Precedence: bulk
WHY IS INDONESIA NOT FALLING APART?
(part 2 of 4)
by Waruno Mahdi
2. WHAT DID AMBON AND SAMBAS HAVE IN COMMON?
Outbreaks of violence of a type that has been generally handled under
the rubrique "ethnic, religious, and racial conflict" (SARA) have been
occurring throughout the country. The two most spectacular of these,
in Ambon, Maluku, and in Sambas, West Kalimantan, have served as tragic
landmarks in this protracted period of national agony.
That of Ambon was quickly dubbed as interconfessional: a conflict
between Christians and Muslims. That on the Sambas was just as quickly
characterized as interethnic: Malays and Dayaks versus Madurese.
In reality, both characterizations are not quite satisfactory. They fail
to reveal the ultimate underlying source of the conflict, and for that
reason do not conduce to venues for effective remedy. But more important
for our present interest, they do not permit a candid appraisal of the
implications of such outbreaks for either maintenance or disintegration
of national unity.
In Ambon, it has been stressed again and again, Christians and Muslims
lived peacefully side by side under traditional customs of communal
solidarity. Only more recently arrived Buginese and Butonese muslim
settlers, it is said, failed to integrate into that custom sphere.
Even as violence between Buginese and autochthonous Ambonese polarized
according to Muslim and Christian religious adherence, one still witnessed
isolated instances of followers of one confession having their lives
saved by a local majority of the respective other religion.
This already militates strongly against the assumption that religious
differences lay at the bottom of the conflict. But above all, who has
ever heard of a war between two religions, in which the leaders of
both confessions were at peace with each other and calling upon their
respective followers to stop hostilities since the very start.
In West Kalimantan, Malays and Buginese would seem to be very much closer
to each other in stage of socio-economic development than either of the
ethnic groups to Dayaks.Therefore, the fact that Malays in West Kalimantan,
the main adversaries of the Madurese in the present conflict, should join
forces with Dayaks (rather than side with Madurese to fight Dayaks) must
immediately warn us, that we have not yet understood what it is that lies
at the bottom of the conflict.
To understand what is really at the root of these conflicts, one should
perhaps look back to Europe of the 15th to 17th centuries, when the
continent was rocked by 30-, 80-, 100-years wars in which religious
difference (Protestant versus Catholic) played an important role.
At that time, an increased weight of trade and handicraft empowered an
increasingly prospering urban middle class to contest the supremacy
of the aristocracy. Of vital importance is here the emergence of a
new ethics that replaced an older tradition of savoir vivre by a
principle of diligence and thrift with the aim of achieving a maximal
surplus. It would become crucial in the reorientation of national
mentality, finally refunctioning a rural population with rustical pastoral
communal background into an urban labour force with industrial discipline.
A second confrontation of these two "life philosophies" took place when
the thus converted Europeans met upon not or not yet converted peoples
of countries they colonized. This was aptly described by Mohammad Hatta,
later one of the two proclamators of Indonesian independence and our
first vice-president:
"The Westerner focuses on yield. He sets priority on yield, and he
strives to achieve the highest desired yield by exerting all his
faculties. ... The Easterner focuses on energy. He sets priority
on energy, and by implementing a minimum of energy he strives to
achieve a maximum in yield. But as he uses up a smaller amount of
energy, he ends up with a yield that is smaller as well."
(translated from Moh. Hatta, "Rasionalisasi", 1936)
This puts the fundamental difference in economic ethics in a nutshell.
It lies between, on one side, the attitude of traditionalist ethics of
rustical feudal or communal societies that economizes energy, investing
only so much effort as is necessary for a comfortable subsistence, and
on the other, that of mercantile ethics of individualistic industrial
societies, which sets no ceiling on the targeted achievement, but requires
continued perseverance, sometimes even at the expense of health and life
quality.
That the latter ethical attitude is not a specific feature of European
or Western culture was not generally realized at the time of Hatta's
writing. But in the postwar period, a meanwhile more decadent West has
been eyeing the in their view excessively industrious Japanese and other
Asians with hardly disguised apprehension.
Indonesia experienced a socio-economic revolution similar to that in
Europe, even approximately at the same time. However, it was disrupted
much in the same way as the one in Italy and South France was when, for
the latter two, the main trade route from the Orient shifted from the
Levant and Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, Cape of Good Hope, and
Atlantic.
In Indonesia, the rise of Islamic merchant cities culminated in the
defeat of the feudal overlord, the Empire of Majapahit, at the hands of
the Sultanate of Demak. But further progress was brought to a halt as
a result of the loss of the monopoly on spice trade. Demak succumbed,
and was replaced by the Empire of Mataram which could essentially be
considered as a reincarnation of Majapahit under conditions of Java
having been meanwhile converted to Islam.
These developments have nevertheless left deep traces that are still very
much extant even today. However, the industrious and enterprising element
in the ethnic socio-economic landscape of Indonesia was mostly ignored in
studies on the history of colonial Indonesia. One notable exception was
the 1934 thesis (Leiden University) of Jacob Cornelis van Leur who
likened the leaders of the Islamization of Java (Wali Songo, "the Nine
Wardens"), with Calvinist leaders of the Dutch Reformation and struggle
for independence from Catholic Spain.
Descriptions of Javanese mentality were otherwise restricted to obsevations
on traditionalist communalist life style of the peasant village commons
(desa) and feudal Central Javanese principalities. The no-nonsense
directness and get-things-done spirit of coastal Pesisiran tradition
remained obscure, just like the Islamic puritanism of the kaum putihan
in the interior.
Even less known to the public was the continued maintenance of
interinsular navigation by Makassarese, Buginese, and Butonese shipping,
and by that of the Madurese. Business in the trade niches left unoccupied
by the colonialists continued to be served also by various other peoples,
e.g. Tidorese, Banjarese, coastal Minangkabaus (orang Padang) etc.
All these ethnic communities maintained in various degrees that
mercantilist individualistic life attitude that was contrasted above
with the traditionalist communalist style of egalitarian communities,
village commons, and feudal societies. We have here a third recurrence
of the mentioned confrontation of socio-economic culture. This time it
is not between Easterners and Westerners as witnessed by Mohammad Hatta
above, but between various indigenous peoples of Indonesia.
Encounters of the two life attitudes do not always lead to conflict.
Communities with contrasting socio-economic motivation can and often do
coexist peacefully, adopting complementary functions in systems with
division of economic roles.
However, conditions of strong economic growth or rapid development can
bring such systems into disbalance. The more versatile mercantilist
individualist group is then at a great advantage. The frustration of the
disadvantaged traditionalist communalist group, when "right way of life"
loses in the face of economic success of "unseemly" over-perseverance,
predictably engenders envy and hatred. At the same time, the successful
group may tend to adopt a self-righteous pose of arrogance vis-a-vis
their "lazy" counterparts (Europeans once lamented about "indolent"
Asiatics. These, having recently found the tables turned, complained
of "slack" or "soft" Westerners).
The subjective "drive" or moral rigorism to keep up a life of
uncomprimising diligence and thrift, industriousness and strict
economic discipline, is typically upheld through religion. In Europe
it was e.g. Calvinism and Protestant puritanism. In Asia it has been
Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism, and Islam. Emergence of such
socio-economic traditions are therefore usually accompanied by increased
religiousness, and conflicts with communities with contrasting economic
life styles will often take the form of religious conflicts.
The economic growth in Indonesia during the last two decades evidently led
to considerable tensions between communities with contrasting economic
attitudes. These tensions found no outlet under authoritarian conditions
of government of the former regime. Rampant poverty resulting from
the monetary crisis has now converted the smouldering unrest into
veritable powder kegs, ready to explode at the slightest provocation.
Provocation by rogue elements may perhaps have given the fatal spark in
Ambon, but the underlying tension that provided the force behind the
violence must have already been there long before.
The Buginese are among the most perseverant traders in the Archipelago
beside the Chinese, and this apparently lies at the basis of differences
with the traditional society of both Christian and Muslim autochthonous
communities of Ambon with their chiefdoms ("kingdoms") and communal custom.
The circumstance that the former were strictly Muslim, and that the first
adversaries they clashed with in Ambon were Christian, caused the conflict
to adopt the form of interconfessional violence. This has had a kind of
inductive snowball effect, in that it set off ever widening waves of
violence between Muslims and Christians. Indonesia, after three decades
of suppression of all spontaneous settling of differences, a circumstance
now aggravated by the economic crisis, is one single minefield of
explosive tension, an ideal medium for the propagation of such waves of
violence.
In West Kalimantan, The Malays and the Dayaks, though obviously adhering
to widely different systems of socio-economic organization, both retain
their respective communalist traditions.
Although the Chinese in Indonesia are reported at the opposite extreme of
mecantilist indivudualistic life style scale, this is only true for a part
of them. The Chinese of West Kalimantan, having been once brought here as
plantation coolies, have meanwhile settled in distinct niches within the
local system of division of economic roles.
The Buginese, already for some centuries the economically most expansive
in the Archipelago, have been successfully operating in the waters of West
Indonesia. A Buginese dynasty ruled in Aceh in the 18th century. In the
foremost Malay sultanate of Riau-Johore (later: Riau-Lingga, after
secession of Johore to the British in 1824), actual power was more often
in the hands of the hereditary Buginese viceroy (Yang Dipertuan Muda) rather
than in that of the Malay sultan (Yang Dipertuan Agung). Haji Ali, most
prominent author of Malay works of the 19th century beside Abdullah Munsyi,
was one such viceroy (i.e. he was actually of Buginese extraction).
On the coast around the Southeastern corner of Kalimantan they operate
extensive shipbuilding facilities. In West Kalimantan too, Buginese have
been operating successfully on the Sambas and the Kapuas rivers,
particularly in the more recent past. Their sailing ships proved more
effective than motorized watercraft, whose screws and rudders were
particularly susceptible to damage by continuously shifting sandbanks
(no repair facilities up river). But just like the local Chinese, the
Buginese are well integrated in West Kalimantan.
The arid climate of Madura has not only caused Madurese to expand to
neighbouring East Java and to lesser islands in the Java Sea. They have
been a staunch Pesisiran community to be reckoned with in Javanese
politics of the 18th and 19th centuries. Their sailing boats were
even commissioned by the Dutch as patrol boats to fight piracy in the
19th century. Their trading vessels were regular visitors in prewar
Singapore.
The problem with the local Madurese settlers in West Kalimantan seems to
be that they are not operating here in their traditional role outside
the homeland as active sailors and traders. They have been settled here
by a state transmigration program as peasants. Nevertheless, they do
not sport the kind of unassuming, non-competitive ethical attitude of
e.g. the traditional village common (desa) of Central Java.
Whether in Europe or in Asia, communities with prevalently mercantile
culture often tended to contrast with their more feudally or communally
orientated neighbours by having a coarser "language" and less refined
decorum, which tends to let them seem impolite, uncouth, or even insulting,
depending upon the sensitivity of the counterpart involved. They are
brought up to succeed as individuals, rather than to mind their place in
a community with predefined roles and positions.
The government transmigration not only had its organisational deficiencies.
Under conditions of rampant corruption under the regime, even that support
that was earmarked for the transmigrants often got sidetracked into other
channels. In this situation, one may expect Madurese settlers to use own
resourcefulness in providing themsleves with necessaries. This would
predictably aggravate already tense relations to other local ethnicities.
To return to the initial topic, it seems to follow now, that both in
Ambon and in Sambas, the underlying factor leading to the conflicts
is probably the contrast between mercantilist individualistic and
traditionalist communalist cultures.
This has a whole row of implications of either long-term or short-term
effects. But with regard to the central question of national unity,
the message is a reassuring one.
A greater part of Indonesia can be relatively easily divided into zones
with single prevalent religion, either Muslim, Christian, or other. But
it is hardly possible to divide it effectively according to prevalence
of either mercantilist individualistic or traditionalist communalist
culture.
The boundary runs through all the provinces. Even in Irian Jaya we
find e.g. Biaks and Sentani on alternate sides of it. Many ethnic groups
are themselves divided by that boundary (e.g. Javanese, Minangkabaus).
In many places, variantly orientated communities cooperate in systems
with division of economic roles. Some mercantile groups, e.g. Buginese
and Chinese, are dissipated all over the country, and not always in
clearly bound enclaves or exclusive settlements. And all major cities
are of course multi-cultural smelting pots.
Finally, the contrast is not a binary yes-or-no oposition, but different
communities occupy various notches in a scale of varying degrees of
"mercantilization" or "individualization". We have already seen Buginese
and Madurese in different roles in West Kalimantan. In East Kalimantan,
Buginese and Banjarese (not to mention also Javanese) operate separately
with distinct mercantile strategies, particularly e.g. in transactions
with Dayaks of the interior, or also with the local Bulungan.
Therefore, no matter how much worse the situation may get, conflicts of
the type that have ravaged Ambon and Sambas could perhaps, at the extreme,
lead to total collapse of economic life, but, tragic and upsetting enough
as such an outcome would be, it would not directly lead to the country's
territorially falling apart. Not for this reason.
Seen in general, the very interested parties, the ethnic groups that have
been above-averagely successful either through their mercantilist
individualist life attitude (Buginese, Chinese, Coastal Minangkabaus, etc.),
or through a formerly privileged access to education and thus preferential
access to privileged professions (Javanese, Sundanese, Minangkabaus,
Ambonese, Bataks, Menadonese, Chinese, Arabs, etc.) are spread all over the
country, and are immediately interested to remain there. They would be
the very last to want their respective home-areas to break-off from
Indonesia or for the country to break apart.
Of course, the spirit of belonging together in one nation, the ideological
seeds of which had already been sewn in the first half of this century, is
now quite deeply embedded in public sentiment all over the country, and is
not restricted to the ethnic groups mentioned above. And many people of
all ethnic groups are involved in economic and social life on a nationwide
scale. All this contributes to sustainment of the national unity.
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There still remains one major potential source of national disintegration
to be considered, that of provinces in which representative speakers of
at least major parts of the population have called for separation from
Indonesia.
... to be continued in part 3
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