Abstract
This exchange of letters, or from a Yogyakarta perspective, diplomatic notes, between Indonesia’s first President Soekarno and Sultan Hamengkubuwana IX set the tone for relationships between the Sultanate of Yogyakarta and the Republic of Indonesia. President Soekarno’s note was sent two days after he and Vice President Mohammad Hatta declared Indonesia’s independence from the Netherlands.
We the President of the Republic of Indonesia confirm Ingkang Sinuwan Kanjeng Sultan Hamengkubuwana Senopati Ing Nagala Abdurrakhman Sayidin Panatagama Kalifatull ingkang Kaping IX of Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat in his position in the belief that he will devote all of his thoughts, energy, spirit and deeds to the establishment of tranquility (keselamatan) to the region of Yogyakarta as a territory of the Republic of Indonesia.
Jakarta, August 19, 1945
President of the Republic of Indonesia
Soekarno
We Sultan Hamengku Buwono IX of the nation of Ngajogjokarto Hadiningrat proclaim:
1. That the nation of Ngajogjokarto Hadiningrat is a special region of the nation of the Republic of Indonesia with the attributes of a kingdom.
2. That We, as head of the region, hold all powers internal to the nation of Ngajogjokarta Hadiningrat and therefore, in light of current conditions, all matters of government, from this time forward, are in Our hands and we retain all other powers.
3. That relationships between Ngajogjokarto Hadiningrat and the central government of the Republic of Indonesia are direct and that We are responsible for Our nation directly to the President of the Republic of Indonesia. We command all inhabitants of Ngajogjokarta Hadiningrat act in accordance with Our proclamation.
Nga Jogjokarto Hadiningrat
28 Pasa, Ehe, 1878
(5 September, 1945)
Hamengku Buwono
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Notes
- 1.
Soekarno and Hatta were complimentary opposites. Soekarno was the consummate revolutionary. He was flamboyant, charismatic and a spell binding orator. Hatta was a brilliant, cool headed rationalist. Hamengkubuwana IX was a flamboyant, highly charismatic, cool headed rationalist. On Soekarno see B. Hering, Architect of a Nation, Leiden: KTLV, 2002. On Hatta, G. Kahin, “In Memoriam: Mohammad Hatta,: Indonesia, 1980, pp. 13–20 and M. Hatta, Portrait of a Patriot: Selected Writings, The Hague: Mouton, 1972. On Hamengkubuwana IX see S. Kutoyo, Sri Sultan Hamengku Buwono IX, Riwayat Hidup dan Perjuangan, Jakarta: Mutiara Sumber Widay, 1996.
- 2.
On the political contracts see S. Hardjodipoero, Kasultanan Yogyakarta, Satu Tinjauan Kontrak Politic (1877–1940), Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press, 1985.
- 3.
K.P.H. Poerwokoesoemo, personal communication and S. Soemarjan, Social Changes in Yogyakarta, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962, J. Monfries, “The Sultan and the Revolution,” Bjidragen to de Taal, Land- en Volkenkunde, vol. 164, no. 2/3, pp. 269–297, 2008.
- 4.
My understanding of these issues, and the ways in which they play out in the histories of Yogyakarta and Indonesia has benefited enormously from conversations with Sita Hidayah of the Department of Anthropology at Gadjah Mada University.
- 5.
On the political status of Yogyakarta and the Sultan in the Republic of Indonesia see Chapter 7. Following the democratic transition of 1998, the status of the Sultan as provincial governor was confirmed for a period of ten years. In 2008 it was extended for three additional years after an extended struggle between royalist forces in Yogyakarta and some, including Islamist political parties, in the national parliament that attempted to disestablish the monarchy, see, M. Woodward, “Resisting Wahhabi Colonialism in Yogyakarta,” COMPS Journal: Analysis, Commentary and News from the World of Strategic Communications, pp. 1–8, 2008.
- 6.
These are the sources of the texts translated here. On hearing of this Ronald Lukens-Bull of the University of North Florida suggested that in this case the texts were, in this case, “literally carved in stone”. On the 30th of October 1945 the Sultan issued a second proclamation stating the powers formerly held by the Netherlands Indies Government had reverted to him, Kedaulatan Rokyat, October 31, 1945. This proclamation is more technical in nature and is not “carved in stone”.
- 7.
S. Alatas, Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism, New Delhi, SAGE Publications, 2006, C. Breckenridge. and P. Van der Veer (eds.), Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament. Perspectives on South Asia, Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993, N. Dirks, Colonialism and Culture, Anne Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1995. Rita Kipp has addressed similar issues in her study of religion, ethnicity and identity among the Karo people of Sumata, Dissociated Indentities. Ethnicity, Religion and Class in an Indonesian Society, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993.
- 8.
My thinking on these definitional issues has profited enormously from many years of conversation with Professors Emeritus James Foard and Kenneth Morrison of the Department of Religious Studies at Arizona State University.
- 9.
I use the term Indian rather than the more politically correct “Native American” because my Pima and Navajo friends in Arizona prefer to be called “Indian People”.
- 10.
I would like to thank James Foard for this observation.
- 11.
A similar dynamic tension can be found in many Indonesian Christian societies. Ambon is a particularly striking and complex example. There is a distinction between Kristen Ambon or Ambonese Christianity and Kristen Belanda or Dutch Christianity. Kristen Ambon includes many elements of traditional belief and ritual practice. Kristen Belanda is a more “orthodox” form of Dutch Calvinism. Kristen Ambon is practiced and supported exclusively by native Ambonese. During the colonial period Dutch missionaries discouraged this hybrid form of Christianity. Today Kristen Belanda is supported by Ambonese ministers who have studied in the Netherlands and by the large diaspora community most of who migrated the Netherlands in the 1950s because of their support for the Dutch during the Indonesian Revolution. Some Indonesian Ambonese Christians consider them to be “imperialists” or “colonialists”. This closely resembles the way in which many traditional Javanese Muslims think of Islamists affiliated with Saudi Arabian and other Wahhabi groups. On Wahhabi colonialism see M. Woodward, “Contesting Wahhabi Colonialism in Yogyakarta,” COMPOS Journal: Analysis, Commentary and News from the World of Strategic Communications , November, 2008, pp. 1–8.
- 12.
This strategy does not always work. In October of 2008 the Islamist Front Pembela Islam (Front for the Defense of Islam) attacked the headquarters of Javanist kebudayaan groups they considered to be “un-Islamic”. In Yogyakarta they targeted the modernist mystical organization Sapta Dharma, which, analytically speaking, is a religious organization.
- 13.
This is, of course, a hegemonic discourse that is strongly contested by the neighboring court of Surakarta, which also claims to be the center of Javanese culture. The intensity with which these rival claims remain contested became clear to me in January of 2008 when I delivered an address at ceremonies inaugurating the Center for the Study of Religion and Javanese Culture at the National Higher School of Islamic Studies in Surakarta in which I spoke primarily about Yogya. The audience, of approximately 300 found this more than a bit disturbing. Several pointed out that “Surakarta is the older of the two kingdoms and the real center of Javanese culture”. Both claims are contested because in Yogya it is believed that Surakarta ceased to be a genuine kingdom when Ngajogjokarto Hadiningrat was established. It is also contested by Javanese living out side the territories of both kingdoms.
- 14.
On the Javanese theory of power see Chapter 2.
- 15.
Panjimas, vol. 1, no. 12, May 2007.
- 16.
Throughout the issue of Pajimas cited above and particularly in the editor’s introduction to most recent edition of the Indonesian translation of Islam in Java (Islam Jawa, Yogyakarta: LKiS, 2006) in which the book is compared with Edward Said’s Orientalism for exposing the anti-Islamic biases of Anglo-Dutch Orientalism and American Anthropology. In Indonesia the book is frequently read as inclusivist Islamic theology. While this was not my intent when I wrote it, that is what it has become.
- 17.
Prior to the consolidation of the New Order regime in the early 1970s the list of “religions” was more open. Confucianism was originally included, but was dropped in 1978 because the category “Chinese” was associated with “Communism”. For a discussion of debates concerning the extent and boundaries of the category agama see: S. Hidayah, Religion in the Proper Sense of the Word: The Discourse of Agama in Indonesia, unpublished MA thesis, Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies, Gadjah Mada University, 2007, pp. 58–59.
- 18.
Ibid., p. 7.
- 19.
Stanley, “Penggambaran Gerwani sebagai Kumpulan Pembunnuh dan Setan (Fitnah dan Fakta Penghancuran Organisasi Perempuan Terkemuka)”. in, Sejarah. Pemikiran, Rekonstrucksi, Persepsi, no. 9, pp. 23–32, n.d.
- 20.
On ethno-religious nationalisms see, P. Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison, Sage Publications: New Delhi, 1991; W. Connor, Ethnonationalism and the Quest for Understanding, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994 and J.L. Comaroff, “Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Difference in an Age of Revolution,” L. Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995 and S. Tambiah, “The Nation State in Crisis and the Rise of Ethno-Nationalism,” In: E. Wilmsen and P. McAllister (eds.), The Politics of Difference, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 144–162 and 124–143. Unfortunately, in most of the literature on these hybrid nationalisms, the concepts of religion and ethnicity are conflated. Yogyakarta nationalism is far more religious than it is ethnic. In terms of the local discourse about kebudayaan (culture) and agama (religion), it is as much, if not more, cultural than religious because the term agama refers to transnational and trans-cultural religious traditions such as Islam and Christianity. In October of 2008, in the midst of a national level debate about the political future of the Sultanate one observer of the political scene commented: “There is no other place in Indonesia where traditional culture (kebudayaan) is so politically important as it is here. In Yogya kebudayaan is almost like what agama is in other places”.
- 21.
See Chapter 7. There are, of course, others who reject the idea of Yogyakarta nationalism and consider is to a relic of the “feudal” past. These views are most common in new, middle class areas, especially Seleman in the northern part of the city where there are many universities and colleges. The area is home to many who are not Yogyakarta natives and do not have strong attachments to its distinctive culture and history. It is sometimes said that there is a perang dingin (cold war) between the kraton and Seleman. It is also said that Seleman is Indonesia and the older parts of Yogyakarta are Java.
- 22.
In a certain sense Yogyakarta nationalism resembles Thai nationalism where the king is highly revered by the masses of the people. But because Yogyakarta is far smaller than Thailand the Sultan is in far more frequent contact with his subjects than the king. He is also far more actively involved in day to day governance.
- 23.
The democratic transition of 1998 is discussed in Chapter 7.
- 24.
For introductions to Old Javanese Hindu and Buddhist civilization see: see R. Jordaan (ed.), In Praise of Prambanan. Dutch Essays on the Loro Jonggrang Temple Complex, Leiden, KITLV, 1996; N. Krom, Hindoe-Javansche Gescheidenis, ‘s-Gravenhage: Nijoff, 1931; W. Stutterheim, Rama-legenden und Rama-reliefs in Indonesien, Munchen: Georg Muller, 1925; T. Pigeaud, Java in the Fourteenth century, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960 and P. Zoetmulder, Kalawangan. A Survey of Old Javanese Literature, The Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1974.
- 25.
On Christianity in Indonesia see P. Van Akkeren, Sri and Christ; a Study of the Indigenous Church in East Java, London: Trinity Press, 1970; L. Aragon, Fields of the Lord: Animism, Christian Minorities and State Development in Indonesia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000 and R. Kipp, “Conversion by Affiliation: the History of the Karo Batak Protestant Church,” American Ethnologist vol. 22 no. 4, pp. 868–882, 1995. On Hinduism see: R. Hefner, “Ritual and Cultural Reproduction in Non-Islamic Java,” American Ethnologist vol. 10 no.4, pp. 665–683, 1983 and Hindu Javanese: Tengger Tradition and Islam, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985 and M. Ramstedt, Hinduism in Modern Indonesia. New York: Routledge Curzon 2004 During the New Order “Buddhism” was a politically acceptable label for traditional Chinese Folk Religion, which includes elements of Mahayana Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism and local forms of ancestor veneration. Today there are small Mahayana and Theravada Buddhist communities. Almost all Mahayana Buddhists are ethnic Chinese. The Theravada community includes ethnic Chinese and some Javanese converts. Non Muslim religions expanded rapidly during the New Order as former “Communists” “ran to religion” in hopes of escaping persecution and who, because of the role that Muslim organizations played in the mass killings of 1965 and 1966, found continuing to refer to themselves as “Muslim” unpalatable. Some other Javanese have converted to Theravada Buddhism for more purely religious reasons and have undertaken serious study of Theravada teachings and Pali, the language of the Theravada scriptures, in Thailand and Burma. There is now a Theravada monastery in Mendut near the ancient Mahayana Buddhist monument Borobudur. I would like to thank Yulianti and Willis Rengganiasih Ekowati Endah, both of whom are Javanese Theravada Buddhists and Buddhist scholars at the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, for informing me of these developments.
- 26.
On the founding and early history of Yogyakarta see M. Ricklefs, Jogjakarta under Sultan Mangkubumi, 1749–1792: A History of the Division of Java, London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
- 27.
On the Java War see P. Carey, Babad Dipanagara: an account of the outbreak of the Java War (1825–30): the Surakarta court version of the Babad Dipanagara, Kuala Lumpur: Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Malaysian Branch, 1991.
- 28.
It is difficult to say exactly how many “Native States” there were in the Netherlands Indies because of the imprecise use of the term kerajan (kingdom) in colonial discourse. In some parts of Ambon and other areas in what is now Eastern Indonesia every village was referred to as a kingdom (kerajaan) and every village chief as a king (raja).
- 29.
On monarchist tendencies in contemporary Yogyakarta see Chapter 7.
- 30.
With more than 30 million members Muhammadiyah is Indonesia’s, and the worlds, largest Muslim modernist organization. It also has branches in Singapore and Malaysia. Its teachings build on those of the early twentieth century Egyptian reformers Muhammad Abduh and Rashyid Riddah, On developments in Middle Eastern Muslim thought that influenced the development of Muhammadiyah and other modernist movements in Southeast Asia see A. Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Muhammadiyah was founded by Kyai Achmad Dhalan, an official of the Grand Mosque of Yogyakarta, which is located within the palace walls, in 1912. On the history and teachings of Muhammadiyah see: Alfian, Muhammadiyah. The Political Behavior of a Muslim Modernist Organization under Dutch Colonialism, Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press, 1989, M. Nakamura, 1983. The Crescent Arises over the Banyan Tree: A Study of the Muhammadiyah Movement in a Central Javanese Town. Yogyakarta, Gadjah Mada University Press, 1978. D. Noer, The Modernist Muslim Movement in Indonesia, 1900–1942 Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1973 and J. Peacock, Muslim Puritans: Reformist Psychology in Southeast Asian Islam, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. The seeming contradiction between Muhammadiyah’s reformist theological orientation and acceptance of many aspects of Javanese culture is explored in Chapters 5 and 6.
- 31.
On Yogyakarta and Surakarta during the Indonesian Revolution see B. Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance 1944–1946, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972. On the political transformation of Yogyakarta during this period see, S. Soemardjan, Social Changes in Yogyakarta, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962.
- 32.
See Chapter 7.
- 33.
For Indonesians visiting the kraton, and other historic or holy places in the Sultanate and elsewhere in Java, the line between tourism and pilgrimage is very fine.
- 34.
Taman Siswa (The Garden for Students) is a cultural nationalist movement. It promotes traditional Javanese culture, especially the performing arts. It also established a network of schools, which now include universities. See K. Tsuchiya, Democracy and Leadership. The Rise of the Taman Siswa Movement in Indonesia Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987.
- 35.
The Republican government fled advancing Dutch forces, retreating to Yogyakarta in January of 1946, less than 6 months after the August 17, 1945 declaration of independence. On the role Yogyakarta played in the Indonesian Revolution see Monfries, op. cit.
- 36.
S. Poerwokoesoemo, Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta: Gajah Mada University Press, 1984,
- 37.
Mataram is the name of the kingdom prior to its division into Yogyakarta and Surakarta both of which claim to be its sole legitimate successor.
- 38.
A clearer example of what Mircea Eliade terms the “symbolism of the center” in which the structure of traditional states mirrors that of the cosmos, and that of their historical narratives cosmogonic mythology would be harder to imagine. See: Eliade, The Myth of Eternal Return or Cosmos and History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954.
- 39.
In Yogyakarta at least, this is not a new development. In the late 1970s there were many in Yogyakarta ho found their neighbor’s near complete dependence on the New Order deeply disturbing.
- 40.
B. Anderson, “The Languages of Indonesian Politics”, Indonesia vol. 1:1, pp. 89–116, 1966.
- 41.
Faruk, Belenggu Paasca-Kolonial. Hegemoni dan Resistensi dalam Sastra Indonesia, Yogyakarta, Pustaka Pelajar, p. 8.
- 42.
On the history and development of Indonesian see, J. Snedden, The Indonesian Language: Its History and Role in Modern Society, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, p. 19
- 43.
There were, and still are, numerous distinct dialects of Malay/Indonesian some of which are barely mutually intelligible. “Standard Indonesian” is the language of politics, education commerce and the media, but is not well understood in many of the more remote regions of the country. It is understood, but not usually spoken in others, including Kudus in east Java. Because it was the language of colonialism in a multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic colonial state Malay/Indonesian acquired large numbers of words and phrases from regional languages, as well as from Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese and Arabic. In the post colonial era English has replaced Dutch as the source of European borrowings. In the past thirty years the number of Arabic words in common use has increased substantially.
- 44.
The dialect of Javanese spoken in Yogyakarta and Surakarta, and which has come to be considered “standard” Javanese in Indonesia and the global academic community is especially hierarchical. Dialects spoken in areas that were not subject to the control of Mataram and its successor states are decidedly less hierarchical. This indicates that the linguistic hierarchies of the Javanese Muslim courts were created as elements of kraton centered hegemonic discourse. Javanese who do not speak the court centered dialects are often reluctant to speak Javanese with those for whom this dialect is a native tongue for fear of making mistakes and being taken as “rustics”. I would like to thank Inayah Rohmaniyah and Sita Hidayah, both of whom are native speakers of the decidedly less hierarchical Banyumas dialect, for insisting on the cultural and political salience of this linguistic distinction.
- 45.
See J. Errington, Language and Social Change in Java: Linguistic Reflexes of Modernization in a Traditional Royal Polity, Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1985.
- 46.
Very few colonial subjects spoke Dutch. After the establishment of independence English rapidly became the international language of choice. For a time teaching Dutch, even to ones children, was criminal. Here the contrast between Indonesia and former British colonies in South and Southeast Asia where English in the defacto Lingua Franca is striking. It has had lasting consequences for Indonesia because of the emergence of English as the global Lingua Franca in the post World War Two era.
- 47.
Op. cit., p. 69
- 48.
S. Soemardjan, Purubahan Sosial do Jogyakarta, Jakarta: Kommunitas Bambu, 2009, pp. 150–157. Translation of Social Change in Yogyakarta, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962. My own conversations with members of the Javanese elite in the late 1970s were very similar.
- 49.
Policies aimed at the establishment of linguistic uniformity are nearly universal aspects of nationalist projects. France provides a striking example. In his classic, Peasants into Frenchmen, The Modernization of France. 1870–1914, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976, pp. 303–339, E. Weber shows that schools played a central role is almost eliminating distinctive local languages and establish the Parisian dialect as the national language. The United Stated employed similar policies to effectively eliminate German, Polish, Italian and other non-English European languages after the First World War. China and Singapore have employed similar strategies in attempts to establish Mandarin Chinese as a national language.
- 50.
In older sections of Yogyakarta street signs are also in Javanese, in Javanese script, even though few can now read it. They are emblematic of the “Javaneseness” of these parts of the city. Their function is more cultural than informational.
- 51.
This trend has been somewhat reversed as a consequence of the Post-New Order policy of decentralization. Yogya TV, which was founded in 2004, broadcasts a significant portion of its programs, ranging from local, national and international news to comedies and variety shows, in Javanese. It is argued in Chapter 7 that it is also a media vehicle for resurgent Yogyakarta Nationalism and that it is entirely appropriate to refer to it as Yogyakarta Kraton TV. The fact that many non-Javanese residents of Yogyakarta find Yogya TV very boring supports this view.
- 52.
As Talad Asad has noted, some Anthropologists and Historians, to which one might add particularly those concerned with the societies and cultures of colonial and post-colonial South Asia, have found concepts of agency and resistance to be powerful analytic devises. Many have been very nearly obsessed with the desire to “give subordinate peoples what they think of as ‘their own agency.’” T. Asad, Formulations of the Secular. Christianity, Islam and Modernity, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 216. I find this discourse to be well intentioned, but naïve, presumptuous and most of all elitist and even neo-colonialist. Human agency, in the sense of attempting to define the course of one’s life, regardless of the contexts in which it is located is characteristic of human beings, no matter what their circumstances. While the “agency of the oppressed” can sometimes be “recovered” by scholars where it has been inadvertently or deliberately ignored in the representation of events, it is by no means the task of scholars to “give” people what is a simple fact of human existence. What the scientific study of religion, culture and history requires is that scholars endeavor to capture the multiple agencies present in any social situation. The concept of agency is often associated with that of resistance. This linkage betrays an ideological rather than analytic orientation as acquiescence to power is as much a behavioral manifestation of agency as is resistance. The contrast between the political strategies of the two Javanese courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta in the early days of the Indonesian national revolution provides a cogent example. The Surakarta court chose acquiescence to Dutch power, in the expectation that imperialism would emerge triumphant and with the hope of regaining territory lost to Yogyakarta in the eighteenth century. The Yogyakarta court chose the path of resistance to the Dutch and acquiescence with Indonesian claims of sovereignty, describing itself as a kingdom within the Republic of Indonesia. Agency is readily apparent in both cases. Neither was a passive subject in the political and military struggles of the Indonesian nationalist revolution.
- 53.
Exactly who was responsible for the 1965 coupe remains the most controversial topic in modern Indonesian history. There is an extensive and controversial literal on the subject. Some scholars, particularly Anderson and McVey, maintain that it was an internal military feud, that the Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia/PKI) was not directly involve, but that it was used as excuse for mass slaughter,. B. Anderson and R. McVey, A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1 1965 Coupe in Indonesia, Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1971. An English translation of the Indonesian government’s account of the coup is The September 30 th Movement, the Attempted Coup by the Indonesian Communist Party: Its background, Actions and Eradication, Jakarta: State Secretariat of the Republic of Indonesia, 1995. Hermawan Sulistyo provides a detailed account of the killings in East Java and the role of the conservative Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama in planning and carrying them out, H. Sulistyo, The Forgotten Years: The Missing History of Indonesia’s Mass Slaughter (Jobang-Kediri 1965–1966), Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Arizona State University, 1997. On violence and the fall of the new order see Chapter 7 and K. Van Dijk, A Country in Despair. Indonesia Between 1997 and 2000, Leiden: KITLV, 2001.
- 54.
This is remarkably perverse but culturally significant because seven is the number of generations considered to be the limit of affinity in Javanese kinship reckoning.
- 55.
J. Bresnan, Managing Indonesia. The Modern Political Economy. New York Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 7–28.
- 56.
Herman, Judith, Trauma and Recovery: The aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, New York: Basic Books, 1997, p. 6.
- 57.
On the centrality of management in New Order politics see Bresnan, op. cit., pp. 293–95.
- 58.
From the time I first visited Indonesia until the fall of the New Order harsh criticism of the regime circulated in the form of rumors. One of the most extreme of these was that Suharto and his family were secretly Christian and were conspiring with Chinese Roman Catholics to “Christianize” Indonesia Another than circulated widely after the death of Suharto’s wife Siti Hartinah 1996 is that people do not want to visit her grave because they could hear her crying – a sure sign that she is already suffering the pains of Hell. The same is now said of Suharto. One friend told me that he knew someone who had video-taped the grave site and that while he heard nothing at the time when he played the tape back he could hear the former president screaming Tolong! Tolong! (Help! Help!), which suggests that he too is suffering the pains of Hell. In 1997 freedom of speech and the press came to Indonesia in ways that they never had before. Nowhere was this more apparent than in accounts of the former president and his family. Much that had long been spoken in private began to appear in print. Several of these works are discussed in Chapter 7. One of these is a vitriolic Islamist critique of his “sins”. The others explain his rise and fall in the language of Javanese Islamic mysticism.
- 59.
See Nurcholish Madjid, “In Search of the Islamic Roots for Modern Pluralism: The Indonesian Experiences”. In: M. Woodward (ed.), Toward a New Paradigm. Recent Developments in Indonesian Islamic Thought. Tempe AZ: Arizona State University Program for Southeast Asian Studies Monograph series, 1998, pp. 89–116
- 60.
R. Abdoelgani, Roeslan (ed.), Sejarah Lahirnya Pancasila. Jakarta: Yayasan Soekarno-Hatta dan Yayasan Pembela Tanah Air, 1984 and Soekarno, The Birth of Panca Sila, Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1972.
- 61.
For a discussion of the religious roots of this discourse and Muslim responses to it see M. Woodward, “Textual Exegesis as Social Commentary: Religious, Social and Political Meanings of Indonesian Translations of Arabic Hadith Texts”, in, The Journal of Asian Studies vol. 52, no. 3, 1993, 565–583.
- 62.
D. Porter, Managing Politics and Islam in Indonesia, London, Routledge 2002: D. Ramagae, Politics in Indonesia: Democracy, Islam and the Ideology of Tolerance, London: Routledge, 1995. The emergence of a vibrant critical and very nearly “post-modernist” Muslim theological discourse was the, almost certainly unintended, consequence of New Order attempts to depoliticize Islam and simultaneously develop Islamic education. This discourse has been referred by terms including “Islam Libera,l” “Islam Inklisif,” “Neo-Modernism,” and “Neo-Traditionalism”. See, G. Barton, “Neo-Modernism: A Vital Synthesis of Traditionalist and Modernist Islamic Thought in Indonesia”, Studia Islamika, vol. 2, pp. 175–196, 1995, R. Marin, M. Woodward and D. Atmaja, Defenders of Reason in Islam. Mutazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol, Oxford: One World, 1997 and M. Woodward (ed.) Towards a New Paradigm: Intellectual Developments in Indonesian Islam, Tempe: Arizona State University Program for Southeast Asian Studies Monograph Series, 1996
- 63.
On the role of role of violence and the threat of violence in governance during the New Order see B. Anderson (ed.), Violence and the State in Suharto’s Indonesia, Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Publications, 2001.
- 64.
H. Schulte Nordholt, State-Citizen Relations in Suharto’s Indonesia: Kawula-Gusti. Rotterdam: Comparative Asian Studies Program, Erasmus University, 1987.
- 65.
On the Quranic and Sufi origins of the concept of the union of servant and lord, see Woodward, op. cit., Islam in Java…, pp. 73–75.
- 66.
S. Moertono, State and Statecraft in Old Java: A Study of the Later Mataram Period. Ithaca: Modern Indonesia Project, Southeast Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University, 1968, p. 27.
- 67.
On the Taman Siswa movement, see Tsuchiya, op. cit., On the centrality of the concept of the unity of servant and lord in Dewantara’s thought, see B. Dewantara, 100 Tahun Ki Hajur Dewantara. Jakarta: Pustaka Kartini, 1989, 93–95. Dewantara was also influenced by Theosophical thought.
- 68.
Tuschiya, op. cit., p. 141.
- 69.
Reeve, op. cit., p. 312.
- 70.
R. McVey, “Taman Siswa and the Indonesian National Awakening, Indonesia, No. 4, 1967.
- 71.
S. Prawiranegara, “Pancasila as the Sole Foundation,” Indonesia 38:74–84, 1984; D. Reeve, Golkar of Indonesia: An Alternative to the Party System. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1985 and N. Tamara, Indonesia in the Wake of Islam. Kuala Lumpur: Institute of Strategic and International Studies, 1986;
- 72.
N. Hasan, Laskar Jihad. Islam, Militansi dan Pencarian Identitas di Indonesia Pasca-Orde Baru, Jakarta: LP3ES, 2008, p. 48 and S. Hidayah, op. cit.
- 73.
Alran Kepercayaan are formalized and in the Weberian sense, rationalized organizations that promote mystical teachings and modes of ritual practice rooted in Javanese Sufism, Theosophy and rediscovered pre-Islamic Javanese Hindu and Buddhist traditions. They began to appear in the 1920s and continue to figure significantly in the Javanese religious landscape. While they are primarily urban and middle class, some have extended their reach into rural communities in East and Central Java. They are the product of the interaction of modernity and Orientalism. Unlike more traditional Javanese mystical groups, including one described in Chapter 2, they are not strongly tied to locality or specifically Javanese historical narrative. Most teach that they are modes of belief and practice that are independent of, but can be combined with any “religion”. Like Theosophy they are concerned primarily with the psychological and experiential dimensions of mysticism. Many of the leaders of these movements I interviewed in the late 1970s were familiar with the writings of Hellena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, and had Dutch translations of her works in their personal libraries. Many also teach that there have been Prophets and revelation after the Prophet Muhammad. For this reason, and because they teach “mystical truths” in public contexts, they are regarded as heretical by most Javanese Muslims. In 2008 many were targeted for attack by the extremist, and violent Front Pembela Islam (Front for the Defense of Islam) in Yogykarta and elsewhere in Indoneisa. It is a serious error to consider these groups to be representative of Javanese mystical thought and practice. It is, however, for many of these same reasons that some Aliran Kepercayaan, especially Subud, have a global appeal. The spread of groups like Subud to the United States and Europe, like that of Tibetan Buddhism, provides an example of the globalization or universalisation of local religion. Many Aliran Kepercayaan leaders I interviewed in the late 1970s believed that they were supported by Suharto, his wife or other important New Order figures. So did many of their opponents. For studies of this variety of Javanese religion see: A. Geels, Subud and the Javanese Mysitcal Tradition, London: Cruzon 1997; C. Geertz, Religion of Java, op. cit., pp. 339–59, J. Howell, “Indonesia: Searching for Consensus”. In: C. Caldarola (ed.), Religions and Societies, Asia and the Middle East, The Hague: Mouton, 1982 pp. 497–48; P. Stange “The Logic of Rassa in Java” Indonesia, no. 38, pp. 113–34, 1984 and “Legitimate Mysticism in Indonesian” Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 76–117, 1986. On the influence of Theosophy on the development of religious and nationalist thought among the Javanese elite of the later colonial period see L. Sears, Shadows of Empire: Colonial Discourse and Javanese Tales, Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.
- 74.
President Suharto announced this policy initiative in a speech delivered August 16, 1982. For a critique by a leading conservative Muslim scholar see D. Noer, Islam pancasila dan Asas Tunggal, Jakarta: Yayasan Perkhidmatan, 1983.
- 75.
M. Djadijono, “The 28th Congress of Nahdlatul Ulama,” The Indonesia Quarterly 9, 1:10–14, 1990. and L. Harun, Muhammadiyah dan Asas Puncasila, Jakarta: Pustaka Panjimas, 1986.
- 76.
See D. Weatherbee, “Indonesia in 1984: Pancasila, Politics and Power”. Asian Survery 25, p. 190, 1985 and M. Woodward, “Textual Exegesis as Social Commentary: …” op. cit.
- 77.
This observation is based on conversations with NU and Muhammadiyah leaders in 1998, after the fall of the New Order. Several stated that the only reason that jihad was not required in this case was that it could not possibly have been successful and that according to Islamic teachings tyranny is preferable to chaos.
- 78.
For an English language example, based on a previously published Indonesian article see Madjid op. cit.
- 79.
K. Muslich 1987, “Dakwah Dengan Kasih Sayang”. Pesantren vol.4, no. 4, pp. 4:29–32, p. 32, 1987.
- 80.
Jakarta Post, June 20, 2006.
- 81.
This discussion builds on that included in my earlier book, Islam in Java: Normative Piety and Mysticism in the Sultanate of Yogyakarta, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989.
- 82.
I. Wallerstein, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth century, New York: Academic Press, 1974
- 83.
E. Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
- 84.
G. Worgul, From Magic to Metaphor: A Validation of Christian Sacraments. New York: Paulist Press, 1980, p. 234.
- 85.
J. Goody, Literacy in Traditional Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 5.
- 86.
Woodward, Islam in Java. op.cit.
- 87.
King, op. cit., p. 71.
- 88.
S. Ortner, “Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 26, no. 1, 1984, 143.
- 89.
P. Berger,. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Garden City, 1967; Doubleday, Rumor of Angels. Garden City: Doubleday, 1970, King, op. cit.
- 90.
Eliade, op. cit., I do find it curious that Eliade wrote very little about Islam which approaches the question of relationships between time and religion in very similar ways. On Islam’s self location in linear history see W Smith, Islam and Modern History, New York, The New America Library, 1969, p.14 and N. Shiddiqi, “Sejarah: Pisau Bedah Ilmu Keislaman”, In: T. Abdulah and M. Karim (eds.), Metodologi Penelitian Agama, Yogyakarta, Tiara Wacana, 2004, pp. 83–108.
- 91.
T. Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 12.
- 92.
D. Wiebe, The Politics of Religious Studies, New York: Palgrave, 1999, p. 60. I do not accept Wiebe’s op. cit., pp. 100–01, more general conclusion that the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, as a whole pursued a theological agenda during Eliade’s tenure there. I studied there in the 1970s and 1980s as well as in theAnthropology Department at the University of Illinois, which was then and is now, entirely secular. I have subsequently served on one Ph.D. committee at Chicago. Some people very clearly and self consciously pursued various theological agendas. Others, particularly graduate students, employed a variety of text critical, historical and social science methodologies in the analysis of both the sacred texts and lived religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. I can state with absolute certainty that none of my mentors there, among who Frank Reynolds was the most important, and who Wiebe associates with Eliade’s theological agenda, did not encourage those of us who were not inclined towards theological perspectives to adopt them. I think that few of us associated with that segment of the Divinity School would associate ourselves with Wiebe’s position.
- 93.
R. McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion. The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia, New York, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 79 and on this discourse concerning the historical and political contexts of his scholarship more generally, pp. 74–100 and Norman Manea, “Happy Guilt: Mircea Eliade, Fascism and the Unhappy Fate of Romania,” in: The New Republic, 1991, 5 August, pp. 27–36.
- 94.
E. Leach, “Sermons by a Man on a Ladder,” in, The New York Review of Books, 1966, 20 October, pp. 28–31. While he wrote extensively on religion, Leach (personal communication) was a secular person who took a dim view of it.
- 95.
See, for example, S. Moertono, State and Statecraft in Old Java: A Study of the Later Mataram Period, 16th to 19th centuries, Monograph Series, Modern Indonesia Project. Ithaca: Cornell University
S. Tambaiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1974.
- 96.
My rural background influenced my research on Javanese Islam in two other less significant ways. It enabled me to determine that the sheep and goats slaughtered at the Feast of Sacrifice were all approximate a year old as I know how to judge the age of a ruminant by examining its teeth – they acquire one set of permanent incisors per year. My neighbors were also very surprised to learn that I could and would be a participant as well as an observer in the sacrifice as I had slaughtered sheep and goats on many previous occasions. I also did not come to Asian Studies by accident. When I decided to become an Anthropologist in my senior year in high school, the choice of “areas” was entirely obvious. My paternal grandparents were “Old China Hands” who had spent much of the period between the two World Wars with the US Army in China and the Philippines. When I was a child visiting their house was like going to a museum which was filled with “priceless Oriental antiques,” which I did not discover for many years bore a striking resemblance to the “art objects” one finds in Hong Kong and Singapore curio shops.
- 97.
T. Asad, Genealogies of Religion. Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, pp. 53–54.
- 98.
T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 (3rd edition)
- 99.
Cultural Anthropology underwent a similar epistemological crisis in the 1980s. For a summary of this literature see G. Marcus and M. Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique. An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. For a critique of the extreme cultural relativism this approach motivated see the papers included in J. Dougherty, Directions in Cognitive Anthropology, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.
- 100.
On these debates and their significance in the discourse of Religious Studies see: R. King, Orientalism and Religion. Post Colonial Theory and the Mystic East, London: Routledge, 1999; F. Timothy, The Ideology of Religious Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000: McCalla, Authur, “When is History not History?” in, Historical Reflections vol. 20: 435–52, 1994; McCutchen, Russell, Manufacturing Religion. The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997; P. Samuel, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1987; M. Tomoko, The Invention of World Religions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005; and D. Wieber, The Politics of Religious Studies, New York: Palgrave, 1999.
- 101.
D. Sperber, Rethinking Symbolism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
- 102.
E. Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956; A. Hallowell, “Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior and World View,” In: D. Tedlock and B. Tedlock (eds.), Teachings from the American Earth, New York: Liveright, 1975, pp. 141–78; K. Morrison, “The Cosmos as Intersubjective: Native American Other-Than-Human Persons,” in G. Harvey (ed.), Indigenous Religions: A Companion. London: Cassell, 2000, pp. 23–36.
- 103.
N. Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, The Hague: Mouton, 1957;R. Keesing, “Linguistic Knowledge and Cultural Knowledge: Some Doubts and Speculations,” in: American Anthropologist, 1979, vol. 81: pp. 14–37; F. Lehman, “Cognition and Computation: On Being Sufficiently Abstract”. In: J. Dougherty,. (ed), Directions in CognitiveAnthropology, Urbana:, University of Illinois Press, 1985, pp. 19–48.
- 104.
C. Levi Strauss, The Savage Mind, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966, p. 167. “Shade tree mechanics” are a contemporary American example. Burmese mechanics I knew in the early 1980s, who seemed to do everything with anything, including installing a 1970s Toyota transmission in a 1951 English Ford are even better examples.
- 105.
Yogyakarta and Surakarta are both successor states of Mataram. There has been an intense rivalry between the two courts since the kingdom was divided in the late eighteenth century. The royal cemetery at Imogiri is divided into three sections: one for undivided Mataram, one for Surakarta and One for Yogyakarta. The ceremonial costumes of the two courts are quite distinct and it is, therefore quite easy to identify someone as the subject of one of the two rivals. People wearing either costume may visit the Mataram graves. Only those in the politically appropriate attire may visit those of Surakarta and Yogyakarta.
- 106.
It is for this reason that many Javanese women will not visit these places. In October of 2008. I and colleagues at the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University attempted to arrange a “field trip” for students to visit some of the important religious sites near the university. We initially thought of the royal cemetery at Imo Giri but found that many of our female Muslim students were literally horrified about what they would have to (not) wear. We visited a Roman Catholic shrine instead. Some were very surprised to discover that Catholic nuns cover their hair “just like Muslim girls” as one put it (English in the original).
- 107.
This is why the practice of making frequent public appearances and mingling with the wong cilik (little people) instigated by Hamengkubuwana IX and continued by the present Sultan is of such great symbolic importance. Hamengkubuwana X now holds “open houses” at the end of Ramadan which are attended by thousands of people and are of course, featured on the news on Kraton TV.
- 108.
In 2006 I visited the Shrine of the wali Sunan Kudus wearing jeans and a western style shirt. This would have been utterly impossible at Imo Giri.
- 109.
C. Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
- 110.
D. Eickelman, “The Study of Islam in Local Context, Contributions to Asian Studies, 17, pp. 1–16, 1982.
- 111.
F. Rahman, “Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies: Review Essay”. In Martin, op. cit., p. 196.
- 112.
R. Martin, “Islam and Textuality: Aspects of Discourse on the Qur’an in the Buyid Period (945–1055 C.E.)” (paper presented at the Ohio State University Conference on the Origins of Islam, Columbus, 1986).
- 113.
W. Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History Princeton: Princeton University Press 1957, p. 20; F. Denny, “Islamic Ritual: Perceptions and Theories,” in Martin, op. cit., pp. 63–77.
- 114.
P. Ricoure, “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as Text,” in Interpretive Social Science: A Reader , In: P. Rabinow and W. Sullivan (ed.), Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1979.
- 115.
Hadith are traditions concerning the speech and actions of the Prophet Muhammad and are recognized as being a source of religious law second in importance only to the Qur’an.
- 116.
Bali is the remaining Hindu enclave in otherwise Muslim and Christian Indonesia. Balinese Hinduism shares gods and goddesses with Indian Hinduism, but little else.
- 117.
M. binte-Yahya, Pimikir Islam, Singapore: Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura, 2005, is one of the few scholars to have appreciated that Madjid and other Southeast Asian Muslim thinkers are “world class” figures.
- 118.
J. Bowen, Muslims Through Discourse, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 3. Most of the time I spent at Chicago was devoted to Buddhist Studies.
- 119.
D. Munro, “Urban and the Crusaders”, Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, vol 1:2, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1895, pp. 5–8
- 120.
Op. cit., pp. 91–92.
- 121.
The Reverend Jerry Falwell is an example. In an interview with CBS news that sparked riots throughout the Muslim world he said:. “I think Mohammed was a terrorist. He – I read enough of the history of his life written by both Muslims and – and – non-Muslims, that he was a violent man, a man of war”.
- 122.
H. Benda, “Christian Snouck Hurgronje and the Foundations of Dutch Islamic Policy in Indonesia,” in Continuity and Change in Southeast Asia: Collected Journal Articles of Harry J. Benda (New Haven: Yale University Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1972), 86.
- 123.
Raffles, History of Java op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 1–64.
- 124.
Ibid., p. 61.
- 125.
Raffles cites a memoir by Hogendorp that states: “The Javans, however, are far from bigots in their religion, as other Mahometans generally are”.
- 126.
K. Steenbrink, Dutch Colonialism and Indonesian Islam: Contacts and Conflicts 1596–1950, Amsterdam and Atlanta: Editions Rodopi B.V., 1993, p. 50.
- 127.
Ironically, Voetius found common ground with Muslims in their rejection of the veneration of images and icons, and in their ridicule of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation as eating God. Cited in Steenbrink, Dutch Colonialism, p. 52.
- 128.
Ibid., p. 55.
- 129.
A. Reland, Of the Mahometan Religion, Two Books. The former of which is a short system of Mahometan Theology, Translated from an Arabick Manuscript, and Illustrated with Notes. The latter examines into some Things falsly charged upon the Mahometans London, 1712, p. 9.
- 130.
Ibid., p. 13.
- 131.
Ibid., p.47.
- 132.
Ibid., p.17.
- 133.
E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, London: Methuen and Co., 1911, pp. 401–402.
- 134.
A. Day, “Islam and Literature in Southeast Asia: Some Premodern, Mainly Javanese Perspectives,” In: M. B. Hooker (ed.), Islam in Southeast Asia, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988, pp. 130–59. N. Florida, Writing the Past, Inscribing the Future: History as Prophecy in Colonial Java, Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.
- 135.
Day, op. cit., p. 134.
- 136.
Florida, op. cit., p. 26.
- 137.
Ibid., p. 27.
- 138.
This perspective is apparent even in the works of Drewes whose contributions to scholarly knowledge of early Javanese Islam are enormous. In the introduction to his translation of what is certainly one of the oldest extant Javanese Islamic texts Drewes takes the homiletic character of the text, which is similar to basic ethical texts used throughout the Muslim world as a sign that the “Javanese neophytes did not stand too firmly in their shoes”. G. Drewes, An Early Javanese Code of Muslim Ethics, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978, p. 5.
- 139.
Steenbrink, op. cit., p. 88. A. Suminto, Politik Islam Hindia Belanda,Jakarta: LP3ES, 1985, 117.
- 140.
Suminto, op. cit., p., 171–73.
- 141.
C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth century Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1931.
- 142.
A. Djajadiningrat, “Reminiscences about Life in a Pesantren,” In: C. Peders (ed. and trans.), Indonesia. Selected Documents on Colonialism and Nationalism, 1830–1942, Saint Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1977, pp. 248–52. On relationships between the Priyayi elite and Dutch colonial authorities see H. Sutherland, The Making of a Bureaucratic Elite. The Colonial Transformation of the Javanese Priyayi, Singapore, The Australian Association for Asian Studies, 1976.
- 143.
A. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1996, pp. 89–90, T. Asad, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, New York: Humanities Books, 1995. J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Vol. II: The Dialectics of Modernity on South African Frontier, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, E. Said, op. cit.
- 144.
These words are engraved on a marble plaque located in Ghedung Kaca in the Yogyakarta Kraton. The text is in Indonesian and Dutch: “Walapun saya telah emgenyam pendidikan barat yang sebenarnya namun pertama-tama saya adalah dan tetap adalah orang Java” and “ Al hebik een uitgesproken westerse opreoding gehad toch been en blijf Ik in de allereerste plaats Javaan”. See Chapter 4 for a more lengthy discussion.
- 145.
A. Azra, The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia: Networks of Malay-Indonesian and Middle Eastern ‘Ulama’ in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, Leiden: KITLV, 2004, Snouck Hurgronge Mekka … op. cit., On the history of Southeast Asian Islamic movements see, B. Boland, The Struggle of Islam in Modern Indonesia. The Hague, Martinus Nijhof, 1982. On more recent developments and attempts to bridge this divide see R. Heffner, Civil Islam. Muslims and Democracy in Indonesia, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004 and N. Ichwan and N. Hasan, Moving with the Times. The Dynamics of Contemporary Islam in a Changing Indonesia. Yogyakarta, Center for the Study of Islam and Social Transformation, Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, 2008.
- 146.
These observations are based on interviews with students, faculty and administrators at institutions throughout Indonesia between 2000 and 2008. For detailed discussions of these issues see: R. Lukens-Bull, “Two Sides of the Same Coin: Modernity and Tradition in Indonesian Islamic Education”. Anthropology and Education Quarterly. vol. 32, no. 3, 2001, 350–372 and A Peaceful Jihad: Negotiating Identity and Modernity in Muslim Java, New York: Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005 and R. Martin and M. Woodward, Defenders of Reason in Islam. Mutazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol, Oxford: One World, 1997.
- 147.
Raffles was as influential here as he was in setting the course for the study of Islam in Indonesia. His History of Java, op.cit., includes the first scholarly accounts of Javanese Hindu and Buddhist monumental architecture. For an account his influence and on early Dutch efforts to “restore” Hindu and Buddhist monuments in the last 19th and early 20th centuries see R. Jordaan, op. cit.
- 148.
Jordaan describes Groneman’s clearing of the site as a “disaster” from the perspective of scientific archeology. R. Jordaan, “Candi Prambanan. An Updated Introduction”, p. 14, in Jordaan, op.cit., See also J. Groneman, “De Vereenining voor Oudheid-, Land-,Taal- en Volkenkunde to Jogjakarta, en de Tjandi Prambanan,” in Indische Gids, vol. 9, no. 2, 1887.
- 149.
On the Annee Sociologique and its contributions to European social thought see, N. Yash, Emile Durkheim. Contributions to L’Annee Sociologique, New York: The Free Press, 1980.
- 150.
W. Rassers, De Pani-Roman. Antwerpen, De Vos von Kleff, 1922. English translation, Panji, the Culture Hero. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959; Pigeaud, op. cit.
- 151.
For a more detailed consideration of Sutterheim’ views see Jordaan, op.cit., pp. 35–37.
- 152.
Kuhn, op. cit., pp. pp. 10–11
- 153.
Geertz, Religion of Java, op. cit., p. 24.
- 154.
Ibid., p.121.
- 155.
M. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, Glenco: Free Press, 1963, p. 46.
- 156.
Geertz, Religion of Java, op. cit., p. 125.
- 157.
Ibid., p. 38.
- 158.
Ibid., pp. 30–85. L. Mayer, and J. van Moll, De Sedekahs en Slametans in de Desa de Daarbij Gewoonlijk door den Given Gegeven Festiviteiten, Semarang: Van Dorp, 1909.
- 159.
It has never been clear what “Hindu-Buddhist” might mean. Geertz’s typology has, by now, fallen out of use. The most basic division in Javanese Islam, that be shari’ah-centric and Sufi variants is most commonly referred to as that between santri and Kejawen Islam. Divisions within the santri community are now more complex than they were when Geertz described them in the late 1950s. Today Indonesian and other scholars now speak of traditionalist, modernist, neo-modernist or neo-traditionalist and Islamist variants. The category “traditionalist” is, itself problematical because it is at least implicitly defined in terms of various strains of Islamic “modernism” that emerged in Indonesia and elsewhere in the Muslim world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As such it neglects, and indeed trivializes, difference within this community, as as such can be understood as being yet another Orientalist construction. “Traditionalist” Islam is, in fact, extremely diverse. Theological orientations within the Javanese pesantren tradition range from those associated with pantheistic Sufis to Shari’ah centric textual literalists. A comprehensive study of the varieties of traditional Javanese Islam remains to be written.
- 160.
C. Poensen, “Letters about Islam from the Country Areas of Java, 1886”. in Penders, Indonesia, 241–47.
- 161.
B. Anderson, “The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture,” In: C. Holt (ed.), Culture and Politics in Indonesia, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972. While I am deeply indebted to Anderson for his theoretical observations on the nature of nationalism, I could not disagree more strongly with his assessment of the significance of Islam in Javanese history and culture.
- 162.
B. Anderson, Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990, p. 11.
- 163.
Anderson, “The Idea of Power,” op. cit., pp. 58–59.
- 164.
Ibid., p. 54. This is simply not the case. Almost all Kyai are thoroughly conversant with Muslim legal, theological and/or mystical texts. Geertz’s account of Kyai, and of traditional Javanese Islam in general is so wide of the mark that it is difficult to see how he could have been more than very superficially acquainted with the pesantren tradition. He was also was seemingly unable to distinguish between Sufism, Hinduism and Buddhism. See Z. Dhofier, Tradisi Pesantren: Studi tentang Pandangan Hidup Kyai. Jakarta: LP3ES, 1985 and Pesantren Tradition: The Role of the Kyai in the Maintenance of Traditional Islam in Java. Tempe, Arizona State University Program for Southeast Asian Studies, 1999 and S. Jones, “The Javanese Pesantren: Between Elite and Peasantry”. In: C. Keyes (ed.), Reshaping Local Worlds: Formal Education and Cultural Change in Rural Southeast Asia, New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies – Southeast Asia Studies, 1991. On Arabic language Islamic texts studied in Pesantren see: M. van Bruinessen, Kitab Kuning:Ppesantren dan Tarekat: Tradisi-Tradisi Islam di Indonesia, Bandung, Mizan, 1995.
- 165.
W. Keeler, Javanese Shadow Plays, Javanese Selves, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, p. 23.
- 166.
J. Siegel, Solo in the New Order: Language and Hierarchy in an Indonesian City, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, p. 70.
- 167.
S. Errington, Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, p. 23.
- 168.
Ibid., p. 87.
- 169.
M. Ricklefs, “Six centuries of Islamization in Java,” In: N. Levtzion (ed.), Conversion to Islam, New York, Holmes and Meier, 1979, p. 127.
- 170.
T. Pigeaud, Javanese and Balinese Manuscripts and some codices written in related idioms spoken in Java and Bali, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1975, p. 77.
- 171.
Kuhn, op. cit., pp. 176–77.
- 172.
See W. Roff, “Islam Obscured? Some Reflections on Studies of Islam and Society in Southeast Asia,” Archipel, vol. 29, no. 1, 1985, 7–34; Steenbrink, Dutch Colonialism; op. cit., and Said, Orientalism, op. cit.
- 173.
Roff, “Islam Obscured?” op. cit.
- 174.
Steenbrink, Dutch Colonialism, op. cit., pp. 90–91.
- 175.
S. Soebardi, The Book of Cabolek,The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975; A Kumar, “Javanese Court Society and Politics in the Late Eighteenth century: The Record of a Lady Soldier,” Indonesia, 29: pp. 1–46 and M.Woodward, Islam in Java, op. cit.
- 176.
op. cit., pp. 1–8.
- 177.
Esposito, op. cit., p. 203.
- 178.
Op. cit., p. 6. Scholars of South Asian Islam voice similar complaints.
- 179.
Unfortunately this has also given birth to a vast body of quasi-academic punditry that reincarnates the very worst Orientalist stereotypes of Islam. One need look no further than the front tables of Borders and other chain bookshops for examples. Books that would otherwise pass largely unnoticed have become instant best sellers and their authors propelled to international prominence for no other reason than that they are Islamaphobic in a cultural climate where Islamapobhia is politically acceptable and economically profitable. See, for example, B. Lewis, What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, New York: Harper Perennial, 2003, D. Pipes, Militant Islam Reaches America, New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. Pipes is fond of referring academics who disagree with him as “Jihadi Professors”. Most of us on his list consider it an honor to be included. I have argued elsewhere that attempts to attribute the subordinate position of Muslim peoples and countries in the World System are Orientalist fictions masking the military and economic foundations of Western hegemony, “Modernity and the Disenchantment of Life: A Muslim Christian Contrast,” in, J. Meuleman (ed.) Islam in the Era of Globalization. Muslim Attitudes Towards Modernity and Identity. London: Rutledge Cruzon, 2002, pp. 111–142.
- 180.
C. Geertz, After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995, pp. 56–57.
- 181.
M. Nakamura, The Cresent Arises Over the Banyan Tree, Yogyakarta, Gadjah Mada University Press, 1983, pp. 182–83.
- 182.
The list of scholars who would have to be included on this list is too long to recount here. By virtue of the ways in which they have described Islam in Indonesia Western scholars would include John Bowen, Nancy Florida, Anna Gade, Robert and Nancy Smith Heffner and Ronald Lukens-Bull. Indonesian scholars would have to be included are Tuafik Abdullah, Dwi Atmaja, Azurmadi Azra, Nurcholish Madjid, Abdurahman Masud, Amien Rais and Inayah Rochmaniyah. There are many others.
- 183.
This does not mean that works produced within this paradigm are without value. Many contain enormous amounts of data that could not possibly be collected today because of the scale of change that has taken place in Indonesia over the last century. Rather, the information they include must be carefully scrutinized, but can be used in the construction of analyses quite different from those the authors intended.
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Woodward, M. (2011). Yogyakarta: Religion, Culture and Nationality. In: Java, Indonesia and Islam. Muslims in Global Societies Series, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0056-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0056-7_1
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