By Lawrence Pintak | FāVS News Columnist
Good has triumphed over evil. At least it did in Bali last month. The rest of Indonesia, not so much.
The Balinese were celebrating the 10-day Hindu festival of Galungan, which marks the victory of dharma (goodness) over adharma (evil). Ancestral spirits return to the Indonesian island; families honor their lineages and their gods; balance is restored to the universe.
But across the Bali Strait, on Java, Indonesia’s largest island, that battle between darkness and light is still in full force as a bloody history is being replaced by a new sanitized mythology in the political capital, while the would-be inheritors of a mystic dynasty quibble over the crumbs left in what was once the nation’s religious and cultural heart.
The late Indonesian dictator Suharto (who, like many Indonesians, used only one name) was considered one of the world’s most corrupt and brutal dictators. Hundreds of thousands perished in the orgy of violence that preceded his ascension to power in 1966, and tens of thousands more were killed, arrested or disappeared in the 32 years that followed.
But on Nov. 10 at the State Palace in Jakarta, all that was forgotten when the disgraced autocrat was declared a national hero. As The New York Times put it, the move “was a jaw dropping swerve of revisionist history in Indonesia.”
But, of course, history belongs to the victors and while Suharto was forced to resign in 1998 in the face of a national uprising, the man who was then his son-in-law and chief enforcer, Prabowo Subianto, is now president. To rewrite Suharto’s history is to rewrite his own.
A reporter’s memory of Indonesia’s violent transition
As I reported from the Indonesian capital in the days before Suharto stepped down, masses of students besieged the Parliament building and armored vehicles rolled through the streets, while smoke hung over the city from fires in ethnic Chinese neighborhoods where more than 1,000 would die in riots that the National Commission on Human Rights would later claim were orchestrated by Prabowo, then head of the military’s special forces command, to set himself up to take power.
Prabowo, now 73, fled the country when Suharto was driven from office. He was eventually blacklisted by the U.S. and Australia for his brutal record, which included accusations of mass killings, widespread abductions, the killing of student protest leaders and fomenting the Jakarta rioting.
“Whitewashing History Undermines Efforts to Bring Justice for Victims,” was the headline on a Human Rights Watch report about anointing of Suharto as a “hero of the revolution.”
Underlining how history has been turned on its head, in the same ceremony Probowo also honored — without a hint of irony — a young labor activist who was brutally murdered and became a symbol of the struggle for human rights in the Suharto years.
As Goenawan Muhammad, one of Indonesia’s most renowned journalists, wrote shortly after her mutilated body was discovered on a roadside in 1994, “This is a world that has only winners and losers. It is a world obsessed with violent verbs such as ganyang (crush), bunuh (kill) and gebuk (clobber). These are the metaphors of fighting and male virility, but also of despotism.”
As the ceremony was taking place at the presidential palace in Jakarta, male virility and despotism were also on full display at another palace in Central Java 400 miles away.
The sons of the Pakubuwono XIII, head of one of the three royal families of Java, were locked in a succession duel, just as their late father had been for more than a decade after his own father passed away.
Henry Kissinger once said, “Academic politics are so brutal because there is so little at stake.” At first glance, much the same could be said for Java’s “Game of Thrones.”
My wife is a member of the extended family of all three of Java’s royal families, and when we visited the Pakubuwono palace, or kraton, a few years ago to register our children’s royal lineage, the place reminded me of the dirty and dilapidated government compounds I had visited in some of the world’s poorest countries.
Entering the “archive,” we startled two functionaries who sat half asleep at an empty table. They said they would try to help, but many of the loose-leaf folders containing the extended family tree had been looted by supporters of the rival claimant, who had grabbed whatever was at hand when they were ejected from the palace a few years before.
The mystical power behind Indonesia’s thrones
Out in the compound, where gardeners were doing little more than moving around the dust, there was a reminder of why the old royal lines are still relevant in Indonesia today.
A courtier pointed out a small tower built into one wall. This was the chamber where, each year, the reigning sultan was said to have a mystical union with Kanjeng Ratu Loro Kidul, the Queen of the South Sea, who has been protector of the royal lineage since her spiritual marriage to the 16th century founder of the Mataram dynasty, which would later split into today’s three royal houses.
And therein lay the power of the old royal lines. Decaying as some of them may be, the palaces of Sultan Pakubuwono and Prince Mankunegara in Solo, and the royal palace of the Sultan of Yogyakarta, are the focal points of Javanese culture and — perhaps more importantly — Javanese mysticism, or kejawan, an often invisible thread that binds Indonesian politics, religion and culture.
Throughout history, these royals have been looked upon as mystic icons, writing inspired verse, leading sacred rituals and maintaining cosmic balance and harmony. The perception of their otherworldly connections was — and to some extent, still is — the root of their authority.
The idea of a sultan making love to a mystical goddess might sound ridiculous to most Westerners — and some Indonesians. But Sukarno, the founder of Indonesia and thus inheritor of the power of Java’s historic rulers, kept a hotel room in Bali where he claimed to have assignations with Kanjeng Ratu. It has been preserved to this day.
Suharto began practicing kejawan as a teenager and is said to have gone on frequent spiritual retreats, even building a helicopter pad near one remote meditation spot associated with Kanjeng Ratu.
Prabowo’s mystical ambitions
But where true devotion to Javanese mysticism ends and raw political expedience begins, is as opaque as Java’s famous shadow puppet plays that tell the tales of ancient battles between the light and dark.
During his first run for the presidency in 2014, Prabowo tried to position himself as the inheritor of the mantle of Diponegoro, a Javanese prince who experienced a series of religious and mystical visions that convinced him he was the divinely appointed future king of Java, or Ratu Adil (“Just King”), and led a19th century revolt against the Dutch.
This time, he has announced that he will build a full-scale replica of the palace at the heart of yet another ancient dynasty, where Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic mysticism coalesced.
But it’s likely the former general has more in mind than bolstering his mystic credentials. As one Indonesia political analyst observed, “Prabowo seems to want to revive the myth of Majapahit because it is closer to militarism.”
For the Balinese celebrating this week, Galungan is about the balance between dark and light. In Java, it seems, politicians are less concerned about cosmic balance as long as the mystic scales tip toward them.
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News. FāVS News values diverse perspectives and thoughtful analysis on matters of faith and spirituality.
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