Pratap Bhanu Mehta is President of the Center for Policy Research, a New Delhi-based think tank. His academic interests include political theory, constitutional law, society and governance in India (The Burden of Democracy was published in 2003), and he has done extensive public policy work as a member of various bodies such as the World Economic Forum’s Council on Global Governance.
Notes
N Luhmann, Observations on Modernity, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998; PB Mehta, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the circle of reason’, Political Theory, vol. 28, no. 5, 2000, pp. 619–39.
6
Cultural Pluralism in Indonesia:
Local, National and Global Exchanges
Azyumardi Azra
Cultural pluralism and diversity are striking realities in Indonesia. As the prominent American anthropologist Robert Hefner argues in The Politics of Multiculturalism: Pluralism and Citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia (2001), few areas of the non-Western world illustrate the legacy and challenge of cultural pluralism in a manner more striking than in the Southeast Asian countries of Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. In fact, JS Furnivall, a British administrator and political writer before World War II, introduced the concept of plural societies in his Netherlands India: A Study of Plural Economy (1939/1944), and identified the country known today as Indonesia as one of its most striking examples.
According to Furnivall, a plural society is a society that comprises two or more elements of social orders which live side by side, yet without mingling, in one political unit. He further maintained that this situation is accompanied by a caste-like division of labour, in which ethno-religious groups play different economic roles. This social segregation in turn gives rise to what Furnivall regarded as these societies’ most unsettling political trait: their lack of common social will. Facing this unfortunate situation, Furnivall asserted that unless some kind of formula for pluralist federation could be devised, Indonesian pluralism seemed doomed to a nightmarish anarchy.
Furnivall’s ‘doomed’ scenario by and large fortunately failed to materialise. In contrast, a post-war Southeast Asia saw the establishment of an independent Indonesia and other countries. But this national independence was assumed to have paradoxically stimulated the rise of ethno-religious sentiment in the struggle for control and power of the new state. Indonesia saw outbreaks of communal violence in the late 1950s and 1965; more shocking yet, Indonesia was shaken by bitter, though intermittent, ethno-religious violence from 1996 – the final years that President Soeharto was in power – up to 2005, when all communal conflicts from Ambon (Maluku province) to Poso (Central Sulawesi province) and Aceh were finally peacefully resolved.
Competing cultures
Indonesia is indeed one of the most pluralistic societies in terms of ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious diversity. Age-old local traditions survived when Indonesia proclaimed its independence on 17 August 1945. Since then the so-called ‘Indonesian national culture’ gained momentum, competing with and in some ways transcending local cultures and tradition. The state since the time of independence has been trying to strengthen and sometimes to impose a ‘national culture’ in the name of national unity and integrity through centralised political structure and leadership, legislation and education – to name a few.
But the expansion of Indonesian national culture has never been able to replace local cultures up until today. Many Indonesians today still hold fast to their local cultures and traditions. This is not surprising, since the young generation is initially brought up according to the values and decorum of their ethnicity, culture and tradition. For instance, the idea of personhood in relation to parents, families and society is based on the ‘traditional’ norms considered to be most appropriate for each group; ‘communalism’, or rather ‘collectivism’, is often much more important than individualism, for instance.
Therefore, when centralised political power in Jakarta during the Soeharto regime had destroyed certain aspects of that ‘traditional culture and tradition’ through its monocultural policy, there was a sense of loss, and violation of pluralism; now people are increasingly longing for and talking about ‘local wisdom’ possessed by local cultures and tradition. They believe that each local ethnic culture has its own geniuses that are instrumental in the maintenance of socio-cultural stability and harmony.
Indonesian national and local cultural diversity in the last few decades has been enriched by a more cosmopolitan culture resulting from increased globalisation. At the same time, the introduction of various new cultural forms found their way into Indonesian society, creating cultural confusion, disorientation and dislocation among young people in particular. Global lifestyles like individualism, liberalism, materialism and even hedonism are generally considered as incompatible with local and national culture. But since those kinds of lifestyles are so intrusive through instant communication, it is now a public discourse that Indonesian and local cultures are under threat from global culture.
Language of nationhood
The Indonesian archipelago – the largest one in the world, which consists of more than 17,800 islands, isles and islets – and its history make Indonesia an extremely pluralistic society. There are diverse ethnic groups – amounting to 656 ethnic groups, big and small – living in the country, having their respective cultures, traditions and customs. Up to the 1960s, there was little interaction among these different ethnic groups, but with the acceleration of economic development that brought about improvement in transportation and communication, greater contact, communication and exchanges were established. As a result, stereotypical perceptions and prejudices among various ethnic groups decreased significantly, strengthening the feeling of Indonesian nationhood.
Not least important, those different ethnic groups speak more than 746 different local languages and dialects, even though 726 among them are now on the edge of extinction; but still, there are now 13 languages that survive, which are spoken by more than one million speakers. Considering these languages alone, Indonesia is very fortunate that the Indonesian language was adopted as the sole national language during the ‘Youth Pledge’ on 28 October 1928, when nationalist movements gained momentum under Dutch colonialism. It is important to mention that the Indonesian language was originally spoken by a relatively small ethnic group, the Malay, who lived mostly in Eastern and Central Sumatra. One should appreciate the tolerance of the Javanese or Sundanese who accepted the Malay-based Indonesian language, while their languages constituted the first and second largest languages, respectively, in the archipelago.
The adoption of the Malay-based Indonesian language as the national language was a good example of socio-cultural exchanges among different ethnic groups in the area. The Malay language had much earlier been adopted as the lingua franca, since it was the vehicle for the spread of Islam in the archipelago from the late twelfth century onwards. The Malay language had been considered as a more egalitarian language compared with both the Javanese and Sundanese languages. That is why it was easier for non-Malay Indonesians to adopt the Malay language as the national language.
The Indonesian language no doubt plays an instrumental role in strengthening the feeling and sentiment of nationhood. This national language continued to expand, particularly in the post-independence period when education increasingly became available for the young generation at the cost of many local languages. Many people are now worried that more and more local languages are losing their speakers. It might be interesting to note that Indonesia has two parallel systems of education: about two-thirds is ‘general’ or ‘secular’ education, under the Ministry of National Education. Another third is conducted in madrasahs under the supervision of the Ministry of Religious Affairs; here, the national curriculum is obligatory, but there are more Islamic religious subjects taught than in the other schools.
At the same time, English continues to gain momentum to become a third or second language of the people. The first language in many cases is an ethnic language
, next is the Indonesian language, and then English. But with the increased dominance of the Indonesian language and the ever-increasing number of interethnic marriages, the national language becomes the mother tongue of many young people, and English becomes the second.
Again, perceptions of the self in each of these languages are different. In local and national languages, all people are expected to use vocabularies appropriate to the age they address; but this is not always in line with English.
Religion as an identity
Religion is also an important part of Indonesian culture, and diversity is clearly reflected in religious life as well. According to some latest estimates, the total population of Indonesia is about 220 million people of which 88.2 per cent are Muslim, 5.87 per cent Protestant, 3.05 per cent Catholic, 1.81 per cent Hindu, 0.84 per cent Buddhist and the remaining 0.20 are of other religions and spiritual groups. The Indonesian government officially recognises the six world religions of Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
It is important to point out that, although the population of the archipelago converted mostly to Islam, the region is known as the one of the least Arabicised areas throughout the Muslim world. Geographically, it is also the farthest from the Arabian Peninsula, or more precisely Mecca and Medina, where Islam was originally revealed and developed. Furthermore, Islam was introduced by Sufi wandering teachers who accommodated local beliefs and practices. Therefore, Islam in the archipelago was regarded by many outsiders as ‘marginal’ or ‘peripheral’ Islam, as ‘impure’ or ‘syncretic’ Islam. Moreover, Islam in the archipelago was regarded as having little to do with Islamic orthodoxy attributed to Islam in Arabia, or the region now known as the Middle East.
The most important proponent of this perception is the influential American anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Having a great reluctance to recognise the deep influence of Islam in Java in particular, he called his work The Religion of Java (1960) rather than, for instance, The Religion of Islam in Java or even Javanese Islam. In this seminal work, he proposed that there are three variants of Islam in Java particularly and, by extension, in the archipelago generally. The three variants were priyayi (aristocratic Muslims), santri (strict and practising Muslims), and abangan (nominal or ID card Muslims). According to Geertz, the priyayi variant was heavily influenced by Indic-Sanskrit culture, whereas the abangan variant was too indigenous, syncretic and even animistic. Therefore, in his judgment, it is only the santri variant, with its heavy orientation to Middle Eastern Islam, which is the real Islam, and members of this variant are numerically few among the population. With that, Geertz implies that the majority of Javanese or Indonesians are not real Muslims, and Islam is adhered to by only a small fraction of the population.
One of Geertz’s fiercest critics is Marshall GS Hodgson, a prominent expert of Islamic civilisations from the University of Chicago. In his celebrated work The Venture of Islam (vol. 2, 1974) he admits the importance of Geertz’s Religion of Java; at the same time he criticises Geertz for identifying Islam in Java with only the modernist Muslims and ascribing everything else to an aboriginal or a ‘Hindu–Buddhist’ background. In Hodgson’s sharp criticism, Geertz made a wrong conclusion that ‘Javanese Islam’ has long been cut off from the centres of Islamic orthodoxy in Mecca, Medina, and even Cairo.
Recent studies have further refuted much of Geertz’s assertion. As I have shown in The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia (2004), for the period of the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries and beyond, and also by Michael Laffan in Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia: The Umma Below the Wind (2003), Islam in the archipelago has never been cut off from Islam in the Middle East. In fact there are a great many intense connections, networks and religious–cultural exchanges among Muslims in the two regions. All these in turn have influenced the course of Islam in the archipelago, including in Java. Islam in fact forms an obvious layer of Javanese and, by extension, Indonesian cultures.
In the last two decades at least, Islam has been gaining momentum due to the increased attachment to religion; more and more of the so-called abangan (nominal) Muslims become practising believers. This can be seen in the steady growth of the number of Muslims attending rituals in mosques and performing pilgrimage to Mecca; and the more widespread use of jilbab (hijab, ‘headscarf’). Islam is getting stronger to become one of the personal and collective identities beside ethnic and Indonesian national identities.
Islam thus is part and parcel of ethnic and Indonesian national cultures. In most cases there is no conflict between the three. This is due mostly to the nature of Indonesian Islam, which is very accommodating and tolerant of local cultures. At the same time Indonesian Muslims in general love to practise what I call, ‘colourful Islam’, or even ‘flowery Islam’ – that is, Islam which draws much on local cultures and particular interpretations of doctrine. So, Islam is also an integrated part of the ‘inner lives’ of Indonesian Muslims, reflected in many aspects of daily life.
Pancasila: politics and culture
Even though Indonesia is known as the largest Muslim nation in the world, it is not an Islamic state, nor is it a ‘secular’ one. Politically and ideologically, Indonesia is a state based on Pancasila (five principles): (1) Belief in One Supreme God; (2) Just and Civilised Humanism; (3) the Unity of Indonesia; (4) Democracy; and (5) Social Justice. Proposed initially by Soekarno, the First President of the Republic of Indonesia, Pancasila was (and still is) a compromise between secular nationalists who advocated a secular state and Muslim leaders who demanded an ‘Islamic state’. Muslim leaders accepted Pancasila when it was adopted into the Preamble of the 1945 Constitution and regarded it as having no incompatibility with Islamic teaching.
Therefore, Muslims’ acceptance of Pancasila is one of the most important Indonesian Islamic roots of pluralism. For the majority of Indonesian Muslims, Pancasila is, in line with a verse of the Qur’an, a kalimah sawa, a common platform, among different religious followers. Addressing the Prophet Muhammad, the Qur’an has this to say: ‘Say: O the people of the Book [ahl al-kitab, that is the Jews and Christians]; come to common terms between us and you; that we worship none but God, that we associate partners with him, that we erect not, from ourselves, lords and patrons, other than God…’ (Q 3:64).
As the prominent Indonesian intellectual Nurcholish Madjid rightly argues in his Islamic Roots of Modern Pluralism: Indonesian Experience (1994), the Pancasila thus becomes a firm basis for the development of religious tolerance and pluralism in Indonesia. Madjid cited Adam Malik, once Vice President during the Soeharto period, who maintained that Pancasila, in Islamic perspective, is in a similar spirit to the modus vivendi that was created by the Prophet Muhammad in Medina after having migrated (hijrah) from Mecca. The Prophet laid down the modus vivendi in a famous document called the ‘Constitution of Medina’ (al-mithaq al-madinah). The document includes a provision which states that all Medinan factions, including Jews, were one nation (ummah) together with Muslims, and that they have the same rights and duties as Muslims. Adam Malik interprets the ‘Constitution of Medina’ as a formula for a state based on the idea of social and religious pluralism.
Similarly, Robert N Bellah, the American sociologist of religion maintains in his important article ‘Islamic tradition and the problem of modernization’ (1970) that the Medinan state was a root of Islamic modernity and pluralism. He further argues that Islam in its seventh-century origins was for its time and place ‘remarkably modern… in the high degree of commitment, involvement, and participation expected from the rank-and-file members of the community’. Despite that, the Prophet Muhammad’s experiment eventually failed because of the lack of necessary socio-cultural prerequisites among the Arab Muslims. In other words, the modus vivendi failed because it was ‘too modern’ for the Medinan society. Looking to the Indonesian experience with Pancasila as a common platform, it is a part of what Bellah sees as an effort of modern Indonesian Muslims to depict the early
community as the prototype ‘Islamic recognition of pluralism’.
As a basis of Indonesian pluralism, Pancasila had unfortunately been used by the Soeharto regime as a tool for repression. The forced implementation in 1985 of Pancasila as the sole ideological basis of all organisations in the country was unfortunate and resented by many Indonesians. Through special training, Pancasila was forced on Indonesians through indoctrination, which in the end gave Pancasila a bad name. It is clear that for most Indonesians nothing is wrong with Pancasila as such, but when it was abused and manipulated for the maintenance of President Soeharto’s political status quo, then people rapidly lost their belief in Pancasila as an integrating factor within plural Indonesia.
In my view, there is no other viable alternative to Pancasila as the common platform of a plural and multicultural Indonesia. Therefore, it is a serious challenge for Indonesia to revive and revitalise Pancasila. At the same time, there is an increasing need to bridge the gap between the ideal five pillars of Pancasila and the current daily realities of various aspects of Indonesian life. Otherwise, people will again lose their belief in Pancasila; they will simply pay lip service to Pancasila as it will have very little meaning in their lives.
Muslims and democracy
Given the fact that Muslims are the single largest group of the faithful in Indonesia, it is reasonable to expect that they should play a greater and more positive role in the development and enhancement of a democratic and multicultural Indonesia. Indonesian Islam possesses distinctive traits and characteristics that are to a large extent different from Islam in the Middle East. Indonesian Islam is essentially a tolerant, moderate and ‘middle way’ (ummah wasat) Islam, given the history of its early spread, which was generally peaceful and had been integrated into diverse ethnic, cultural and social realities of Indonesia.
The majority of Indonesian Muslims belong to moderate mainstream organisations such as the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Muhammadiyah, and many other regional organisations throughout Indonesia. All of these Muslim organisations support modernity and democracy. They support the current form of Indonesian state and Pancasila, and at the same time oppose the establishment of an Islamic state in Indonesia as well as the implementation of shariah (Islamic law) in the current Indonesian nation-state.
All of these moderate and mainstream organisations are also religiously based civil society organisations, which play a crucial role in the development and enhancement of civic culture, civility, democracy and good governance. These organisations are very active in the dissemination of the ideas of democracy, human rights, justice, gender equality and other ideas that are crucial in modern society. Not least, mainstream Muslim organisations have been very active in conducting religious dialogues with non-Muslim groups at local, national and international levels.
With the Muslim acceptance of democracy, Indonesia has been successful in conducting peaceful elections in 1999, 2004 and 2009. These general elections have been historic landmarks, particularly the election of 2004, which was the first direct presidential election. The success of these democratic elections in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, has shown a compatibility between Islam and democracy.
Conclusion
There is little doubt that a good understanding of the cultures of people within various ethnic groups and nation-states will contribute a great deal to successful dialogues across boundaries and differences. With that, healthier intercultural exchanges can also take place.
In such intercultural dialogues, it is necessary to find and strengthen commonalities among people of different cultural backgrounds. By the same token, it is also appropriate not to emphasise – let alone to exaggerate – differences among them. If we can do that, then we have some strong reasons to be optimistic for a better future for humankind.