Dick van der Meij

English

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

352 353Wacana, Vol. 11 No. 2 (Oktober 2009) RESENSI BUKUto Makassar (South Sulawesi). About the same time, that is at the end of 1998 and in early 1999, other occurrences of communal violence happened in the two other regions.One was in Sambas, where the local Malay people drove the Madurese out of their territory by. Another was in Poso, Central Sulawesi, where the Muslims were fighting against Christians. This continued for a year. At end of 1999, in North Maluku, 400 km. from Ambon, two cases of violence occurred between Muslims and Christians, and between Muslims. After that, in February 2001, another case of violence erupted in Central Kalimantan, which was patterned like the one in West Kalimantan, where the local Dayaks attacked the Madurese who lived in Sampit, a coastal town. In general, the duration of these six incidents of violence  turned from weeks into years. Between 1990-2003, they have caused hundreds to thousands of deaths, and tens even hundreds of thousands were displaced. First, the incidents took place at the district level, and later expanded to the provincial level. The violence was communal, and involved segments of society that brought in ethnicity and/or religion, and less explicitly class gaps into the conflicts, but they were not against the government. The conception of the political consensus of the “Pancasila” ideology, has failed and Van Klinken points to the increase in the presence of the issue of disintegration in the public discourse. All of a sudden, the word “disintegration” appeared in the news in June 1998, only a few days after the May riots, which set in motion President Soeharto’s downfall. Subsequently, there was a trend among the public against the idea of disintegration and chaos, and in favor of a substitute, even though it emerged locally, in the alternative idea of nationhood. The idea of “Putra Daerah” or “Local People” was elevated to express the identity of local ethnicities throughout the post-1998 period. Van Klinken has researched this local social construction in places where cases of violence took place. He especially paid attention to the relations between the local institutions, the roles of the local elites, political parties, churches, mosque organizations, non-governmental organizations, and pressure groups in the society that helped to mobilize the masses to go out to rally in the streets.--------------------------------M.C. Ricklefs, Polarising Javanese Society; Islamic and other visions (c. 1830-1930). Leiden: KITLV Press, 2007, xviii + 297 pp. ISBN 978-90-6718-276-8. Price: EUR 22.50 (soft cover).Dick van der MeijCenter for the Study of Religion and Culture,UIN Syarif Hidayatullah, JakartaDickvdm2005@yahoo.com352 353Wacana, Vol. 11 No. 2 (Oktober 2009) RESENSI BUKURight after the Java War, Javanese society was in shambles. Much was ruined and Javanese society had to find a way to realign and reestablish itself. Clearly, the situation had changed irreversibly, and new orders of Javanese society had to be made. Java was to enter a new era in its history and in this book, Ricklefs has unraveled an important part of that history. No other historian on Java would have been able to write this book. Professor Ricklefs is famous for his outstanding knowledge on the inns and outs of the history of Java seen from all possible angles and he is one of the very few who can (and does) base himself on a multitude of sources in many different languages and scripts and crossing numerous methodological boundaries. As no other, he knows that no single scholarly field is able to explain changes in any society, including Javanese society. Changes and conflict are invariably the outcomes of combinations of intertwined and mutually influencing causes and effects of all players in the field. In the case at hand, there were indeed many different players. In the time under discussion, Java was populated by Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, Chinese, Indians, Arabs, and of course, the colonial Dutch and other Europeans in their employ. There were Muslims, Christians, Confucians, colonists, sultans, civil servants, politicians, hajis, priests, authors, and writers and a host of others all involved in deciding the cultural and historical make-up of Java at the time. Each group – if we can speak of groups because it is often easily said but hard to prove that we are indeed talking of groups – had its own strengths and weaknesses, its own desires and constraints, its own ethics and morals (or lack of them). During the period, also technological findings at places on earth far removed from Java deeply influenced the situation on the island. The construction of the Suez Canal in 1869, for instance, enabled Muslims to visit Mecca and Medina in previously unheard off numbers and contacts between the Netherlands and their colony in the East increased in intensity and frequency especially after the invention of the telegraph and the telephone. Improved infrastructure in Java itself through road and railway construction gave rise to unprecedented mobility and enabled intensifying contacts and exchange of ideas and innovations. Agricultural, technological, infrastructural, political, economic, financial, religious, cultural, demographic, and many other innovations, and developments influenced the formation of society on Java. The book, however, primarily focuses on the role of Islam in the whole issue and discusses what happened to and in Javanese society while paying close attention to the other factors as well.The present book is a sequence to Mystic synthesis in Java; A history of Islamization from the fourteenth to the early nineteenth centuries (Norwalk, Connecticut: EastBridge, 2006), which is the first book in a trilogy Ricklefs is presently writing on Java. It discusses Islamization not as an isolated 354 355Wacana, Vol. 11 No. 2 (Oktober 2009) RESENSI BUKUphenomenon, but rather as a process coinciding with other processes of change. Javanese society is deeply conflicted by differing degrees of commitment to Islam. Ricklefs quite rightly points in the book to the importance of the lessons we may learn from the Javanese case about what happens when differences within the same religion (Islam) become replicated in educational systems, political organizations and political actions (p. xv). Central to the issues addressed in the book is the concept of ‘mystic synthesis’ which has three characteristic features: commitment to Islam, commitment to fulfilling the ritual obligations of Islam, and the acceptance of the reality of many local spiritual forces from village spirits, haunted sites and inanimate things “alive” with spirits to the immensely powerful Goddess of the Southern Ocean. All of this was within the capacious boundaries of Javanese Sufism (p. 251). This concept was what bound the Javanese Muslims up to 1830. After 1830, all three constituent elements of this mystic synthesis came to be rejected by some part of Javanese society.After 1830, there were three dramatic changes in Javanese society. One was the new context of Dutch colonial rule with the implementation of the cultuurstelsel and its dismantling after 1870. This period also witnessed changes in prosperity, intensifying roles of money, changes in transportation, infrastructure, communications, education, and many other elements of modernizing society. Secondly, the period showed enormous population increase and thirdly it was a period of Islamic reform and revivalism as well as rejection of Islam among certain circles.The first chapter is a brief summary of the first book in the trilogy and the part of the book I do not particularly like. I strongly feel that reading the original book is required in order to grasp Ricklefs finely attuned arguments on the mystic synthesis much better than this summary is able to provide. For instance. On page three is mentioned that ‘such evidence as we have from the early centuries of Islam in Java supports the view that mysticism – Sufism – was the dominant style of Islam there. The two sixteenth-century manuscripts that survive are both mystical’. The accidental existence of these two manuscripts is of course not enough even to begin to prove any trend in the way Islam was practiced in Java. I am sure that the original first book had a much more convincing way of telling this part of the story as with the next issue. The works of literature ascribed to Ratu Pakubuwana, Carita Sultan Iskandar, Carita Yusuf, and Kitab Usulbiyah departed from the mystic synthesis because they did not mention local forces as Sunan Lawu or Ratu Kidul (p. 7). My question here would be how they would have fitted into these stories, given their specific story plots.The book really takes off with the second chapter “Javanese society’s nineteenth-century colonial context”. In 1830, the Java War ended in victory for the Dutch and a period of increasing intensifying colonization ensued. The colony had to become a source of income for the Dutch rather than a source of deficit. The infamous cultuurstelsel was implemented and the Javanese had to plant specific crops and to hand over significant percentages of the 354 355Wacana, Vol. 11 No. 2 (Oktober 2009) RESENSI BUKUharvests to the Dutch. The ‘system’ was added to the system of land taxes already levied on the Javanese. Ricklefs points to the various ways Dutch and other scholars have tried to interpret the evidence on the significance of the cultuurstelsel. After 1830 we are talking of ‘a society in flux, not some so-called “traditional” society tied to a “traditional” way of life’ (p. 15). The peasant population was moreover highly mobile. The cultuurstelsel involved everybody and had various impacts on the Javanese. Farmers suffered the corruption of those in charge (already at that time!) whereas others found and exploited unprecedented possibilities for personal enrichment. Demographic answers to the situation differed widely on the island as well. Some areas saw their population increase whereas in others the number of people declined. Regional and temporal variety is therefore great and complicates a clear understanding of what was really going on. The third chapter “The diverging worlds of pious Islam” sketches the variety of Islam in Java in the period under discussion and pays much attention to the role of texts to our understanding of what the mystic synthesis and Javanese Islam in general entailed. Ricklefs points to the fact that ‘the evolution of Javanese Islam during the nineteenth century is a complex matter, with transitional stages and hybrid states that are unclear in the evidence and difficult to untangle’ (p. 30). Other aspects are discussed as well such as the hajj and the growth of the number of religious teachers, the role of pesantren and Sufism.The fourth chapter “The birth of the Abangan” tells of the abangan or nominal or non-practising Muslims and traces the history of the term and the group of Muslims it signifies. Chapter 5 “Javanese Christian communities” continues with a short exposition of the birth of the Christian missionary activities in Java and the early Christian communities. Chapter 6 “The Elite’s New Horizons” tells the history of the priyayi and their role in cultural and political life in Java. Chapter 7 “Anti-Islamic Reaction: Budi and Buda” presents the history of movements away from Islam and forefronts three texts that were important in the dissemination of these reactionary thoughts: Babad Kĕdhiri, Sĕrat Gatholoco, and Sĕrat Dĕrmogandhul. The eighth chapter “Polarities politicised, c. 1908-1930” pays attention to Java’s entrance in modern society with the founding of Budi Utomo in 1908, Taman Siswa in 1922, Sarekat Islam in 1912. The final chapter contains the “Conclusions: religion, politics and conflicted societies”. The book is extremely rich in observations, details and analysis and the above mentioned cannot but provide a small idea of what may be found in the book. Ricklefs has worked his way through an impressive amount of information in multiple languages and scripts and has written a book that is an absolute must for anyone interested in Javanese history and the history of Islam in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. It has a much wider, significance, however. The book ends with the important observation that the history of Islam in Java can teach us much about the situation in our own times and in other places on earth:356 357Wacana, Vol. 11 No. 2 (Oktober 2009) RESENSI BUKUThese matters are of more than abstract interest. Group conflicts, especially when defined by religious differences, is a significant issue in human history. In our time, it is arguably among the most significant of human issues. How does such religiously defined conflict originate? How does it grow? How can it be brought to an end? In our attempt to answer such questions, the history of the Javanese people may have much to teach us (p. 264). --------------------------------Gusti Asnan, Memikir ulang regionalisme Sumatera Barat tahun 1950-an. Jakarta: Yayasan Obor Indonesia and KITLV Jakarta, 2007, xxvi + 264 pp. ISBN 978-979-461-640-6. Price: IDR 63,000 (soft cover). Wannofri SamryCentre for Historical, Political and Strategic Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysiawannofri@yahoo.comThe study of the social-political history of West Sumatra in the 1950s has not received much attention of researchers. Events that took place during that period are often neglected, and if interest is demonstrated, it is usually incorporated in broader studies as in Audrey Kahin’s book (2005), and Mestika Zed’s study. More focused studies on the dynamics of politics and democracy in the region have not been conducted. Although the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia (Pemerintah Revolusioner Republik Indonesia, PRRI) is often discussed, its historical roots in the 1950s have not been studied in-depth.In this book, Gusti Asnan presents something different in terms of his use of sources, theory, as well as scope. He studied new archival sources and mass media documents which before him were probably regarded as of less importance but which he considers as valuable sources.Although he does not verbally use major sociological and political theories, Gusti analyses several social elite groups, studies the change in local social-political structures, and changes at the national level. He has attempted to relate social-political symptoms present among the grassroots, such as at the nagari (village) level, with state political conditions in Java. As the core of the Minangkabau, the nagari community apparently actively responded to political processes taking place at the national level. The nagari community and its reaction to these developments are the base for the emergence of various 

Polarising Javanese Society; Islamic and other visions (c. 1830-1930)

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Polarising Javanese Society; Islamic and other visions (c. 1830-1930)

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Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia