Indians and National Television in Indonesia: Behind the Seen by Maria Myutel, MA August 2016 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University School of Culture, History and Language College of Asia and the Pacific © Copyright by Maria Myutel 2016 All Rights Reserved I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any tertiary institution. ………………………………………. Maria Myutel Acknowledgements This thesis would have not been possible without help and support from a lot of people. In this part of my writing I allow myself to follow a chronological order, or "order of appearance", as in film credit titles. First, is, of course, my Chair supervisor, Professor Ariel Heryanto, who believed in the importance of my research since our first meeting in Jakarta in 2011 and who supported me all the way through. I am enormously grateful to Ariel for giving me freedom to question, explore, challenge and argue. I am deeply thankful for the Endeavour Postgraduate Awards that generously sponsored my research and made our life in Australia a wonderful experience. My special thanks goes to my best friends, Annushka, who always saw the best in me, and Rachel Routley who helped me and my family in so many different ways, from encouraging me to apply for a PhD degree to picking us up from the airport when we first landed in Canberra. I am deeply grateful to Professor Brij Lal and Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki for their warm welcome, and gentle and sincere support, especially during the first and last years of my PhD. My very special thanks goes to the best office mate I could ever imagine, Professor Craig Reynolds. Craig was my main mentor, who always found the nicest ways to remind me that I was not only a researcher but also a mother, a wife, and a Russian, the identities that can be easily forgotten during the long PhD journey. I would also like to thank Dr Ronit Ricci, the only role model in my life, for showing me the beauty and elegance of academic work. Last but not least, I thank Professor James Fox for encouraging words and practical suggestions about my fieldwork, Dr Emma Baulch for insightful comments, Dr Meera Ashar for invaluable conversations, and Professor Robert Cribb and Professor Ken George for great academic discussions and the respect they pay to young scholars. Of course, my fieldwork would not have been possible without generous support from the Sindhi community members and media practitioners, who welcomed me into their complex world, and let me observe, participate and ask questions. I am particularly thankful to my friend Ricky and his beautiful mother who paid respect to my work and i believed in its importance. And I am very grateful to my friend Tatiana Koshina, who helped me stay luxuriously safe and productively sane. My deep gratitude goes to my dearest PhD buddies, Meghan Downes and Evi Eliyanah, for sharing sad and happy moments (as well as food and bed) in various parts of the world and across Australia. I am also grateful to the University of Freiburg, and Professor Judith Schlehe and her PhD students (and my friends), Eva-Maria Sandkühler, Paritosha Kobbe and Mirjam Lücking, for a very enriching experience of transnational collaborative research. The Research Skills Centre at the Australian National University has played an important role in my writing and I would like to thank the organisers of the Thesis Boot Camp for the given opportunity. My special thanks goes to the administrator of the School of Culture, History and Language, Jo Bushby, as well as the School editor, Maxine McArthur. I also highly appreciate the comments of two anonymous reviewers of my article (to be published in 2017) for The Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Cambridge University Press. But I struggle to find the right words to express my love and gratitude to the dearest people of my life, my mom, Татьяна Мютель, my husband, Ron, and our two wonderful sons, Kiran and Milan. I just say Thank You. ii Abstract This is the first in-depth study of the critical power of the Indian (Sindhi) ethnic minority in modern Indonesian public culture. The research is a close examination of the success and dominance of the Sindhi community in the production of popular dramas for national television in Indonesia. Despite several decades of Sindhis' control over media production, scholars have ignored the significant influence of this South Asian community on contemporary Indonesian culture, economy and politics. Moreover, previous research has emphasised either unilateral dominance of the state over selected minority groups or resistance of minorities to state power, largely oversimplifying the existing relations between ethnic minorities and nation-state. Highlighting the collaborative nature of interaction between the Sindhi community and the Indonesian state, in the media production industry in particular, the study sheds light on the previously unknown aspects of ethnic politics in post-independence Indonesia and moves beyond the issues of assimilation or discrimination central to many existing studies of minority-majority relations. Likewise, in the midst of increasing scholarly interest in the Islamisation of modern Indonesia, the study serves as a reminder of unsettled ethno-racial tensions that continue to define the distribution of political, economic and social power in Indonesia. iii Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ i Abstract ............................................................................................................................ iii Contents ........................................................................................................................... iv Images ............................................................................................................................. vii Abbreviations ................................................................................................................. viii Note on Interviews and Spelling ...................................................................................... xi Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 1. Existing Scholarship on Sindhis and Media ...................................................... 6 2. Challenging Existing Scholarship .................................................................... 11 3. Introducing the Sindhis and History of Ethnicity in Indonesia ........................ 15 4. Methodology .................................................................................................... 25 Chapter 1 Sindhi Migration and Settlement in Indonesia .............................................. 30 1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 30 2. Sindhis in Colonial Indonesia .......................................................................... 31 3. Sindhis during Revolution ............................................................................... 35 4. Sindhis during the Sukarno Era ....................................................................... 37 5. Sindhis during the New Order ......................................................................... 42 6. Reformasi Period (1998–mid-2000s) ............................................................... 45 7. Gandhi Memorial School ................................................................................. 47 8. Sindhis in a Broader Context of Domestic Politics ......................................... 53 9. Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 55 Chapter 2 Sindhis in Jakarta in the 2010s: The Reproduction of Sindhiness ................ 58 1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 58 2. Sindhiness as an Identity .................................................................................. 59 3. Business as the Core of Life ............................................................................ 65 4. Social Stratification .......................................................................................... 70 iv 4.1. Politics of Language ............................................................................ 71 5. Gender Ideology ............................................................................................... 77 5.1. The Roots of Gender Ideology ............................................................. 78 5.2. Beauty as Duty ..................................................................................... 81 6. Home and Homeland ....................................................................................... 82 7. Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 84 Chapter 3 Sindhis and Indonesian Media prior to "Sinetron Era" ................................. 86 1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 86 2. Sindhis in Media Industries before the "Sinetron Era" (the 1940s–the early 1990s) ..............................................................................................................