In the Name of History
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September and October have always been “history season” in Indonesia’s political cycle. In late September and early October, people commemorate the G30S incident that ended the Old Order regime and marked the emergence of the New Order.
However, the change of regime was also marked with the dissolution of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as a political entity and crushing whomever and whatever deemed to be linked to the party. Through the killing of Army generals, the Sept. 30, 1965 attempted coup and thePKI as its alleged mastermind came as a huge blow against the Indonesian military, especially the Army, as many of its leaders were murdered and their bodies discarded disrespectfully in a hidden location. The emotional effect was that it heated the esprit de corps of the Indonesian military, which deemed the PKI as a national thorn that had also stabbed its dignity as a security force.
The G30S incident is a dark chapter in the history of an independent Indonesia. A film made on Soeharto’s orders by director Arifin C Noer aimed to serve, among other purposes, as a record to fight forgetfulness of a particularly dark chapter in the country’s political history. Controversies ensued on the authenticity of the film’s depiction of events, and questions abound as to whether the film has faithfully documented the historical event or whether it has been subjected to distortion to make it line up with the ruling regime’s version of events.
Historian Ong Hok Ham once wrote that history was a branch of study that was most open to non-experts – in this case, non-historians. This is because, much like political science, anthropology or sociology, history has always gone through the stages of researching historical facts, interpreting them and using history. There is a huge difference between researching and using history.
The difficulty often faced by scientific researchers often stems from the fact that their responsibility as scientists ends with ensuring the accountability of their research results, that is, in the methods they used to reach their conclusions, in the sources they used in their research, whether their research results can be applied broadly or only in a limited fashion, and whether the research results can be validated through scientifically justified methods. The researchers cannot control what their research results will be used for, whether for business promotions, educational purposes, legitimizing political actions or criticizing political policies.
Confused orientation
A lesson we must all take from the New Order regime is its view that all of its political policies have a scientific basis. Opposition was banned at the time, as it was said that the cultures of Indonesia essentially embraced harmony and did not recognize conflicts. This is merely a political statement that cannot be validated or verified scientifically, as the wealth of research in history, sociology, anthropology and political science shows conflicts as commonplace in Indonesian cultures as in any other culture in the world. What is unique and different in these local cultures is how they choose to interpret and resolve conflicts.
In this sense, political policies can use the results of scientific research (for instance, to find out whether economic programs can be continued as an indicator of successful development, despite that existing growth figures are boosted mostly by growth in the monetary sector with little or no correlation to real growth in the people’s economic activities).
However, it must be emphasized that all political policies are political actions that must be defended through political, not scientific, arguments. This is important to underline, as scientific research has its own rules and criteria that may not be the same as political criteria. Our respected founding fathers and founding mothers provided examples of their awareness of the difference between political and scientific actions.
In 1928, van Vollenhoven, a celebrated professor of adat (customary laws) with a huge influence in Dutch universities and within the Dutch Indies government, wrote in the Koloniaal Tijdschrift (Colonial Journal)about the issue of using the name “Indonesia” for all Dutch East Indies territories. The professor said that the name Indonesia should not be used as a replacement for DutchEast Indies. His reasoning was that Indonesia encompassed a much larger area than that of the Dutch East Indies and that some 15 million Indonesians were then living outside the territories of the Dutch East Indies– even though this figure was dwarfed by the 49 million people living within its territories.
For these two reasons, he said, the name Indonesia should not be used for the Dutch East Indies. In his rebuttal in the De Socialist newspaper on Dec. 22, 1928, Indonesian founding father Mohammad Hatta, or Bung Hatta, rejected van Vollenhoven’s arguments. Bung Hatta said that the name Indonesia was a political and state administrative term instead of a geographic or an ethnological one. The terminology and scientific boundaries of geography and ethnology could not be used as grounds for creating a political entity and a state administration.
Colonial statistics showed that the average income of Javanese farmers before the 1930s malaise was 8 Netherlands Indies cents per day. The Economisch Weekblad said that the average daily income plummeted to only 2.5 cents during the malaise. On Oct. 26, 1932, the Home Affairs Governance Director reported in a Raad van Indie (Dutch Indies Council) meeting that a pribumi (indigenous person) could survive on only 2.5 cents a day. Founding father Soekarno, or Bung Karno, then wrote in the Fikiran Ra’jat newspaper that the report had distorted reality. It was not that a pribumi could live on 2.5 cents a day; it was that they were forced to live on 2.5 cents a day. The report had given the sense that an economic survey had proven that a pribumi could truly live on such a paltry income, especially when compared to poor people in other countries.
People in Bulgaria, “renowned for its poverty”, still earned 13 cents a day. In India under British colonialism, people still earned 10 cents a day according to Gandhi. Thus, the director’s statement was a political statement to relieve the Dutch East Indies colonial government of the responsibility to end poverty and hunger among the pribumi population. The report could also be seen as an excuse to decrease the pribumi’s wages, shrouded in what was espoused as scientific finding. What would be more scientifically valid was to say that the pribumi were forced to live on 2.5 cents a day, as the colonial government did nothing to alleviate their burden during the great malaise.
These examples are enough to show us the dangers of a confused orientation due to the blurred boundaries between a political statement and a scientific proposition, as well as between a political decision and a scientific endeavor to discover what has happened and to provide accountability for their findings. In this sense, the dissolution of the PKI by the New Order was a political action justified through political reasoning and arguments and, by its very nature, was not legitimized by scientific findings.
Politically, the dissolution of the PKI put an end to the reemergence of another communist party in Indonesia. However, scientific research on the shift in regimes from the Old Order to the New Order continues. Within this context, research on the G30S context will also continue, as a responsible nation surely wants answers as to why it acted in certain ways and not in others during particular times. Science attracts much attention and interest. Therefore, if research on important historical events, such as the regime shift and the creation of the New Order, is made difficult for Indonesian researchers, foreign researchers will conduct the same research.
Such researches will be done scientifically in the study of history, political science, political sociology, political anthropology and other social and human sciences. Such research findings may contradict the New Order regime’s assumptions and considerations of the political situation in 1965. However, these findings do not falsify the political decisions that were made, as these political decisions were made based on political assumptions, arguments and considerations, which are by nature different from scientific ones. A scientific proposition is made on the basis of empirical evidence, while a political decision can be made in spite of the empirical evidence, as it is based more on political will.
Learning from history
The contradiction between political will and scientific findings gained locus classicus during the preparations for Indonesian independence. It can be understood that most leaders in the 1940s were still skeptical about the nation’s independence as, empirically, the prevailing conditions at the time did not support Indonesia’s freedom. We had no economic capability, no experience in the technical aspects of administration, a poor literacy level, limited educational reach and few educated people. This was why Hatta and Sjahrir established the PNI Baru (the New Indonesian National Party) on the platform of providing education to prepare trained and skilled manpower for government administration once the Dutch administrators and officials had left the former Dutch East Indies.
On the other hand, in his speech on June 1, 1945, Bung Karno reaffirmed that we needed to achieve independence immediately, as only through independence could we prepare all the things we needed to prepare to become a truly independent state. Here, political will contradicted historical and empirical evidence. The political will was based on the assumption that the life of an independent country was not determined by prevailing historical and empirical conditions, but by the willingness and courage to achieve independence. We were not dependent on history, as independence enabled us to create a new history and to change the path of history.
History is important, as people with no knowledge of it are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. History serves as a lesson. In reality, however, people can read many history books and yet, not take any lessons from them. It is known from history that legal violations have legal consequences and punishments, that corruption harms the state and must not be tolerated, that extremism in politics is more harmful than beneficial, that attacking one’s political opponents as political enemies is wrong, that people can be kingmakers and yet can suddenly become king killers, that politics as the art of the possible is not the same as political opportunism – and yet, people always make the same mistakes in every generation. It is unsurprising, then, that philosophers have concluded that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from it.
Tragedies in history always inflict pain on the victims. Knowledge from these tragedies can trigger feelings of vengeance among its victims and perhaps remorse among its perpetrators. However, remorse alone is not enough. According to philosopher Max Scheler, remorse comprises only unrealistic hopes that what has happened might not happen again. Remorse is oriented merely towards the past and will change nothing. What is needed for change and reform is not remorse, but conversion or atonement –the decision not to repeat the mistakes that were committed or the pledge to be more just towards others. Different from remorse and its orientation to the past, atonement is a decision for the future. It is useless for a person to regret his or her mistakes all year long without making any decision for the future.
Germany once shouldered a heavy burden from the past, as it felt it had caused world wars that led to millions of deaths, resulting in the Allied powers breaking up the nation-state, a condition that lasted 40 years. After the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 10, 1989, the two Germanies reunited and faced many huge problems of readaptation. The nation rose up and decided not to be burdened by its past, and a new motto emerged: Bewaeltigung der Vergangenheit. The past must be resolved and taken care of; the burden must be overcome.
Perhaps it is time for us Indonesians to take the same stance. We will never move forward if we continue to be beholden to our past without making any decision for the future. Regretting or cursing the past will not improve anything. What is needed is a national conversion with a decision to build a just and more humane future. We should look at our founding fathers, who remained respectful towards one another as brothers despite the sometimes fierce debates among them. It is no coincidence that, through Bung Karno, our founding fathers left behind a legacy for the entire nation to build upon: Pancasila, the fundamental philosophy of the Republic of Indonesia.
British historian Thomas Carlyle once said something about the importance of respecting our forefathers in history that is widely quoted within British politics and in global history books. He said: “Swerving from our fathers’ rules is calling our fathers fools.” Our founding fathers have sacrificed everything to unite us as a nation. Therefore, any behavior that aims to disunite the nation must be seen as examples of those who refuse to learn anything from their own nation.
IGNAS KLEDEN
Sociologist
