Old traditions do not die..

Bandit Saints of Java: How Java's eccentric saints are challenging fundamentalist Islam in modern Indonesia.
Author: George Quinn

A famous message asserts that Sukarno's father was an avid reader of the Hindu scripture, Mahabaratha. He was so fascinated with the character Karna that he named his son after his hero. Karna was a good man in the father's eyes but on the wrong side of the war. So, the father added the prefix 'Su' to his son's name. Su in Sanskrit, it seems, indicated goodness. Hence, his son was named Sukarno -the good Karna. Sukarno went on to name his daughter Sukarnoputri - daughter of the good Karna.

This shows the extent of the influence Hinduism had on the psyche of people in Indonesia. After all, the name 'Indonesia' in all its glory would imply the land of Hindus. Despite boasting of being the country with the largest Muslim population on the planet, I do not think they are in any hurry to change their country's name anytime soon.

A radical fire-brand kind of conservative Islam is taking over worldwide. Thanks to the Saud family of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in cahoots with the winning side of the World War 2, in exchange for land for oil exploration in the Arabia Peninsula, they got a free hand to spread their kind of Islam -Wahabism- to the then up and coming post-colonial nations. 

Interestingly, in the 16th century, Islam spread to this region in almost a similar fashion. Enlightened individuals, after embracing the recently received good news from the Arabian deserts, evangelists made it their life ambition to spread the good word to the heathens across the continents. Many towering figures, as they were tall of Middle Eastern stock, much bigger than the local men, impressed the local populace. The locals had had contact with Muslim traders before and, therefore, received these preachers with open arms. They came to their Indonesian shores with many tall tales of a loving God in the skies. In their zest to earn brownie points with their God, these saints did dakyah work to convert the Hindu land with Islamic do's and don'ts. The locals embraced their teachings and continued revering these saints even after their deaths.

The book is a collection of the first-hand account of an academician who had visited many of the tombs erected around Java Island to commemorate many of their Muslim saints who had walked the land. Many of these saints led larger-than-life lives. Some are said to have possessed magical skills. One of them was even a flamboyant homosexual. One lived and died in a fire with his faithful dog.

Bandit Saints of Java
Saints who helped the spread of Islam in Indonesia.

For generations, this practice of honouring their dead saints has been happening in the archipelago (including Malaysia). Remembering them, making an annual pilgrimage to their gravesites, and performing certain rituals are norms. And it is big business. It draws many economic activities to these otherwise remote places.

With the general worldwide trend of orthodoxy in Islam these days, purists view such practices as idolatry and draw ire from the younger members of the country.

The country can roughly be divided into two sub-cultures of Muslims - the santris and the abangan. The word 'santri' is probably a derivative of the Sanskrit word 'shastri' - a person with higher learning. They emphasise purity, exclusivity and scripture-based authority. They look upon their Middle Eastern brothers for validation in dressing, arts and education. The abangans are inclusive and tolerant of including Java's old traditions in their day-to-day lives.

A point to note is that these graves are by no means the exclusive domain of Indonesian Muslims. There is even a site where its saint is said to have Chinese heritage. Indonesian Chinese too frequent some of these sights.

It is said that the Indonesian mass killing or genocide of 1965 is said to have its roots in this schism as well. The sastris leaned toward Suharto, the Army and their voluntary vigilante civilians. The abangans, by their nature of inclusivity, were the satris' target. Their other targets were leftists, Chinese, communist sympathisers and women movements.

Fast forward to the present, these holy sites are still functioning as usual. The monetary driven from its activity is just too good to resist. It draws in local and foreign exchange and puts food on their table. These areas too get other incidental benefits like better roads and modern facilities to their vicinity which would otherwise not come.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Trapped in the long shadow of the past!

Inventing South East Asia (Documentary; 2016)
Written and Presented by Dr Farish Noor

It is always interesting to listen to or read Dr Farish Noor's rendition of history as we were never taught.  In this documentary series, he dons khakis and ventures deep into the heart of South East Asia. He tells us how the colonialist masters carved out boundaries amongst the borderless Malay archipelago to invent race, identity, cause destruction and pillage, all in the name of bringing 'modernisation' to the 'primitive' natives. What they did not realise or refuse to admit is that the area that they thought were doing a great humanity service, already had a stable civilisation and were already cultured in their own way. They created a smokescreen to do their job, to pilfer enormous wealth and precious natural resources.

#1. Conquerors and Merchants
We are seldom told of the British invasion of Indonesia. In fact, they had interfered in Indonesia's affairs twice, albeit a short while, once after the Napoleonic wars and after WW2.
Capt Gillespie and an unknown officer Stamford Raffles invaded Java and destroyed the Jogjakarta Sultanate. Raffles then reinvented himself as a curator of conservation of the traditional Java relics to self-promote himself. His promotion of Java as an entity gives them their identity. Some old Javanese are still sore with the British till this day for their carnage. However, they are also eternally grateful to Raffles and his men for rediscovering Borobudur and the Javanese heritage.
Jambi City, Sumatra, where the Malay language is said to have originated had an illustrious Hindu-Buddhist past. In the 19th century, John Anderson, a British merchant was sent by the East Indian Company to explore Jambi which was fabled to be filled with cannibals and pirates. He was pleasantly surprised with the hive of trades happening there and the hard-working and friendly people selling a myriad of exotic produce. His book which showcased the rich natural resources there lured the Dutch to reap its natural resources and denude the greenery leading to various environmental damage. Commerce which was supposed to improve the general livelihood of people of Indonesia failed to do so. Wealth just changed hands from one master to another. For the poor, it is just business as usual.

#2. Kings and Pirates
In the second episode, Associate Prof Farish Noor travels to Borneo to discuss the shadow-play of the British in the island to justify their actions of gaining power to bring law and order. As is well known, in the 19th Century there was a blurred line between piracy and privateering. When done by the British against their enemies it was privateering, and it was legitimate and rewarded at the highest level. Sir Walter Raleigh was one such character. His actions, in reality, were no different than that of a pirate.
James Brooke was a soldier in the Anglo-Burmese war, but he ventured to the exotic Borneo Island for adventure and excitement. He came here, not as a representative of the East Indian Company or of the British Government but on his own accord. By a twist of fate, when he arrived in Sarawak in 1839, there was a local outbreak between Muda Hashim, a relative of the Brunei royalty, and some rebels. In return for helping Muda Hashim, Brooke was rewarded a piece of land. In the pretext of controlling piracy, he expanded his control over the rest of Sarawak and appointed himself as the White Rajah of Sarawak. He justified his nefarious actions of killing natives indiscriminately by concocting stories of pirates and headhunters as the bogeymen.

He also attacked Kampong Ayer, Brunei's busiest port and centre of commerce, with his comrades, Mundy and Keppel. They pointed a cannon at the Sultan's palace and arm-twisted him to give Labuan to the British. All in the name of combating piracy and to make commerce safe but for whom?
The community in Sabah has always been varied, complex and mobile. The whole landscape was fluid, borderless, porous and people, especially boat people (Bajau Laut) were a nomadic lot. The British conveniently labelled them as pirates to legitimise their treacherous actions.

#3. Shadow of the Guillotine

Louis Delaporte

It all started with the French wanting to compete with the British Raj to find an alternative route to China. Louis Delaporte, an explorer-artist, led an expedition up Mekong River in a failed mission. What he found was gems of ruins of ancient archaeological finds of Angkor Wat. Being the artist that he is, he returned with realistic and colourful drawings of an abandoned but advanced civilisation. 

To be fair, Delaporte had very high regards to the Khmer culture. He viewed the Indo-Chinese as descendants of an advanced race. His country, however, did not want to hear any of that. As far as they were concerned, a race that had forgotten its roots is lost. The ruins denote that the Asian Civilisation is on the decline, and the French took it as their moral duty to educate and bring culture (modernisation) to the natives, correct this fall from grace while looting of its treasures. They created French Indo-China.

Khmer sculpture on display at l'Exposition 
Universelle de 1878, an engraving 
by Louis Delaporte

They brought French culture wholesale into Indochina. Colonisation is not just limited to canons and military might. Colonisation also encompasses control of the mind, thinking and faith. Catholicism crept in. Students were educated in Paris. The advanced culture of the South East Asians went on a decline.

European education also brought in nationalism in the form of Ho Chi Min and Pol Pot. Both of them were members of the French Marxist Party.

Independence did not bring freedom but was fraught with wars, terror and genocide. The Vietnamese and the Cambodians have all got heart-wrenching stories of war, loss of loved ones and torture. Ironically, memories of these atrocities draw visitors to their land to dwell a bit of torture porn in the War Museums, Genocide Museum and Killing Fields.

The narrator ends the series with the message for us to question the myths of the past and live beyond the long shadow of our 19th century colonial past.

Māyā...

Malaya 1942

There is no such thing as the 'good guy' or that good guys always wear black! Everybody does something not with the purest of thoughts but with the motive of ‘what's in for me?' lurking entrenched in his mind. This, the Asiatic peace loving natives, found out the hard way. About three-quarter of a century ago, Malayans were visited by their fellow Asiatics on bicycles. A group of Malayans were actually happy that their kind of people were coming to liberate them from the tyranny of the foreign oppressors. Little did they realise what waited for them - from the frying pan into the flaming hot fire!

In 1945, when Sukarno declared independence and proclaimed Indonesia as a sovereign nation, the British, who gave an aura of being a just army, caring for humanity and liberty, came into Indonesia. The Malayans who once looked at their colonial masters as fair soon realised that they do not care about the people of the East. They were only interested in safeguarding the political interests of their own kind, the Dutch, fellow Europeans. And on top of that, the British sent 60,000 Indian (the native's kind) to squash the Indonesian liberators but troublemakers in the eyes of the colonialists.

Peacemakers and negotiators come in various forms. Some create trouble deliberately to be offer solutions. Some divert people’s attention from the real issue. Some purposely ignore the elephant in the room. The victims sometimes fail to realise that the joke is actually on them and that the predators are laughing at them, not with them.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. It needs to be reciprocated. It cannot be that your irresistible charisma or your dire hopelessness that earned you the alms. Something gotta give!

N.B. I always wondered why the word ‘Māyā’ carries so many meanings. From illusion, magic, mystic all the way to Buddha’s mother and the Goddess of Prosperity, Lakshmi! I guess it goes to signify the magic that money can do. 

Forgive, forget and move on...

Senyap (The Look of Silence, Indonesian, documentary; 2014)

Director: Joshua Oppenheimer

This well deserved multiple award winning documentary film is actually a follow-up to 2012 'The Act of Killing' by the same director. Both documentaries look at Indonesia's marred history with the handling with supposed communist sympathisers in 1965/66 era. An estimated one million people perished then.

In the former film, the narration was from the perpetrators who carried out the so-called justice of the rulers of the land. In the sequelae, the approach is from the victim's perspective. Adi, an optician, had an elder brother who was killed during those tumultuous times. Adi himself was born about 3 years after the episode. Adi, a father himself of 2 young kids, tries to subtly interview the past militia men who carried out the murders under the guise of offering free optical consultation.
The presentation managed to draw in the emotional aspect of the interviewer (i.e. Adi) through slow long shots and concentrating on facial mannerisms and expressions. The slow laid back photography showing much of the village landscape and the villagers' houses accentuates the nostalgic, pensive and sometimes surreal mood. Adi's parents, a demented almost blind old man and a old lady who attends to her husband's every need live all by themselves in the memory of their past. Adi's father, because of his medical condition, is oblivious to what is happening and has no recollection of his son, his killing or that matter, his own age! Adi's mother, even though bitter about the whole episode, would not rekindle the past but let it be bygones.

What Adi cannot stomach is the fact that his brother's killers are still walking around without an iota of guilt amongst them. Some are even holding important reputable posts and command respect from the community.

Oppenheimer leads another crew to interview two men who had actually killed Ady's brother personally. They go on to describe the gory details of their actions, slowly disembowelling and mutilating his genitals. These perpetrators did not exhibit any remorse of their action. They, in fact, feel proud for being there to protect the country from the tyranny of communism. They took great pride in demonstrating their prowess in slaughtering communist insurgents 50 years previously. To them, communism is godless belief and it was bad. They were told by their leaders that the communists were bad, so they must be bad. Asked on the morality of their acts, they just shudder and were emphatic that what they did was correct at that time.

The irony of all is that the ex-vigilantes are now pious family people who utter godly words in their every sentence. There was an ex-member who genuinely felt remorseful of the whole event and took the courage to apologise unabashedly to the grieved family. The majority of them were quite defensive and refuse to admit any wrong doings on their part.

As it had been often told, we, the human race, are a bunch of rash unthinking species. At the drop of provocation, with the element of doubt when we feel our comfort zone is threatened, we recoil into defensive mode. The devil in us take charge and the worst of the primal animal behaviour surfaces. As always when the climax of violence and destruction is complete, only then our godly inner eyes open. We come to our senses, we try to clear the slate, forgive, forget and move on. We console ourselves that we are weak and we err and to forgive is divine that revenge would leave everyone dead! 

"War crimes are defined by the winners, and I'm a winner."

The Act of Killing (Jagal, 2012, Indonesian, documentary)
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer

As we have always seen, we, humans are a bunch of brainless animals. We do so much atrocity in the name of justice without even thinking of its repercussions. At the end of the day, we can only 'Sorry' and think that some how like magic, everything would be wiped clean from our slate and start a fresh count. Alternatively, we justify our acts by invoking rationalization of preserving of a piece of cloth, race, ideology or religion!
The documentary which drew worldwide accolade is also rumoured to be reason behind Obama's cancellation of his visit to Indonesia last year!
In 1965, during the oust of Sukarno, there was a real risk of communism taking a foothold in Indonesia. A group civilian vigilante group, made mostly of jobless gangsters, with the auspices of the ruling government of the day went around nabbing communists and communist sympathizers, torturing and killing them in most heinous ways.
The directors of the documentary went to Medan, North Sumatera, to interview a well known figure there, Anwar Congo and his henchman, Herman Kato. He convinced them to detail the killings that they did in the 1965-66 era when the Communist is said to have assassinated Sukarno. Anwar even called in his fellow gangsters all over the country, some of them are rich politicians now, to reenact the whole scene. Even the local newspaper editor was in cahoots with their activities.
The gruesome details of the killings were detailed. They seem to be unashamedly proud of their actions of what they done for the country and had become part of Indonesia's history.
Anwar brings the crew to the site where he used to kill his subjects with his favourite weapon, the steel wire as it left less blood and less stench!

Anwar and his crew were jobless youths selling black-market movie tickets when they were recruited to eradicate the communists. Having nothing much to do around, they chose that path and now boast to have killed 1000 people.
All the people interviewed seem quite proud of what they have done and even boast about it. By and large, it was a witch-hunt for the communists who predominantly were ethnic Chinese. These preman (gangsters, from the word free man) burnt houses, raped, pilfered, robbed and at yet they all walk free under the protection of the present government. They are hailed as national icons and as founders of the youth Pancasila movement which is still present today and acts like a emergency mobile vigilante for the country.
As some flaunt their new found wealth and luxurious lifestyles, Anwar lives under constant recurrent nightmare of the eyes of his victims staring at him in his sleep. They do, however, admit what they did under the name of democracy was far worse than what the communists were said to have done.
Most ex-vigilantes have contradictory lives, talking dirty jokes at one minute and almost immediately reciting prayers when necessary in the same breath.  Anwar himself is a doting grandfather who teaches his grandchildren to be kind to animals!
In the last scene, though the ingenuity may be questioned, he revisits his 'killing field' (top balcony of a building) to retch and shed a tear or two.

It is forbidden to kill. Therefore, all murderers are punished, unless they kill in large numbers, and to the sound of trumpets. Voltaire.

"War crimes are defined by the winners, and I'm a winner."

Serumpun lalang!

Before the era of globalization and the seamless, borderless world of the 21st century reared its ugly head, as far as Malaysia and Indonesia were concerned, there were, and there are, no borders between these two countries. In the pre-Independence years, people's movement between nations had no boundaries. Some people had 2 lives and 2 families. This was instrumental in many Malay screen and music legends like Maria Menado, Aziz Sataar, Asiah and even P.Ramlee's father! Fast forward to the future, you still see many Indonesians in Malaysia with 2 lives, 2 families and many passports (just in case one is blacklisted). Even our earlier race-based Malayan politicians (and present ones) had plans up their sleeves to naturalize Indonesians to the Malayan Malay headcount to show dominance!

When the Cobbold Commission went on their mission to carve off a slice of the Malay archipelago to form a new country, General Sukarno and his countrymen went up in arms. They believe that the Malaya-Indonesia entity should be one as Nusantara. It went on for 3 years until Sukarno's ouster.

The Malaysians, on the other hand, have a soft spot for their neighbour. Maybe, because without them, the many mega-buildings around towns would not have materialized, and their children would not be attended to. So many times, amnesty had been given to their illegal intruders. It even paid for their trip, only for them to return with another spanking new passport, courtesy of the Indonesian Government and their inefficiencies. When either team play in either country (Malaysia or Indonesia), they (Indonesia) land in full force to haunt the Malaysians. This is obvious even when Malaysia plays Indonesia in Thomas Cup in KL. The visitors are louder than the host. In Jakarta, recently, during the football finals, our victorious team had not only to survive food poisoning and substandard accommodation, but they also had to survive a hostile barrage of heckling and intimidation.

Now, are we still serumpun (of the same stock), engaging in sibling rivalry, are different because of changing times, or do we choose to sway like a clump of weeds (serumpun lalang) to the direction of the wind when it suits us?