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The exhilarating political reforms of 1998 and 1999 made many of the ideological mantras of the Soeharto decades (1966–98) seem inane and anachronistic . No longer did politicians speak of ‘Pancasila democracy’, dwifungsi, integralism and the disjuncture between Indonesian culture and liberal freedoms . The new catch cries were democracy, regional autonomy, human rights and civilian supremacy. This entailed what Budianta (2000, p. 109) referred to as a ‘cultural identity crisis’, a search for new ways to think about what it meant to be Indonesian. Old taboos were swept aside as it once again became possible to talk of the liberal democratic 1950s in positive tones, to advocate federalism and to call for the overhaul of the 1945 Constitution. But this public rethinking of the foundations of the Indonesian state and of national identity was only part of the story. More than a year after Abdurrahman Wahid was elected president, the power of the so-called ‘status quo’ forces has become increasingly apparent. It is clear that however Indonesian politics is going to unfold in the next few years, the forces of reaction and conservatism have to be taken more seriously. This chapter will reflect on the character of political conservatism in Indonesia. It will examine ideological devices used by past generations of Indonesian conservatives to counter democratic ideas and movements. This will help put current attempts to retard the democratisation process in perspective and perhaps assist the present generation of reformers to respond to them. Conservatism is an imprecise and contingent concept. In this chapter I am using the term to signify something which in its extreme form resembles what Indonesia’s first prime minister, Sutan Sjahrir (1968, p. 28), called ‘hierarchical feudalistic solidarism’ but which more broadly manifests as rejection (or suspicion) of ideological pluralism in favour of a more or less organicist conception of the polity. These conservatives, who in another context could be described as ultra-conservatives or reactionaries, regard political contestation 9 CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL IDEOLOGY IN INDONESIA: A FOURTH WAVE? David Bourchier 112 AA/Part2 23/3/01 6:25 PM Page 112 as dysfunctional; as a problem to be overcome rather than a natural expression of a diverse society manageable through democratic negotiation. They have typically represented their anti-liberal and indeed anti-political outlook as culturally authentic, justifying this with reference to their own peculiarly paternalistic construction of indigenous tradition. Broadly speaking, there have been three waves of conservative ideologising by Indonesian politicians in the 20th century: romantic traditionalism (1910s to 1945), corporatist anti-partyism (mid-1950s to early 1960s) and integralist developmentalism in Soeharto’s New Order (1966–98), especially before 1988. While these initiatives share a family resemblance, each was shaped by its particular political and intellectual milieu. After looking briefly at how each of them rose and subsided, I will speculate on the shape and character of an incipient fourth wave of reaction in the post-Soeharto era. ROMANTIC TRADITIONALISM What I have called romantic traditionalism arose as a conservative response to the Muslim, communist and socialist nationalist movements in the first two decades of the 20th century. Its proponents were mainly members of the pangreh praja, the indigenous administrative elite that served the colonial government and joined organisations such as Boedi Oetomo or Parindra.1 Many in fact thought of themselves as nationalists, but dedicated themselves to either cultural nationalism – in most cases Javanese cultural nationalism – or to a version of national independence that involved minimal disruption to the existing social hierarchy. Sukarno’s brand of nationalism they saw as dangerously populist and a threat to the privileges they enjoyed as servants of the colonial state. It was only after Sukarno and other hardline nationalist leaders were arrested and exiled in the 1930s that they came to play a significant role in national politics, becoming the best represented Indonesian political party in the Volksraad (van Klinken 1997, p. 82). Their vision was of a monarchical or autocratic system in which a class of benevolent administrators presided over a country of grateful and obedient peasants. The most developed attempt to translate the ideas of the romantic traditionalists into reality was Raden Supomo’s contribution to the Japanese-sponsored constitutional debates in June 1945. Supomo was Indonesia’s foremost expert on adat (traditional) law. As with several other representatives of this tradition, Supomo had been trained in Holland and was strongly influenced by the Historical School of Law, a stream of legal thinking associated with German romantic nationalism. One of the key...

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