Who controls the past?
In a world of few absolutes it’s safe to say that Dr Peter
Carey (right) will not be submitting his CV to a cabal of bureaucrats for a permit to
ply his trade.
The
proposal that Indonesian historians should be certified like halal foods sounds like a brain fade by
the Bureau of Idiot Notions during a full moon. But the source is the Education
Ministry's Directorate General of Culture
A spokesman said registration was for
international events and scholarly journals. Assessors would check capability
and competence.
Carey,
adjunct professor in the History Department of the University of Indonesia (UI)
appeared bemused. He told Strategic Review:
“It’s
odd – pretty outrageous. This is the sort of thing found in North Korea, China
and the stan states like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
“Who is
qualified to evaluate? About 90 per cent
of research on Indonesia is done by outsiders.
This is the fourth most populous country but it has the smallest capacity
to explain itself to the world.
“Politicians
fear history. They see facing the past
as dangerous. But society respects
historians. We are novelists who visited
the archives.”
Government certification also overlooks
the brutality of academia where reputations can be shredded by slipshod citations
and faulty footnotes. Historians get forensically
scrutinised, like climate scientists and cancer-cure researchers. No outside agency’s penalty could match the career-crushing
that follows a damning peer review.
The licence proposal surfaced after
the International Peoples’ Tribunal
meeting in The Hague passed judgment on Indonesia – and Carey detects a link. The judges heard evidence of the
government-sanctioned slaughter that followed the failed coup d’état allegedly
engineered by communists 50 years ago.
This June the IPT concluded that mass
killings which took an estimated 500,000 lives were crimes
against humanity and victims should be compensated. The Indonesian government snubbed the
proceedings and rejected the findings
Accounts
of the 1965 events were taken from individual witnesses and historians unconcerned
about endangering their warrants.
Victors
write history. After the coup the Soeharto government hired the late military
historian Nugroho Notosusanto to pen its account of the putsch.
As the
author was also Minister for Education and Culture (and rector of UI) his version
prevailed, ignoring the slaughter. This
was taught to millions of children across more than three decades.
Australian
historian Professor Kate McGregor wrote that Notosusanto was ‘the central propagandist of the New Order
regime’.
“It was a dire era, the de-intellectualisation
of Indonesia, like being lobotomised,” said Carey. “The results are with us
today in the low interest in books and reading.”
Carey’s
objections to licensing are not because he quivers on a shaky academic and
personal platform. He started research in the archipelago in 1971, speaks the
language and is married to an Indonesian.
Before
retiring from Oxford University in 2008 and settling in Banten he was a
researcher, teacher, media commentator and author. He’s also been an awarded human rights
activist in Cambodia, Timor Leste and Myanmar – where he was born in 1948.
Neither is it because he knows less about Indonesia’s past
than the Director General of Culture. Carey still holds a British passport but
he’s the go-to guy for facts on the guerrilla fighter Prince Diponegoro and the
1825-1830 Java War, the topic of his doctoral thesis.
Carey said stories of the derring-do Yogyakarta-born
aristocrat who confronted the Dutch also inspired Soekarno’s anti-colonial revolutionaries.
Now the yarns are exciting new generations of aspiring nationalists through
books, plays and comics.
Inevitably facts morph into myths. Diponegoro was a skilled tactician who
outmanoeuvred Dutch soldiers for much of his campaign, but not the pure and
polished royal beloved by his boosters. Carey said Diponegoro was a “Jekyll and
Hyde character ... a very difficult
person to live with – maybe a bit like (Russian author) Tolstoy.
“He was religious but not a killjoy. He liked sharing a
glass of Chardonnay with his captors, claiming he drank for medicinal
purposes. He didn’t lose his humanity or
his spirit … he was a man of iron.”
Carey’s biography The
Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara (alternative spelling) and the End of an Old Order in Java was
published in The Netherlands in 2007. It’s
around 1,000 pages and has a price tag equal to a dollar a page.
This has put it beyond the reach of most Indonesian
libraries, let alone students. So the
author has revised his work for a three-volume paperback edition in Indonesian
retailing for around Rp 250,000 (US 19).
It’s titled Takdir; Riwayat
Pangeran Diponegoro. (Destiny; the History of Prince Diponegoro).
The rebel leader was arrested when invited to discuss peace
proposals under a flag of truce.
“The Dutch betrayed
Diponegoro but didn’t execute him because they feared local anger and problems
in Europe,” said Carey. “He was treated with respect and exiled to Manado and
Makassar where he died in 1855.
“The Dutch had a deep
sense of insecurity and feared the British (who ruled between 1811 and 1815)
might return.”
This month [sept] Carey addressed about 150 students at the Malang
State University’s campus cafe to promote Perempuan-perempuan
Perkasa di Jawa XVIII - XIX (Strong women of the 18th and 19th
century). The book was co-written with
Dutch historian Vincent
Houben.
“The Dutch records don’t give attention to the important
role played by women,” Carey said. “It’s my vision and mission to help
Indonesians understand the warp and weave of their history. My work is in the
public domain.
“More important than talk of registration is to ask: What is
the role of the public intellectual in modern Indonesian society? By discovering the nation’s history we can
reflect on what is happening today.
“It’s
too late for licensing historians – Pandora is already out of the box.”
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(First published in Strategic Review 16 September 2016)
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