ALIRANS AND THE FALL OF THE OLD ORDER* Donald Hindley The Indonesian nationalist struggle produced neither a single nor a dominant political party. Rather, before the declaration of independence in August 1945, during the physical revolution against the Dutch which terminated in December 1949, and in the subsequent years, the nationalist movement has been fragmented into a diversity of political groupings. Even today, after many small parties have disappeared, there remain ten legally active parties; an eleventh, the PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia), is striving to put together an underground apparatus from the ruins of 1965. As each party is the center of a net­ work of mass organizations, the peasants, youth, women, students and workers are also organizationally fragmented. The multiplicity of political parties is rooted in the division of Indonesian society into several distinct and self- conscious socio-cultural groupings, or alirans ,* 1 2 whose distribu­ tion has changed little since 1945. The broad outlines of the aliran pattern become apparent through an examination of two fundamental cleavages that cut across society: one religious, the other between holders of traditional and modernist world views. Although approximately 90 per cent of Indonesia’s 110 million people are classified as Moslem, Islamization was ex­ perienced with varying degrees of intensity. As a result of this and not of recent secularization, only some 40 to 45 per cent of the population are devout Moslems in the political sense that they express themselves through and give their loyalty to specifically Moslem organizations. In Java, these santris * An abbreviated version of this paper entitled, "Dilemmas of Consensus and Division: Indonesia’s Search for a Political Format," appeared in Government and Opposition, 4, 1 (Winter 1969 ) . 1. On the alirans in Javanese society, see Clifford Geertz, The Social Context of Economic Change: An Indonesian Case Study (Cambridge , Mass . : M. I. T. , 1956 ), passim"; and Geertz, The' Religion of Java (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1960), passim. 2. In Indonesia’s only parliamentary elections, held in September 1955, the Moslem parties received 43.5 per cent of the vote. Herbert Feith, The Indonesian Elections of 1955 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 195 7 ), pp. 58-59 . 23 24 often live in separate residential locations, clustered around a mosque or prayer house, and are readily distinguishable from the rest of the population by their dress, music, and ritual observances. The strong consciousness of group identity is usually retained even when a santri receives a high level of Western-style education and enters a modern profession. Th|d non-santri Moslems may be religiously devout, non-reli­ gious, or tied to pre-Islamic religious observances, but all are opposed to Moslem-inspired organizations. Many non-santris not only oppose but greatly fear Moslem political domination. While they may detest what they perceive to be santri self-righteous­ ness and hypocritical puritanism, they believe that politically victorious santris would extirpate from Indonesian culture non- and pre-Islamic elements that they hold precious. This non- santri fear of santri power has been a dominant theme in Indone­ sian politics. About 10 million Indonesians are Christian, either Protestant or Roman Catholic. If the traditionalist-modernist cleavage is added to the religious, then the socio-cultural bases of Indonesia’s major political divisions are made clear. This is not the place to attempt an exhaustive definition of "traditional man" and "modern man," but they differ in two basic respects: attitudes to authority, and attitudes to societal change. Traditional man obeys and defers to persons of established authority (famil­ ial, religious, or political), and the younger subordinates him­ self to the accepted wisdom of his elders. Society is accepted as given, as pre-ordained, and change is perceived as harmful or threatening. Suspiciousness, hostile rejection, and anxiety are the typical reactions toward "Western" cultural imports, whether they be music, cinema, dress, new styles of relation­ ships between the sexes or age groups, or "scientific" and "rational" approaches to problem-solving. Modern man, by con­ trast, exhibits a questioning of society as presently consti­ tuted, a dissatisfaction with some of its parts, a reliance upon "rational" and "scientific" solutions to what are now regarded as "problems," a readiness to sample and adopt some of the West­ ern culture imports. He is capable of questioning and rejecting traditional values and behavior patterns when these do not meet his needs. And as Indonesia’s Islamization proceeded unevenly, so has the modernization of its people. The (politically) devout Moslems, or santris, are split between reformist (modernist) and orthodox (traditionalist) alirans. The Masjumi party, with its related mass organizations, largely represents the former, the Nahdatul Ulama (NU) the lat­ ter. Masjumi, banned in 1960 and resurrected in 1968 as the Partai Muslimin Indonesia, while heterogeneous in composition, is based more on the cash-crop, trading, manufacturing, urban and Western-educated sectors of the Moslem community, with the greatest concentration of support in Sunda (West Java) and the Moslem regions of the Outer Islands, especially Sumatra; it is 25 relatively democratically oriented in its internal operations, and more open to an acceptance and assimilation of elements of Western culture. The NU is more authoritarian, based on the villages of East Java, and suspicious of modernization. Further, much ill-will attended the breakaway of the NU from Masjumi in 1952,3 and subsequent political events did little to reduce the mutual dislike. The approximately one-half of Indonesians who are neither political santris nor political Christians are divided between traditionalist and modernist alirans. The Partai Nasional Indo­ nesia (PNI) is identified with the traditionalist aliran. Much of its leadership emerged from the aristocratic-bureaucratic stratum of Central and East Javanese society. Many PNI activists come from the bureaucracy, which retains much of the aristocratic- colonialist attitudes to societal change. The party!s mass support has always come largely from the non-santri, ethnic Javanese peasants who continue to follow the political direction of their "betters," the village chiefs, government officials, and schoolteachers. But the PNI rests on more than this mainly Javanese, traditionalist base. Especially in the early 1960fs, the PNI came to attract some non-santri Western-educated young men who wished to modernize society, including the PNI itself, but who could not see themselves joining the then-legal Communist Party. Apart from the santris and the tradition-oriented non- santris, Indonesian society contains a sector that is both secu­ lar and modernist. But even this is broken into two alirans.4 The first consists of those with a relatively high level of Western-type education, a rare achievement in the newly inde­ pendent Indonesia.5 Their education has lifted them, if they did not start there already, into positions of high status and good income and into the social elite of the major cities. They have tended to aggregate politically around the Partai Sosialis Indonesia (PSI, banned by Sukarno in 1960), with its develop­ mental, pragmatic, rational and often elitist approach to prob­ lems of state and with a marked sympathy for Western states and 3. The largest organization in Masjumi is the Muhammadijah, formed in 1912 as a reformist socio-religious association. The orthodox response was the Nahdatul Ulama, established in 1926. The Japanese brought the two organizations together as Masjumi, though each retained its separate identity. 4. The PSI and PKI may well not be aliran-based groupings, but represent, at least at the cadre level, the emergence of political groupings based on social class. 5. In the academic year 19 38-9 , only 20*4 Indonesians were gradu­ ated from highschool. George McT. Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell, 1952 ) , p. 32. 26 culture. The second, larger, secular and modernist aliran con­ sists of those who have broken free from traditional society but whose lack of adequate educational qualifications has barred entry into high bureaucratic, professional or business positions. This aliran became largely identified with the Communist Party (PKI). The expansion of the PKI depended ultimately on the part^Ts ability to undermine or capture for its own purposes the traditional values, attitudes and behavior patterns of the tradi­ tionalist lower classes. The santris proved resistant to this effort; whereas the PNIT s mass support suffered serious erosion. The Christian Indonesians come, in the main, from a few ethnic groups of the Outer Islands: the Toba Bataks of North Sumatra, the Dayaks of Kalimantan (Borneo), the Toradjas of central Sulawesi (Celebes), the Minahasans of northern Sulawesi, and the Florenese, Rotinese, Ambonese and Timorese of East Indo­ nesia. Many of the Chinese ethnic minority have converted to Christianity, more often to Roman Catholicism. Through mission­ aries and mission schools, the Christian Indonesians have been acquainted with Western culture and are, on the whole, more "modern" and Westernized than their fellow countrymen. Politi­ cally, many have supported the two specifically Christian par­ ties, the Partai Katolik and Parkindo (Indonesian Protestant Party), although some have joined other non-santri modernizing parties, such as the PKI and PSI.6 Diagram l:7 Alirans and Party Identification Religion Traditionalist Modernist Santri NU Masjumi (PMI) Parkindo Christian Partai Katolik PKI Secular/Moslem Non-Santri PNI PSI 6. In the 1955 elections, Parkindo and the Partai Katolik re­ ceived 2.6 and 2.0 per cent respectively. Feith, Indonesian Elections, p. 58. 7. The diagram ignores the minor parties. It should be noted that the major cleavages weaken, rather than re-enforce, the intensity of ethnic-group loyalties. Thus Masjumi (modernist santri) unites many Outer Islanders, for example, Atjehnese, Mandailing Bataks, Minangkabaus and Makassarese, with Javanese 27 Standing apart from the civilian, aliran-based political groupings are the Indonesian armed forces, of which the 300,000- man army is by far the most powerful. The officer corps of the army8 encompasses a broad ethnic and religious range, but it is extremely rare for a higher officer to have emerged from the lower classes or from either of the santri alirans. The higher officers in general have a comparatively high level of Western- type education, they enjoy high social status, and they live in an urban environment. Especially those living in or near the large, relatively cosmopolitan cities of Djakarta and Bandung therefore belong to the modernist, non-santri sector of society. At the same time, there is, particularly among ethnic Javanese officers close to traditional Javanese aristocratic culture, a traditionalist component with, as one of its more visible charac teristics, a suspicion of and sometimes open hostility towards the penetration of Western culture. Indonesian officers may feel an affinity with the civilian political party representing their respective aliran backgrounds more usually the PSI or the PNI, but they have refused to sub­ ordinate themselves to party control. This is not only because of ordinary institutional loyalty to the army. Men and youths had joined the Republican army for political reasons, and the officers believe that the army, not the civilians, was largely instrumental in the defeat of the Dutch and the creation of an independent Indonesia. Nor was the officers1 sense of apartness superiority and political mission to be reduced by the behavior and "accomplishments” of the aliran-fragmented civilian parties in the period following the Dutch withdrawal. urban santris and many Sundanese of West Java. The NU (tra­ ditionalist santri), while dominant among santri Madurese and East Javanese, is strong in South Kalimantan. The PNI (tra­ ditionalist non-santri), though heavily ethnic Javanese, receives significant support outside that base. The PKI, under its Sumatran chairman, D. N. Aidit (1951-1965), spread from the ethnic Javanese heartland to include non-traditional moderns across Indonesia. And each Christian party encom­ passes a wide ethnic range. The alirans, then, are cross­ ethnic in nature, which helps account for the lack of strong separatist movements in Indonesia. It should also be noted that each aliran, with the exception of those centered polit­ ically on the PSI and PKI, encompasses a broad range of socio economic classes. 8. So far the rank and file of the army has been politically quiescent. The officers strive to develop a traditionalist bapak (father) relationship with their men. 28 We have seen that Indonesia attained independence with a multiplicity of political parties and an army whose officers manifested a high elan and political interest as members of a successful nationalist organization. The santris could trace back their nationalist activism to the establishment of the Sarekat Islam in 1912; the PKI to 1920; the PNI to 1927. No major p&rty was willing or able, because each was based on a self-conscious and distinct socio-cultural aliran, to merge its separate identity and interests into an all-embracing single organization. Even the Japanese-enforced temporary unity of the santri groups was sundered with the breakaway from Masjumi of the PSII in 1947, and the NU in 1952. If the newly independent Republic lacked a dominant nation­ alist party, it was also wanting in a tested political system. The Dutch had denied Indonesians experience in top-level admin­ istration and in the processes by which national leadership and policies may be achieved through the aggregation and compromise of a diversity of group and individual interests. Shortly after the declaration of independence, the Indone­ sian nationalists opted for a democratic (which meant, in the Indonesian context, multi-party) parliamentary system. This was formally instituted after the Dutch withdrawal in the 1950 Provisional Constitution with its figurehead President and cabinet responsible to a parliament composed of representatives of the political parties. Very few leaders, however, and, of course, none of the masses were especially committed to this system. For parliamentary democracy to have survived, it would have had to win and retain the voluntary allegiance of at least the more important political strata--and this would have occurred only if the democratic system’s outputs were satisfactory to them. But such an accomplishment was highly improbable given a welter of adverse circumstances: society and the party system divided into several, in many ways irreconcilable, groupings; limited material resources available to the state;9 an at best semi-skilled, and soon over-staffed, bureaucracy; a new political system in which the "rules of the game" had still to be agreed upon; and powerful political elements constitutionally either outside the system (the army) or relegated to a minor role within it (President Sukarno). 9. At the time of the peace treaty with the Dutch, December 1949, Indonesia was not only a poor country, but was saddled with nearly $1.13 billions in debts to the Netherlands. Fur­ thermore, almost all large plantation, commercial and indus­ trial enterprises were in the hands of either aliens or citizens of Chinese descent. The political system, was, therefore, subject to great pressure from those Indonesians seeking material, status or power advancement. 29 Parliamentary democracy did not survive. It degenerated into a succession of immobilist, multi-party coalition govern­ ments, characterized by feuding within and between the coalition parties and increasing bitterness between the in-parties and the out. The composition of the coalition governments changed, but a pattern of party alignment was already evident by 1954: the ijaodernist Masjumi and PSI on one side, the PNI and NU on the other. While many factors helped produce this alignment, the most fundamental hostility and competition were those between the PNI and Masjumi, largely motored by the formerfs aliran fear of the largest, most dynamic of the santri parties.10 This overriding preoccupation of PNI leaders, shared by President Sukarno, facilitated the latterTs efforts to gain a dominant, albeit indirect, role in the PNI. This preoccupation also opened the way for what became during 1954 a de facto alliance between the PNI and the communists.11 General elections, held at last in September 1955, could not infuse either national unity or national purpose into the parliamentary system. The election campaign produced fresh crescendos of obloquy in the struggle between the opposing par­ ties. The balloting reduced the number of parties represented in parliament, but as the bulk of the voting proceeded in ac­ cordance with aliran identity, four parties received roughly 10. It may appear at first sight incongruous that on each side of the alignment a santri party was allied with a secular party. The PNI and NU collaborated because it was mutually beneficial to do so. It served the PNI to foster non- Masjumi santri parties in order to undercut the strength of Masjumi, and to exclude Masjumi from the authority and patronage accruing to government position. Coalition with the NU also muted the Masjumi's outcry that the government excluded Moslems. The NU leaders, embittered from their experience while within Masjumi, gained control of govern­ ment patronage, especially the Ministry of Religious Affairs. In authoritarian command of their own party, they could easily silence any pleas for united santri political action. The leaders of the PSI and Masjumi, as pragmatic modernists, shared a similar outlook on questions of government policy. It may be significant that their chairmen, Sjahrir and Natsir respectively, were both Minangkabaus. 11. Sukarno was a founder of the original PNI in 1927, but organizationally unattached since his imprisonment by the Dutch in the early 1930!s. On the PNI-PKI alliance, see Donald Hindley, The Communist Party of Indonesia, 1951-1963 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California, 1964), pp. 246-55. 30 equal votes and several others retained seats.12 A post-elec­ tion attempt to re-establish a working coalition between the PNI and Masjumi quickly collapsed. By the beginning of 1957, the multi-party system and aliran anxieties and hostilities held the cabinet as immobilist as ever, several regions in the Outer Islands had rejected Djakarta’s authority, national prosperity promised through independence remained a mirage, and the Dutch gave ho indication of relinquishing their hold on West Irian. The PKI was by now the largest party on Java, and expanding rapidly elsewhere. At this juncture, many army officers, some of whom were perhaps influenced by PSI leaders,13 voiced strong disapproval of the existing political system. They charged that multi-party democracy exacerbated division within the country, provided the opportunity for the growth of the PKI, and tackled successfully neither economic problems nor the national claim to West Irian. In short, they argued, the party-based governments lacked author­ ity and purpose, other than the enrichment of party leaders. The alternatives to the existing system were not given precise form, but demands were raised for the abolition of all parties and for firm, authoritative government. Sukarno responded to this situation by the gradual formula­ tion of the concept of Guided Democracy, formally initiated in July 1959 by the decreed restoration of the 1945 Constitution.14 From the start, Guided Democracy was an arrangement of conven­ ience. The officer corps, in command of the most powerful organization in the country, wanted strong government in which the army would play a major role. But while the officer corps could unite to defend its institutional interests, it was too 12. The four main parties received 22.3 (PNI), 20,9 (Masjumi), 18.4 (NU), and 16.4 (PKI) per cent respectively; 24 other political groups received at least one seat under the system of proportional representation. 13. The PSI, while heavy in highly educated supporters, proved light in popular appeal. In the 1955 election, the PSI won only 2.0 per cent of the vote. 14. The 1945 Constitution will be described in greater detail below. It provides for a powerful presidency, and had been shelved shortly after the initial writing. Sukarno acted outside the provisions of the 1950 Provisional Constitution in decreeing the reintroduction of the earlier constitution. The opportunity to do so arose with a deadlock in the Con­ stituent Assembly, elected in December 1955, between, sig­ nificantly, the santri parties and the rest. On Guided Democracy, and the circumstances of its formulation, see Herbert Feith, "Dynamics of Guided Democracy," in Ruth T. McVey, ed., Indonesia (New Haven: HRAF, 1963). 31 deeply fragmented to consider an attempt to rule alone. Sukarno, the most powerful individual in Indonesia and hungry to extend that power, was eager to restore a strong executive, but could not countenance a simple Sukarno-army government. That would have raised the danger of his becoming his partner’s captive. The parties were reprieved. Guided Democracy was at root a competitive alliance between Sukarno and the army leadership. For both partners, there re­ mained the question of what to do with the political parties. Sukarno might have preferred to create a monolithic state party controlled by himself, but this proved impracticable. Because he needed parties both to counterbalance the army and, through parliament and the MPRS (Provisional People’s Consultative Congress),15 to legitimize his rule, he was compelled to accept the aliran-based parties’ insistence on retaining their separate identities. He therefore blocked the desire of army officers to ban all parties, and in 1960, his opposition frustrated army attempts to merge all trade unions and youth organizations, most of which were affiliated to the parties, into single, army- controlled bodies. Sukarno’s approach to the parties was a mix­ ture of coercion and persuasion. Although his dissolution of most minor parties received the approbation of the army and the major parties, in September 1960, he banned Masjumi and the PSI for refusing to render him unquestioning support. The survival of a party became dependent upon its public support for govern­ ment policies, including public adherence to the principle of Nasakom (nationalist-religious-communist) unity for the comple­ tion of the Revolution. In this way, the political divisions within the civilian population were either formally removed, or papered over. At the same time, Sukarno provided the leaders of amenable parties with certain rewards: within the limits of open avowal of support for the government, their parties were allowed to continue their activities; they themselves were granted, if not power, wealth, honors and positions of high status (as within the newly appointed legislative bodies). The PKI, now with the added advantage of presidential favor, con­ tinued both to grow and to educate its cadres. As the largest, best organized and most anti-Western of the parties, it enjoyed the least unequal relationship with the President. If Guided Democracy was an arrangement of convenience, resulting from the inability of any one political force to eliminate the others, it was also, from the start, necessarily temporary in nature. The system was a juggling act dependent upon the skill of Sukarno in manipulating the fragmented polit­ ical forces around him. But the juggler was mortal, the archi­ 15. Under the 1945 Constitution, the MPR(S) is "the highest authority of the State," which determines the broad lines of national policy and elects the President who is responsi­ ble to it. 32 tect of no dominant political organization that could survive his own removal from the political stage. Further, he was manipulating strongly antagonistic institutions and alirans. The enforced reiteration of national and Nasakom unity only masked mutual hostility, while both the army leaders and the communists believed that eventually one of them must eliminate the other. Guided Democracy also pretended that the modernist santri sector, large in numbers, and the PSI-oriented intellec­ tuals did not exist. The six years of Guided Democracy did nothing to reduce the system’s inherent contradictions. The santris were resent­ ful of their exclusion from the center of power, a resentment unalleviated by the status and wealth of a few NU leaders and Sukarno’s promise of the largest mosque in Southeast Asia. The continued growth of the PKI, in part due to Sukarno’s obvious favor, only served to increase the hostility and fear of the santris and officer corps. But why were the santris and offi­ cers so bitterly hostile to the PKI? The PKI had wooed the NU as an ally since 1954 and stressed that while the party itself could not espouse a religion, its members certainly could. Com­ munists had assisted the army central command in the suppression of the PRRI-Permesta rebellion of 1958-1961 and, in recent years, had expressed adherence to the unity of the People and the Armed Forces in the defense and promotion of the Revolution. One source of undying hatred was the abortive communist rebel­ lion in September 1948. Communists and santris had butchered one another at that time, while the officer corps as a whole viewed the rebellion as an act of treason perpetrated while the young Republic was at war with the Dutch. Both santris and officers saw, in a PKI victory, their own political downfall and probably the physical liquidation of many of their leaders. Moreover, by 1965, the PKI was launching attacks against the ’’bureaucratic capitalist” officers in charge of Dutch enterprises seized in December 1957 , and against the ’’feudal” santri land­ lords.16 In short, then, the santri and army leaders were under no illusion regarding the PKI’s goal of total power. No commu­ nist strategy or tactic, no public affirmation of Nasakom unity, could erase this awareness--an awareness shared by most other non-communist leaders, including those of the PNI. The PKI was unquestionably, whatever its professed appearance, the party of the non-santri, less privileged sector of society, seeking the complete re-ordering of the political and socio-economic systems. 16. In Java, there are few large landlords, but especially in East Java, the relatively large landholdings are often owned by kijais, or Moslem religious scholars. The PKI campaign of 1964 and 1965 against ’’feudal” landlords was not aimed against santris as such, but the santri community was fully aware that the kiajis were in fact under attack from outside the community.