chapter 2 Bodies of Knowledge: The Pedagogy of Pencak Silat

Introduction

In February 2003, Eddie Nalapraya, the president of the Indonesian Pencak Silat Association (ipsi), together with members of the organization’s governing board, made the four hour trip from Jakarta to West Java to the home of Ibu Enny Rukmini Sekarningrat, the widely respected head of the Pencak Silat school, Panglipur. Ibu Enny’s home in Sukawening also acted as the training centre for Panglipur, the largest Pencak Silat school in West Java. Ibu Enny had invited Eddy Nalapraya to Sukawening for the purposes of strengthening ties between the school and ipsi. The event provided an opportunity for ipsi to showcase its activities directly to penca teachers and players in West Java, and Eddie Nalapraya took the chance to talk to 200 or so members of Panglipur gathered at the meeting. He spoke of the success of the recent world Pencak Silat championships held in Penang, Malaysia, and about the European tour of a demonstration team that several performers from Panglipur had taken part in. After his address on the latest accomplishments of ipsi and the continued development of Pencak Silat, questions were invited from the floor. A young player from West Java, not a member of Panglipur, raised the issue of sporting competition, or olah raga (literally ‘to cultivate the body’), in modern Pencak Silat, expressing what he claimed were the concerns of many local teachers about transformations in the art under the management of ipsi. In his view, and, he stated, the view of many Sundanese Pencak Silat teachers, it was no longer necessary to study penca, as the art is known locally in West Java, in order to enter ipsi competition. Rather, to compete one merely had to learn how to punch and kick in any fashion whatsoever.1 Further, the rules of ipsi competition did not reflect the practice of penca, and, he concluded, many teachers and players in West Java were concerned that the movements

1 ipsi rules state that the players must take at least five steps or langkah before engaging with one another, the aim being to preserve the aesthetic aspects of the art, to prevent the athletes engaging immediately in the fashion of other contact sports such as boxing or karate, and to distinguish it as Pencak Silat. Unfortunately these stepping patterns often bear little or no resemblance to any actual langkah, and I often heard criticism to the effect that they were farcical, one guru going so far as to exclaim that the athletes ‘looked like clowns when per- forming them’.

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54 chapter 2 displayed by competitors in ipsi competitions were no longer those of any form of penca they could recognize. In response to these concerns, Eddie Nalapraya stated that rules in competition were necessary to prevent injury to competitors. Without rules it would be too dangerous, and people would no longer want to practice the art. However, ipsi were aware of concerns over the erosion of the traditional practice of Pencak Silat, and, to address these issues, it had plans to introduce a ‘festival of traditional Pencak Silat’ specifically for those performers not wanting to enter ipsi competition. He closed by noting that ipsi did not force people to enter its ranks: ‘if they don’t like it, it is not necessary to join’. Rustadi Effendi, the Executive Director of ipsi, gave the most well-received speech of the evening, stressing the need for the preservation of the diversity of Pencak Silat. If Pencak Silat were to remain distinct from other martial arts such as Karate and Tae Kwon Do, then it was important that teachers and schools take care not to focus exclusively upon sporting competitions to the detriment of tradition. The teachers and players with whom I later spoke expressed their surprise that the Executive Director of ipsi should be sensitive to such issues. Members of Panglipur do not participate in sporting competi- tion,2 and, given the opinion of the hosts for the evening on the matter of participation in ipsi sparring, it was perhaps not surprising that Rustadi Effendi chose to address his audience with their concerns about loss of tradi- tion in mind. Yet, the issues raised do highlight what has been a major point of contention in west Java since the official introduction of a competition standard at the national sporting championships in 1973. That is, the standard- ization of the art, the introduction of olah raga and the transformation of Pencak Silat into a modern sporting practice. In off the record conversations with me, some members of ipsi’s governing board had voiced similar criticisms to those heard in Garut. These senior mem- bers of ipsi expressed their concerns that it was no longer possible to discern any real difference in the styles of athletes, and Silat increasingly had come to look like other ‘foreign’ martial arts in open competition. A further concern often conveyed in frank conversations I had with many members of ipsi was the dearth of any real ‘masters’ (pendekar) of the art in senior positions within the governing body. Consequently, at the top level the organization lacked leaders with the understanding and knowledge of Pencak Silat that can only be gained through years of practice. ipsi, it was often said, had too many

2 The school is well known for the artistry of its demonstrations, and Ibu Enny’s ruling on participation in olah raga was made on the basis that it would be to the detriment of the practice of traditional penca in the school.