Jakarta (August 17)

Photo: Sukarno “Sipping Kopi Tubruk, the strong black Javanese coffee I cannot live without, during college days in Bandung, 1925″ (from Sukarno: An Autobiography, As Told to Cindy Adams, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1965).

A useful time line of the War if Independence, 1945-1950, can be found here at Sejarah Indonesia:

August 17, 1945 is the appropriate date to recognize Indonesian independence. It is equivalent to July, 4, 1776 in the United States.  In the case of both nations all that achieved on these respective dates was to declare that they were free of the colonial order.

The time line states that:

“August 29 The New Republic: The constitution that had been drafted by the PPKI preparatory committee, and announced on the 18th, is adopted (UUD 45). Sukarno is declared President, Hatta is declared Vice-President. PPKI (originally BPUPKI, founded under the Japanese occupation the previous March) is remade into KNIP (Central Indonesian National Committee). KNIP is the temporary governing body until elections can be held. The new government is installed on August 31.”

In 1947 Egypt and Syria were the first nations to officially recognize RI.

Sukarno was the exemplary center of Indonesian nationalism. No other political figure of his time or this has exhibited the single-minded purpose of the Indonesian Nation as Sukarno. Sukarno was, in fact, Indonesia and it is difficult to conceive of the nation without this most remarkable man.

Sukarno speaks:

“The city of pilgrimage”, as Jogja became known, numbered 170,000 inhabitants. In the next few week, the entire government moved inland and the population swelled to 600,000. Our ministers were billeted in home with Jogjanese families. Our ministries were the front parlors. Our flags which ran the whole length of a bamboo pole flew in every yard.

We operated more like a band of thieves than a government. We had nothing. No typewriters, stationary, airplanes; the only salvageable radio equipment was of 1935 vintage. We also had no money. Indonesia’s Japanese currency has depreciated. In the first minutes after independence, Dr. Suharto [not THE Suharto] acted as our treasurer. And his was a one-man business. He had no time to count out devalued bills so he’d weigh up a pile and parcel it out to us by the kilo. By the time we moved to Central Java we had our own money. That is the Republic was grinding out currency on a hand printing press, so in theory we had our own money, but it wasn’t good anywhere. Nobody would accept it. We had nothing to back it up but our printing press.

The only way to get what we desperately needed was to smuggle. And everybody smuggled for the Republic. My current Ambassador to Japan ran sugar. My former Ambassador to America ran opium. Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Manila were four excellent smugglers’ towns. My men worked all four.

Singapore was a goldmine. We robbed warehouses for textiles until we discovered the British were easily corrupted and could be bribed with contraband we’d smuggle elsewhere in return for ready made uniforms from military stores. Singapore suddenly suffered a big rash of fires of army supply stores. Our contacts couldn’t dare tell their superiors that they were being bribed so one by one each burned his emporium down to “legitimately” account for the losses.

You could always tell where my men made a killing. One week a military unit sported Canadian hats. The following month another blossomed forth in English blouses. Following a run of good luck, our top smuggler presented me with a package. “It’s a skirt from the Australian Women’s Army Corp”, he beamed happily. “The material’s very good quality and never been worn.” I wasn’t the sort who looked trim in brown wool skirts but I badly needed something so I remade it into a pair of military shorts and had aperfectly good outfit for a long while.

A high official in my Cabinet smuggled nine kilograms of gold and 300 kilograms of silver from Sumatra as a down payment for 20,000 uniforms. Our men were judged differently depending on whose side you were on. The man who arranged the gold and silver trade and also spirited out 8,000 tons of rubber was Pak Gani. The Netherlands called him a top swindler. The Indonesians knew him as the Minister of Economics.

Besides those foreign soldiers of fortune who’d hijack anybody for money, we were also helped by idealists. One dear boy just showed up from nowhere one day and introduced himself. “My name’s Bob Freberg. I’m an American. I’m a pilot and I sympathize with your struggle. How can I help?”

After the war Hong Kong had a sale on used airplanes. I mean, what can’t you buy in Hong Kong, right? Everything’s for sale there if you’ve got the price. And by hook or crook, by gold or opium, we managed to get the price. We bought two second-hand Dakotas and Bob Freberg flew me everywhere. He crashed in ‘47 when I sent him to Palembang with money to aid the Sumatran guerrillas. Never will I forget my American friend, Bob Freberg.

The Indians were helpful, too. During the battle of Surabaya, 600 deserted to us. We got many good things out of the Indians. They’re born smugglers. India was starving. In return for tons of rice, friends there smuggled us an airplane. Always altering its course its course, this plane ferried back and forth to Manila. It loaded at two a.m. with a cargo of coffee or quinine and returned immediately with a spare parts, medicines, supplies, and munitions they had ready for me. The Dutch finally shot it down in Jogja.”

The Nation and the State

In his classic study of nationalism “Imagined Communities” published in 1983 [Imagined Communities, Verso, 2006] Benedict Anderson relates the following:

“In 1913, the Dutch colonial regime in Batavia, taking its lead from the Hague, sponsored massive colony-wide festivities to celebrate the centennial of the ‘national liberation’ of the Nathelands from French Imperialism. Orders went out the secure physical participation and financial contributions, not merely from the local Dutch and Eurasian communities, but also from the subject native population. In protest, the early Javanese-Indonesian nationalist Suwardi Surjaningat (Ki Hadjar Dewantoro) wrote his famous Dutch-language newspaper article ‘A;s ik eens Nederlander was’ (If I were for once to be a Dutchman).

In my opinion, there is something out of place – something indecent – if we (I was still being a Dutchman in my imagination) ask the natives to join festivities which celebrate our independence. Firstly, we will hurt their sensitive feelings because we are here celebrating our own independence in their native country which we colonize. At the moment we are very happy because a hundred years ago we liberated ourselves from foreign domination; and all of this is occurring in from of the eyes of those who are still under our domination. Does it not occur to us that these poor slaves are also longing for such a moment as this, when they like us will be able to celebrate their independence? Or do we perhaps feel that because of our soul-destroying policy we regard all human souls as dead? If that is so, then we are deluding ourselves, because no matter how primitive a community is, it is against any type of oppression. If I were a Dutchman, I would not organize an independence celebration in a country where the independence of the people has been stolen.

With these words Suwardi was able to turn Dutch history against the Dutch, by scraping boldly at the weld between Dutch nationalism and imperialism.  Furthermore, by the imaginary transformation of himself into a temporary Dutchman (which invited a reciprocal transformation of his Dutch readers into temporary Indonesians) he undermined all the racists fatalities that underlay Dutch colonial ideology.”

Ann Laura Stoler in ‘Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieities and Colonial Common Sense’ [Princeton University Press, 2009] asks:

“Why is it easier to imagine, as Benedict Anderson writes, that “millions of people…willingly die for [nations]” but not for states? How is that a citizenry can accrue virtue by sacrificing their lives for nations, even though people are killed not by nations but by states? “Nation” and “sentiment” are often treated as an obvious pairing while “state” and “sentiment” are not. How is it that states are commonly viewed as institutional machines that squelch and counter passions, while nations are envisioned as culturally rich producers of them? Why does the pairing of “state” and “sentiment” read as an oxymoron?”

In 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

This is truly a fine sentiment but the unfortunate reality is that all men are not created equal in the eyes of other men.  In American history this is manifestly apparent in the American Civil War in which the war dead exceeds in numbers all the other wars America has fought combined.

The issues of equality are still being vigorously fought over. American history is rife with crimes against humanity from the treatment of Native American Native peoples through to the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But is this the “nation” speaking or is it the “state”?

In Indonesia the concept of ‘pancasila’ was first articulated on June 1, 1945, in a speech delivered by Sukarno.  Sukarno argued that the future Indonesian state should be based on the Five Principles: Indonesian nationalism; internationalism, or humanism; consent, or democracy; social prosperity; and belief in one God.

While some have regarded this as a “state” philosophy I would rather see it as a “national” one. As best that could be brought forth given Indonesia’s wide cultural, political, and religious diversity.

But, as the United States, Indonesia has a long list of crimes against humanity to contend with.  The suppression and torture of political prisoners, writers, and poets. The suppression of nationalist movements in Aceh, Maluku, Timor, and Papua. The 1965-66 purges of the PKI. The entire regime of the New Oder. The uneven development which has left its cities with masses of urban poor.

This August 17 it is worth the time to note the meaning of the “nation” and the meaning of the “state” .

There is a difference.

Perhaps one is worth celebrating and one is not.

Jakarta (Sukarno Under Attack)

Photo: Sukarno, Life Magazine, John Dominis, 1960

After God made Sukarno he broke the mould. Sukarno is the supreme political figure in Indonesian history. There has been no one like him since. He was effectively the leader of Indonesia for twenty years, from 1945 until the Soeharto coup of 1965.

He spent thirteen years of his life in Dutch prisons or in exile before independence. In the twenty years in which he led the nation there were six assassination attempts made on him– all conducted by Darul Islam, the forerunner of Jaamal Islamiya.

The recent bombings in Jakarta then are nothing new.

Miraculously, unexpectedly, Sukarno’s Indonesia perists.

Below is an excerpt from Sukarno: An Autobiography (As told to Cindy Adams), published by Bobbs-Merrill, 1965.

It is a remarkable book. Here is Sukarno in his own words. Reading it makes you realize what an amazing, alive and remarkable individual Sukarno was. When the book ends you realize how much he gave to Indonesia and how much he is missed.

Sukarno:

“There is always conflict between the force pushing toward progress and the force which retards. Darul Islam, the violent, limited religious fanatical right-wing terrorist group which demands an Islamic State, has waged war against me since 1948. In the ‘50’s Kartosuwirio was the firespitter who preached, “Kill Sukarno. He is the obstacle keeping us from Negara Islam. Sukarno says the Moslem God is not the only God. Sukarno works against us. Sukarno says Indonesia is based on Pantja Sila, not Islam. The answer to the problem is KILL SUKARNO!”

On the 30th of November, 1957, he nearly succeeded. I was leaving a fund-raising bazaar at the Tjikini School which was attended by my two eldest children. It had been a gala affair with balloons, confetti, music, songs, an auction, a playlet. Five hundred guests plus faculty, children, and thousands of spectators stood in the rain at 8:55 pm as our party came down the narrow little stairs from the second floor where the entertainment had been held.

In my gay mood I playfully touseled the hair of one child who trotted alongside me on my left and hugged another who clung to my right leg. I was covered with children. As we reached the outside, my limousine doors were flung open and, following the then official custom signaling the President’s departure, the Escort Commander called, “Hormat-Attention.” This was a costly command. During that split second when everything and everybody stopped for a general salute, the first grenade was thrown.

From the left of the building another grenade. From the right another, followed by the beat of a heart. It became chillingly clear what was happening. My reflex action was to protect the babies. I stooped to shelter them when a guard pushed me down hard behind the car. I used that as a shield until a shell, thrown from about five meters off, went clean through the engine, blew out the windshield, ripped the interior apart and exploded two tires. The fourth, hurled from across the street, shattered the other side of the car. Children screamed and stampeded into the building. Guests rolled under cars or into ditches. Scores were hurt. Hundreds were dashed to the ground. I saw the force of the blast flatten one police inspector up against a pole. Blood was everywhere.

After the car was shelled, my aide, Major Sudarto, pulled me by the arm and we scrambled across the street. In the dark and in the panic we couldn’t see our way and I fell flat on the ground. He picked me up and clinging fast to each other we ran into a house. The fifth explosion caught him in the leg and opened the thigh of a second officer who was shielding me with his body.

The house we ran into belonged to a Dutchman. Lest the President of Indonesia meet his maker on Dutch territory, I scurried out and went into another shelter. Within minutes nearby police and army garrisons were on the scene. An ambulance followed and an emergency hospital was set up in the school. Forty-eight children were critically wounded. Several were crippled for life. At 10:00 pm a reserve car brought me back to the istana. By 11 I was on the radio to calm the people and reassure them I was alive and unharmed. By midnight the religious fanatics who opposed my policy were rounded up. Within 24 hours our Intelligence Service had apprehended all four would-be assassins. I thought of the innocent victims buried under the ground. I thought of the nine babies and the pregnant woman I saw fall dead at my feet. Because one fanatic wanted to kill me, many were killed. And so I affixed my signature to the order of Kartosuwirio’s execution. In 1963 Kartosuwirio was shot before a firing squad. It was not an act of satisfaction. It was an act of justice.

On March 9, 1960, Darul Islam tried again. I was at home and, for some reason, sitting in a chair other than my usual one. A low flying airplane dropped its package of death squarely on the place in which, except for the hand of God, I would have been sitting.

Another time was the Idul Adha holy day. It was 1962. The faithful, including Sukarno, were on the grass in front of Merdeka bowed down in humble prayer. Suddenly shots rang out in rapid succession. It was one lone man with bad aim…

…There have been two other attempts of assassinate me. Both were in Makassar. A sixth time, while driving in a procession, I spied a strange man looking furtive. He caught my eye and something stopped him…”

In the end Darul Islam was not successful in any of their attempts at assassinating Sukarno. The end of his presidency came at the hands of the CIA puppet Soeharto in 1965.

Jakarta (Shadow Play)

Sukarno: Image: © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS – Photographer: Bert Hardy – Date Photographed: April 1949

The Jakarta Indonesia Urban Blog will soon be moving from Hilo, Hawaii to Hololulu, Hawaii. We’re packing up the house, the library, and the cats and moving to the big city. Although I have to admitt that  Hilo is to Honolulu what Honolulu is to Jakarta, if you follow that logic. Nevertheless, Honolulu is a city.

I will be attending graduate school at the University of Hawaii – Manoa and will focus on urban geography, with a particular emphasis on my beloved city of Jakarta. I am looking forward to the move.

I also thank you for your continued support in visiting this blog.

Postings will be rather sporadic through the summer but there is enough here on this blog to keep anyone busy who might be  interested in Jakarta.

I am currently reading two biographies of Sukarno. The first is Sukarno: An Autobiography, As told to Cindy Adams, published in 1965 by Bobbs-Merrill. A  most interesting read. Sukarno’s voice is both precise, candid,  and clear in the text. This is a book I highly recommend because you can feel just how full of life Sukarno is. He is not afraid of his faults nor of his love of Indonesia.

The other book is Soekarno: Founding Father of Indonesia, 1901-1945 written by Bob Hering and published in 2002 by Koninklijk Instituut Voor de Tropen. Which explains the spelling of Sukarno’s name. This is a closely written academic type of book and quite exhaustive in its documentation. It’s sort of the flip side of the Cindy Adams book but well worth reading as it fills in Sukarno’s glosses.

Properly his name is spelled as “Sukarno” and not “Soekarno.” “Soekarno” being the the Dutch spelling of the name. Although, even Sukarno admitts himself that he often signed official state documents using the “Soekarno” spelling.  The old colonial habits were and are  hard to quit.

Both books are  posted as Book(s) of the Week.

This coming June 6 is Sukarno’s birthday. My intent here is to write and reflect a bit on this most remarkable man.  If there had been no Sukarno there would be no Indonesia.

I thought I would start by sharing a few video clips.

The following clips are from the documentary Shadow Play  of the production company Hilton Cordell, by Vagabond Films, produced by Sylvie Le Clezio and Chris Hilton, directed and wirtten by Chris Hilton, with the original music by Scott Saunders and narrated by Linda Hunt.

Synopsis

“In Indonesia, on 30 September 1965 a group of President Sukarno’s guards murdered six generals who were anti-Communist. General Suharto blamed the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). Suharto grabbed power and set up death squads to murder up to a million accused Communist sympathisers. The documentary traces the events from 1965 to today. Archival film is used together with interviews and re-enactments.”

September 30 is still a date in Indonesian history which even the Indonesians have yet to fully come to terms with.  This is a topic I would like to explore in future posts.

Clip 1: Sukarno

“Reviews the background and leadership of President Sukarno, leader of Indonesia from 1949 to 1965. He had led the independence movement after the Second World War and embraced communism while preaching religious tolerance as a means to unite Indonesia’s various ideologies and religions.”

done

Clip 2: ‘Not a Slaughter’

done

Clip 3: When a coup is a transfer of power

done

Jakarta (fear of the street, part 1)

President Sukarno Addressing May Day Rally 5/7/1965-Djakarta, Indonesia- President Sukarno of Indonesia addresses a mass May Day rally in the Sports Hall Building. Sukarno announced his decision not to attend a peace conference with Malaysian Prime Minister Rahman in Tokyo. The announcement was viewed as a victory for Indonesia’s powerful Communist Party. Posters above the silent crowd stress the unity of the working classes in their struggle to overcome “imperialism.”
Image: © Bettmann/CORBIS
Date Photographed: May 7, 1965

see: kaskus

Reading further into Abidon Kusno’s book Behind the Postcolonial: Arctitecture, urban space and political cultures in Indonesia is both interesting and enlightening.

All cities have their aspects of violence. American cities have long been associated with violence. Gang warfare, the drug trade, and poverty, domestic violence, random shootings fills the news here in a regular cycle. But Jakarta being Jakarta fear of the street has its own particular aspect.

What follows is a review, of sorts, from Chapter Four, which Kusno has titled:

 The Violence of Categories: Urban Space and the Making of the National Subject

Let us again begin with Sukarno. The sub-chapter headings are from Kusno.

THE CITY, THE SUPREME LEADER AND THE EMBODIMENT OF THE NATIONAL SUBJECT

“My friends and my children, I am no Communist… I am not prejudiced. I am no dictator. I am no holy man or reincarnation of God. I am just an ordinary human being like you and you and you… Why is it that people ask me to give a speech to them, even when the sun is at its hottest? The answer is this: What Bung (brother) Karno says is actually written in the hearts of the Indonesian people. The people want to hear their own voice but… they cannot speak eloquently for themselves… (Therefore) when I die… do not write on the tombstone: ‘Here rests His Most Exalted Excellency Dr. Ir. Raden Sukarno, the first President of the Republic of Indonesia’ … [but] write… ‘Here rests Bung Karno, the Tongue of the Indonesian People”.

-Sukarno, 1959

“In every Seventeenth of August meeting [Independence Day] … it is as though I held a dialogue. A dialogue with the people of Indonesia. A two-way conversation with Sukarno-the-man and Sukarno-the people, a two-way conversation between comrade in arms and comrade in arms. A two-way conversation between two comrades who in reality are one. That is why, every time I prepare a Seventeenth of August address I become like a person possessed”.

-Sukarno, 1963

Kusno suggests that the results of political experimentation in the decade of the 1950s ultimately ended in social and political unrest threatening Indonesia’s national unity and national economy. Sukarno’s response was to initiate “guided democracy” based on the leadership of his personal authority. Sukarno’s reasoning was that the troubles which beset Indonesia were the outcome of the politics of the “looseness” of the center. Indonesia “should become whole again, that the state become whole again”, as Sukarno stated.

Kusno argues that in order for Sukarno to achieve this end that, “…it appeared important for Sukarno to find a way to communicate with the whole population, and to convince them that he, the leader, is not merely representing “them” as the head of state, but he actually is them…” and that, “Sukarno, as the “extension of the tongue of the people” is also “Sukarno the people.” This political representation demanded that Sukarno embody the people himself as a way to communicate with them. As a result, “populist politics” was initiated, a policy which demanded the constant mobilization of the crowds on the principal streets of the capital city (emphasis mine). In this period of populist politics, in the first quarter of the 1960s, the city of Jakarta became a symbolic representation of state power”.

As illustrated in the Sukarno quotes in the previous posting Sukarno then began his program to rebuild the central part of Jakarta with monuments, a department store, a convention center, a stadium, and grand boulevards. Jakarta, certainly the idea of Jakarta, was linked to nation building. Jakarta was the stage of populist politics and high performances. Acted out by Sukarno this was the appeal to “the street”.

Kusno again: “In this train of subjective thought, the Parliament House, the people’s Republic of Indonesia, and Sukarno, the megalomanic architect, are all interchangeable, each one representing the other. The imagined Parliament House was to be a building that would capture the voices of the 105 million people in the country in which he could better hear them and also speak with them. Sukarno represents the people, and the people are represented by the buildings and the city he created. Through the city, a singular collective national body was created. It is from this early official affinity between the city and the nation that as Toer wrote in 1955, one begins to feel that “one cannot be fully Indonesian until one has seen Jakarta”. Once one identifies with the nation’s capital, one is an Indonesian.”

1965 would be the breaking point. The bother (bung) was overthrown and the father (pak) would take his place.

THE SCENE OF THE STREET: THE STATE OF NEW ORDER AND THE PATHOLOGICAL COLLECTIVE SUBJECT

“Before” appears as a time of chaos, with men and women angrily gesticulating and debating. Then Suharto takes control – the symbol of reason and harmony. “After” shows people quietly going about their business, under the protective eye of the military.

(Abeyasekere 1987)

Kusno begins, “Perhaps it was in relation to this extraordinary attempt to produce a single abstract body of the nation that, when Suharto took power from Sukarno in 1966, he ended this era of populist politics. His regime, officially named as the New Order, legitimized itself by “decapitating” the supreme leader, disembodying the single collective body of Sukarno and turning the revolutionary street into a space of discipline and fear”.

This New Order begins with the massacre of perhaps as many as half a million Indonesians. The New Order characterizes politics of the Sukarno era as one of chaos, communism, and a danger to the stability of the state. As a result, Kusno notes, “the space of the street, the locus of Sukarno’s revolution, has been turned into the site of “disturbance”. It became a “dangerous” place which, in the name of national security, demanded constant anticipation from the government. With the end of populist politics, Sukarno’s revolutionary subject was decapitated and the street, where they used to parade, was criminalized”.

The example Kusno gives of the New Order’s politics of the street comes from acts of state terrorism which took place in the early 1980s.

By the early 1980s the New Order was busying itself with “producing a new generation of “modern” Indonesian”: elevated highways, office towers, “dream homes” in the suburbs. But what was to come came as a shock and so it was intended.

Kusno: “During this period, urbanites began to find the corpses of tattooed men known as “gali” on the streets. “Gali” were mostly petty criminals and members of gangs. To ensure the winning of the 1982 election, the government hired many of these people. When they were no longer needed, the shooting began. The “gali” were killed and their bodies left in the streets as public spectacle. This state-sponsored operation became known as the case of “Petrus-Penembak Misterius” (mysterious shooter) and “Matius-Mayat Misterius” (mysterious corpse)”.

The names, as Kusno points out are the names of Catholic Saints, Saint Peter (“Petrus”) and Saint Matthew (“Matius”) and refer to the “powerful presence of Catholic officers and civilians in Indonesia’s security apparatus that were sent to “discipline” the Catholic province of East Timor”.  The techniques of terror and social control used in the Indonesian war against East Timor after it was “pacified” were transposed other localities through Indonesia including Jakarta.

Kusno: “…this technique of violence was soon integrated into the national pedagogy. To the incident of “Petrus” and “Matius”, it was reported that President Suharto, after the operation, was proudly fascinated by the technique that “…the corpses were left where they were, just like that“. For him “this was for ’shock therapy’ (in English). This therapy, as James Siegel points out, is meant to shock in order to cure, and is directed not at criminals but at the general populace. The corpses were left in the streets, Suharto continues, “so that the crowds (‘organg banyak’) would understand that, faced with criminals, there [are] (sic) still some who would act and would control them“.

“What is extraordinary in this statement is the way the state makes its appearance on the street through the dead bodies of those considered as “criminal”. Through the display of the murder victims, viewers see the state, and acknowledge its presence. This “theatrical representation of pain” in which the power of the state was inscribed in the visible flesh of the condemned serve to discipline and normalize the well-being of the general populace. However, the corpses, instead of scaring people away, as Siegel reports, “became attractions not only to newspapers readers but to people on the streets where the bodies were distributed”. Through this display of violence towards the underclass, collective identities were constituted (empasis mine). The dead body is the message sent by the state to the “underclass”, who are seen as potential criminals, as a way of communicating with them. The message, however, also addresses the upper class, which fear that they are not distinguishable from “criminals”. This method of “criminalizing” the street makes the corpses on the street a sign of menace provoking, as a result, as Siegel indicates, a fear among the general populace not merely towards the “gali”, but the possibility of them to be like the “gali”. This displacement of the street creates a collective body of the populace whose identity is contructed through a retreat from it (emphasis mine).”

 As my wife would say, “Just wow”.  I had been mulling these ideas over for some time. When I finally got to Kusno’s book I was blown away. There is more to come…

I have quoted Kusno at length here in this post.  His analysis is spot on and serves to set up the second part of this review (which I hope to post soon) which will address the economic crisis and the Jakarta riots of 1997-1998 in context of the urban poor, the urban intellectuals, the urban middle class and the state elite to further explore the idea of  ”fear of the street”.

 

Jakarta (Bung Karno)

Sukarno 1948  – Born in 1901 in Surabaya. First President of Indonesia. Architect. Genius. Womanizer. And, yes, indeed, a megalomaniac. I love him.

“Is Jakarta the awful culmination of the nation’s past or does it in fact mirror Indonesia’s future? Throughout its history its rulers have certainly intended the latter, but the real city has always taken its own perversely different path, making it to some extent a microcosm of the country at large- a forum for government policies at odds with people struggling to make a life of their own”.

Abeyasekere 1987: xvii

“Dust lies hot on streets
Clearly empty of love and pity;
It’s not like my green village
Here”.

- Ebiet Ade

“As you know, I am an architect. Besides, I have been roaming far and wide abroad… and everywhere, in every country, I’ve seen the Parliament Building is always the most prestigious… Oh, yes, I am indeed a megalomaniac…”

Cited in Leclerc 1993: 54

“Build up Djakarta as beautifully as possible; build it as spectacularly as possible, so that this city, which has become the center of the struggle of the Indonesian people, will be an inspiration and beacon to the whole of struggling mankind and to all the emerging forces. If Egypt was able to construct Cairo as its capital, Italy its Rome, France its Paris and Brazil its Brasilia, then Indonesia must also proudly present Djakarta as the portal of the country”.

Sukarno 1962 (The Transformation of Djakarta Raya)

“Projects such as the Asian Games, the National Monument, Independence Mosque, the Jakarta By-pass, and so on, are examples of “National Building” and “Character Building” …of the whole Indonesian people striving to recover out national identity. Who is not aware that every people in the world is always striving to enhance its greatness and lofty ideals? Do you remember that a great leader of a foreign country told me that monuments are an absolute necessity to develop the people’s spirit, as necessary as pants for somebody naked, pants and not a tie? Look at New York and Moscow; look at any state capital, East and West it makes no matter, and you always find the centers of nations’ greatness in the form of buildings, material buildings to be proud of”.

Cited in Leclerc 1993:52

“Man does not live by bread alone. Although Djakarta’s alleys are muddy and we lack roads, I have erected a brick-and-glass apartment building, a clover-leaf bridge, and our super highway, the Djakarta Bypass, and I renamed the streets after our heroes: Djalan Diponegoro, Djalan Thamrin, Djalan Tjokroaminoto. I consider money for material symbols well spent. I must make Indonesians proud of themselves. They have cringed too long”.

Cited in Abeyasekere 1987:210

“Comrades from Jakarta, let us build a Jakarta into the greatest city possible. Great not just from a material point of view; great, not just because of its skyscrapers; great not just because it has boulevards and beautiful streets; great not just because it has beautiful monuments; great in every respect, even in the little houses of the workers of Jakarta there must be a sense of greatness… Give Jakarta an extraordinary place in the minds of the Indonesian people, because Jakarta belongs to the people of Jakarta. Jakarta belongs to the whole Indonesian people. More than that, Jakarta is becoming the beacon of the whole of mankind. Yes, the beacon of the New Emerging Forces”.

Cited in Abeyasekere 1987:168

“Who is not proud that he is a member of a nation that is not stagnant, of a nation that is moving, moving, moving on swiftly towards a building of a great state, whole and strong, that stretches from Sabang to Merauke, a great state that moves forward fast toward a life that is noble and respected, just and prosperous, that is a beacon to others, that had no exploitation de l’homme par l’homme, and that is rapidly becoming one of the champions of the new emerging forces, a nation that is moving to realize socialism based on its own identity?”

Cited in Feith and Castles 1970:118-19

“What we ask is just a dike
No monuments or football stadiums
Or coloured fountains
Send us lime and cement”.

-Taufiq Ismail

Cited in Teeuw 1967:254

Notes:

Abeyasekere, S. 1987. Jakarta: A History. Singapore. Oxford University Press.

A is for Abeyasekere. Susan Abeyasekere, Jakarta’s historian. If you have anything to say about Jakarta at all you start with her. Her book is perhaps cited more than any other text in journal articles, books, and Jakarta Urban Blog.

Kusno, A. 2000. Behind the Post Colonial: Architecture, urban space and political cultures in Indonesia. Routeledge.

I am currently reading Kusno’s most interesting book. Most of the Sukarno quotes are cited there.

Leclerc, J. 1993. ‘Mirrors and the Lighthouse: A Search for Meaning in the Monuments and Great Works of Sukarno’s Jakarta, 1960-1966′ in Nas, P. (ed.) Urban Symbolism, Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Teeuw, A. 1967. Modern Indonesian Literature. The Hague: Nijhoff.

Off to Jakarta (or not)

I am certainly going to bring pants and not a tie. I would look somewhat foolish walking down Jalan Thamrin with just a tie and no pants. But either way I can’t go alone…

My wife tells me that if I go to Jakarta by myself then I can’t go. No way!!!! (emphasis not mine). It appears I need a minder, mind you. In the old Soviet days you couldn’t go anywhere without your local Intourist Guide (= KGB agent). I am sure their methods have improved and the spying is all remote and electronic now. But I digress. The issue is not that I would be out to steal any of Indonesia’s state secrets it’s more that something unpleasant might happen to me while strolling down Jalan Thamrin. Should that occur it would be a family scandal of high magnitude, catastrophically unlucky, not mention unpleasant.

How about Jalan Jaksa? You know Jalan Jaksa?

Oh, that’s where the bule live. Cheap apartments. Kind of the “bule district”. Looks like Bali. Small street. Many café there. People know that’s where the bule live so they know all the bule there and leave them alone. They know they have money or not. Because, you know, bule miskin are there. You can go there.

Can I walk around there by myself?

You can go with Dedy or Ovet or Budi or Gari or Eky.

Why can’t I go around Jakarta by myself?

Because you’re a nice person and you don’t know Jakarta. You’re a virgin. You know virgin?

What!? Yes, of course…

Ya, you’re a Jakarta virgin… (laughs). You don’t know Jakarta well enough. There are bad people there that seem nice and nice people there that are really bad.

What!?

How can you tell the difference? They’ll take advantage of you because you’re a nice bule.

How do they know that? I see, I am like someone who just comes from the village for the first time to Jakarta. Is that it then?

You think you know Jakarta but you don’t. You can’t go by yourself.

Ok, well how about Jalan Thamrin? Can I go there?

Yes, if someone goes with you… (more laughs)

Can I take the train?

Nooooooooooooo way!!!!!

Look for me soon on the streets of Jakarta. You will know who I am.  The nice bule with the pants and the entourage of minders walking down Jalan Thamrin.

Jakarta (Bung Karno and the New Jakarta)

Abeyasekere in Jakarta: A History (1987) quotes a becak driver in 1977: “I want a governor who can  bring back a time like Sukarno gave us. We were free to make a living and to trade. Not like now: everywhere we’re picked on”.  Abeyasekere states, “the central fallacy which has persisted from 1619 to the present is that it is possible to create a city for the privileged few, cut off from the countryside and the majority of the poor”.   In Koch’s The Year of Living Dangerously, Soekarno mocks the ABS reporter Hamilton’s questions: “Hey, Sukarno, why do you pour out all this money on Jakarta? I will tell you the answer I give. My people cringed for a long time.  They called us a coolie among nations. But now we are on our feet, and the world takes heed. And my people need a capital worthy of them — a capital to stiffen their spines: a world capital.  Do not yet judge my country by New Jakarta, which is not complete. Judge Indonesia by Borobudur, and the beautiful rice-bowl of West Java. Yet wait a little more, and you will see the New Jakarta I am creating. Already it is becoming a Paris, a city of light to inspire struggling humanity”.

What would Bung Karno say now?

video from YouTube