Study the past,
manage the future
Even though she’s an Indonesian citizen by birth, Ida
Suhardja, 66 (left), knows about discrimination.
The genes from her ethnic Chinese father seem to have
dominated those of her Javanese Mom so she has round features and a white skin.
Responses by others depend on their level of prejudice.
If zero then this lady is your friend and you’re welcome at
her Omah Djadoel (olden house) museum in the East Java town of Blitar.
She won’t talk about the persecution following the 1965 coup
which felled President Soekarno and still a taboo topic for many. The Chinese were targets as real or imagined
Communists. According to Australian historian Robert Cribb, Communist strength
in Blitar was ‘especially conspicuous’.
There are reports of three mass graves south of the town.
Instead of harboring the horrors Suhardja prefers to recall
an event when she was about eleven. Soekarno
visited her school and singled her out for special attention, stimulating her
sense of nationalism.
“I liked him so much and felt very proud that I was the only
child who got to shake his hand,” she said.
“He was friendly towards the Chinese.”
However his successor Soeharto imposed heavy regulations on
the Chinese, curbing the use of language and signs, forcing name changes and
prohibiting entry to the public service.
“It’s OK now,” Suhardja said cheerfully. “There’s been no discrimination since Gus Dur
(Abdurrahman Wahid – fourth president between 1999 and 2001) took away
restrictions.”
By then she’d changed her religion three times – from
Buddhism to Protestantism at the time of the coup and then to Islam when she
married a Muslim. “Now I just believe in
God and inner beauty,” she said.
Along the way Suhardja garnered an assemblage of old tools,
gadgets, knickknacks, art works and a philosophy which could have fed
resentment at the absence of tolerance. Instead she’s chosen not to dwell on the dark
times and employ her artefacts to celebrate diversity.
Many came from her father who collected porcelain and
statues; others were donated by neighbors for last century the Chinese in
Blitar lived together in a compound of around 150 families.
In 1970 Soekarno died and was buried in Blitar where his
family had connections. His grave has
become a shrine attracting thousands and supporting an industry of trashy
souvenirs. The main road to his memorial
is kampung kitsch offering mass-produced toy drums, back-scratchers, plastic
puppets and T-shirts featuring the fist-thrusting Proclamator.
Suhardja owned buildings close to the tomb. Why not use these to show visitors a more
substantial story of Indonesian history and culture by putting all the goodies
in her home on public show?
So three years ago she opened her museum and filled it with
a thousand objects. She also took the
opportunity to put up signs displaying her reasoning that “harmony creates
happiness” and that the five steps to nationalism are “knowledge, respect,
love, care and preservation of the past.”
To justify the museum her line is; ‘A great nation is one
which cares for its history.’
Unfortunately not all get the message.
“I’m struggling against an indifferent society,” she said.
“I haven’t been to university so have no curatorial
skills. I just do what I can but it’s
getting too much. I’m not arrogant – I
know I need help but I’ve shown what can be done and that many want to know
more.
“The interest is there. Now I want the government or a philanthropist
to take over – not to sell the collection but to treat it properly.”
Outside her cluttered museum a concrete horse purports to pull
a wooden cart while motorbikes race past.
Inside Suhardja shows schoolkids how a Morse-code tapper works, but
they’re into smartphones.
She cranks a gramophone, drops a needle and the scratchy
tunes of last century flow through the rooms and into the yard; here stone
coffins and troughs for pounding rice stand close to carved wardrobes. The grotesque features of wayang puppets peer
from the corners.
Some objects have been labelled and grouped according to
function or style, but there’s no catalogue so the provenance is unknown.
The show stopper is a large ceramic singing bowl which sends
out a clear tone when the rim is rubbed with a wet wrist. It competes with a drumbeat of drips from a
leaky roof.
For some the phenomenon shows black magic at work; even the
owner, who knows the secrets, proves her Javanese credentials by refusing to
sleep in the building for fear of ghosts.
But for rationalists
Faraday waves (named after a 19th century British scientist) develop
when the frequency of the rubbing reaches the point where the pottery naturally
vibrates. This information is not
available in the museum so the curio remains a gimmick rather than a marvel of
the natural world.
The singing
bowl sets the tone for Omah Djadoel –
an eclectic mix of mystery and the mundane, beauty and gewgaws, trash and
treasure, all looking for purpose.
“I love our
heritage and culture,” Suhardja said. “By studying the past we can manage the
future. I’ve been to Europe and seen
museums and the respect held for history.
“This collection has a message about the
strength of the nation, the diversity and adaptability of the people.
“Those who made
these objects have long gone but their creativity lives. Some people think I’m
eccentric doing this but I believe that God will help me find a place where
these things can be admired. I’m waiting.”
(First published in The Jakarta Post 29 June 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment