Page 58 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

Indonesia: perning in the Gyre 47
state (Steinberg 1987). Naturally, the modern political culture has a more
traditional context, for example Kingsbury uses Wittfogel’s idea of hydraulic
cultures (Wittfogel 1957) to explain Indonesia’s inward looking and politically
autocratic nature, as well as the domination by a military elite (Kingsbury and
Aveling 2003: 114). The impact of structural considerations – social and physical
factors: geography, economic and sociological structure provide the institutional
basis for the development of Indonesia’s mass media of communication and the
other objective elements that are seen as having inhibited political participation,
including cultural variables such as the traditional Javanese concept of self, ideal
social behaviour, patronship and power (Jackson 1978: 23).
Further, the combination of traditional, Islamic and modern culture combine
with the state ideology instituted at the time of independence – pancasila. In its
preamble, the 1945 constitution sets forth the pancasila as the embodiment of
the basic principles of an independent Indonesian state. In brief, and in the order
given in the constitution, the pancasila principles comprise: a belief in one
supreme God, humanitarianism, nationalism expressed in the unity of Indonesia,
consultative democracy, and social justice. Designed by modern Indonesia’s
founding father Sukarno, pancasila sought to meet the ideological needs of the
new nation, and, as with the adoption of Bahasa as the national language, represented
part of the effort to build a new nation.
These elements exist in an ‘incongruous harmony’ (Lubis 1983: 7): a syncretic
melange imposed on society where power is still informed by a feudal past where
the King’s power was an extension of the power of the Gods, at the centre of soci-
ety, like the head of the family. Criticism of those in power was not tolerated, and
the ruling elite traditionally had very little communication with the common
people – where they did, ‘communication is always from the top downward, never
the other way around. The traffic is strictly one-way’ (Lubis 1983: 23).
But, even the strong hand of Sukarno’s successor Suharto could not prevent
divisions emerging across the country, even within Angkatan Bersenjata Republik
Indonesia (ABRI) – the Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia, which is the
1
protector of the pancasila faith. Many were based around more localised national
identities, in Banda Aceh, Timor and Papua, but recently the modern veneer has
seen religious concerns push through the uneven surface, with evidence of a shift
in the past decade towards greater public and private practice of the Islamic faith.
The increased religious identification, in turn, reflects wider trends in the
region, the growing awareness of Islam’s global identity, and the increasingly
coherent emergence of its militant expression. As Marxism once was, Islam has
become a change agent, ‘transforming the culture and institutions of modern
Southeast Asia, sometimes buttressing them against the advance of global capi-
talism and Western popular culture, at other times accommodating notions of
democracy and universal human rights’ (Raymer 2002).
But, Southeast Asian Muslims, like Muslims worldwide, face competing
interpretations of Islam and themselves adopt and utilise the identity in varying
ways. While rural Indonesia often reflects the mix of faiths, that is the country’s
inheritance, urban Indonesians have become, on the whole, modern. Moderate