The political regime that developed in the second half of the 1960s was dubbed the ‘New Order’ by its leader, General Soeharto.1 It aspired to totalitarian control through condominium by a dominant military — above all the army — and a collaborating civilian bureaucracy, which together would control the society to its very roots. In aspiring to control rather than to mobilise the populace, the New Order resembled the colonial order, but the latter had never attempted the degree of social control that Soeharto and his colleagues eventually sought. Through such control, they hoped, the threat of Communism could be completely uprooted. Looking back from the early 21st century, we may be tempted to think of Soeharto’s New Order as a monolithic authoritarian state, but it was not that, except in aspiration. In its first years, it was quite unstable and many an observer (notably political scientists) expected it not to last long. This was paralleled by those (notably economists) who, in its last years, expected it to go on forever.
The regime faced enormous challenges at its start. Indonesia was a regional pariah because of its previous radicalism and armed hostility against
1 An overview of the period may be found in Ricklefs, History of modern Indonesia, with references to the major scholarly works in the readings listed for Chapters 21–2.
Malaysia, and an economic ‘basket case’. There were real possibilities of a violent political backlash by Sukarno supporters. Runaway inflation, political uncertainty, military brutality and social instability were part of the common daily experiences of Indonesians. Soeharto’s government quickly brought
‘Confrontation’ with Malaysia to an end and restored relations with the ‘Free World’ side of international politics. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) was created in August 1967, its main initial purpose being the rehabilitation of Indonesia as a responsible regional neighbour.
Purges of the Provisional People’s Consultative Assembly, the military and the bureaucracy tossed out — and frequently imprisoned without trial
— anyone who might be suspected of pro-PKI sympathies. ‘Left PNI’
persons also came under suspicion. Over many months, a more loyal military and bureaucracy were thus constructed. The Soeharto regime achieved a remarkably rapid turnaround in the nation’s affairs. Inflation was brought down from over 600 per cent in 1966 to about 10 per cent in 1969. The government could then begin its programme of economic development.
Muslim Modernist politicians soon learned that the destruction of PKI and the army-Islamic alliance that had played a central role in that destruction would not, in fact, make it possible to revive Masyumi, even under another name. A party led by Modernists called Parmusi (Partai Muslimin Indonesia, Indonesian Muslims’ Party) was created in 1968. In that year’s Consultative Assembly session, Parmusi and NU both urged that a curiosity of constitutional history called the Jakarta Charter — which in the eyes of some obliged the state to impose Islamic law on all confessed Muslims — should be recognised as having the force of law.2 The proposal was defeated. The government spotted the reviving potential for Modernist Islamist trouble-making, which for the regime revived the spectres of Darul Islam and Masyumi’s support for the late 1950s Sumatran rebellion. When former Masyumi leaders — but not Natsir — were elected to the leadership
2 The Jakarta Charter was a compromise proposed during the drafting of the 1945 constitution. It declared that the state was based upon belief in God, but ‘with the obligation for adherents of Islam to carry out Islamic law (syari’at)’. This was not adopted in 1945 and became irrelevant with the adoption of the interim constitution of 1950. But it again arose as an issue surrounding the reintroduction of the 1945 constitution in 1959 as the constitutional basis of Guided Democracy. On this, see Daniel S. Lev, The transition to Guided Democracy: Indonesian politics, 1957–1959 (Ithaca, NY: Monograph Series, Modern Indonesia Project, Cornell University, 1966), pp. 263–77. The 1945 constitution has remained in force ever since, unchanged until it underwent a series of amendments after the fall of Soeharto.
of the party later that year, the government intervened and left Parmusi effectively leaderless for two years. The regime would in fact shortly act to emasculate all surviving political parties.
Islamic political activists’ frustrations with the regime thus arose early and were well-founded. In no small part this frustration arose from their recognition that Soeharto’s growing personal domination of the political scene brought with it a style of spirituality greatly at variance with their own.
Soeharto’s spirituality
General Soeharto — who was declared Acting President of Indonesia in 1967 and substantive President in 1968 — was truly a son of rural Java.
He was born in 1921 in Central Java,3 but there is uncertainty about his parentage. Various romantic rumours arose, including that he was secretly descended from Yogyakarta royalty. Elson concludes that ‘he was the illegitimate child of a well-placed villager … or someone of some means who might come in continuing contact with villagers. … From the age of about 8 … he joined the family of a lower Javanese official living in a town’,4 the latter being Wuryantoro in the area of Wonogiri, in the mountainous area south of Surakarta. Soeharto also came to know and was much influenced by a local mystic and healer named Kyai Daryatmo. Here Soeharto encountered that village world thick with secret doctrines and supernatural powers, allied to Traditionalist Islam. He went on to formal schooling in a Muhammadiyah junior high school5 in Yogyakarta, which he left in 1939.
After 1965, any Islamic activists not already aware of Soeharto’s personal beliefs soon learned that they were a long way from Islamic orthodoxy. Among his spiritual gurus in adulthood, two were of particular importance: his former Diponegoro Division comrade General Soedjono Hoemardani6 and Soediyat Prawirokoesoemo, known with the Javanese titles
3 The best biography published so far is R.E. Elson, Suharto: A political biography.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). This does not, however, give much attention to Soeharto’s spirituality.
4 Ibid., p. 5.
5 This was at the level of MULO, which stood for Meer uitgebreid lager onderwijs (more extended lower education), a sort of junior high.
6 Soedjono Hoemardani was also the founder of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, a major New Order think-tank. He was slightly older than Soeharto, having been born in Surakarta in 1919; O.G. Roeder, Who’s who in Indonesia: Biographies of prominent Indonesian personalities in all fields (Djakarta:
Gunung Agung, 1971), p. 143.
for a spiritually advanced person as Empu Rama Diyat. In his quite arrogant, but dull, memoirs written in the late 1980s, Soeharto dismissed Soedjono’s spiritual influence on him, saying that he knew more about kebatinan (i.e., Javanese spiritualism) than Soedjono.
Regarding Soedjono Hoemardani, people have been heard to speak as if he knows more than I about kebatinan. Even though Djono himself usually sungkem [paid obeisance] to me. He regarded me as the elder and more knowledgeable in the science of kebatinan. So anyone who reckons that Djono was my kebatinan guru is nuts. Such an allegation is false.
Soedjono more often asked me than I asked him about the science of kebatinan. He himself once said, ‘I am a student of Pak Harto’.7
Rama Diyat presided over an annual ritual at the site called Jambe Pitu, on Mount Selok near Cilacap on the south coast of Java. There is conflicting evidence as to whether, after becoming President, Soeharto continued to attend these ceremonies or merely sent emissaries on his behalf.8 These occasions took place in the first month of the Javanese lunisolar year, beginning with a ritual raising of the national flag and then proceeding to an all-night session in which Rama Diyat gave spiritual teachings and predictions for the coming year. The language throughout was Javanese, but with the occasional Indonesian key word, such as pembangunan (development) and kebudayaan (culture). Rama Diyat described his teachings as ‘Ilmu Kebatinan Tanggap-Warso saha Napak-Tilas’ (the inward science of attending to the year and the traces of the past) and wrote, ‘Based on understanding of Tanggap-Warso we will always remember especially the
7 Soeharto, Pikiran, ucapan dan tindakan saya: Otobiografi (as told to G. Dwipa-yana and Ramadhan K.H.; Jakarta: PT Citra Lamtoro Gung Persada, 1989), pp.
441–2.
8 See George Quinn, ‘National legitimacy through a regional prism: Local pilgrimage and Indonesia’s Javanese Presidents’, in Minako Sakai, Glenn Banks and J.H. Walker (eds), The politics of the periphery in Indonesia (Singapore: NUS Press, 2009), pp.
181–4. According to Arwan Tuti Artha, Dunia spiritual Soeharto: Menelusuri laku ritual, tempat-tempat dan guru spiritualnya (Yogyakarta: Galang Press, 2007), p.
114, at Jambe Pitu there is displayed a photograph of Soeharto with Rama Diyat.
This book depicts Soeharto as a product and at the same time a master of Javanese mysticism, but unfortunately the foundations of this discussion are rather thin. The author, a journalist and creative writer, relies largely on secondary sources and did not interview Soeharto (who was still alive at the time). He did, however, speak to some relevant guardians (juru kunci) of sacred sites and the book has useful photographs of several of the spiritual sites associated with Soeharto.
originality of Javanese culture’.9 Talk of an original Javanese culture was, at this time, code clearly implying the non-originality of Islam.
We may take the Jambe Pitu ritual on 24–25 November 1979 as an example. It opened with a pre-Islamic invocation in ‘Kawi’ using the Hindu sacred syllable ‘Om’, and then proceeded to a more Islamic invocation that posited an identification of Rama Diyat with the Prophet Muhammad, the kind of idea that is found in Javanese mystical traditions10 but anathema to orthodox Muslims:
Exalted thoughts and deeds serve as the foundation to restore culture, in the midst of Development, both outer and inner.
OM! Let us analyse the origins of being, applying the one place of spells [?].
I act in the role of the Bloom of God’s emissary; my nature is that of Muhammad; my actions are the doings of Faith.11
The teachings that followed emphasised the originality of Javanese culture and the need to preserve those ‘exalted thoughts and deeds’ upon which it rested. The followers of [world] religions and the influence of ‘foreign culture’
were blamed for causing conflict among Indonesians.12
Soeharto’s own spiritual maxims were gathered together in a privately printed and distributed book, the dedication of which is in his hand and
9 The proceedings at Jambe Pitu were recorded in privately printed booklets of around 50–60 pages, of which I have photocopies of the versions for 1979 and 1980.
I do not know how widely these booklets were distributed. The quotation here is from the preface (p. 9) in the 1979 booklet, dated 25 November 1979 and signed
‘Sesepuh/Pengayom R.P. Soediyat Prawirokoesoemo’. The 1980 booklet has the same text, dated 10 November 1980.
10 On these traditions, see P.J. Zoemulder, Pantheism and monism in Javanese suluk literature: Islamic and Indian mysticism in an Indonesian setting (ed. and transl. M.C.
Ricklefs; KITLV translation series 24; Leiden: KITLV Press, 1995), esp. pp. 209 et seqq.
11 This quote is from p. 17 of the 1979 Jambe Pitu booklet. The translation is conjectural in parts. Such invocations were meant as much to create an atmosphere of mysterious powers as to convey specific meanings. Kawi is a term used for language meant to be Old Javanese, but in modern practice this is often a self-consciously literary style of Javanese which is in fact not — or not wholly — Old Javanese. The original text (in its non-scholarly spellings) reads, Budi pakarti luhur pinongko dasar mulyakaken kebudayaan, salebeting Pembangunan lahir soho batin. Hong wilaheng purwaning sido, matek sawiji dunung aji. Ingsun makarti pakartining Sari utusaning Pangeran, sipatku Mohammad, pakartiku lakuning Iman.
12 1979 Jambe Pitu booklet, pp. 19–20.
dated 1986. In this dedication, he said, ‘I give this book to my children as a guide in life’. Despite its Indonesian title Butir-butir budaya Jawa (seeds of Javanese culture), the text is in Javanese (in Javanese script) accompanied by an Indonesian translation and a (frequently poor) English translation.13 The sources for the aphorisms are listed at the back of the volume; these are Javanese works mainly associated with the great literati of Surakarta of the 18th and 19th centuries. These books teach the old Mystic Synthesis of Islamic Java: Serat Centhini (written at the behest of the Crown Prince of Surakarta in the early 19th century), Serat Cipta Ening (taken from the Arjunawiwaha), Serat Dewa Ruci, works by Ronggawarsita (the most famous of the 19th-century Surakarta writers) including Serat Jaka Lodhang and Serat Kalatidha, the prophecies of Jayabaya (regarded as the thoughts of a 12th-century king of Kediri), Serat Nitisastra, Serat Tridharma ascribed to Mangkunagara I, Serat Wedhatama by Mangkunagara IV, and Serat Wulangreh by Pakubuwana IV.
The maxims chosen by Soeharto as ‘a guide in life’ for his children included ideas entirely unacceptable to orthodox Muslims. For example:
Where is the location of God? God is also within you, but do not dare to admit that you are God.
God can take shape, but the shape God takes is not God.
Humankind is from the being (dat) of God and thus has also the qualities (sipat) of God.14
Stones and wood have the being (dat) of God but are not God.
Humankind can be occupied by the being (dat) of God, but do not embrace the idea that humankind can be called God.
Whosoever dares to change things as they are, that is not just any person, but is to be regarded as an emissary (utusan) of God.15
13 This work is a bibliographic nightmare with regard to its date. The photocopy that I have (205 pp.) is of a version put together by Soeharto’s daughter Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana (commonly known as Tutut) on the occasion of the Soehartos’ 40th wedding anniversary in December 1987, but with the original dedication by Soeharto of June 1986 and a further handwritten dedication (with a signature that is not clear to me, but is not Soeharto’s) dated 1993. A note on p. 197 says that its compilation was completed in 1983 on the occasion of eight windus (eight-year cycles) in the Javanese calendar (since Soeharto’s birth in 1921). I am grateful to Dr Syafi‘i Anwar for providing me with this copy.
14 From Arabic dhat (being, essence) and sifa (attribute). Along with the Arabic term asma (names), these are crucial terms in Javanese Islamic mysticism, which is full of speculations about the essence, attributes and names of God.
15 These examples are from pp. 2, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16 of the book described in n13.
The aphorisms quoted above contradicted central Sunni Islamic doctrines. Islam posits that God created the world but does not enter into it; his transcendence and unity are absolute. It also states that Muhammad was the last of the Prophets sent to humankind. For orthodox Muslims, therefore, there is no room for the idea that God might be ‘within you’, whether or not it was a secret doctrine that one should not admit to. Nor can humankind ‘be occupied by the being of God’, or can there be an ‘emissary of God’ subsequent to the Prophet Muhammad, however much such a person might ‘dare to change things’ (as, indeed, Soeharto himself could be said to have done). Yet such ideas are unremarkable within the traditions of Javanese mysticism of both the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. They were — and are
— also common among adherents of modern kebatinan movements, which we will consider below.
Despite pushing the boundaries of orthodoxy, however, such ideas did have resonance in the Traditionalist community with its commitment to Sufism. In the mid-1960s, kyais were — as indeed they often are now
— regarded as having superhuman powers. They may master ilmu laduni, that mystical knowledge that God can impart directly to a Sufi practitioner.
Kyais may thus directly master various Islamic sciences without the need actually to study them, have the gift of prophecy, and be able to cure the sick and confer invulnerability. The powers of a kyai indeed extend beyond his death and thus constitute a crucial element in the continuity of Sufi orders and the cults of saints.16 In 2008, the new NU museum in Surabaya was displaying an armband and a carved stone used to confer invulnerability when fighting PKI in 1966.17 In Banyuwangi, the very ability to read the Qur’an is thought to be associated with supernatural powers, sometimes with negative results if the person is thought to be a sorcerer and on those
16 See Zamakhsyari Dhofier, Tradisi pesantren: Studi tentang pandangan hidup kyai (Jakarta: LP3ES, 1982), p. 69; Martin van Bruinessen, ‘Pesantren and kitab kuning:
Continuity and change in a tradition of religious learning’, in Ethnologica Bernensia 4/1994: Texts from the islands (Bern: Institut für Ethnologie, 1994), p. 124; Suzaina Abdul Kadir, ‘Traditional Islamic society and the state in Indonesia: The Nahdlatul Ulama, political accommodation and the preservation of autonomy’ (PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999), pp. 95–7.
17 I visited the museum on 23 October 2008. On a previous visit, the museum was also displaying a stone in which indentations in the shape of splayed fingers could be seen, where a particularly powerful kyai was said to have touched it. I was told that it was no longer displayed because the owner of the stone had fallen ill in its absence and had therefore taken it back, implying that it was the absence of this powerful stone that had caused his illness.
grounds is attacked, even killed, by other villagers.18 These are not just ideas held by rustics unfamiliar with the urban and modern worlds. In 1995, NU’s leader Ky. H. Abdurrahman Wahid — a man deeply imbued with esoteric spiritual ideas as well as a well-travelled and sophisticated thinker and political operator — introduced me to his brother Hasyim Wahid as a Sufi with gifts of prophecy.19
In 1977, Abdurrahman Wahid asserted that many kyais believed in the reality of the Goddess of the Southern Ocean (Ratu Kidul or Ni Lara Kidul).
She is a major figure in Javanese legends, one of the most powerful spiritual forces in the minds of believers in old-fashioned Javanese spiritualism, and certainly not of Islamic origin. ‘There are’, Abdurrahman said, ‘many legends about successful kyais that were married to Ni Lara Kidul, not just princes’. He claimed that many kyais accepted that the Goddess was a divine being who lived in the Indian Ocean. Was this not heresy, I asked?
He responded,
OK, it’s heresy and it’s clearly in opposition to Islamic teachings, but according to the ulama, including my grandfather [Ky. H. Hasyim Asy‘ari], certain rules are not applied to those extraordinary beings, like the Imam Mahdi or the Ratu Adil: those people are not bound by ordinary rules. So they don’t want to reject those figures while in the meantime they just say that for us ordinary beings, human beings, we have to follow not them, but the rule of law.20
Abdurrahman also a provided a veneer of orthodoxy with regard to super-natural amulets by saying that one could believe in them so long as one regarded them as tools by which God’s grace flowed to the Prophet, then to the saints, then to the gurus and thence to oneself.21
Such Traditionalist ideas were, and remain, as unacceptable to most Modernists as Soeharto’s quotations from classics of the Mystic Synthesis would have been. And for political reasons, as we will see below, NU found that even if its spirituality had overlaps with Soeharto’s, its relationship with the regime in its early years was hardly less problematic than that of the
Such Traditionalist ideas were, and remain, as unacceptable to most Modernists as Soeharto’s quotations from classics of the Mystic Synthesis would have been. And for political reasons, as we will see below, NU found that even if its spirituality had overlaps with Soeharto’s, its relationship with the regime in its early years was hardly less problematic than that of the