KPK and the Indonesia Raya Narrative
After Maghrib prayers on Tuesday, August 16, 2016, I asked Muhammad Arais Amartya NYS (Arais), “What day is tomorrow?” He answered confidently, “Wednesday!” Arais was then a student in Class IA at SD 10 elementary school in Pondok Bambu, Duren Sawit, East Jakarta. Hearing the “great” answer, I called him to approach: “Let\'s sing.”
“The seventeenth of August in year forty-five/That is our independence day.”
After singing, I asked again, "So, what day is tomorrow?" Arais answered, "Wednesday!"
I am fortunate to have been born in 1954 in Kampung Ujông Tanôh, Susoh, Southwest Aceh. Because my mother was a teacher, since the early 1950s, she taught songs of struggle with poetic lyrics:
"The world is quiet/ I leave a shepherd singing/ Under the glorious sky/ We shake hands/ Separation for Nusa."//
The song was created to encourage Acehnese youths to go to the “Medan Area”in 1948-1949 to maintain Indonesia\'s independence. As is known, from 1948-1949, the entire territory of Indonesia was reoccupied by the Netherlands, except Aceh. Therefore the Acehnese youths were mobilized to the so-called Medan Area, namely a region that was not controlled by the Dutch in East Sumatra, to maintain Indonesia’s newly claimed independence. The song above, in my interpretation, is romantic propaganda to mobilize Acehnese youths to the battlefield.
And at home, my father taught thrilling national songs in Acehnese and Arabic. For example, an Acehnese call to war:
Rincông, peudeung pasuka ayah/ Tumbak, siwah, kréh meudulang/ Dum geutanyou pahlawan gagah/ Ta manoh darah cit bak masa prang!//
(Rencong, father\'s heirloom sword/Spear, knife, venomous dagger/We\'re handsome heroes/Bathing in blood only in wartime!)
And in Arabic, Hubbul Wathan (Love of Motherland):
Wathani antaabulli/ Tsalisu li abawaini/ Wathani anta hayati/ Wa muna nafsi wa’aini//.
(My nation,you are my parent/The third after my parents/My nation, you are my life/An idol upheld).
A song in Arabic was addressed to youths and the word "Indonesia" had been inserted in it: Ya abna ana, jin sana Indunisia/ Gum minaumigum/ Undhur ila wathnigum (O youths, Indonesian nation/ Rise from your sleep/ Maintain your nation).
To us, my father said that these songs of nationalism were growing in dayah (boarding schools) and were deliberately written in Acehnese and Arabic.
Why? To make sure the Dutch could not understand them.
‘Post-Soekarno’, HizbutTahrir and ‘sour smell of history’
In the decades between myself and the above mentioned Arais, Hizbut Tahrir was established in Indonesia. What is the connection to a group that wants to establish a pan-Islamic political caliphate? To answer this, we need to look at global development.
By slightly putting aside the accuracy of the almanac, the period between myself and Arais was marked by the increasingly intensive “sour smell of history” in influencing the structuring of global life and, ultimately, Indonesia. Borrowed from Tariq Ali (The Clash of Fundamentalisms, 2002), this phrase reveals the rise of the United States as the ruler of the world, especially post-World War II (1939-1945).
The development of the world economy – which had entered the “away from society” period from Karl Polanyi’s double movement, as pointed out by Craig Murphy in his Egalitarian Politics in the Age of Globalization (2002) – was increasingly discovering its extreme form with the US revival; namely the renewed strengthening of the capitalist system based on the US military industry.
In the midst of Europe\'s post-World War destruction, the US formulated its new role: to establish its own political hegemony and rebuild the autonomy of European capitalism. Why? Because with this, America could maintain its global interests for which the country had to emerge as a “global gendarme”.
This could only be realized by making it militarily superior. Through the Arms Export Control Act, the US military industry thus became one of the drivers of the world economy. In order to supply the military needs of postwar Europe, the US imported oil, iron ore, bauxite, copper, chemical materials (manganese), and nickel.
The result, as in the thesis of Winda Weiss and John Hobson in States and Economic Development (1995),was the development of a world industrial economy that derived from the military industry.
This industry, wrote Tariq Ali, stimulated the birth of heavy industry as well as electronics, aircraft, chemical and aerospace research. The post-World War II global industrialization process that we see today,for the most part, emerged from this. It also made the domestic US economy more stable and, said Ali, less affected by economic fluctuations. "It helped cushion the impact of recessions," he said. As a result, the American economy was relatively resistant to devastating disasters, such as the Great Depression that occurred in 1929-1930.
To maintain its survival, this advantage in the military industry must be upheld in the structure of world capitalism. The advantage was therefore not a technical matter, but a change in thinking or culture.
Physically, this advantage was maintained by extending control over areas rich in raw materials, through political intervention by mobilizing a series of coups or political-economic alliances with the rulers of those areas – such as in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East – or by establishing direct military presence in areas considered strategic. Of the 187 UN member nations, for example, the US has established military might in 100 nations.
Conceptually, its advantage must be maintained by creating a global cultural consensus through the spread of capital and the superiority of Western ideas, especially that of the US. This is development and modernization based on a capitalist system, or“capitalist modernization” as Paul Commack calls it in Capitalism and Democracy in the Third World (1997).
It is in this context that the emergence of the seeds of rebellion against the "global cultural consensus" is understandable, since “the US industrial military-origin economy” was responsible for a new wave of economic globalization that had to be "stalled" because of World War II.
These seeds of rebellion have emerged because, in the confines of globalization, life has not become easier: According to Joseph Stiglitz in Making Globalization Work (2007), life is increasingly marked by tight competition, uncertainty and instability. And this, Stiglitz writes in The Price of Instability (2012), has the potential to destroy democracy and undermine justice and legal certainty.
To summarize, except for the giant capitalists and the handful of others that are capable to adapt, humans on the global level have collectively entered a period of chronic uncertainty.
Especially interconnected to the “global cultural consensus” is Hizbut Tahrir’s taking root in Indonesia. Why? Because Indonesia had then reached the post-Soekarno stage (1945-1967). Under Soekarno, Indonesia did not only keep itself from the influence of "the sour smell of history" by saying, "go to hell with your aid": through its character and nation building program, it also built a distinctive national identity. In contrast, by taking the path of capitalist modernization, post-Soekarno Indonesia entered “the sour smell of history" created by the US: the uniformity of historical experience and, as a result, reflecting an unauthentic socio-political consciousness.
The narrative of Indonesia Raya therefore experienced a shift. Under the influence of "the sour smell of history" that gave birth to capitalist modernization, the Indonesia Raya narrative is more expressed in the dry statistics of economic growth, without an emotional foundation. Entering the orbit of the US-created global cultural consensus, the post-Soekarno regime placed more emphasis on adjusting national policies in line with the capitalist system. This was because, under the influence of the global cultural consensus, the new nation\'s survival could be assured through the capitalist system.
As a result, what developed at the national level was a commercial narrative that indirectly, as revealed in the term “human capital”, viewed humans only as an integral part of economic performance.
This has caused, in turn, as has also happened in other nations within "the sour smell of history" orbit, the Indonesian people to enter a period of “history without a subject”. The phrase, derived from the title of David Ashley\'s book (1997), illustrates the absence of authentic truth and reality, in which the world has become layer upon layer of imitation. In quoting Baudrillard, Ashley calls this “simulacra”, a condition under which new realities are identified after they have been falsified.
Thus, the foundation of righteousness becomes nil because a simulacrum does not describe anything, except a “knowingly manufactured and contrived reality”.
The situation of “history without a subject” makes the post-Soekarno Indonesia Raya narrative devoid of emotion and, beyond this, does not provide a handle for the future. What emerge instead are tautological statements, without historical consciousness or sociological reality. Therefore, those who seek emotional depth and meaning attempt to find it in religion.
This, in part, explains why religious revival – especially in the capitalist modernization era – continues to occur in society. And those who do not find the pulse of the nation’s ideological heart under "the sour smell of history" created by the US try to find another rationale. The birth of Hizbut Tahrir in Indonesia, which turns out to find the ideological basis for their "political movement", could theoretically also be understood from this context.
The notion of the Hizbut Tahrir caliphate is clearly anachronistic, as a universal caliphate is a mere copy of the Roman or Persian system of organized power adopted by Islamic rulers, as seen in the Ottoman Turks, from the 8th century and on up to the early 20th century. In other words, in relying purely on historical facts, the caliphate is nota model of Islamic rule.
The imperial system was adopted by the Islamic ruler of the time because such a model was only available then to organize power. Nonetheless, the emergence of Hizbut Tahrir has to be understood as a "criticism" of the absence of a nationalistic, emotional intent in the post-Soekarno Indonesia Raya narrative.
KPK and political parties
The times that define myself and Arais are clearly different. In my childhood, the Indonesia Raya narrative was embodied in the substantial, poetic songs in which religion was a vehicle and a basis for understanding and appreciating nationality that led to a spiritual existence in our Indonesian-ness. The expression of Soekarno\'s ideas and his political-ideological actions provided a modern bandage for this loyalty. In Arais’s time, Indonesia is no longer seen as romantic and poetic, but as a nation whose heartbeat has been inflicted by "the sour smell of history" of the US. The capitalist modernization narrative continues without a spiritual foundation or root and, therefore, without a soul.
And this spiritual foundation recedes even further when political parties come forth not only without ideology and historical consciousness – not a single political figure today resembles Soekarno, Mohammad Hatta, or other founders of this nation –but nevertheless also as a great power, almost without limit, to weaken the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). The current actions by political parties are clearly contrary to the expectations of justice when the elites who "own" these parties “allow” the House of Representatives to weaken the KPK.
Under such circumstances, what kind of narrative for Indonesia Raya can be offered to the people, when the elites who determine national policies act nearly collectively against the system of justice?
FACHRY ALI
A founder of the Institute for the Study and Advancement of Business Ethics (LSPEU Indonesia)