[NYTr] Military ideology and the construction of Indonesia's past

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Tim Murphy


Jakarta Post - Jan 6, 2008
http://www.jakartapost.com

Book review

HISTORY IN UNIFORM: MILITARY IDEOLOGY AND THE
CONSTRUCTION OF INDONESIA'S PAST
by Katherine McGregor
National University of Singapore Press, 2007


Military ideology and the construction of Indonesia's past

by David Jardine

In 1945 when Indonesia proclaimed its independence from the Netherlands
it had no army-in-waiting, indeed no police, nothing at all in the way
of a formal apparatus of repression or defense. The leadership was
essentially anti-militarist and in the case of Prime Minister Sutan
Sjahrir avowedly anti-fascist.

Twenty years later the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) submerged the
nation's leftists, principally but not solely the Indonesian Communist
Party (PKI) in a bloodbath that took hundreds of thousands of lives.

That bitter episode continues to be the target of official obfuscation
and falsification. The shameful 2007 burnings of school history texts
offering alternative versions of the events of 1965-66 demonstrate a
continuum between democratic Indonesia and Soeharto's New Order, at
least where presentation of uncomfortable truths is concerned. The
specter of the New Order continues to hover above writers and
historians.

Those such as playwright Ratna Sarumpaet who insist that Indonesia face
up to the crimes of the past face formidable obstacles, and may in
effect be involved in a dialogue of the deaf.

How did such a powerful force as TNI arise ab ovo? Certainly, President
Soekarno end the founding fathers felt no urgent need in 1945 for the
creation of a national army but within five years it had come together
from a rag-tag of different elements such as the "pemuda" militias.

How does TNI explain itself?

It is the second of these two questions that Australian historian
Kathleen McGregor deals with in this important new book History In
Uniform. Central to the book is the control of history, who decides what
can and cannot be said about the history of Indonesia. Central to that
are certain important individuals such as General Abdul Haris Nasution,
former Chief of Staff of TNI, the pro-military University of Indonesia
academic Nugroho Notosusanto and ex-President Soeharto himself as well
as figures in the defeated and now banned PKI.

Battles over history have gone on in Indonesia for decades and continue
as the book burnings orchestrated by the Attorney General's Office (AGO)
in recent months demonstrate. History or the telling of it remains a
theater of conflict. Versions of the tragic events of 1965-66 (I say
"tragic" not because I am a sympathizer of the PKI but because of the
huge loss of life) remain contentious, of which more in a moment.

Author McGregor knew when she took on this project that the military
would vet her and seek to control her output and that she would thus
work under constraints not imposed in her native Australia. Never
willing to let the truth out at the best of times, TNI operates on a
platform of suspicion and obfuscation in which independent researchers
are seldom welcome.

Interestingly, however certain compromising material remains in military
archives and skilled, determined researchers can unearth it.

The Armed Forces prefer their kept men and women, in this case
historians such as Nugroho Notosusanto whose position as the head of the
History department at the University of Indonesia and his closeness to
the military pose serious questions about UI's independence even prior
to the coming of Soeharto's New Order.

Nugroho was the quintessential state-sanctioned academic and the leading
spokesman of the so-called Generation of 1945, that age group which lays
claim to being the true harbingers of independence through the armed
struggle of 1945-49 which gave birth to TNI.

Nugroho became more or less the official historian of the military and
one who could barely conceal his contempt for the founding fathers and
their willingness to pursue negotiations and diplomatic means to advance
the national cause. In particular he would have had in mind President
Soekarno, Vice-President Hatta and PM Sutan Sjahrir, the last of whom
was absolutely convinced of Indonesia's need to win international
recognition and support.

As spokesman for the Generation of '45, it was Nugroho's purpose to
write up the heroism of the armed struggle against the British and the
Dutch, leaving out of course inconvenient matters such as the holding of
Dutch civilian internees, men, women and children as hostages and the
November 1945 Bekasi massacre of British and Indian troops and airmen.

We learn here that in the 1950s and especially the early 1960s PKI was
doing what Stalinist parties everywhere tried to do (still do in North
Korea), writing its own account of national history, omitting
inconvenient truths or indeed anything that would cast it in poor light.
Because this meant omission of the 1948 Madiun Affair and its role in
the events in East Java, Nasution was desperate to put out a
counter-view that would cast TNI in a good light in relation to the same
period.

The TNI leader brought together a team to write an official,
military-endorsed history and Nugroho, a man of aristocratic priyayi
background from Central Java, did most of the writing. Out of this
project, which succeeded in Nasution's aim of beating the PKI to the
publication punch, came the Armed Forces History Center, which of course
has since had the role of propagandizing on behalf of TNI. It would be a
mistake to dismiss the Center lightly.

Nugroho was an admirer of Japanese militarism and of the ancient bushido
warrior spirit that infused it. This would appear to place him close to
the fascist end of the political spectrum but McGregor, without
cautioning against the use of the term "fascist", does not openly say
so. Certainly the historian was passionately anti-Western and no
democrat. What mattered most to him was the integrity of the state,
which should, according to integralist thinking, subsume society.

Arguing that only historians with a "national spirit", narrowly defined,
could write national history, Nugroho offered up a template for some of
the bleakest New Order censorship.

McGregor has done an essential service in this lucidly written account
in highlighting the way in which the military has both erased much of
Indonesia's history and shaped a conformist interpretation of it.