Ayu Utami IHS Lecture 2018.Pages
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Lecture Text, Ayu Utami, March 20 2018, Indonesian Heritage Society Evening Lecture Series, Erasmus Huis Jakarta FROM MODERN TABOOS AND TRADITIONAL TOLERANCE I would like to thank the Indonesian Heritage Society for inviting me to speak in this re- spectable forum. I also want to thank the audience for being here to listen and, hopefully, to share opinion on this important topic.1 Tolerance, or intolerance, is a very pressing problem today. It will impact us sooner or later. I want to start this presentation by showing you these pictures: The two men in the middle are convicts of a homosexual criminal offence in Aceh. A crowd is very eager to watch the flogging, they hold their smartphones high up to record the process. A group of female audience is no less excited. If you go to youtube, you can also see and hear people cheering and shouting at every lash. From Aceh we go to Yogyakarta. Banners in a demonstration: Communists and LGBTs must be eradicated. Fight the seeds of communism and LGBT. LGBT is a plague. Save our young generation from perversion. Eradicate LGBT and its supporters. Having seen these pictures, let us realise that Indonesia had never known any hatred against LGBT before 2000. What we have seen just now is a very new phenomenon. We may find it paradoxical, but it occurs exactly in democratic Indonesia. 1 I would also thank my friends, Burhanuddin Muhtadi and Yulius Tandyanto, for their time and comments during the preparation of this text. 1! Let us continue to other pictures. This is a statue titled Tiga Mojang (Three Ladies), a work by a prominent artist Nyoman Nuarta, located in Bekasi. The statue was condemned by certain Islamic groups as either a representation of the Christian Trinity or being too sensual. The next picture is the de- struction of Jayandaru Monument in Sidoarjo. Next, statue of Arjuna, a hero from wayang story originated from Indian epic Mahabharata, in Purwakarta. There were four similar statues burned and destroyed. Next, the dismantling of the statue of a Chinese warlord, Kwan Sing Tee Koen, in front of a Chinese temple in Tuban. Iconoclasm or, here, the destruction of statues, was not seen in the ancient history of In- donesia. The earliest recorded iconoclastic incident is the 1985 Borobudur bombing by a jihadist group that damaged nine stupas on the upper level. When did intolerant incidents start to take place in Indonesia? Here is a rough list of earliest records of incidents that might relate to intolerance. This list is not comprehensive nor taxonomic. Some cases, after a deeper look, may not fall into the category of intolerance case.2 But it’s helpful to start with. Anti-heresy. The earliest incident is found in the Javanese literature as the case of Syekh Siti Jenar, who was accused of heresy and sentenced to death in the 15th or 16th century. No hard historical proof about the existence of Siti Jenar, however he still has followers un- til now, among Javanese muslims from the mystical schools. If not a historical fact, it is a narrative fact, written in many Javanese literary works, including the famous Babad Tanah Jawa and Serat Centhini. Anti-clerics. We heard about the massacre of the clerics in 1648 by Amangkurat I, a king of Islamic Mataram, Surakarta. The Dutch archive describes that around 6000 people— comprising muslim clerics, their families, wives, children, followers—were killed within half an hour in the palace’s court. Here, it’s probably more of a political intrigue than a case of intolerance. The clerics were alleged to have supported a plot to topple the king.3 In the 20th century, we also witnessed an anti-Islamism policy during Soeharto’s military regime. Anti-Chinese. The first anti-Chinese massacre in Batavia (Jakarta) in 1740 was instigated by the Dutch colonial ruler. Whether this is a case of intolerance, we can debate. But, it is worth to mention here that the first recorded Chinese pogrom in Java was not perpetrated by the locals, but by the Dutch. Don't forget, it was the Dutch colonial ruler that enforced a 2 What we mean by cases of intolerance here is any act of force or violence against individuals or groups or symbols that is charged by the inability to accept differences in race, ethnicity, or belief. 3 The report came from from Rijcklofs van Goen, a VOC’s officer that stationed in Mataram. The record was later published in De vijf gezantschapsreizen naar het hof van Mataram, 1648-1654 (1956). Merle C. Ricklefs in War, Culture, and Economy in Java 1677-1726 (1993) and Soemarsaid Moertono in State and Statecraft in Old Java: A Study of the Later Mataram Period, 16th to 19th Century (1968, p.64) described Amangkurat I as a brutal and despotic ruler. According to Mo- ertono, there was a negative description in Serat Jayabaya about Amangkurat I, without particular nor detailed mentioning of the incident: Kalpa sru semune kenaka putung (A time as painful as having your nails off). 2! racial segregation law, dividing the society into three groups: Europeans, foreign Asians, and the natives. This would support our view that intolerance is a modern phenomenon. Anti-Christian. During the independence war, there was a series of attack toward Catholic schools in Central Java. Two clergymen were killed. Church buildings were damaged (1948). Inter-religious and inter-ethnic clashes happen from time to time, not very often, and rather difficult to pinpoint any earliest occurrence. Next, anti-communism & anti-atheism, starting in 1966. It is being continued until today, most of the time for political reasons. In 1985, the first case of iconoclasm: the Borobudur bombing. The attack was said to be a retaliation of an anti-Islam massacre by the military one year earlier in Tanjung Priok. Since then, we didn’t hear any more iconoclasm until what we are seeing these days. In the 21st century we see new movements of anti-pornography and “pornoaction” as well as anti LGBT. The word “pornoaction” is not in any dictionary. Even the Indonesian official dictionary doesn’t have “pornoaksi” as an entry. It is a new word coined by the leg- islators to extend the definition of pornography in order to criminalise not only the produc- tion of images and texts, but also people’s behaviour. There is a consistent movement to criminalise individuals whose sexual perceptions or behaviour differ from what is prescribed by shari’ah. What can we say about these facts? Intolerance is a modern phenomenon in In- donesia. It is known in Indonesia’s history only after the introduction of monotheism and moderni- ty. Monotheism here means Islam as well as Christianity—but practically we will talk mostly about Islam, as nearly 90% of Indonesia’s population are muslims. Islam had made an entry in Java since the 11th century or proba- bly even earlier, but it started to gain domina- tion in the 15th or early 16th century. And what do we mean by modernity here? Different scholars will agree to define modernity as either a historical period, a socio-cul- tural norm, and a philosophy developed after the Middle Age, or the sum of them, with a strong emphasis on humanism, reason, technology, and market economy. Humans are being freed from the grip of God, and by using their reason only they can create technolo- gy and rule the world. Modernity is considered to begin in the 16th century Europe, follow- ing the Renaissance. It didn’t take long for the development in Europe to have an impact in Java, Sumatra, and the surrounding islands. At the end of the 16th century, the Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman arrived in Banten, seeking for the spice islands. It would mark the beginning of the Dutch presence in the ar- 3! chipelago for the next 350 years. Interestingly, the year de Houtman landed in Banten, 1596, is also the year in which Rene Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, was born. Modernity is the spirit of that age. Indonesia is not isolated from that spirit, through colo- nialism. Colonialism introduced to Indonesia a modern mechanism of control, by way of division, categorisation, and appropriation. Curiously, it is after the entrance of Islam and western modernity that intolerant incidents started to be seen in Indonesia. But, is it true that the ancient or pre-modern people in Indonesia were tolerant? That’s what scholars and our founding parents believe. I tried to seek some comparison from folk- lore and myths. Let me give you three models of mitigation of religious frictions from the ancient time. #1 Cleansing Ritual Model (Ruwatan). The story of Calon Arang. Calon Arang is one of the most watched traditional theater in Bali. It often combines performance art with a trance and cleansing ritual. Calon Arang is believed to be a historical figure from the c.11th century East Java. The story is about a black magic widow named Calon Arang who, by her dark power, sent a deadly plague to the kingdom of Kahuripan. In the end of the story she was killed and purified. For our interest here, this is a story of political conflict imbued with a possible religious ten- sion between a certain Hindu practise and a certain Buddhism. Calon Arang observed a kind of left-hand Hindu tantric, she was a worshipper of Durga. King Airlangga assigned a Buddhist priest Baradah to overcome Calon Arang. How is the conflict resolved? Interestingly, we don’t see any inquisition here. Calon Arang is not treated as a sorcerer in Europe’s witch hunting in the c.15th century: condemned and burned at stake.