Thammasat University students interested in Indonesia, ASEAN studies, history, political science, international affairs, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 14 March Zoom webinar, Real and Rhetorical Polarisations in Indonesia: Towards the 2024 Elections.
The event, on Tuesday, 14 March 2023 at 2pm Bangkok time, is presented by ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of Indonesian politics.
The event webpage explains:
About the Seminar
Between 2013 and 2019, many commentators failed to realise the purely rhetorical character of what seemed to be a serious polarisation in Indonesia between a more secular, democratically liberal, and inclusivist politics and a more religious identity-driven, exclusionist, and more autocratic style of politics. The focus of the attention on this perceived polarisation was the electoral contestation between Joko Widodo, seen to be the more liberal, and Prabowo Subianto, seen to be the more autocratic and exclusivist. When the purely rhetorical nature of this electoral polarisation was revealed after Prabowo joined the Widodo cabinet in 2019, the discussion of this polarisation faded and was overtaken in the commentary by a discussion of the decline of democracy.
But is there no real polarisation in Indonesian politics? In this seminar, I will argue that there is real polarisation. Thus real polarisation manifests in two ways. Firstly, there are the regular waves of social opposition, organised through the wide spectrum of civil society organisations whose outlook is very different from all the established political parties. It is an opposition with no electoral representation. Secondly, the difference between the liberal and progressive outlooks of civil society and the conservative status quo outlooks of the nine political parties also have reflections in ideological differences in society that are only faintly echoed among the parties but can have stronger echoes in society outside the parties. There are very important questions about how these real polarisations will impact on electoral tactics of parties vying in the elections. Will potentially destabilising rhetorical contestations, where parties appeal to religious identity or other conservative ideas, re-emerge? Will any of the new parties trying to appeal to civil society gain any traction?
The speaker will be Dr. Max Lane, a journalist and Visiting Senior Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
The TU Library collection includes translations by Dr. Lane of books by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, a noted Indonesian author of novels infused with personal and national history.
TU students have access to Dr. Lane’s latest book, Indonesia out of exile: how Pramoedya’s Buru Quartet killed a dictatorship, through the TU Library Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service.
Here is the publisher’s description of Dr. Lane’s book:
A nation is exiled from itself to prison; a nation is re-awakened through the storytelling of its origins; understand Indonesia through Pramoedya’s books
In 1981, a new company, Hasta Mitra, founded by three men just released from over a decade in prison, published a novel written in a prison camp by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The novel was This Earth of Mankind. It told the story of the early gestation of the Indonesian national awakening. The dictatorship eventually banned it after several months of tactical struggle by the three men, Pramoedya himself and the fighters of Hasta Mitra, Joeoef Isak and Hasyim Rachman. In defiance of the dictatorship, they went on to publish the three sequels to This Earth of Mankind, each time followed by another battle and then a ban.
This book tells of these men’s struggle, their arrests and imprisonment-the story of the writing of Pramoedya’s novels in Buru Island prison camp. They return from exile to a different Indonesia, its radical past suppressed and its people terrorised. Pramoedya’s epic novels starting with This Earth of Mankind then explodes onto the scene. Set in a time when even the idea of Indonesia had not yet formed, the book tells an inspiring creation story. The story of that early struggle and of the amazing effort to publish Pramoedya’s novels in the face of repression inspired a new generation of youth who succeeded in breaking the dictatorship. Today, a new generation is being inspired by those same books. So what comes next?
Students are invited to register for the event at this link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_MXa1Q0UERYeasyulZv3Xjw
A book review in February explained Dr. Lane’s connection with works by Pramoedya:
While imprisoned for 14 years on the remote Buru Island, Pramoedya produced six historical novels including the so-called Buru Quartet, the first of which, The Earth of Mankind, was dubbed by The Washington Post as the Indonesian Iliad.
Set during a period of emerging anti-colonialism under Dutch rule, the books were progressively banned after being published following Pramoedya’s release in 1979, not least, as Lane posits, because they challenged the repressive Suharto regime’s narrative of national awakening, posing a threat to its own grip on power.
A long-time aficionado of our sprawling neighbour to the north, Lane has a personal connection with the Pramoedya story. As a 30-year-old then mid-level diplomat in Australia’s embassy in Jakarta in 1980, he was key to The Earth of Mankind and its sequels being given a global audience, translating them into English during his spare time at night.
It was a contribution that earned him a ticket home on the orders of the ambassador, displeased at the actions of one of his staff on a subject of such sensitivity for Suharto and his cronies. But while it didn’t impress his boss, readers reap the rewards of Lane’s friendship with the late Pramoedya and the two other political prisoners, Hasjim Rachman and Joesoef Isak, who formed a company to publish the books in defiance of the authorities.
Through interviews he conducted with them during the Suharto era he recounts their capture and incarceration amid the crackdown on the ascendant Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), and the perilous lengths to which they later went to in a bid to bring Pramoedya’s words to the masses.
Among the most illuminating passages are those that explore the support The Earth of Mankind had within the authoritarian establishment, which would eventually crumble in 1998 on the back of the Asian financial crisis and widespread student protests. […]
As for his work’s potential impact, the Australian academic’s desire to raise the profile of the Pramoedya in the Indonesian public consciousness faces clear challenges. He laments the fact that even 25 years after the fall of the New Order and the beginning of “reformasi” in Indonesia, the author’s writing is still not taught in schools there or the focus of serious critical analysis there despite being lauded internationally.
That may well be explained by Pramoedya’s socialist leaning. Indonesia remains wary of such philosophy to the extent that its new criminal code, which received headlines for its provisions on sex before marriage, includes lengthy jail terms for spreading communism or associating with groups that follow Marxism.
Regardless of Pramoedya’s political views, however, Lane argues he provided Indonesians with a long-lost link to their past, one that is fundamental in reckoning with the future of a still young nation. His highly accessible insider’s account also offers readers in Australia greater understanding of Indonesia’s journey and that can only be positive.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)