic, was then to be worrying about the future all the time. The religious sense of eschatology, or the afterlife, was very strong during my childhood. We did not seem to enjoy the present to the full because we were obsessed with our ‘religious fantasy’ about the afterlife. We lived in the present, but always with the imagined future.
Additionally this teaching about Hell and Heaven can be understood in the context of the old theology of salvation proposing that outside the Church there is no salvation, or in Latin, ‘extra ecclesiam nulla salus’. It should be noted, the phrase
‘extra ecclesiam nulla salus’ means that all salvation only comes from Jesus Christ, the Head, through the Church, the Body. The expression comes from the writings of
Saint Cyprian of Carthage, a Bishop of the 3rd century, and the axiom represents the
Catholic doctrine about the importance of the Church as a means for salvation.
Theologically, the doctrine about salvation is based upon the beliefs that Jesus Christ was the sole founder of the Church, and that the Church is the only way to attain salvation from Jesus Christ as God the Son in the Trinitarian theology (Orlando and
Nickoloff 2007; Rahner 1975; Komonchak, Collins, Lane 1990).
With this deep fear of hell, and the fear of what would happen if one followed temptation and converted to Islam, or allowed Islamic influences to weaken one’s devotion to Catholicism, the sense of religious fear associated with Muslims as tempters and of the dangers this posed to the destiny of one’s soul in the future life after death is very profound. It is this fear that reading From Madiun awakens in me.
209 Muslims as polygamists
The idea of Muslims as sexual tempters who will lead Catholics into transgressions that will result in their falling into hell after death that informs my culturally- conditioned religious fears is strongly linked to the Indonesian Catholic stereotype of
Muslims as polygamists. Polygamy is seen by official Catholic doctrine as a sin that would endanger the soul in the afterlife. Even though I know that most Muslims in the Lamaholot communities do not practise polygamy, the stereotype of Muslims as polygamists is pervasive amongst Lamaholot Catholics. As we shall see in this section, polygamy is a complex phenomenon in the Lamaholot world, both Catholic and Muslim, and we can argue that it constitutes a real temptation for Lamaholot
Catholics, which is one of the reasons why Muslims – who are stereotyped as polygamists – are beings who stimulate religious fear. Converting to Islam would, in theory, permit Lamaholot people to practise polygamy legally, and this would, from a
Catholic point of view, risk punishment in hell in the afterlife. As I shall explain, polygamy is simultaneously a temptation (since it permits men more sexual opportunities than does monogamous Catholic marriage and than priestly celibacy) and a source of fear and anxiety for Lamaholot people.
Polygamy is indeed legal in Indonesia. However, the Muslim communities are divided on the issue of polygamy between two main camps, the ‘traditionalist’ and
‘modernist’. The Muslim traditionalists approve of the practice of polygamy, while the modernists disapprove of it. Both camps use the Qur’an as their point of reference
(Rohman 2013). The traditionalists cite a verse in the Qur’an: “If you fear that you will not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry the women of your choice, two or three or four”. They understand this verse to suggest that a Muslim man can marry
210 more than one wife, but no more than four. They also cite a hadith (the saying of
Prophet Muhammad) to support their position on polygamy: “Be married! The most blessed in Islam are those who have many wives”. The traditionalists are then led to believe that the more wives a Muslim man has the more rewarded by God. Another argument used by the traditionalists in their support of polygamy is that polygamy can prevent Muslims from zina (adultery), and the social problem of prostitution can also be eliminated. The traditionalists even go further accusing those modernists who reject polygamy of being evil (even though they understand this as a ‘lesser evil’), also saying that they have been contaminated by western ideology (Rahman 1989; cited in Rohman 2013). Another argument used by the traditionalists in their support of polygamy from the women’s perspective is that many Muslim women allow their husband to be polygamous because by marrying a polygamous husband they can, as in the words of Rohman, “smell the fragrance of heaven” (Rohman, 2013:73), an idea that is the complete opposite of the view of Catholics, who ‘smell the fire of hell’ in the practice of polygamy.
In response, the modernists claim that the traditionalists who support polygamy in Islam have misunderstood the core message of the Qur’an. According to the modernists, the verse in the Qur’an needs to be read in full, and not partially.
They assert that the traditionalists only look at the first part of the verse in the Qur’an that says: “If you fear that you will not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry the women of your choice, two or three or four”, and that they fail to read the rest of the verse: “If you fear that you will not be able to do justice, then marry only one”.
To the modernists, this part is key in the understanding of the entire verse that clearly prefers monogamy to polygamy. The modernists believe that a man who is married to
211 more than one wife would be most unlikely to offer equal treatment to all his wives.
In support of this claim, the modernists cite another verse in the Qur’an: “You will never be able to be fair and just between women even if it is your ardent desire, but do not turn away from a woman altogether so as to leave her as it were hanging in the air”. The modernists then conclude that Islam teaches monogamy, not polygamy
(Badawi 1994; cited in Rohman 2013). The modernists also reject the idea of the polygamous relationships of the Prophet Muhammad being a justification for Muslim men to have more than one wife at the same time. Modernists argue that the context and needs of the times are essential in understanding the practice of polygamy by the
Prophet (Nurmila 2009; Mernissi 1993 [cited in Rohman 2013]).
These debates show that the Indonesian Muslim position on polygamy is complex. It should also be noted that there are Lamholot Catholics who practise polygamy. I know of a Catholic man in a village in Lembata who had three wives at the same time, and they all lived together in the same house rather happily. There was also another Catholic man who had four wives, but they lived in separate houses and towns, and on different islands. There was a recent report in the Indonesian press that on the Eastern Indonesian island of Sumba a Christian man called Deta Raya, aged 72 in 2014, has 12 wives, 52 children, and 212 grandchildren. His wives live separately in the village of Waiha on the island of Sumba, Eastern Indonesia. According to Deta
Raya, all his 12 wives are legitimate in accordance with the local adat and religion namely Christianity. He said that three of his wives had passed away, and nine remain faithful to him until today. Proudly Deta Raya stated that he had a very peaceful and respectful relationship with all his wives; he provides for them, and there is no apparent jealousy and conflict between the wives (Kompas, 17 and 18 October 2014).
212 I cite these reports because they show that amongst Christian Eastern Indonesians there is a tradition of polygamy which predated Christianity and which has survived into the present.
It is clear that polygamy in Islam is always a matter of choice, and that there is no obligation for all Muslims to practise polygamy. The idea of polygamy was generally not well received in the village context of the Lamaholots – both Muslim and Catholic – for two reasons. The first reason was that the traditional practice of polygamy was a burden economically and emotionally, especially for men.
According to our local adat, customary law, the wife-receiving family has to give at least two large ivory tusks and about a dozen live animals, usually goats and pigs, as a brideprice or bridewealth. The second reason, other than the brideprice itself, is the pressure involved in supporting the wives and the offspring born to each of them – this could cause a great deal of stress and burden economically and socially. Many families in the village who only have one wife but who were unable to pay the full brideprice to the wife’s family are often excluded socially or feel themselves to be excluded. They feel as though they are ‘tidak laku’, or ‘not worthy’ of belonging to the community.
Another reason for the rejection of polygamy was a local Catholic sense of modernity. There was a belief that polygamy was evidence of backwardness. Up to my great-grandparents’ generation, polygamy was a common practice. After the arrival of Catholicism, however, polygamy was slowly erased from the society, as part of the wider process making Catholic norms dominant in Lamaholot life. As an example of the spread of Catholic marriage norms, my mother and father received four Catholic sacraments in one day, namely baptism, confession, first communion,
213 and matrimony. This occurred in the early 1950s. These changes in marriage practices are perceived as being part of modernisation: Catholic villagers do not want to practise polygamy not only because it was banned in the Catholic doctrine, but also because polygamy is a symbolic representation of backwardness, of being stuck in or of going back to the past.
This general anxiety about polygamy and its possible effects on Catholics add to the fear of Muslims, because of the perception that they are polygamists. Even though polygamy is not a common practice among local Muslim communities, their acceptance of polygamy as in the position of the fundamentalists as explained earlier remains a source of worry for local Catholics. When I read the references to Muslims in the From Madiun text, this fear of polygamy and the association of Muslims with polygamy arises in my mind, even though there is no reference to polygamy in the text. I am thinking of Muslims as potential polygamists regardless of whether or not they actually practise it. At the base of these thoughts and fear is the belief among the local Lamaholots that Catholics who practise polygamy are threatened with going to hell when they die; they will suffer in eternity. This local belief seems logical as local
Catholics who have more than one partner are not allowed to receive communion. In this context, the Church has the instituional power to decide on one’s destiny in the afterlife, since a dying Catholic who does not take communion is not assured of salvation in eternity.
There are examples of these anxieties about marriage and being able to take communion in my own family. My father’s brother was married three times due to the death of his wives. He is now dead, leaving behind his third wife and several children and grandchildren. When alive he was not allowed to receive communion by
214 our local parish priest; he was not at all happy about the imposition of this sanction.
Deep down he was anxious about his destiny in the afterlife: he was very worried that when he died he would be thrown straight into hell and eternal suffering. He spoke with me when I was still in the seminary studying for priesthood. I tried to assure him that the idea of eternal salvation is completely God’s business, and that I myself believe that God is a loving and merciful God who will not punish, but forgives and embraces everyone in heaven when their time comes. He seemed relieved, and found some peace within himself after that conversation. We can see from his case the deep religious fears that Lamaholot people experience in relation to marriage issues, and the power that the Church has in this area.
Muslims as ‘marangele’
In the previous section, I explained how fear of Muslims as polygamists is linked in my mind and in those of Lamaholot Catholics more broadly with punishment in the afterlife. In this section, I discuss another image associated with Muslims as fear inspiring religious beings that is connected with fears about sufferings after death – the image of Muslims as ‘Marangele’. I have noted that I had very little personal contact with Muslims in my childhood and adolescence, due to having grown up in predominantly Catholic regions of Lembata and Flores. A persistent image that was imparted to me at this time was that of Muslims as ‘marangele’, which means
‘headhunters’.88 Every year, particularly during the harvest, people in villages in
88 Maribeth Erb (1991) writes about the rumor complex of ‘marangele’ or the headhunters in Manggarai, Flores, in her article ‘Construction sacrifice, rumors and kidnapping scares in Manggarai: Further notes from Flores. The article was published in December 1991 in Oceania, Number 62(2), pages 114-126. Erb mentions that the rumor panics center on European missionaries who have been in Flores for a very long time, and who have been mostly responsible for concrete construction such as bridges, churches and schools. According to Erb, this rumor should be understood as an expression of
215 Lembata worried about attacks by ‘marangele’. Stories about ‘marangele’ became a local consumption during the season. One story in particular referred to a local
Muslim man from a coastal village of Labala in southern Lembata. This man remains a puzzle to me until today; I do not know whether he was real or imaginary. He was known just by the name of Umar. Described as a dark-skinned man, big-built and tall with curly hair, Umar was accused of being a ‘marangele’. Often people told stories of seeing Umar trying to catch children and young women in particular, but his attempts always failed, his targeted victims were able to escape from him. Looking back now as an adult the stories about ‘maranglele’ that instilled fear in the villagers seem to me like a ‘seasonal fear’ that was constantly maintained and recycled. These
‘marangele’ stories contributed significantly to my childhood perception of Muslims as frightening beings.
The From Madiun text, with its explicit account of communists as threatening, violent beings and its hints about the dangers of fanatical Muslims, brings to my mind the story about Umar, the local ‘marangele’ who allegedly tried to kidnap and murder young children. According to the locals, the heads of murdered children were used as the foundations for buildings such as churches and bridges (Erb 1991). The imaginary physical appearance of Umar which represents cruelty and threat appears to me as I read the From Madiun text. At one level my fear reaction to the text is rather
Freudian in the sense that the text takes me back to my childhood and stirs up my fears relating to the figure of Umar. The text summons up the ‘marangele’, the headhunters as frightening beings linked in my young years with Islam, with threats to children. For me, it is an interesting process to recognise my emotions of fear that
Manggarai’s ambivalence towards foreigners on one hand, and on the other a reflection of their fear of slave-raiders in the past.
216 arise reading the From Madiun text as an educated adult, and to learn to deal with the deep culturally-conditioned fear of Muslims that the text triggers and maintains in me as a reader. Moreover, this sense of fear is deepened by the suspicion that Umar practised black magic. This meant that there was a double layer of fear relating to
Umar, namely that of Umar as a marangele and Umar as a black magician. In this sense, my fear of Umar as a religious being links to my fear of Umar as someone linked with supernatural forces.
These supernatural forces and the fears associated with them are the subject of the next chapter. The link between supernatural fears and religious fears is connected with the idea of a bad death (which will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapter). Lamaholot locals believe that people who die ‘unnaturally’ such as through traffic accidents, falling from a cliff or trees, and through kidnapping as in the case of
‘marangele’, do not go straight to heaven but pass through purgatory. Religious ideas about the fate of the soul are joined with local cultural ideas about unnatural death: as the following chapter will discuss, in the eyes of Lamaholot people, the blood of those who suffer an unnatural death remains with the living community, or, in the local terminology, ‘mei nawa’. The soul of the victim can only leave the living community to be united with the dead community after a cooling down ritual is performed. This ritual is locally known as ‘ritus pana nawu’, literally means the ritual of taking the soul of the victim to the dead community, and is in the form of offerings, or ‘sesajen’, to the ancestral spirits and God, known in the local terminology as ‘lera wulan tana ekan’.
Lamaholot locals, including myself as the reader of the From Madiun text, are deeply afraid of unnatural death, including being the victim of a ‘marangele’
217 operation. On one hand, the fear of ‘marangele’ is a secular fear because it involves fear of physical death; it is also a supernatural fear, as the ‘marangele’ are known as people who practise black magic. On the other hand, the fear of ‘marangele’, as highlighted in the story above, has a religious dimension because it is fundamentally related to one’s salvation in the afterlife; the image of Muslims as ‘marangele´ involves their capacity to cause suffering in the afterlife, because Lamaholot
Catholics believe that the victim of a bad death, such as that caused by a marangele´, must pass through purgatory after dying and thus will experience pain in the world after death. Having discussed fear and religious beings which is concerned with
Muslims as setan besar or the greater devils according to Pater Beek, Muslims as tempters, Muslims as polygamists, and Muslims as marangele or the headhunters, I now explain in brief the idea of religious fear and time.
Fear and religious time
The above discussion of fear of religious beings presented quite a different kind of fear of beings from the previous chapter’s discussion of fear of secular beings. The same is true of fear and religious time. Secular fear involved a secular time that was this-worldly and focused on the relationship between the present and the past; religious fear involves religious time which involves not just this present world but the next world – the future world beyond this life. The fear caused in me as a reader by the explicit secular narrative in From Madiun involved my being transported from the present back into the frightening secular past in the years before 1965, the period that the text discusses. The fear caused in me as a reader by the implicit religious narrative in From Madiun involves my being transported into the frightening religious future where I worry about the fate of my soul in the afterlife. I have already
218 pointed out that Catholics have a deep concern that at the Final Judgment those religious people who could not resist the communist and Islamic temptations in this life will be judged accordingly and be thrown into the hell of eternal fire and pain.
This future dimension of religious fear is experienced in the present: punishment in the afterlife and the possibility of a future Islamic state in Indonesia are imagined in the present. The theoretical chapter of this thesis put forward the contention that the fear is always encountered in the present, even when it involves imagining the future. Although the spiritual consequences of the danger presented by
Muslims in the present will take place in the eschatological future religious time of the afterlife, the fear of this future takes place in the present. Moreover, the reader of the From Madiun text always reads the text in the present, and the fear that the text triggers and maintains in the reader always occurs in the present.
In my view, what is common to the religious fears of Catholics and Muslims is that they are competing over entry into heaven in the afterlife and both worry about falling into hell. In the following section, I will discuss how these fears about the religious future play out in the fear of Muslims as religious rivals. I argue that the question of religious rivalry over who will get to heaven is connected to the secular rivalry over who has the right to control the Indonesian state. In the next section, I shall refer more directly to the From Madiun text to address these questions of religious rivalry, particularly with regard to the idea of religious ‘fanaticism’ and political Islam.
Fear and religious rivalry
The previous chapter outlined my reading of the From Madiun text in terms of the
PKI being a secular and secularising rival to the Catholic Church. In this chapter, I
219 discuss the religious rivalry between the Catholic Church and Islam and the Catholic sense of fear of Muslims as religious rivals. For me, an implicit message of the text is that after 1965-66, ‘fanatical’ Muslims continued to be the main rival with which
Indonesian Catholic Church must contend – they are the ‘setan besar’, the ‘greater devils’, in Pater Beek’s terminology.89 I see the text as pointing to this danger in its discussion of the Islamic political party Masyumi (which, as we have already noted, was banned in 1960). In the 1950s and 1960s, Catholics were worried about the political influence of Islamic groups in Indonesia, and sought to counteract this influence, to maintain Pancasila and prevent the establishment of an Islamic state in
Indonesia. In my view, From Madiun suggests that the danger that ‘fanatical’
Muslims will seek to create an Islamic state is still real, and that ‘fanatical’ Islamic groups remain a frightening rival to the Indonesian Catholic Church in the post-1965-
66 era.
89 It should be noted, however, that the threat of political Islam had been a plausible source of fear since independence, most obviously since the first DI revolt in West Java in the late 1940s. Both Sukarno and Suharto opposed a major role for political Islam and an Islamic state – hence Pancasila/ NASAKOM, then Suharto’s version of Pancasila. In 1965-66 Suharto destroyed the PKI as an organisation and killed or imprisoned its leadership and much of its membership. He also marginalized political Islam. In line with Suharto, one of Pater Beek’s strategies was to mobilize Army support to make sure that political Islam was marginalized. With the advantage of retrospect, Beek’s strategy was successful, at least until the establishment of ICMI in 1990. The implied fear of Islam in the From Madiun text reflects the Beek strategy to pressure the government and military to combat any possible revival of political Islam. Again, with the advantage of retrospect, in the entire period since independence, the influence of political Islam was at its lowest in the first two decades of Suharto’s New Order. The Darul Islam rebellions had been defeated and the Masyumi had been banned and its leaders and supporters were permitted no new organization. The influence of the Muslim majority is a demographic reality. The political influence of Catholics within the government, through Pater Beek’s ‘anak buah’ (followers) in CSIS and Benny Murdani, has never been greater than in the first two decades of the New Order. No doubt, Pater Beek would have liked Catholic influence to be greater. So from a political history perspective, it is not that Islam replaced communism as the principal source of fear for Catholics, but rather that Islam continued to be a source of potential fear. In the pre-1965 period, the Church confronted two sources of fear: Islam and the PKI. Suharto destroyed the PKI, but political Islam could be marginalized but not eliminated.
220 However, the religious fear of Islam as a rival to Catholicism is not simply about fear of a rival force in the secular political sphere; it is fear that is related to the fate of the soul after death. Catholics are taught that either eternal torment in hell or eternal joy in heaven awaits all people after death, based on whether they trust in, or reject, Jesus Christ (See, Rahner 1975; Komonchak, Collins, Lane 1990). The idea of religious loyalty and faithfulness is fundamentally important in Christianity to ensure a place in heaven. Catholics are afraid that conversion to Islam – the dominant religious alternative to Catholicism in Indonesia – or simply following Islamic law, as a result of residing in an Islamic state, would result in punishment for them at the
Final Judgment. Catholics fear that if their religious rivals – ‘extremist’ or ‘fanatical’
Muslims – were to ever to succeed in establishing an Islamic state there would be no guarantee that religious freedom would be allowed, and Catholics would be forced to make hard decisions – either to convert to Islam and remain in Indonesia, or to leave the country. This is of course simply a secular choice relating to the possible future of
Catholics in an Islamised Indonesia, but the more profound fear relates to the future of the soul in the afterlife, and the fear that one might endanger one’s immortal soul as a result of living in an Islamic culture where one could not fully pursue a Catholic life.
‘Fanaticism’, an Islamic state and fear of hell
I argue that for me and for other Indonesian Catholics, the question of the rivalry over who will control the Indonesian state is bound up with the question of rivalry over access to heaven. Fear of the possibility of an Islamic state being established in
Indonesia is not merely a question about secular power, but also a fear about salvation. Catholics and Muslims are engaged in competition over heaven: when
221 reading the From Madiun text I feel a sense of the implicit competition with Muslims over a place in heaven. In seeking to establish an Islamic state, ‘fanatical’
(extremist/radical) Muslims, it can be argued, are not simply trying to attain secular power – they are attempting to build a framework, which they believe, will help them to get to heaven. For me, Islamic religious ‘fanaticism’ (extremism/radicalism) and the idea of an Islamic state are a frightening prospect as they reduce my chance for salvation in the afterlife. Residing in an Islamic state poses a great test to my ability to resist any temptations that might be in conflict with my Catholic values. In the following, I shall explain what the From Madiun text says about ‘fanaticism’ in Islam in Indonesia and Islamic state. As in the context of the From Madiun text, I argue that there is a connection between Islamic ‘fanaticism’ (extrimism/radicalism) and Islamic state, and there is fear of hell amongst Catholics as a result.
Islamic ‘fanaticism’
As will be outlined below, the From Madiun text refers explicitly to religious
‘fanaticism’ and it presents this ‘fanaticism’ as a source of danger to Indonesian
Catholics. It also explicitly discusses the Islamic Party, Masyumi, which, according to the text, intended to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia. This caused fear to
Catholics at the time. When reading what the From Madiun text says about the intention of Masyumi before Masyumi was banned in 1960, and the suggestion that
Masyumi’s successors still have these intentions, I immediately sense their fears. I felt the fear of those Catholics that the future of Catholicism in the country could be under threat in secular terms, and consequently their place in heaven could also be hijacked by the actions of ‘fanatical’ Muslims. Subconsciously there is thus a
222 constant sense of rivalry with Muslims over state and heaven. The logic is that whoever controls the state controls the heaven.
Both Catholics and Muslims live and do things today for the afterlife as well as for their enjoyment of life on earth. In Catholic eyes, ‘fanatical’ Muslims want to take control of the Indonesian state to secure their own place in the afterlife and for their own enjoyment of life on earth; what Catholics fear is the consequences of the pursuit of these goals by ‘fanatical’ Muslims – they are worried that their own salvation will be endangered if the Muslims are successful. But there is also a more everyday fear of the religious consequences of excessive contact with Islam. Deep down Indonesian Catholics fear being thrown into hell if they become trapped by the temptation of religious conversion to Islam. On this question of death, the supernatural fear is actually beyond death. This means that there are no points of reference that could enable a person to control his or her own conduct during life for the benefit of the afterlife. This sense of powerlessness in controlling one’s destiny is the source of fear, and is regarded in this thesis as the most frightening form of fear.
This is different from the religious fear where there is a clear point of reference that could help one to control one’s own behaviours here and now for the life beyond.
Additionally, it should be noted however, that some Muslims in Indonesia also have a suspicion that there have been Christianisation attempts by Christians in Indonesia.
This perception, regardless of whether or not it is substantiated, highlights the idea that ‘fanaticism’ may belong to any religious group. It does not belong exclusively to one particular religion, such as Islam.
According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1989: 438), the term
‘fanaticism’ means “great or obsessive enthusiasm”; and the word ‘fanatic’ refers to
223 “a person who is too enthusiastic about something, especially religion or politics”.
Whereas fundamentalism, in Christian thought, is “belief that the Bible is literally true and should form the basis of religious thought or practice” (Oxford Dictionary,
1989: 501). Religious (Islamic) ‘fanaticism’, in the context of the text studied thus refers to obsessive enthusiasm about the creation of a religious (Islamic)-based state, as opposed to the Pancasila-based state. For the Catholic Church, this ‘obsessive enthusiasm’ is poisoning and frightening, especially for minority religions like
Catholicism. Such an obsessive enthusiasm denies the very principle of religious freedom and plurality. Yet one should bear in mind that it is not the Muslims, but rather Islamic ‘fanaticism’ that is seen as a threatening object. It is important that this distinction is made between Muslims and Islamic ‘fanaticism’ in order to avoid a generalised view that all Muslims are of the same nature, or a generalisation that all
‘fanatics’ are Muslims, and all Muslims are ‘fanatical’.
In the context of the From Madiun text, it should be mentioned that at the national level the religious fear of Islamic ‘fanaticism’ is mainly due to the potential threat of Indonesia one day becoming an Islamic state. There is therefore a concern within the Indonesian Catholic Church that under Islamic rule there will be no religious freedom. As highlighted in the text, before 1965, there was a sense of
Islamic threat, but to a lesser extent, due to a greater communist threat that needed to be fought together by the religious communities including the Catholics and the
Muslims. There was a constructed common enemy, and all the religious forces seemed to be united to tackle this common enemy namely communism. From 1965-
66 onwards, however, Islam was regarded as the main object of fear at least within the institutional Church. This perceived Islamic threat leads to a conclusion that fear
224 indeed remains. The massacre of the communists in fact failed to end the fear, but fear is being recycled and remodified. The ‘fanatical’ Muslims became the revised object of fear in the post-1965-66 present.
Islamic politics
The religious rivalry that I consider to be implicit in the From Madiun text is deeply connected with the complex political relationships between Muslims and Catholics that have developed in Indonesia between the 1940s and the present. Both Muslims and Catholics have had political parties that have sought to project their interests.
What is important is that Catholics have moved back and forth between collaboration and competition with Muslim political groups since Indonesia’s independence.
It is important to emphasise Catholic-Muslim political friendship in the pre-
1965 era, especially in the 1950s, did not last after 1965-66. In the years after 1965-
66, politically active Muslims came to be seen by Catholics as rivals and even enemies to be avoided or eliminated because they were perceived to represent religious threats to Catholicism. We can see this in the From Madiun text, which voices fears about attempts by the Masyumi Party to establish an Islamic state in the
1950s, even though there is no evidence to support this claim of the ‘national
Church’. From Madiun implies that such dangers are still there in the present. We can argue that the following passage expresses post-1965-66 anxieties about the threat of
Muslims as political rivals:
The parties should not blind themselves to the failures of the work methods of the past: The PNI must become a party that is truly principled and cleanse itself from the infection of Marxism as well as the cult of the individual. The religious groups should leave behind the assumption that only religion can save the nation. Uphold a nation that is godly but do not establish a Religious State!
225 Tolerance in its truest meaning must be revered! In the past, Masyumi was indeed quite democratic. But its tactics and steps it took created the general impression that it intended to create an “Islamic State” (From Madiun, 1967:137).90
It is interesting to see how the From Madiun text tries not to play a ‘blame game’ on a particular group. At its opening paragraph as in the citation above, the text asks that the nationalists (PNI) as well as religious people should all bear some responsibility for their failure to stop the communists from attempting to seize the state power in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The From Madiun text implies that the events of 1965-66 should be seen as ‘a wake-up call’ for all the non-communist forces about the danger of the Godless people, as well as the hard-line Islamists, both of whom represent a challenge to Pancasila.
In relation to this, the From Madiun text suggests that allowing ‘the extreme left’ (communists) and ‘the extreme right’ (radical Muslims) to exist is not beneficial for Indonesia’s democracy. The text shows the Church as frightened by those two extremes, and presents both the communists and the radical Muslims as equal dangers to Indonesian democracy. The text asserts,
...Therefore democratic principles demand that anti-democratic parties, both from the left and the right, be banned. In democracy there does indeed occur conflict between political parties. But this competition must be based on the desire and conviction to build the nation and not to achieve personal victory or gain. Because the parties neglected that principle, the PKI received a good wind (From Madiun, 1967:36).91
90 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Partai-partai janganlah membutakan diri terhadap kegagalan-kegagalan cara bekerja pada masa lalu: PNI harus lebih merupakan partai yang betul-betul berprinsip dan membersihkan diri dari infeksi Marxisme serta kultus individu. Golongan Agama supaya meninggalkan anggapan seolah-olah agama sajalah yang menyelamatkan negara. Pertahankanlah negara yang ber-Tuhan tetapi janganlah mendirikan Negara Agama! Toleransi dalam arti yang benar harus dijundjung tinggi! Dulu Masyumi memang cukup demokratis. Tetapi taktik maupun langkahnya menciptakan kesan umum hendak mendirikan “Negara Islam” (From Madiun, 1967:137).
91 The following is the original Indonesian quotation:
226
The ‘fanaticism’ of radical Islam – the ‘right’ – is presented in the text as being as dangerous a rival to the Church as communism - the ‘left’. It should be noted that the expression, ‘fanatisme agama’92, or religious ‘fanaticism’, is used in the text in specific reference to highlight the negative political consequences of the attempt to create an Islamic state. The text asserts that religious ‘fanaticism’ – which I understand as referring to the plan to establish an Islamic state – had actually provided the opportunity to the Godless communists to try to take charge of the
Pancasila-based state.
The Crocodile Hole tragedy occurred not only because the PKI was clever and cunning, but also because of the impotence of non- communist parties and groups, and the weakness of a feudalistic society that gave absolute power to one person namely Sukarno. It is useless to condemn only the PKI! It is important that we non- communist groups or religious groups are cautious. Was it not with our negligence, our religious fanaticism, our fickle attitudes, our corruption and egoism that we had actually given the opportunity to the PKI which was in collaboration with Sukarno to take control of this Pancasila-based state? (From Madiun, 1967:6).93
... Maka prinsip demokrasi menuntut agar partai-partai yang anti-demokratis dilarang baik yang berhaluan kanan maupun kiri. Dalam demokrasi memang terdapat persaingan antara partai-partai politik. Tapi persaingan itu harus berdasarkan pada hasrat serta keyakinan untuk membangun Negara dan bukan untuk mencari menang serta keuntungan sendiri. Karena partai-partai melalaikan prinsip itu, maka PKI mendapat angin baik (From Madiun, 1967:36).
92 As noted in my earlier footnote in this chapter, the word ‘fanaticism’ is used in the From Madiun text, and so it can be argued that the use of the term partly reflects a broader Catholic discourse on Islam in Indonesia.
93 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Tragedi Lubang Buaya bukan hanya karena kelihaian dan kelicikan PKI, tapi juga karena impotensi partai-partai/golongan non-komunis dan kelemahan masyarakat feodalistis yang memberikan kekuasaan mutlak kepada satu orang, yaitu Sukarno. Tidak ada gunanya kita hanya mengutuk PKI saja! Hendaknya kita, golongan non-komunis/kaum beragama, mawas diri. Bukanlah dengan kelalaian-kelalaian, fanatisme agama, sifat plin-plan, korupsi dan egoisme golongan itu kita memberikan kesempatan terus kepada PKI yang berkongkalikong dengan Sukarno untuk menguasai negara Pancasila ini? (From Madiun, 1967:6).
227 Here the From Madiun text suggests that it was religious ‘fanaticism’ that gave the PKI the opportunity to attempt a coup in 1965; by not specifying what is meant by
‘religious fanaticism’ this passage tries to highlight the shared responsibility amongst the religious groups for the 1965 Crocodile Hole tragedy, but to me the implication here is that it was the desire of ‘fanatical’ Muslims for an Islamic state, which prevented the religiously-affiliated political parties from opposing Sukarno’s acquisition of absolute power, giving the opportunity for the PKI to try to take control of the Pancasila-based state. Later on in the From Madiun text there is a more specific and explicit reference to Masyumi Muslims as ‘fanatics’94:
During the time of the Wilopo Cabinet (3 April 1953 - 2 March 1956), the PKI succeeded in erasing its stigma and overcoming its illegal status. Initially the PKI was very disappointed that the PNI was in a coalition with Masyumi. But the PNI needed and sought an ally in the face of the religious fanaticism of Masyumi and the influence of the PSI in the military. The PKI was willing to help as much as possible, as long as it weakened Masyumi – PSI – Hatta. Nationalist groups considered the PKI to be still too weak and small to be a threatening danger. The opposition of the PNI towards Masyumi was systematically used by the PKI to blockade Masyumi. Moreover, the PNI came to rely on PKI more and more (From Madiun, 1967:46).95
94 This, in a sense, would seem to be an anti-party line in keeping with the Pater Beek/CSIS agenda to build the New Order of Suharto (ORBA) into a strong corporatist state able to suppress the PKI and marginalize, merge and manage the other parties. Targetting Masyumi rather than NU is interesting. Why did Catholics fear Masyumi more than NU is an interesting question to explore in further research.
95 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Selama masa kerja Kabinet Wilopo (3 April 1953-2 Maret 1956), PKI berhasil melenyapkan segala nodanya dan mengatasi keadaan illegalnya. Mula-mula PKI sangat kecewa melihat PNI berkoalisi dengan Masyumi. Tetapi PNI membutuhkan dan mencari kawan untuk menghadapi fanatisme agama dari golongan Masyumi dan pengaruh PSI dalam kalangan perwira-perwira. PKI bersedia membantu PNI sejauh mungkin, asal saja itu melemahkan Masyumi – PSI – Hatta. Golongan nasional menganggap PKI masih terlalu lemah dan kecil, sehingga belum merupakan bahaya yang mengancam. Oposisi PNI terhadap Masyumi digunakan secara sistematis oleh PKI untuk membendung Masyumi. Malahan kelak PNI makin lama makin tergantung pada PKI (From Madiun, 1967:46).
228 For me, the two above citations invoke religious ‘fanaticism’ – which I take as meaning Islamic ‘fanaticism’ – as a source of danger to Catholics in Indonesia. The
Catholic Church is well aware of its minority status, and feels threatened by this fact.
From Madiun communicates the religious fear that Catholics experience as a minority group in a country in which there are constant dangers from groups who wish to change the state in ways that will make it difficult for Catholics to practise their religion and thus ensure their salvation in the afterlife.
The fears associated with this minority status, and the idea that the survival of
Catholics in Indonesia is in danger, has had a big effect on Catholic politics in
Indonesia. We can see an example of this in the following quote from a work published in 1980 that discusses the critical response of the elites in the Indonesian
Catholic Party to the rejection by I.J. Kasimo, the leader of the Catholic Party, of
President Sukarno’s proposal of 21 February 1957 to include the communists in the government:
What is the purpose of the Catholic Party in rejecting the Konsepsi Presiden? Doesn’t the Catholic Party know that we are part of a small, minority group! As a minority, we can only be fortunate if we are in line with the government! A minority group must put their fate in the hands of those in power, because, if not, we could be crushed! (Kompas & Gramedia, 1980:86).96
The statement that “as a minority, we can only be fortunate if we are in line with the government” can be taken up as summing up a view that Catholics must, for their own survival, ally themselves with whoever is in power. However, the stance of
From Madiun and of the leaders of the Catholic Church was that this approach had
96 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Apa maksudnya Partai Katolik menolak Konsepsi Presiden? Kita kan golongan kecil, golongan minoritas! Sebagai golongan minoritas, kita hanya untung jika sejalan dengan pemerintah! Golongan minoritas harus selalu menggantungkan nasibnya kepada yang berkuasa, sebab jika tidak kita kan bisa dihabiskan begitu saja! (Kompas & Gramedia, 1980:86).
229 been wrong when Sukarno sought to monopolise power in the late 1950s (partly as a response to the challenge of Masyumi). It is worth noting that Kasimo’s disapproval of Sukarno’s suggestion to permit the PKI to join the government was due to his conviction that participation of the communists in the Cabinet in Eastern Europe had actually paved the way for the communists to gain power; when they (the communists) were in power they had turned the Eastern European countries into communist states in which there was no religious freedom. Kasimo feared that the same fate would befall Indonesia if the communists were allowed to participate in the running of the government, and religious freedom in Indonesia would have been under serious threat. Kasimo had learnt from his teacher Father van Lith SJ, a Jesuit
Priest of Dutch origin, the meaning of tolerance towards other groups, but argued that there was no room for tolerance towards the communists. According to Kasimo, atheistic ideologies such as communism should not be allowed to exist in countries like Indonesia that value the importance of religion (Kompas & Gramedia, 1980:85).
These arguments in the late 1950s and early 1960s about how Catholics should respond to Sukarno’s stance on the PKI and, by extension, how Catholics and the Catholic faith could best be preserved in Indonesia, were strongly affected by the differences in opinion between the archbishop of Jakarta Mgr. Jayaseputra SJ and the
Archbishop of Semarang Mgr. Sugiyopranoto SJ. The archbishop of Jakarta at the time refused any form of cooperation with the PKI, and he approved of Kasimo’s opposition to the President’s concept. Mgr. Sugiyopranoto was also against the PKI, but was more concerned about preserving the leadership of President Sukarno. To
230 him, President Sukarno should be supported by accepting his proposal that the PKI97 be included in the government.
For me, there is an implicit link between these discussions of the stance of the
Catholic Party on support for Sukarno’s government in the late 1950s, with its PKI members, and the question of how Catholics should think about their relationships with those seeking to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia. While the fact that
‘fanatical’ Muslims also have a monotheistic religion enables Catholics to see them as allies in the struggle against secularism and atheism, the fact that ‘fanatical’
Muslims have a rival conception of the path to salvation and want to impose their values on Indonesia as whole makes them a source of fear. The failure of Islamic groups to give full support for Pancasila in debates about the Indonesian constitution in the 1950s is focused on in the From Madiun text. For the PKI, there was no other better choice than to support the political system of Guided Democracy and return to the Constitution of 1945. The Constitution gave sweeping power to the position of
President. The From Madiun text states,
The Constituent Assembly which was two years old did not produce anything, because the Pancasila and Islamic groups could not reach an agreement. For the PKI, there was no other choice except to support Guided Democracy and return to the ’45 Constitution. The Constitution gave sweeping power to the position of President. Another possibility did indeed exist, but it would greatly disadvantage the Party, that is: the Dissolution of all Parties or even military rule (From Madiun, 1967:57).98
97 This was only a proposal until Sukarno appointed the communists, Aidit and Nyoto, advisory Ministers in 1962.
98 The original Indonesian quotation is as follows: Konstituante yang sudah berusia dua tahun itu tidak menghasilkan apa-apa, karena golongan Pancasila dan Islam tidak mencapai kata sepakat. Bagi PKI tidak ada pilihan lain daripada mendukung Demokrasi Terpimpin dan kembali ke UUD ’45. UUD itu memberi kekuasaan luas kepada jabatan Presiden. Kemungkinan lain memang ada, tapi jauh lebih merugikan Partai, yakni: Pembubaran semua Partai atau malahan pemerintahan militer (From Madiun, 1967:57).
231
Furthermore, due to the split between the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Masyumi in August 1952, the PKI could infiltrate into the Masyumi without even offending
Islam as a whole. This was because Masyumi was not the only one representing Islam in Indonesia, even though it was then considered to be the strongest anti-communist fortress. From Madiun text asserts that:
In the month of August in 1952, the conservative group Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) separated itself from Masyumi, so that Masyumi was no longer the one and only representative of the entire Islamic community. But later on NU was not strong enough and did not hold to matters of principle. It was more important to the NU for their figures to gain advantage. Now Masyumi, the strongest anti- communist fortress, could be penetrated by the PKI without offending the Islamic group (From Madiun, 1967:47).99
In order to inject more fear of Muslims into the text, the author(s) of the From
Madiun text deliberately talks about the assassination attempt of President Sukarno by extremist Islamic groups on the 30th November 1957 at Cikini. According to the
From Madiun text, these extremist groups believed that the structure of the Central
Government was not advantageous to groups outside of Java, and the only way to deal with this was to assassinate President Sukarno. On the 15th February 1958 an opposing government was then set up in Padang, the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia (PRRI). This was then followed by another rebellion in
Sulawesi, namely the Perjuangan Semesta (Permesta). The two rebellions were, however, defeated by the military (From Madiun, 1967:55-56). The From Madiun text states that the Masyumi and PSI were labelled as traitors due to the participation
99 The following is the original Indonesian quotation: Pada bulan Agustus 1952, golongan konservatif Nahdlatul Ulama (N.U.) memisahkan diri dari Masyumi, sehingga Masyumi tidak merupakan satu-satunya wakil seluruh umat Islam. Tetapi selanjutnya N.U. kurang tegas dan tidak memegang hal-hal prinsipiil. Yang lebih penting bagi N.U. ialah asalkan tokoh-tokohnya dapat memperoleh keuntungan. Sekarang Masyumi, benteng anti-komunis yang terkuat, dapat diterobos PKI tanpa menyakitkan hati golongan Islam (From Madiun, 1967:47).
232 of many of their members in the assassination attempt, and in the rebellions in
Sumatra (PRRI) and in Sulawesi (Permesta).
Indeed, as mentioned earlier, the secular fear of communists, did not seem to end with the communist killings. In fact, the fear is perpetuated in the next objects of fear, namely Muslims. The following citation seems to suggest this when the author(s) of the From Madiun asks that the two black pages in the history of
Indonesia not be repeated for the third time. It states,
Musso was dead, even Aidit was dead. Madiun took tens of thousands of lives, the Crocodile Hole took hundreds of thousands. Don’t let these two black pages in the history of Indonesia be repeated for the third time! (From Madiun, 1967:138).100
Indeed there seems no sign that the fear is ever going to disappear. Poverty and corruption remain critical in the God-based country, as explained in the From Madiun text as cited above. At the same time, a reader whose worldview is structured by
Catholic fears of Islam as a rival force can see this warning about the future as also implying the dangers that Catholics may encounter in the future from ‘fanatical’
Muslims, should these ever manage to seize power in Indonesia.
Concluding Notes
In this chapter, I have discussed the religious fear of Muslims that I, as a reader, experience when reading the From Madiun text. I have argued that the religious fear of Muslims concerning the political upheavals of 1965-66 is implied in the From
Madiun text, and is fundamentally related to the fear of hell in the afterlife. Yet there is always a secular dimension of the religious fear of Muslims in the present, and that
100 The quotation in original Indonesian is: Musso mati, Aiditpun mati. Madiun memakan puluhan ribu jiwa, Lubang Buaya memakan ratusan ribu jiwa. Janganlah kedua lembaran hitam dalam sejarah Indonesia itu terulang untuk ketiga kalinya! (From Madiun, 1967:138).
233 is in relation to the possible creation of an Islamic state in Indonesia and the influence of political Islam. This is seen, as explained in the chapter, as a threat to religious freedom and pluralism, as well as to the 1945 Constitution and the state ideology of
Pancasila. Religiously, as argued, the fear of Islamic state is a representation of the more profound fear of the Final Judgment. The Eastern Indonesian Catholics are generally worried that at the Final Judgment they will be thrown into hell eternally if they are unable to resist the so-called religious seduction by the Muslims. There is a perception that religious conversion to Islam, or simply following Islamic law, as a result of residing in an Islamic state, would result in eternal punishment in the afterlife. A Christian who failed to remain a Christian and to follow Christian doctrines and values is believed to be thrown directly into hell where there is eternal suffering. Catholics are taught that either eternal torment in hell or eternal joy in heaven awaits all people after death, based on whether they trust in, or reject, Jesus
Christ.
In response to the fear of an Islamic state, the From Madiun text could be seen as a reminder for all Indonesian Catholics to safe-guard the state ideology of
Pancasila. This fear is perpetuated as a way to preserve the Indonesian Catholic identity, which is defined by their fate in the afterlife. Eschatologically Catholics are where they would be in the afterlife. The life here and now is only a transit; it is temporary, and all Catholics are constantly reminded to be well-prepared for eternity in the next life. As the reader, with a strong Catholic upbringing and education, who always reads the From Madiun text in the present, the religious fear of Muslims, as implicit in the text, is also experienced in the present, even though the fear is fundamentally about eschatological consequences in the afterlife. In the next chapter,
234 I will examine the supernatural fear of ghosts as another frightening product post-
1965-66 that is triggered by the From Madiun text. Unlike the religious fear of
Muslims that is concerned with the future, the supernatural fear of ghosts is about the present; and this clearly suggests that the chain of fear is indeed hard to break.
235 Chapter 7 SUPERNATURAL FEAR OF GHOSTS (The Hidden in the From Madiun text)
When I read the From Madiun text I feel afraid of the ghosts, particularly the ghosts of communists executed in 1965-66. The fear of these supernatural beings (ghosts) is unmentioned in the text; it is completely hidden. The power of the hidden is overwhelming for me as a reader. I feel as if I can sense their haunting presence around me. I feel powerless as there is nothing I can do to eliminate the supernatural fear of ghosts. The idea of ghosts is deeply rooted in the cultural belief systems in which I was brought up, belief systems that maintain the fear of 1965 in the present.
Introductory Notes
In the previous chapter, I discussed the religious fear that is implicit in the From
Madiun text, and which is triggered by the text and maintained in the reader (myself).
In the years after 1965-66 the Catholic struggle in Indonesia shifted from the struggle against secularism and secularisation at the hands of communists that had been dominant before 1965 to the struggle to increase their influence over the state and to preserve their identity vis-à-vis the Muslim majority. This intensified Catholic religious fears, and the focus of this fear was Muslims. The previous chapter argued that the religious fear of Muslims that From Madiun triggers and maintains in me is related to the future, as it is associated with fears about the possible establishment of an Islamic state in Indonesia as well as with fears about the fate of the soul in the afterlife.
The hidden and the deepest fear
In this chapter, I explore supernatural fear, a form of fear that differs from secular and religious fear because it involves entities that are both of this world and of the world beyond it. My analysis of supernatural fear focuses on fear of ghosts and black magic,
236 fears that in my local cultural world are overlapping. This fear is not explicitly discussed in the From Madiun text; it can be said to be ‘hidden’ but it is the deepest fear that I experience when reading the text. As I move from the implicit in the text
(religious fear) to the hidden (supernatural fear) my analysis becomes less a text- focussed analysis of From Madiun and more an examination of the reader’s culturally conditioned fear of supernatural forces. I use the few and very indirect references in the text to supernatural forces as a point of departure for analysing supernatural fears in the Eastern Indonesian Catholic world of which I am a part and how these fears are connected with the 1965-66 events.
Two things are worth noting: First, I would argue that the fear of the
Indonesian communists in the Lamaholot communities of the regencies of East Flores and Lembata was at least partly inspired by the idea that the Indonesian communists were practitioners of black magic. Second, the execution of the alleged communists in 1965-66 produced angry ghosts who would subsequently haunt the living, and fear of black magic in Lamaholot communities and in many other communities in Eastern
Indonesia did not diminish when the communists were executed and may even have intensified in the years after 1965-66. In both these senses there is a profound connection between the killing of the communists and supernatural fear.
An exploration of the local perceptions of communists as black magicians and angry ghosts is necessary to understanding the emotional impact of the political upheavals of 1965-66 on the reader (myself) and the effect that the From Madiun text has on me. The supernatural fears that I experience and which inform my reading of the text are perhaps reflective of the general fears of the local Eastern Indonesian
Catholics due to the belief systems I share with the rest of the community. The
237 primary local way to manage the profound fear of black magic within the Lamaholot communities (and other similar societies in Eastern Indonesia) is through the construction of white magic to counter the power of black magic. The Catholic clergy is believed to be in the category of those who possess the power of white magic.
Catholic priests carry out an important role in protecting the local communities from the perceived threats of supernatural forces including black magic. There is a rivalry between the Catholic Church and the angry spirits and black magicians in the supernatural domain.
The chapter begins with a brief definition of supernatural fear, followed by a discussion of the idea of ‘hantu’ (ghosts) and of black magic. I then outline the chapter’s proposition and key questions. As all fears (secular, religious and supernatural) are ultimately concerned with the fear of death whether physical (in the case of secular fear) or spiritual (in the case of religious fear) or both (in the case of supernatural fear), the chapter then examines some of the theoretical writing on the idea of bad and good deaths. In Lamaholot belief systems, there is a fundamental relationship between bad deaths and angry spirits who are the key beings that inspire supernatural fear. Next, in accordance with the fear-being-time-rivalry structure used in the secular fear and religious fear chapters, this chapter examines the idea of fear and supernatural beings, fear and supernatural time, and fear and supernatural rivalry.
In the discussion on supernatural rivalry I not only examine the rivalry between the
Church and the black magicians, but also discuss the importance of sites that are regarded as the dwelling places of ghosts. These sites are part of the structure of supernatural rivalry since they are rivals to the ‘good’ places where harmful spirits are not present.
238 Definitions
Supernatural fear
By supernatural fear, I refer to threats to both the mortal body and mind and to the immortal soul, and to fears that involve both this world and the world beyond this world. The supernatural world is not simply the secular world of the mortal body and mind and the religious world of the immortal soul in the afterlife, but contains both the living and the dead as interconnected realities. In the context of this chapter, supernatural fear involves fear of bad supernatural beings – primarily ghosts and black magicians – that are connected with the massacre of suspected communists in
1965-66.
Ghosts and black magicians
In the Lamaholot world in which I grew up there is pervasive reference to both ‘hantu komunis’– ‘the ghosts of communists’ – and to ‘praktisi ilmu gaib hitam’ – practitioners of the black occult sciences – both of which are Indonesian-language terms for ‘bad supernatural beings’. Together they form a coalition of supernatural forces, consisting of both the dead and the living, who are objects of fear because they are perceived as having the power to do harm to people. I explain the terms
‘ghost’ and ‘black magician’ below.
Ghosts
I translate the term ‘hantu’ (Indonesian) as 'ghost' in English, particularly when I refer to the 'communist ghosts' or 'hantu komunis'. In this instance, the word 'ghost' means
"a person's spirit appearing after his death" (Hawkins, 1986:283), and 'communist
239 ghosts' refers the spirits of the communists that appeared after their death in 1965-66.
These communist ghosts are regarded as bad spirits, which are dangerous and destructive; they are believed to be floating around, especially at the places where they were executed and their bodies were dumped, and continue to haunt the living to take revenge on them. The communists had bad deaths: they are angry both about their execution and the dumping of their bodies in mass graves that remain unknown to their family members and this why they have become ghosts. In Lamaholot belief, ghosts are unseen and cannot be touched, but their presence can be sensed through smell and natural signs of strong winds, and even through events such as traffic accidents.
Black magicians
The local terms, ‘uwur mera’ (Lamaholot – literally ‘red bottom’) and
‘makap’ (Lamaholot –‘black magician’), can both be translated as ‘black magician' in English. These are supernatural beings that have the power to endanger the living community, especially their perceived enemies. The difference between ‘uwur mera’ and ‘makap’ is that ‘uwur mera’ is a black magician who is alive, while there are two types of ‘makap’: ‘makap mojip’ – black magicians who are still alive and actively practising their destructive power, (‘mojip’ means ‘alive’) and ‘makap matek’ – the spirits of dead black magicians (‘matek’ means ‘dead’). ‘Menaka is another local term used elsewhere in Flores which means the same thing as 'uwur mera' and
'makap' (‘makap mojip’). These beings – ‘uwur mera’, 'makap' and ‘menaka’– are all ‘suanggi’, a Maluku and Flores Malay term, which means a malevolent spirit with supernatural powers to do harm.
240 I have already noted in previous chapters that the Lamaholot/Indonesian word
‘mera(h)’ that is a component of the word ‘uwur mera’ for a black magician means
‘red’ in English, and signifies the idea of supernatural danger and threat. The association of the word ‘red’ (merah) with both communism and black magic can be seen as a key reason why the communists were killed in the Lamaholot region in
1965-66; they were thought to be ‘uwur mera’ or ‘makap’ objects of supernatural fear because of the black magic powers they were thought to possess. I would argue that at the time of the killings in 1965-66 the local Lamaholots knew very little, and arguably nothing, about communism, but they knew about ‘red’ (black) magic. They saw communists, such as Buang Duran, primarily as practitioners of ‘red’ (black) magic, and when Buang Durang was executed in Adonara in 1966, he was killed not just for being a communist, but primarily because he was considered to be a practioner of ‘red’ (black) magic. It should also be noted that locals regarded Buang
Duran’s death as a bad death, which means that his ghost, in coalition with other ghosts, continues to float around to haunt the community. Overall, these terms –
'hantu' (Indonesian: ghost), 'suanggi' (Maluku Malay: malevolent spirit), 'makap'
(Lamaholot: black magician), 'uwur mera' (Lamaholot: red (black) magician) – all designate ‘bad supernatural beings’ that need to be 'tamed' through certain rituals, or to be countered with 'white magic'.
Black magic
The noun ‘magic’ has three definitions. First, it is defined as “the supposed art of controlling events or effect etc. by supernatural power”. Second, the word refers to
“superstitious practices based on belief in this”. The third definition is, “a mysterious and enchanting quality” (Hawkins, 1986:407). The term ‘magic’ I use in the thesis
241 has all these elements together: art, power, mystery and belief. In brief, anthropologists tend to refer the term ‘magic’ to beliefs in mystical connections between acts or causes and effects; empirical or scientific connections between causes and effects are completely ignored. Early anthropologists developed the idea of magic as an evolutionary stage; something contrastable to religion, and something that opposes rational thinking. Functionalists and psychologists may view magic simply as a way of fulfilling emotional and social needs (Cunningham 1999; Brown 1997;
Evans-Pritchard 1965).
The definition of magic is complicated by the relationship between black magic and white magic. A simple definition is that black magic involves the idea of someone – the black magician – manipulating illicit supernatural powers and arts to produce destructive effect on enemies, while white magic is the constructive use of legitimate supernatural powers and arts to combat the attacks of black magicians.
However, simply defining ‘red’ (black) magic as destructive power and white magic as constructive power is, in my view, superficial and arbitrary as there are destructive and constructive aspects in both types of magic.101
What is important for the purposes of this chapter is that in Lamaholot communities both before and after 1965-66, communists were perceived as being black magicians. I suggest that the accusation that communists were black magicians has been used implicitly and unspokenly to justify the bad deaths of the communists, even though this means that the locals have to deal with many angry spirits as a
101 Arriving at a satisfactory definition of magic is further complicated in contemporary societies where rationalism has become important in people’s understanding of social phenomena. Some would see the fear of black magic as a reflection of irationality, taking people back to the dark era where the contests between magic practitioners were dominant. However, supernatural contests between the black magic and white magic remain important even today in the Lamaholot communities, so it is wrong to see them simply as part of an irrational past.
242 consequence of the bad deaths. As will be discussed further below, Lamaholot people believe that the spirits of those who have died bad deaths can only be managed and tamed through certain rituals, performed either individually or collectively. In the case of the Lamaholot communities, the Catholic Church has an important role to play in this endeavour. The Church attempts to reconcile with the communist ghosts through rituals in order to protect the living from revenge by the ‘uwur mera’ or
‘makap’. Because of the widespread supernatural fear of ghosts (angry spirits) in
Eastern Indonesia, the Catholic Church has gained more power at local level because it is involved in controlling hostile supernatural forces. I will explain this in more detail later in the chapter, making particular reference to how priests manage the power of black magic through ritual.
Propostion and questions
I would contend that for me and for other Eastern Indonesian Catholics supernatural fear of communist ghosts is the most frightening product of the events of 1965-66.
The peoples of the Lamaholot region believe that when the communists died they rematerialised with a supernatural status; they became ghosts. After 1965-66, the number of ghosts has also multiplied, possibly even infinitely, becoming a kind of coalition of ghosts, or in Indonesian, ‘koalisi para hantu’, which includes not just the spirits of the dead but also the practitioners of black magic who co-operate with them.
For this reason, as well as because of their invisibility, the communist ghosts and their allies are perceived by the locals as exceptionally frightening supernatural beings. Often their presence can be sensed through smell and heard through the sound of music when passing through certain places perceived to be the dwelling places of the ghosts. It can be argued that these places are symbolic representations of the
243 ghosts of 1965-66 and their status as frightening beings that are part of the present world of Lamaholot Catholics including myself.
The chapter argues that this supernatural fear of communist ghosts is a hidden fear in the From Madiun text, a fear that is created by the cultural background of the reader – the text itself makes almost no mention of supernatural beings or threats. My autoethnographic reflections on the reading of the From Madiun text suggest that the more hidden the object is in the text the more profound the fear is. As the reader moves from the implicit (religious fear) to the hidden (supernatural fear) the reader confronts an even deeper fear. Furthermore, where the secular fear that I experienced in reading From Madiun relates to the past and the religious fear that I experience relates to the future, the supernatural fear that the text triggers in me unquestionably involves the present. The ghosts of the dead communists are not part of the past but part of the present that I and other Lamaholot people inhabit. The perception of communists as dangerous beings has therefore been maintained since 1965-66 through supernatural fear of ghosts.
Overall, I argue that the execution of communists in 1965-66 had several supernatural consequences or results: First, the communists who had been secular beings before 1965-66 became supernatural beings after 1965-66. Second, the secular power of the communists before 1965-66 was replaced with the supernatural power of the communist ghosts after 1965-66. Third, the secular fear of communists before
1965-66 was replaced with the supernatural fear of ghosts after 1965-66, a fear which combines fear of the angry spirits of the dead communists and fear of black magicians who are linked groups of harmful supernatural beings. This leads to my fourth proposition concerning the relationship between the power of the Eastern
244 Indonesian Catholic Church and the execution of secular beings (communists) in
1965-66. I argue that the supernatural fears produced by the execution of the communists actually made the Church stronger and more necessary. The Church becomes more powerful paradoxically by eliminating the secular danger of communists in 1965-66, and by multiplying the danger of the supernatural beings
(ghosts and black magic).
Ideas of death in Eastern Indonesia
Understanding the supernatural fears that I experience when reading From Madiun and the supernatural fears that Lamaholot people and other Eastern Indonesian
Catholics have about the communist ghosts and the black magicians who are connected with the killings of 1965-66 requires an understanding of Eastern
Indonesian conceptions of death, in particular the distinction between a ‘good death’ and a ‘bad death’. In anthropological theory, death is frequently seen as a transition, or a rite of passage (Huntingdon and Metcalfe 1991). At death the spirits of dead people leave their social roles as members of a community; they enter into a new world of spirits, in which they automatically embrace a new status and acquire the power of the supernatural (Huntingdon and Metcalfe 1991). This transition is regarded as a journey to a final destination, namely a reunion with the dead community including the ancestral spirits, and the spirits of family and clan members in a spirit world that is parallel to the world of the living.
The most extensive anthropological study of the transition from life to death in the region inhabited by the Lamaholot people is that of Douglas Lewis (1988), who discusses this transition in relation to the people of Tana ‘Ai in Flores. According to
245 Lewis, the journey begins at birth, and it culminates many years after death with, as he calls it, “the apotheosis of the spirit” (Lewis, 1988:258). The Ata Tana ‘Ai people, according to Lewis (1988:257), believe that each person has a spirit, and this spirit is on a journey from the distant past in the time of the ancestors to the future when this spirit itself will become an ancestor. A person’s life on earth is only a part of the long journey of their spirit. Death is more than just the end of earthly life – it is a birth into the more eternal community of the deceased. During the earthly life, each person develops an identity which for the Ata Tana ‘Ai is mainly related to kinship. In the clan, the living and the ancestors are joined in reciprocal service and dependence through the medium of ritual. An example of the reciprocity is that the living perform rituals that ‘cool’ and enable the ancestors to come to final rest, and these resting ancestral spirits are the source of fertility and life for the community of the living.
The spirits of the dead people leave their social groups and become clan ancestors, who then have the status and power of ‘Guna Déwa’, namely “the oldest and most powerful of the old and powerful” (Lewis, 1988:258). Guna Déwa are regarded as the semidivine ancestors, and they “animate the forests and waters of the domain, and are thus ultimately responsible for the fertility of gardens” (Lewis,
1988:258). Lewis states that Guna Déwa can, however, be jealous and angry towards human beings if their dwellings are not respected, and as a result they can react rather malevolently. The only way to manage their anger and aggression is through proper offerings and invocations.
What Lewis observes in Flores is broadly in line with what I observe of ideas of death in my own community, although I would place more emphasis on the difference between a good spirit (such as those described in Lewis’ work above) and
246 a bad spirit. The death of an older family or clan member due to illness or old age is believed to produce a ‘good spirit’ who will continue to guard the living. By contrast, the sudden death of a younger family member – especially through black magic – is believed to produce, at least temporarily, ‘a wandering spirit’, which needs to be ritually ‘tamed’. This is important for the spirit’s own safe journey to the ultimate destination, and for the benefit of the living so that there will be no disturbance caused by the wandering spirit. The sudden death of my own brother in October 2002 was seen as a result of black magic, and his spirit then needed to be ‘cooled’ through special rituals to ensure his smooth journey and the welfare of the family. In contrast, the death of my mother in January 2006, due to illness and old age, was considered
‘natural’, and thus only a general farewell ritual was conducted. In addition, locals believe that the spirits of dead children will become ‘guardian angels’ for the living.
Death rituals are seen as not merely a farewell, but also and even more so as a way to please the spirits on one hand and to ensure peaceful relationship between the two worlds, the living and the dead. In my home village in Lembata, after a person dies usually the body is kept at home for about one night before the funeral. The next three nights after the funeral people would come to the home of the deceased family to pray together for a safe journey of the spirit of the dead person to the supernatural world. The third night is called ‘nebo’ in my local language, and this final night of prayer could be seen as a night of a ‘big feast’ to symbolise the feeding of the spirits.
This feeding ritual has a dual-function, namely to ensure that the spirit of the dead person is not ‘hungry’ as it continues its journey to the other world, and as a symbolic gesture of peace between the two worlds. The rituals are important so that there are no ‘hungry spirits’ around that might target the living.
247 The situation of those who die a ‘good death’ and of those who die a ‘bad death’ but whose souls are ritually tamed contrasts strongly with the situation of those who die a ‘bad death’ and become dangerous spirits. Bloch and Parry (1982) assert that a good death symbolically represents a cultural ideal concerning victory over death and enables the regeneration of life (also, see Abramovitch 1999; Parry 1994), while a ‘bad death’ leaves the community of the living despairing and helpless as they confront a sense of meaninglessness, evil and nothingness. The spirits produced by bad deaths are ‘hot’ (dangerous), and they will continue to haunt the living.102
The destructive power of bad spirits produced by bad deaths can, however, be
‘deactivated’ through certain rituals, for example the cooling down rituals, or in a more religious term the reconciliation rituals with the spirits. I would argue that despite the rituals, the destructive power of the spirits that suffer bad deaths actually remains. It does not switch the destructive power to a more constructive type of power, rather the destructive power is simply deactivated, and as a result it becomes a
‘neutral power’ that is neither destructive nor constructive.
We have noted that the relationship between the living and the dead communities pervades everyday life in Flores. I will conclude with the following story. In early April 2014, a 49 year old man died in a village in Flores. Locals believed his death to be a result of a combination of anger by the ancestral spirits and black magic. The spirits were angry that their rumah adat, or traditional house, belonging to both communities, was not properly built according to their adat, or
102 The dualisms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘hot’ and ‘cold’, ‘wet’ and ‘dry’, ‘light’ and ‘darkness’, ‘day’ and ‘night’ are discussed in James Fox’s, The Flow of Life: Essays on Eastern Indonesia, published in 1980. Douglas Lewis, in his book, People of the Source, published in 1988, especially in Chapter XIII, “The Life Cycle of the Spirit” (pages 257-295), explains the dualism of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ in relation to the spirits of dead people in Tana ‘Ai, Flores. Balthasar Kehi and Lisa Palmer, in their journal article (2012), “Hamatak Halirin: The Cosmological and Socio-Ecological Roles of Water in Koba Lima, Timor”, make some reference to these dualisms in their discussion of water (female) and fire (male).
248 traditional norms. Apparently something in the roof was misplaced. According to local belief, everything has to be precise to avoid offence to the overly-sensitive spirits. Because everyone was convinced of the ancestors’ displeasure and the need to pacify them, after the funeral of the deceased, the ‘rumah adat’ was rechecked and fixed. More slaughtering rituals of animals, such as water buffalos, were performed to feed the spirits of the ancestors. The family were willing to go to this burdensome expense because of the importance they place on keeping the ancestor spirits happy.
The locals believe that the ancestors are now content with the correction made to the house and the blood sacrificial rites performed.103
The most important implication of the above discussion of ideas of good and bad deaths for this chapter is the belief that the communists killed in Eastern
Indonesia (and elsewhere in the archipelago) had bad deaths and have thus become angry ghosts, which are a source of fear and danger and must be controlled through rituals. Because they were executed and their bodies dumped in unknown locations, the communist ghosts are frightening supernatural beings who will harm the living. In addition, the belief that they were killed because they were black magicians adds to the fear, because in addition to being able to harm the living themselves, they are part of a coalition with living black magicians and are thus a source of constant danger. In the following sections, I discuss the fear-being-time-rivalry structure in relation to the supernatural fear of ghosts and of black magicians. I begin with fear and supernatural beings, followed by a discussion on the idea of fear and supernatural time, and finally examine fear and the idea of supernatural rivalry. I highlight both my own and the
103 This story was told by a friend of mine in Melbourne dated 10 May 2014 whose brother died in April as mentioned in the story above. He remains fearful of more victims in the family due to the local belief about the ‘rumah adat’, as well as the practice of black magic in his village. With cynicism, his wife even made a strong statement of discomfort about the ancestors who are so ‘kejam’, or cruel, in causing death to her brother in law.
249 wider Lamaholot fear of ghosts and of black magicians in general and fear of communist ghosts and black magic in particular.
Fear and supernatural beings
In the chapter on religious fear, I discussed how for Catholics the secular fear of the communists as frightening secular beings that was dominant in the years before 1965 was replaced after 1965-66 by religious fear of Muslims as frightening religious beings who are perceived by Catholics as a threat to themselves and to the salvation of their souls. But at the local level, the communists who had been frightening human beings prior to 1965 quite literally became frightening supernatural beings – communist ghosts – when they were killed. While the idea that alleged communists such as Buang Duran were black magicians who possessed frightening supernatural powers was a key reason for killing them, the bad deaths of these alleged communists gave rise to a large group of new angry ghosts who would haunt the community – in other words, the supernatural fear of communists as threatening beings actually increased after 1965-66. The Lamaholot cultural world in which I grew up was powerfully affected by these fears, and it is these fears of the communists as threatening supernatural beings that are triggered in me when I read From Madiun.
The secular fear chapter outlined how communists appear to me in the text as frightening secular beings – as atheists, as cunning operators, as propagandists, as rebels, as leftists, as reds and as demons. The religious fear chapter outlined how the text summons up my fears of Muslims as frightening religious beings – as demons, as tempters, as polygamists and as marengele. In this section, I discuss how the text triggers my fears of communists as supernatural beings – as ghosts and black magicians.
250 There are two parts of the text that trigger my supernatural fears: one is key words in the text that have supernatural connotations for me as a reader; the other is how the description of the events of 1965-66 give rise to thoughts about the killings of 1965-66 in my community and the supernatural dangers that these killings produced.
In addition to the words that were discussed in the secular fear chapter that have strong supernatural fear associations for me – ‘left’ and ‘red’ (and in particular the latter, because of its cultural association with ‘red’ (black) magic) – the main word in From Madiun that triggers supernatural fears is ‘setan’ or demons. As noted there, there are three quotes in the text that use the word ‘setan’, or demons with reference to the communists – one that relates to the communist campaign to expel the ‘seven village demons’ (From Madiun, 1967:79), one that relates to the eve of the
1965 coup, which relates to the communists’ claim that they were a midwife who must protect Indonesia, the pregnant mother, from demonic attack (From Madiun,
1967:92-93) and one that relates to the communist claim that they will expel the demon of imperialism from Indonesia (From Madiun, 1967:98-99). These quotes come largely from the PKI’s own propaganda in which the communists present themselves as a kind of ‘dukun politik’, or political witchdoctors, who protect the country from the danger of demonic attacks. Even though the text does not state that the communists are demons or that the PKI is a satanic or demonic party, my culturally-conditioned fears of demons lead me to see From Madiun’s references to demons as communists possessing some destructive power similar to that of the power of black magic in expelling demons. This points in my mind to the ambiguity of supernatural powers and of black magic; the communists appear connected with
251 the supernatural domain and the fears associated with it when they portray themselves as having the power to combat demons.
Reading From Madiun’s account of the events leading up to 1965 also triggers my supernatural fears because it makes me think of the killings and how they left a legacy of supernatural fear that has surrounded me and my community right up into the present because of the angry ghosts they created. I have a direct personal connection to the killings. In 1966, my father was unwillingly involved in the slaughter of suspected local communists and supporters on Lembata. He was forced to take part to prove that he was not a communist, and to avoid being murdered as a consequence. My father had to carry out the daunting task of being an executioner, algojo, which he did unwillingly in order to protect his own life and the lives of his own family. The only logic broadly applied in Indonesia at the time was that if you did not kill then you would be killed because you would simply be accused of being communist. A story published in Tempo in 2010 which describes a local killer of communists in Maumere, Flores, provides a picture, which explains the underlying logic. This man stated that he had no other choice than to slaughter the communists as instructed by the Army otherwise he would have been killed instead: “I was powerless to save them. My own life was threatened. I didn’t know anyone at that time. The atmosphere was very dark” (Tempo, 7 Oktober 2012:84).104
As noted, after the killing, my father and other executioners performed a cooling down ritual believed to be a means to avoid revenge from the spirits of the communist victims who would continue to haunt the killers and their families for revenge should there be no cooling down ritual to protect the living. Reading From
104 The original Indonesian text reads: “Tak berdaya menyelamatkan mereka. Nyawa saya pun terancam. Saya tak mengenal siapa pun saat itu. Suasana amat gelap” (Tempo, 7 Oktober 2012:84).
252 Madiun triggers the idea that communists are still around to harm human beings despite these rituals. In my opinion, the reconciliation rituals are only a way to manage the fear of the supernatural, they do not eliminate the idea of ghosts being there. So when I read the From Madiun text, I felt like I could ‘smell’ the presence of ghosts. The ghosts of communists that I experience through the medium of reading the From Madiun text seem to demand justice by taking revenge on those who had committed the murders and dumped the bodies of the communists in places unknown to their families.
Fear and supernatural beings: Ghosts and black magicians
In the following section, I provide some cultural context for the deep fears of ghosts and black magicians that appear in my mind when I read From Madiun. In line with my autoethnographic approach, my discussion combined personal observation with examples drawn from the community and from communities closely related to it. In local Lamaholot belief, one can be killed by ghosts, but ghosts cannot be killed physically because they are supernatural beings. For this reason, the spirits, especially the ghosts, are far more frightening than secular beings such as the communists
(when they were alive), and the religious beings such as the Muslims. This is precisely the case because of their invisibility and the perception that their power goes beyond death. Invisible power cannot be defeated by visible power. It can be anything. It can be like a gentle wind that one can only feel. It can also be a sound that one can only hear but cannot see. It can be a light that one can see from a distance but one cannot touch.
My own fear of ghosts dates from childhood. I grew up with plenty of ghost stories. They were often told at bedtime as a way to put children to sleep. No books
253 were read because there were literally no books; reading books, if there were any, only took place in school and during school time. The impact of these frightening ghost stories in constructing my fear of supernatural beings is undeniable. For example, when I was little I was told stories about ghosts as kidnappers of children.
According to a ghost story, one day a child went missing in the village. The villagers believed that he was kidnapped by a ghost, and so they performed some pacification rituals for the ghosts, as well as asking the ancestral spirits for help in finding the missing child. Fortunately, after a few days the child returned to the village, but emotionally he was no longer the same child as before the incident. Physically he was dirty, emotionally he was lost and sad, and mentally rather disturbed.
According to the locals, ghosts have ways to trick the children into following them and keeping the children hidden away from the living community. For example, according to a story, once a village child smelt the aroma of cooked meals. He tried to find where the beautiful smell of food came from. Finally he found the place. He saw plenty of food displayed on the rock. He went there and without thinking as he was hungry, he ate some of the food. All of a sudden he saw a makhluk halus, or a supernatural being, appear from the rock. The child was taken away, and did not return to the village after a few days, or even weeks. The family as well as the entire village knew of the missing child. They believed that he was somewhere with the ghosts, so they performed the rituals of calling back the child. Finally he came back to the community, but he was a different child emotionally. He tended to isolate himself from his peers, and he was often daydreaming. Having outlined some of my own experience of the fear of ghosts I shall now proceed to discuss black magicians as frightening beings. In my discussion, I simply give some examples of what some
254 black magic practitioners do, and how the public reacts to their presumed supernatural powers. I do not provide a complete account of ritual language (mantra) and performance practiced by the ‘uwur mera’ as a way to gather supernatural energy to cause illness and even death.
Along with the stories about ghosts, stories about the practice of black magic were common in the village in which I grew up. As I have stated above, locals refer to black magic practitioners Lamaholot as ‘uwur mera’ or ‘makap’, or ‘menaka’ (in some Lamaholot dialects). The overall term for these malevolent spirits in Flores and
Maluku Malay is ‘suanggi’ described by some as someone with a long beard and hair covering the entire body, and by others as someone with red eyes, with long fingernails and toenails, and with a black skinned body. These descriptions create an intense sense of fear. Black magicians are not, however, understood simply as terrifying ugly beings like the ‘suanggi’ represented in the above description. It is important to note that when I was growing up everyone in the village seemed to know who was, and who was not, a black magic practitioner. The locals believe that night time is usually the time for the black magic practitioners to show off their destructive power in the form of ‘kepikar’ in the local terminology. The ‘kepikar’ is a kind of bird that flies around at night, and sometimes during the daylight, it is highly visible and has an unusual sound. By the sound of the ‘kepikar’ and the direction it comes from and flies to, the locals know who the black magician is. In my youth, the village was completely dark at night, because there were no street lights, but only oil lamps inside people’s homes, the display of supernatural powers was indeed a frightening one.
255 Illness and deaths are often attributed to the action of black magicians. I recall an incident in 1986 where a young boy in the village died after falling ill for a few days. His death led his family to suspect a man in the village who, the locals believed, practised black magic. The family of the deceased strongly believed that the man caused the death of their son. As revenge, the family intended to physically attack the alleged black magic practitioner. They were getting ready with traditional weaponry such as machetes and spears, when I intervened. I persuaded them not to attack the man and his family, but to report him to the police if they had a strong case against the man.
In contrast to the situation in Lembata, in Adonara the community reaction to black magic is often physically aggresive and destructive. On the 5th of January 2011, the local Eastern Indonesian newspaper, Pos Kupang reported that two homes in
Adonara were completely destroyed due to suspicion that the inhabitants were
‘suanggi’, or black magic practitioners. The names of the victims were Dominggus
Libu Kleden, aged 66, at the time of the incident, and Kamilius Ketan Lier Kleden.
Their properties were burnt down by about 100 locals. The crowd took this violent action as a reaction to the recent death of one of their children. They strongly suspected that the two men had caused the child’s death by using black magic. The two suspects and their families were forced to leave the village immediately. Due to fear of their own death and their family members they had no better option than to leave the village; they moved to the eastern part of the island of Flores. The two alleged black magicians strongly denied the allegation; the media stated that the child died due to malnutrition (Pos Kupang, 5 January 2011).
256 A similar account of two black magicians from Manggarai on the western part of the island of Flores was, as reported in the local newspaper, Pos Kupang.105 On
16th September 2013 in the ceremonial house or ‘rumah adat’ of the Ling community in the Village of Golocador, Manggarai, Flores, two local black magicians, known in
Indonesian as ‘Dukun Santet’, Fransiskus Galis (then aged 59 years), and his wife,
Sabina Naut (then aged 58 years) were cruelly tortured by the village residents. Both victims were ordinary farmers and Catholics. The villagers forced Fransiskus to carry a 35 kg mortar around the village while asking for forgiveness from the residents for his actions and advising them not to imitate his actions. Apart from that, he and his wife were punished by having to drink urine mixed with human faeces. The two of them were tortured to redeem their ‘dosa’ or sins of allegedly using black magic against a youth who changed form into a cat, and then went into girls’ bedrooms in the community. It was reported, “They gave that traditional sanction, because
Fransiskus himself admitted that he used black magic” (Pos Kupang, 25 September
2013). In this case, the black magic practitioners and their family are reported to have left their home village. They have promised never to return to the community. It is reported that Fransiskus and his wife had to leave their community, their home and coffee farm. The farm was their main source of income. They indeed feel very ashamed and hurt. For the rest of their life they must learn to live with the stigma given by the local community that they were black magicians who made life difficult for others. More hurtful still, they were considered communists despite practising their Catholic faith.
105 This story is compiled based on reports in a local newspaper, Pos Kupang, dated 25 September 2013; 4, 20, 29 October 2013 and 27 January 2014. This punishment case attracted criticism from human rights activists. According to them, the punishment that was given to the witchdoctor and his wife was a violation of basic human rights. The behaviour and treatment of the torturers was considered immoral and inhumane.
257 This story is significant because it illustrates how even in recent times black magic practitioners are still identified as communists. As I have suggested above to the locals, communists are simply people who practise black magic who must be feared and opposed. This perception guides the attitudes and actions of the local society in cruelly torturing the victims, the alleged black magic practitioners even in the present day. The most significant part of the story of Fransiskus and his wife is the identification of black magicians as communists. The awful torture to which they were subjected shows the victimisation that can occur when one is accused of having practised black magic. The perception that the black magicians were communists, and therefore they were to be particularly feared and eliminated, suggests an even deeper level of local fear than that in other accusations against black magicians. It is possible to suggest that the fear of communists as black magicians has been maintained at a local level between the 1960s and the present.
These actions against alleged black magic practitioners who are additionally stigmatised as communists are deeply connected with the sense of Catholic identity at the local level. The practice of black magic is considered to be contrary to the teachings of Catholicism. Local village residents believe that destructive forces are only possessed and practised by those regarded as unreligious and godless. The practice of the witchdoctors in the story is linked with the fear of latent communism, presumably on the assumption that those who manipulate black supernatural powers are godless and the great symbol of those who are godless is the communists. This adds to the profound association of communists with black magicians.
However, this situation is complicated by the fact that it is not only the black magic practitioners who are considered communists; those who are able to challenge
258 black magic practitioners can also sometimes be considered communists. I have direct experience of this. I once challenged a witchdoctor in my own village in
Lembata, and I was simply told by some villagers that I too was a communist. The next day after my challenge the witchdoctor became ill. A few months later he died.
Significantly, since that time, several people in my village have labelled me a communist. They know that I am not a black magic practitioner, but my ability to challenge one put me in that category. Views like this illustrate a point that the fear of communism in my local context can be complex and ambiguous. Additionally, at the same time, this highlights that the fear of communism and communists is still here in the present. The full story of how I challenged this local black magic practitioner is as follows, quoted here in the form in which I published it in an article in the Melbourne
University magazine INDONEWS:
One quiet night during a recent visit to Lembata, my home island in Eastern Indonesia, I was disturbed by a noisy rat in my bedroom. The room was dark. Only a small generator powered the electric lights in the house, and only until 9:30 pm. The noise of the rat broke the silence of the night. The rat incessantly ran around the room, jumping on and off the wardrobe. Disturbed and curious, I tried to shoo away the rat for fifteen minutes with no success. The rat kept on running around the room, jumping on and off the wardrobe, as it pleased, all the time making noises. I gave up and tried to sleep. Before I dozed off, I noticed the rat had stopped its annoying antics. The story of the rat became a hot topic in the village for several days afterwards. Everyone said that it was no ordinary rat, but a ‘tikus buatan’, literally a ‘made up’ rat. What was that? To the locals, a made up rat was one that had been sent by a black magician, in order to test the resilience of the magician’s targeted enemies. Some people connected the rat with an elderly man who was well known as one of the local black magicians. While pondering the local wisdom, I visited the old man, and told him about the strange rat. Without hesitation, he reaffirmed the story about the made up rat. A few minutes later, this old man offered me food and drinks, following the local custom. But having been warned by many in the village, I diplomatically refused to consume them. I asked if I could take the food home instead. I did
259 that and gave the food to the pigs near our house. Surprisingly even the pigs refused to eat the food, after sniffing it several times. The next day the old man became ill. Many in the village concluded that the old man’s illness was the result of his black magic attack against me that had backfired. My uninvited rodent visitor disturbed my sleep for a little while, and ordinary or ‘made up’, it left me alone without any harm. However, this incident sparked questions and observations about local belief systems. To me, it is not really important whether the rat was ordinary or made up, and whether the old man’s illness was a coincidence or the result of backfired black magic. What interests me most is how it displays the complexity of the belief and interpretation systems of the local community. One hundred percent of the village residents are not only formally baptised Catholic, but their daily lives are permeated by religion to the extent unseen in contemporary Australia. Yet, animism is evidently still alive and kicking. Almost all events in daily life are interpreted from the perspective of white and black magic. Good events prove the strength of white magic, whilst bad events reflect the power of black magic.106
In this instance, it could be argued that what is unmentioned in the From
Madiun text and unseen in everyday encounters can be mostly fearful. Their invisibility poses a serious threat to the living. Another reason why the presence of ghosts is frightening is because, as in the beliefs of the local community, in quantitative terms, the number of ghosts has increased in the supernatural world to be more than the number of communists who were killed. They can be innumerable because, as it is believed, there is a kind of coalition of ghosts to attack the people who were involved in their killing. These revenge attacks from the ghosts are very dangerous to the living community because the attacks are carried out in guerrilla fashion. They cannot be seen, and their invisible presence makes it hard to know how and when the revenge attacks will be carried out. People must continually be on guard by carrying out peace rituals with the world of the dead; they have to ask for
106 This ‘Rat’ story was published in INDONEWS, No 1, August-September 2006, The University of Melbourne (2006), 4. I would like to thank the editorial team of INDONEWS: Elise Gould, Mercia Mitchell, and Ariel Heryanto, for language editing of the text.
260 forgiveness on behalf of the killers in the hope that the communist ghosts will not take large scale revenge, including on those who are innocent.
Fear and supernatural time
As a secular narrative dealing with events leading up the coup in 1965, From Madiun creates fear by projecting the reader back into the communist past. As a religious narrative, which implies the dangers in the future that are posed by ‘fanatical’
Muslims, the text creates fear by projecting the reader into the future. As a narrative, which causes the reader (myself) to experience supernatural fears by making me think of communist ghosts and black magicians that I see as part of the present world in my
Lamaholot home, From Madiun inspires fear by reminding me of the supernatural present.
Supernatural time is the time of the present. The fear associated with this time is always there, and is difficult to eliminate as it is rooted in local culture of the
Lamaholot people and the Lamaholot concept of time. In the Lamaholot concept of time, there is no clear distinction between past, present and future. The two different times – past and future – are blended into the present. The past is present, and the future begins in the present. Lamaholots, and arguably Indonesians in general, do not view time linearly; rather they view time more flexibly and cyclically. The fundamental concept of human control over time is non-existent in the Lamaholot society. The Lamaholots believe that the cycle of life itself controls human beings and their activities; it is not the human beings that control time. For this reason, human beings should live in harmony with nature because they subscribe to the cyclical patterns of events and life. Their failure to do so would create cosmological
261 imbalance, which is reflected in all kinds of natural and social disasters. In short, the concept of time amongst the Lamaholots is seen as cyclical, circular, and repetitive.
The fear of ghosts as the main emotional product of the events of 1965-66 experienced by myself as the reader of the From Madiun text is linked to this
Lamaholot concept of time. Although the suspected communists were killed in 1965-
66 their ghosts survive and remain to haunt the society in the present107. Because time is cyclical, the past can intervene in the present, and ghosts represent this power of the past to intervene in the present. The ancestors, as the spirits of the dead who have had good deaths, are in constant dialogue with the living and can intervene in the present, and the same is true of the bad spirits of ghosts. Unless properly dealt with through rituals these ghosts will act destructively in the present. Black magicians also use these powers to cause harm in the present. The fears that these supernatural forces cause never pass away; instead they are permanently maintained in the minds of Lamaholot people. I would also argue that these fears have intensified because supernatural fear of ghosts was a form of fear that was needed by the Church to replace the secular fear of communists, which ended with the massacre of 1965-66.
This fear has been very helpful in maintaining the power of the Church in local society (as will be explained below). There is thus a chain of fear that seems impossible to break in the present.
The idea that the supernatural fears that I experience when reading From
Madiun are about the present are the strongest example of the theoretical position that
107 In 1995, Tina Rosenberg wrote a very interesting book titled: The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism. In the context of eastern Europe, the author argues that the communist ghosts will continue to spook corridors of power, which in turn undermines their quest for democracy, unless there is reconciliation with the past, tolerance and the rule of law. In the light of Rosenberg’s conclusion, it could be argued that at least in the case of eastern Indonesia, what is mostly haunting is the idea of ‘restless’ communist ghosts that will continue to harass the living unless certain rituals are performed to ‘manage’ the angry ghosts.
262 this thesis has taken that all fears involves the present. Heidegger’s argument is that fear, as an important part of being (sein), is necessary for the continuation of the existence of human beings in the world, from the time of birth to the time of death
(Heidegger, 1978:182). Herein Heidegger sees time (zeit) always in reference to the present and future. According to Heidegger, there is no past. The past simply does not exist because it no longer exists. The survival of Dasein (being in the world) is the concern of the present, and its safe continuation is the concern of the future.
Supernatural fear is in this sense the most profound of existential fears since it suggests that existence is always under threat, as supernatural beings are, for a
Lamaholot person, permanently there in the present. It is through supernatural fears that the communists that I read about in From Madiun are established not as a secular threat from the past or a religious threat in the future but a part of the present. The slaughter of the suspected communists in 1965-66 created an army of supernatural beings – ghosts – who would be part of an eternally frightening present. From
Madiun functions as a reminder to me that the slaughtered communists are still alive in a parallel world as ghostly beings. This means that the fear is never dissipated even though the fearful secular beings (the communists) were slaughtered before I was born. One object of fear might be destroyed but there will emerge new objects of fear that can be more frightening in the present than the previous one.
Fear and supernatural rivalry
The fear that afflicts me in the supernatural time of the present is heavily structured by the local-level supernatural rivalry between the Catholic Church and the ghosts and black magicians with whom it competes. There are two main aspects of this rivalry; the rivalry between black magic and white magic, and the rivalry between the
263 idea of good and bad places and times, which is related to places that which are protected from ghosts and places where ghosts are present.
Black magic versus white magic
The Catholic Church’s rivalry with the forces of ghosts and of black magic is not an organised rivalry like its rivalry with the secular communists a secular force, or with the Muslims as a religious force. The ghosts and the black magicians do not constitute an organised secular structure like the PKI or an organised religious grouping like institutional Indonesian Islam. However, I have suggested above that the ‘coalition of ghosts’ is perceived at the local level as being more threatening than any secular organisation. This coalition is eternally growing and now has more members than it had when the communists were killed in 1965-66.
The rivalry between white and black magic can be understood as one of the possible causes of the 1965-66 killings. The people who killed Buang Duran did not have a clear sense of the PKI as a rival secular organisation that was challenging the power of the Church and needed to be eliminated. They saw Buang Duran as a powerful and dangerous practitioner of black magic. It is even recorded that the locals did not know that he was a communist, and only found out that Buang Duran was regarded as communist after he was killed. One can argue, that from the perspective of the rivalry between white and black magic that in local terms Buang Duran’s murder shows that his magic was not powerful enough to resist the power of the
Church and its allies. Moreover, locals believe that Buang Duran died a bad death in the sense that he would have no salvation in the afterlife.
The idea that communists such as Buang Duran were demonised not because of their secular ideology, but because they were believed to have practised black
264 magic, as opposed to white magic has been suggested by a number of scholars
(Barnes 2003; Farram 2002; Webb 1986). There are even suggestions that the PKI may have deliberately emphasised non-secular values in its quest for support in areas of Indonesia where traditional beliefs were strong. In particular, Farram (2002), in his assessment of the historical development of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in the Timor region of Eastern Indonesia, underlines the association between the communists and local spirit belief:
The party was adept at adapting to local conditions. The area is predominantly Christian, but traditional animism and belief in the powers of the supernatural have remained strong also. The PKI in West Timor showed from its earliest days up until the point when the party was dissolved that it was capable of mixing radical politics, Christianity, traditional magic, and witchcraft into a blend that was palatable to the variety of local tastes (Farram, 2002:21).
Farram states that the combination of politics with Christianity and/or animism is not unique to Timor. This mixture of politics and mainstream religions and/or traditional beliefs, according to Farram, have also been noticed elsewhere in
Indonesia, the Philippines, parts of Europe, and elsewhere (Farram, 2002:21; also see
Kartodirdjo 1978; Ileto 1989; and Hobsbawm 1965). Farram’s points provide vital context for the wider question of the relationship between the conflict between communist and anti-communist forces in Eastern Indonesia and supernatural rivalry.
The Catholic struggle against communist rivals in Eastern Indonesia was conceived at the local level as a struggle between white magic and black magic.
In the traditional Lamaholot world, white magicians locally known as ‘molan’ would perform certain rituals of protection from possible supernatural attacks, primarily the ‘uwur mera’ or ‘makap’. After Christianisation these rituals were taken over by Catholic priests. Some of these rituals are comparatively small in scale. Often
265 Catholic priests were asked to bless new houses and new vehicles with holy water to ask for protection from evil spirits when living in the house, and when driving or riding vehicles. The traditional ‘molans’ too were often asked to perform similar kinds of rituals of protection from evil spirits, usually with the sprinkling of the blood of sacrificed animals such as a red rooster. In July 2015, I bought a new motor- scooter in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Soon after I had a bad accident; I fell from the motor- scooter while riding it. My family and friends then concluded that the accident occurred because I failed to perform the ritual of protection immediately after I bought the motor-scooter.
The importance of the Catholic Church in counteracting black magic in the
Lamaholot world is illustrated in the following cases. In 2010 and again in 2012 priests in my home parish in Lembata conducted a special mass with the intention to eliminate the increasing practice of black magic in the parish community. The mass was called,‘misa hitam’, literally a ‘black mass’. I was told that the priests wore black, the altar was decorated in black, and even people attending the mass were encouraged to wear something in black as a symbol of sorrow and spiritual disapproval of the practice of black magic.
A local media outlet in Lembata reported that on 26 April 2016 the spirit of a dead person made a return to the living community. The deceased was a member of the local parliament. He came back through a female employee of the parliament during an important meeting at the office. The locals call the encounter of the spirit with the living person, ‘bloding’. The woman who experienced the ‘bloding’ at the office during the meeting apparently spoke the local language of the deceased fluently even though she did not come from the same village and never spoke the
266 language before. The spirit of the deceased told the meeting that he also wanted to attend the meeting, and he wanted to tell the parliamentarians that he died because he was poisoned by some in the power structure. Two Catholic priests were asked to talk to the spirit of the deceased, and asked him to leave the meeting by leaving the female employee alone. He simply rejected the request by the priest. He insisted that he must attend the meeting (Aksi, 27 April 2016).
These stories highlight the role of Catholic priests as protectors of the community from supernatural attacks. Priests are expected to play the role of a negotiator with the spirits, as in the case of the second story above. It is interesting to see that the spirit of the deceased in fact refused to negotiate with the priests by simply refusing to leave the meeting room. The rivalry between the Church and hostile supernatural forces is shown by these stories to be a major element in
Lamaholot life. As a work of Catholic propaganda about the struggle against the communists whose dead spirits are a key force in the ‘coalition of ghosts’ who are thought to attack Lamaholot people, From Madiun thus appears to me as part of the larger rivalry between the Catholic Church and its supernatural rivals. The stronger this coalition seems to be the greater the need for protection from white magicians and thus the greater the need for the church.
Good and bad supernatural places
The need for white magic to protect people from supernatural attack is strongly linked to the idea that the local landscape is full of supernatural dangers, dangers that are strongly linked to the killings in 1965-66. Lamaholot people believe that in supernatural terms there are good places, and there are also bad places. Good places are the places where the good spirits such as the ancestral spirits dwell, such as in
267 traditional houses, or rumah-rumah adat, cemetries, and they even share the same houses with the living. Bad places are the places where the ghosts, evil spirits, dwell.
The bad spirits, produced by bad deaths such as in the case of killings of communists during 1965-66, dwell in places where they died and were dumped. There are attempts to transform these bad places into good places.
Often people have road accidents in the areas believed to be the dwelling places of the communist ghosts. The accidents occurred not only because of bad road conditions and the lack of the riding and driving skills, but also and more so because of the overwhelming fear in passing those places that affects one’s on-road concentration. The following stories are to illustrate the idea that certain places are believed to be places communist spirits dwell that represent the fear of supernatural danger.
The first story is in reference to a particular incident that occurred in the town of Maumere on the island of Flores.108 A local Eastern Indonesian newspaper, Pos
Kupang, published an interesting story on Tuesday, 18th February 2014. Tens of female high school students became possessed by spirits at the same time in the schoolyard of Maumere State High School. The victims showed a range of behaviours such as crying hysterically, beating the ground, laying down weakly, holding their own heads silently, shifting eyes, laughing loudly, smoking and looking confused.
108 The local newspaper, Pos Kupang, published three stories about the same incident on Tuesday 18th February 2014 under different titles. The first story is titled ‘Semua Benda di Sekolah Sudah Dihuni Roh’ (All objects at the school are already inhabited by spirits). The second one is: ‘Perasuk Mengaku Guru Sekolah yang Sudah Meninggal’ (The possessor admits he is the deceased school teacher). The third story is under the title: ‘Penggerek Bendera Roboh karena Kerasukan di SMAN 2 Maumere’ (The flag-raisers collapsed because they were possessed at the Maumere State High School).
268 This happened on Monday morning of the 17th February 2014, just before the flag-raising ceremony. Yet the ceremony was still conducted as usual. Suddenly, during the ceremony, three female flag-raisers collapsed, and then they began to scream hysterically. The flag-raising was stopped. The three girls were carried to the school secretaries lobby to be calmed down. The flag-raising was resumed with replacement flag-raisers. The students that replaced the three girls also became possessed. The school principal immediately stopped the flag-raising ceremony. More concerning, the possession quickly spread to affect other students. The number of victims could be as many as fifty students.
The students were possessed by spirits that were believed to be the inhabitants of the school complex. “All of the objects, things, trees and rocks in this school have now become inhabited by spirits”. A teacher by the name of John Bader commented:
“We planted jackfruit and mango trees not to become a place for the spirits, but to provide shade and food. But now the spirits claim the place as their dwelling, and we must respect that. Now if we want to pick the fruits we have to ask for their permission”. Indeed the school is believed to have many inhabitants. Among them are the spirits of the victims of the 1965-66 killings and various other spirits.
A spirit spoke through one of the possessed girls. When the possessor was asked to help restore the female students to consciousness, he answered that he could not control the colony of spiritual inhabitants of that place, because they had a leader and he was hard to be persuaded. He told the teachers to give him cigarettes, betel nuts and sweets because the spirit colony consisted of a few different age groups, there are children, youths and older people. Not long afterwards, the students regained consciousness one by one and left the school grounds.
269 How is the supernatural incident interpreted? The locals believe that it was a sign that the students at the school must behave politely in the school complex. It is also seen as a request by the spirits to respect the place and to become closer to nature. They must not disturb the spirits, but rather make peace with them.
Stories about places being inhabited by spirits are not uncommon throughout
Indonesia; indeed it is the core of the animistic belief system. There are many places that have been identified as the dwelling places of communist spirits, often the places where communists were killed during the anti-communist violence of 1965-66. When
I was riding a motorbike from a village to the town of Waiwerang in Adonara at night, I was told to be ‘hati-hati’, or cautious, especially at a particular place where the locals believe to be one of the dwelling places of the communist spirits. I was told that there are about thirteen places on the island where the communist spirits dwell.
Each time someone passes one of the places, they are required to perform a ritual, even a small one, to ask for permission to pass by safely. For example, a simple beep or flash of the headlights is enough to respectfully ask for safe passage.
The living must ask for permission to pass through areas where spirits dwell. The spirits who dwelt there were believed to be restless and could cause problems if they were offended. Consequently, traffic accidents that occur at those places are almost always blamed on the failure of the driver or rider to ritually ask for permission to pass that place. Moreover, locals believe night is time for the spirits to do their work and roam. In this way, the events of 1965-66 are permanently part of the structure of the supernatural landscape at local level.
270 A personal story that I published in INDONEWS (2007:5) is to highlight the local belief in the dwelling places of communist ghosts and the danger that they reperesent. 109
Once on my visit home to the island of Lembata, I rode a small motorbike home to my village after visiting some of my family in town. The family I visited had urged me to stay the night with them, rather than travel at night. The road between the town and the village is windy and potholed. It was dark, as there are no street lamps on the road; the only light was the headlight of my motorbike. Half way to the village, I passed through a hilly bamboo forest and a small graveyard, when my motorbike suddenly broke down. Neither the engine nor the headlights were working any longer. I was stuck in the middle of a bamboo forest near a graveyard in complete darkness. I tried several times to start the motorbike, a little anxious, as it was still a long way to my village, and just as far back to town. Following my local beliefs, I thought I would try to ask for assistance from above. I tried a Christian prayer, to no avail, and then I thought I would try to ask my ancestors. A non-smoker, I had a packet of cigarettes and a lighter in my pocket for just this kind of reason. I lit a cigarette, took three puffs and prayed to my ancestors in my local language, offering them the cigarette as a customary gesture of respectful greeting, then put the cigarette on the road. I tried to start the motorbike again, but still nothing happened. Whilst trying to remain calm, I started to push the motorbike uphill back to a nearby village I had passed. Fortunately, after a few minutes, I saw the headlight of an approaching motorbike. I waved to the driver and his passenger, two young men, to ask for help. They stopped, though it appeared reluctantly. They tried to start my motorbike, and when it did not respond, they checked the bike’s engine to try to find the cause of the problem. No faults were found. The young men then asked me if I beeped at the place where the motorbike broke down. It may sound like an odd question, but I knew immediately what they meant and what I had done wrong. They probably already knew my answer, I had not beeped. They advised me to always beep at places like this, especially after dark. …Many vehicle accidents had occurred exactly where my motorbike had broken down. This place had a violent and bloody history, a place of killings during the anti-communist violence of 1965-66. The spirits who dwelt there were believed to be restless and could cause problems if they were offended. After this conversation, the young men tried to start the bike again. The bike started, and before continuing with their journey, they urged me
109 In 2007, I published an article in INDONEWS, a bulletin of the University of Melbourne’s Indonesian Program, titled: ‘Beep Beep! The meaning of a beep in Lembata’. In this article I explain that in Lembata, and other parts of Indonesia, a beep is often for safety in traffic, as well as a greeting, not just to the living, but also to spirits unseen. Beeping the horn of a motor vehicle can mean asking for permission from the spirits to pass by safely.
271 again to beep. I then continued my motorbike journey, doing exactly as I had been told, and so arrived home safely.
This story shows how pervasive supernatural fear is in Catholic areas of
Eastern Indonesia and how it affects everyday life. Most importantly, it is an example of the disruption that can be caused by those who have died wrongfully, among whom we may rank the victims of 1965-66. It shows how events form minor disturbances like a motorbike breaking down, to more serious matters such as road accidents and illness provide constant reminders of the dangers associated with the supernatural forces that are linked to the dead communists, and their angry spirits.
They remind locals of the need for protection from white magic as a way of countering the forces associated with the communist ghosts.
Stories about the dwelling places of the communist ghosts are common throughout Indonesia. In Bali, for example, many alleged communists were slaughtered and their bodies were thrown from cliffs and into rivers. In Kediri, East
Java, it is noted that one of the favourite slaughtering places of suspected communists was along the edge of Brantas River that divides the Kediri region. The dead bodies were then thrown into the river (Tempo, 1-7 October 2012:55-56). These places have been known as frightening, and therefore to be avoided. The communist ghosts continue to roam around the area. In Maumere, Flores, for example, it is mentioned that in places where the bodies of the communists were dumped, often at night the locals heard sounds like singing voices (Tempo, 1-7 October 2012:84).
Concluding Notes
The supernatural fear that is triggered in me as a reader of the From Madiun text is the product of the deep fear of communist ghosts and of black magicians that is
272 pervasive in Lamaholot communities. There is a strong belief among Eastern
Indonesian Catholics that the ghosts of communists remain as part of the present and that they continue to haunt and harass the living. They are frightening beings. In order to manage the fear, the locals use ritual to try deal with the threat of harmful spirits.
My own father’s experience as a forced executioner, or algojo, and the cooling down rituals that were performed following the communist killings is an example of this. It is believed that the ghosts would continue to chase the killers and their families for revenge if there was no cooling down ritual to protect the living. Yet these reconciliation rituals are only a way to manage the fear of the supernatural. They do not eliminate the fear of ghosts. Indeed, fear of communist ghosts and of black magicians is a basic part of everyday experience in the Lamaholot world. People who are accused of being black magicians are still labelled communists in the present, and subject to harassment and victimisation. At the same time, fear of harmful supernatural forces provides a powerful justification for the authority of the Catholic
Church. This is also a reflection of the fact that supernatural threats are always part of the present, a result in part of the Lamaholot idea of time, which does not conceive of the relationship between past, present and future in the way that these things are understood in secular or religious conceptions of the world. Like the existential sense of fear, which Heidegger understands as always about the present, the supernatural sense of fear involves dangers – communist ghosts and black magicians – that are always there. The Catholic Church has been able to benefit from this sense of an ever-present supernatural danger, and this has kept the memory of 1965 alive, not just in terms of the use of propaganda like From Madiun to warn people of the secular danger of communism renewing itself or the religious danger of Islam threatening the
273 future of Indonesian Catholics, but because of the idea that the white magic of the
Church is required to counteract the supernatural danger of the communist ghosts and the black magicians.
274 CONCLUSION
As I now come to the conclusion of my thesis, I must say that I think I now understand why some locals in Adonara said: “Tidak tahu itu” (I do not know that) in response to the general question about the local leftist Buang Duran that I asked during my preliminary research in January 2004. No information whatsoever about
Buang Duran was shared with me at that time. Interestingly the locals seem to have been quite happy to share their knowledge and stories about Buang Duran with a foreign researcher, R.H. Barnes, who then published an article on Buang Duran in
2003, in which Buang Duran’s combined identity as Catholic, Muslim, and communist was openly examined.
In my view, the locals’ reluctance to answer my questions about Buang Duran was due to the fact that I shared Lamaholot identity with them and that they would therefore assume that I would know what asking about Buang Duran meant in local cultural terms. I now suspect that locals thought that talking about Buang Durang could provoke the spirit of Buang Duran to return to the community of the living and find revenge. The possiblity of revenge needed to be prevented by avoiding any conversations about Buang Duran. He was known to have practised black magic, and he proclaimed himself to be Catholic, Muslim, and communist at the same time. As a communist he was a secular being, as a Catholic and a Muslim he was a religious being, and as a black magic practitioner he was a supernatural being. Buang Duran was a complete package, and a very powerful one. For this reason, in my view, even after his murder in 1966 Buang Duran remains fear-inspiring to the locals. They are afraid of his spirit. There is a fundamental fear of supernatural revenge. The spirit of
275 Buang Duran as well as other communist spirits can in supernatural ways continue to search for justice from the living, and revenge is one form of justice.
I begin to see the depth of fear that my question provoked. Buang Duran was not the only one killed in the area in 1965-66. I was told by the locals that in Adonara there are about thirteen sites where the local suspected communists were killed and dumped. However, the ‘rumour’ about the number of mass-graves in Adonara remains unconfirmed. I did not return to the island for further research since my brief visit in January 2004, and no literature (other than the article about Buang Duran produced by Barnes in 2003) has discussed the details of the killings of 1965-66 in
Adonara. The reluctant responses to my questions suggest an ongoing trauma about the period, and a transmission of trauma of the events of 1965-66 that crosses the generations.
I also know now why I have the feeling of fear that I had when reading the
From Madiun text, a text that is secular in nature. Clearly the reason why the events of 1965-66 are so frightening for me is the diffusion of the three forms of fear – secular, religious, supernatural – that have surrounded my life since childhood; I was born in the shadow of 1965, was trained as a seminarian and am a Lamaholot person, so I am simultaneously subject to secular, religious and supernatural fears. Because the core of the thesis has been devoted to analysing these three types of fear and how the text gives rise to them, I hope that my analysis has been sufficiently systematic for me not to need to recap on the details here.
For me the question of how one deals with fear, especially fears that are deeply rooted in one’s cultural experience, is very important. I would like to see more cross-cultural investigations into the problem of how fear should be managed. I do
276 not believe that my own fears can be banished completely and banished forever, because these fears, particularly the fear of supernatural forces, are things that are pervasive in the Lamaholot culture. Clearly, in my own context, and that of my community, fear is not something that can be ended, but something that has to be managed.
Some of my fears – the secular fear of the communist past and the religious fear of Islam – seem more easily overcome than others. Unlike my supernatural fear, my religious fears have been reconfigured over the course of my life. While fear of the Muslim Other was a significant part of my religious upbringing, this type of religious fear has been discarded partly as a consequence of my interactions with
Muslims that have undermined the stereotypes I was exposed to when growing up.
The fear of the Muslim Other therefore does not continue to haunt me in the same way as the prospect of ghosts does. Similarly, my fears associated with my involvement with the Catholic Church and its doctrines have been dissipated as a consequence of my life experiences. By contrast, my supernatural fear of ghosts is very difficult to eliminate. At one level it appears that my supernatural fear of hantu
(ghosts) is an intrinsic part of my Lamaholot ontology; it seems to be not displaceable and not optional and is deeply connected with my identity as a Lamaholot person. It may also be that this fear is so strong because it involves the deepest level of my identity. It may also be that whereas I can have personal experiences with people who are the objects of my secular and religious fears, which cause me to lose those fears, I cannot have such personal experiences with the objects of my supernatural fears.
277 Finally, as an autoethnography, I would like this thesis to be seen as a memoir; it reflects on my experience of reading the From Madiun text, and analyses how the text triggered my feelings of fear. When reading From Madiun, my past experiences of fear, both conscious and subconscious, which to a great degree had been repressed, re-emerged. This thesis is thus about my life – a reflection on my life experiences and on my emotional response to encountering the From Madiun text. At a personal level, writing this thesis has helped me to accept my fear experiences as an intrinsic part of my humanity as articulated in the conceptions of Kierkegaard,
Tillich, Heidegger and Küng that were discussed in chapter one of the thesis. These scholars regard fear as something universally human; it is an inherent part of being human, a universal phenomenon experienced by all human beings. To be human is to be afraid. Furthermore, to be religious is to be afraid (something that is particularly emphasised by Kierkegaard and Küng). In this sense, fear as an emotional experience needs to be acknowledged, embraced, and more importantly to be managed in constructive ways, as a core part of one’s human (and religious) life.
While fear can be seen as a human universal, it is also dehumanising. This thesis has suggested that the bloody violence that occurred in Indonesia in 1965-66 was, to a very great extent, the product of fear. I hope that the dehumanising effect of fear seen in the secular past in 1965-66 does not recur in the present and in the future.
However, the crucial question for me is: can feelings of fear have humanising effects, and how can this be so? I would suggest that from the religious-theological perspective, one’s experience of fears – secular, religious, supernatural – can be seen as a spiritual experience of the presence of the Invisible in one’s life journey. As I wrote this thesis sensing all three types fear, I also felt even closer to the spirits of my
278 ancestors and to my local Lamaholot God, ‘rera wulan tana ekan’ (the god of the sky and earth). So for me, as the feelings of fear always come with the feeling of spiritual closeness. In this way I do not necessarily see fear as something to be feared. Instead it is to be embraced. I experience fear as something that does not necessarily dehumanise me or something that reflects a deficit of my religious faith; it is almost like a spiritual bridge that connects the living and the dead, the physical and spiritual worlds, in a religious and supernatural sense. For this reason fear needs to be faced with courage, not with fear (as in the viewpoint of Tillich), because where there is fear there is also hope that one can become stronger and more supportive of others. In this regard, this thesis can perhaps serve as one example of how Indonesia’s violent past and the fears that it involves can be dealt with, suggesting that beyond fear there is hope: it is by acknowledging our fears and by seeking to overcome them that we become fully human. One of the examiners of this thesis suggested that in this work I
“performed the role of ‘a mad scientist’ who experimented in the practice of fear so as to reconfigure it so that fear is rightly ordered in relation to other dispositions.” I am happy to think that this might be so.
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Author/s: Wejak, Justin Laba
Title: Secular, religious and supernatural: an Eastern Indonesian Catholic experience of fear (autoethnographic reflections on the reading of a New Order-era propaganda text)
Date: 2017
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