BUDDHIST TV

(Dhamma TV)

THE CALMING RAYS OF CATHODE © Duncan Graham 2007

Cynics claim that owning a television station licence is like having a permit to print money. Read on to learn about a TV mogul who's licensed to spend, not earn.

Mogul? In this case the cap doesn't fit bald Bhiku Dhammavijayo, boss of East Java's Dhamma TV, a station with no advertising.

This means viewers can enjoy a programme from go to whoa without being urged to purge dandruff and find true romance, ride a motorbike that never sees thicket-thick traffic, or whiten skin for instant popularity.

With this most welcome quality there has to be a downside; no police reality shows where ghouls gape at corpses, sinetrons (soapies) with lovelorn teens - or news. The first two are no loss, but a telecaster without breathless reports on the day's events is like a warung with no rice.

"All other stations have news so you can turn to them, then come back to us," said Dhammavijayo breaking the first commandment of a television producer: Thou shalt not suggest viewers might finger the remote control once they're married to your wavelength.

But Dhammavijayo has smashed all conventional ideas about this rapacious industry and the people who feed its hungry jaws. Yet again a correction is necessary – for Dhamma TV the metaphor is too brutal.

"We always seek the peaceful way," he said. "We must be positive, never negative. We must develop goodness.

"The programs we transmit must not disadvantage people. They must not be dangerous or cause suffering. What's important is what we can give, not what we can get."

When he's not calling the shots, woops, calmly directing activities among the 15 staff and numerous volunteers at Indonesia's only Buddhist TV station, Dhammavijayo is a monk. (Dhamma means the teachings of Buddha).

Born in Surabaya into a Buddhist family with a car accessories business he found information on the religion's teachings hard to find. This was during the Soeharto era when the regime's steel grip on politics, information and the economy extended to faith.

He went to Thailand for eight years and trained in monasteries. On returning to his homeland he became a missionary and publisher, distributing books and pamphlets about Buddhism around the archipelago.

While this was fine, the message wasn't reaching the masses. "At every monastery I visited I urged them to open a radio or TV station," he said. "All agreed it was a good idea but only at Samarinda (in East Kalimantan) did they start broadcasting.

"Most thought the job too big or impossible to achieve. So I had to do it myself."

By now the Orde Baru era had ended and with it the rigid controls on telecasting. New licences became available – all you needed was kilowatts of cash and a contact list of mates in high places. But the Buddhists were able to do things differently.

"Actually it wasn't difficult at all," said Dhammavijayo. "We were very fortunate. We found someone who had already secured a licence and had the equipment, but after three and a half years of preparation couldn't go ahead. Actually it was going to be a Christian station.

"You can only succeed if you have a social mission. (There goes TV commandment number two.) If only money is your god then you won't. You can't take money with you when you leave this world."

So on 15 January last year the station powered-up from its tower in the village of Oro Oro Ombo, 1000 metres up the mountain slopes outside the central East Java town of Batu.

This area has been allocated to all telecasters and is a forest of red and white steel structures. Many are mighty affairs alongside intimidating buildings inside high fences with lots of staff, as befits a megabucks machine.

Though not Dhamma TV. Its control room is a tiny roadside cottage alongside a sapling antenna dwarfed by its giant neighbours - though building of new Rp 600 million (US $ 67,000) facilities are underway nearby. Two squashed blokes tweak knobs and finesse transmission.

Though the catchment area has 8.5 million souls, Dhamma's signal is not as powerful as the big operators. Those who do receive can watch imported wildlife programmes where nature is red in tooth and claw and decidedly not peaceful, education, talk and travel shows and, of course, a bounty of Buddhism.

Has this created problems? Haven't fundamentalists rushed into the foothills to fell the unprotected mast and kill messages that might induce faith changes?

"We haven't had any difficulties," said placid Dhammavijayo. "We're not seeking to convert anyone. We only want to explain our beliefs.

"The truth is not for Buddhists alone – it's for everyone. All we are doing is trying to find the best way.

"Not all the workers we employ are Buddhists. We need people who can do the job."

Many are communication students huddled over screens in an editing suite where the insertion of one extra VCD might cause the walls to rupture. More generous quarters are being built. There's no studio so all programs have to be shot outside. If staffers weren't barefoot this could be described as shoestring TV – running on only Rp 25 million (US $2,800) a month.

Like to buy some airtime? It won't require an overseas loan. For just Rp 2 million (US $220) you can have an hour to reach the masses. Don't bother applying if you sell smokes, but if you have a different religious message – no worries.

And don't expect to be hustled by leggy marketers with promotion plans and desirable discounts. This station isn't into selling space. However if you ask nicely and aren't offering anything offensive then a deal might be done.

Neither Dhammavijayo nor the station manager Jemmy Mulyono (an electrical engineer) had any prior experience of TV. Consequently they haven't imported the awful culture of the industry into Batu.

There are no up-themselves executives screaming in phones, hiring and firing in the same breath, no wannabe stars willing to murder for a flickering moment of fame, no grotesque displays of raw emotion.

How many people watch Dhamma TV? Stand by for another shock – the producers have no data and seem unconcerned. They don't subscribe to the ratings system and like any sane person doubt the veracity of the statistics that power decisions in the industry.

"Looking back over the past year we've been told by many that they find our programs interesting and comforting," said Dhammavijayo. "Viewers who have been depressed and suicidal have been helped.

"Our station is also recommended for those who have problems sleeping. If you watch our meditation program at night you'll have no trouble dozing off."

A TV boss honest about his product being soporific? As noted at the start of this story, Dhamma TV is no ordinary station. Happy birthday!

(If you're in the Malang area you can catch Dhamma TV on Channel 3.)

(First published in The Jakarta Post 15 January 2007)
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YUSMAN ROY

FIGHTING TO PRAY IN PEACE © Duncan Graham 2006

In 1517 in Europe, seven people were burned at the stake for teaching their children The Lord’s Prayer in English rather than Latin.

In 2005 in East Java, Muslim preacher Yusman Roy was jailed for two years for leading Islamic prayers in Indonesian rather than Arabic.

After remissions for good behavior an unbowed Roy is now a free man. He’s back at the Islamic school he runs with his wife Supartini at Lawang in East Java, still determined to keep praying in Indonesian.

“The problem with many Muslims in Indonesia is that they don’t think for themselves,” he told The Jakarta Post. “They just follow whatever the leader says.

“They stand in the mosque and mumble, but they don’t understand what the clerics are saying because they don’t know Arabic. What’s the problem with using Indonesian? God understands everything we think and say whatever the language.”

There’s little doubt the feisty Roy had been trying to pick a scrap with Islamic traditionalists, particularly the Indonesian Muslim Scholars’ Council (MUI), for some time. Not content to lie low in Lawang where he’s left alone by the locals, he published and distributed a little book on his philosophy.

No takers. He then spent Rp 10 million (US $1,100) on promoting a public meeting in Surabaya’s State Islamic University to debate the issue of bilingual prayers.

Not surprisingly the fundamentalists turned up and gave him hell. For them God’s instructions to Mohammed in Arabic had to be forcefully defended. “Why can’t we discuss these issues?” Roy asked. “There’s no commandment to use Arabic. We should debate, not fight.”

Yet ironically fighting had long been Roy’s job. The only son of a Catholic Dutch woman and a Muslim Javanese father who fathered 11 kids with four wives, Roy seems to have had a rocky childhood. He lets his guard down on most personal matters – though not his upbringing and schooling in Surabaya.

His ethnicity was clearly an issue; his Indonesian nationality was constantly challenged and he tended to give knuckle answers.

“I was naughty,” he said. “But I could fight. I like to fight. From the age of 16 I earned money by boxing – Rp 5,000 (US $5.50) a round. I was fast on my feet, a 60 kilo lightweight.” Aged 25, battered and with a broken nose, the pugilist quit the ring.

He then became a debt collector and a thumping success. If you found this young preman (street thug – and his term) leaning on your architrave calmly lighting a Dji Sam Soe you’d be paying up pronto. The tattoo on his rippling forearm of a thoroughly aroused stallion would mightily assist discovery of the mislaid wallet.

But Roy’s soul was on the ropes. What he was doing wasn’t morally right. He knew there was something else – yet it remained elusive. He sought God, but didn’t know where He resided. A come-and-go Catholic Roy looked for help among priests and found some answers.

Though not enough. His friends were Muslim. Slowly he made the transition to Islam but was lax in maintaining his religious obligations.

“It took me about 15 years before I became fully Muslim,” he said. “I read widely and thought a lot. I saw contradictions between what was written in the Holy Book and what people were saying and doing.

“I couldn’t understand Arabic and neither could my friends. The clerics were saying it doesn’t matter what you pray as long as it’s in Arabic. That’s wrong. We have to know what’s being said when we talk to God. ”

Soon after the Surabaya meeting in April last year the police called at his home. Friendly fellows all they asked if he’d like a lift to nearby Malang for a chat. “It was a trick,” he said. “When I got there they arrested me.”

They may have saved his life. While he was in Malang three truckloads of allegedly aggrieved men from the Islamic Defenders’ Front arrived at his school intent on God knows what, but left when they found him absent.

While accepting the truth of this proposition, Roy doesn’t like it. If he’d been murdered his bid for bilingual prayer would have caught public attention and reform in Islam might have been hastened. From zealotry to martyrdom.

He faced two charges - deviating from Islam in his teachings, and inciting hatred by challenging the clerics in the MUI who’d prohibited him from using Indonesian in prayer. He got verbal support from former president Abdurrahman Wahid, legal aid and publicity in Indonesia and overseas. Not enough. He was only acquitted on the first count.

At first life in jail was tough with many wanting to test their skills against the 50-year old former prizefighter. But instead of flexing the foaming stallion he showed a new tattoo on his right arm. This had the words Patience, Prayer and Emotional Control.

“What I did was right - I don’t regret going to jail,” Roy said. “I could not have done this without Supartini’s help.” She said she was proud of her husband and backed his beliefs.

With Roy behind bars she had to run the free school - known as Pondok I’Tikaf, Arabic for meditation - and its 300 students alone. Where did the money come from? “God provided,” she said. “All the other men in jail were criminals. My husband was the only person there for religious reasons.”

Despite fears the self appointed warriors of Islam will return the couple seem unperturbed, putting their safety in the hands of the same Deity their attackers would invoke. The home and school are at the end of a downhill street, above a ravine. The police have cut their phone lines to stop verbal threats, but there’s no security and no easy escape route.

“Prisoners and warders kept away from me at first, but later joined me,” said Roy. “I never went to the mosque because that made me angry.

“I’m not afraid of being charged again, but don’t expect it. It’s the government’s job to protect all citizens whatever their views, and I demand that protection.

“The government should be allowing space for public dialogue and I want to encourage that. The people who attack me don’t know right from wrong – they don’t understand the prayers in Arabic so they don’t pray properly. Quality matters.

“These people are losers. There are many terrorists in Islam – they’ve lost their way. They’ve become criminals and anarchists. Prayer is the foundation of Islam. When that collapses everything else goes down.

“This is what I believe. There’s a group in Indonesia that wants to keep Islam backward. This is a political issue. I’m angry at what they’ve done to me, but I forgive them.

“Many say they support me, but don’t help. I’m fighting this cause as a pioneer with my soul and property. It’s difficult being alone, but I’m sure God will protect me.

“I want my good name restored. I’m an Indonesian Muslim, not an Arab Muslim! Why would anyone want to stop me?

(First published in The Jakarta Post 22 Nov 06)
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