Indonesia's city of soul in mourning
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4527
By Irfan Yusuf
Posted Friday, 2 June 2006
If you wish to discover the real spirit of Indonesia, you need to look beyond the beaches and nightclubs of Bali. You also have to look beyond the traffic jams of Jakarta or the art deco conference halls of Bandung. Indonesia’s real cultural and spiritual heart is Yogya.
Like their Aussie neighbours in the global village, Indonesians love to abbreviate names. “Yogya” is the shortened name for Yogyakarta, the historical capital of an old Javanese Sultanate and the hub of ancient and modern Indonesian culture.
But as a result of the recent earthquake, large parts of Yogya and surrounding villages have been transformed into hills of rubble. At the time of writing, the death toll has climbed well over 5,000.
In January I was part of a delegation of five young Australians on a leadership exchange program sponsored by the Australia Indonesia Institute (AII). We spent almost a week of our 14-day tour in Yogya.
During our pre-trip briefing by AII officials, we were told we’d probably find Yogya more laid-back compared to the rush of the capital Jakarta. Yogya is a university town, with over 50 institutions of higher education. It is also a place of fine arts, culture and music.
By day, the streets outside the universities and in the heart of town are filled with food stalls. By night, the food stalls become tent cities where locals and tourists sit on the ground to savour the local culinary delights.
Our delegation dined in one of these tents one night. We were entertained by a small group of buskers consisting of a guitarist as lead singer and two backing vocalists, playing and singing everything from the Beatles to Bon Jovi.
We also visited a number of universities including the famous Gadjah Mada State University, ranked one of the top 100 universities in the world. There, we visited a special research centre devoted to inter-faith studies. We also visited a women’s research institute devoted to improving the status of Indonesian women and run wholly by Muslim women.
Yogya is a progressive and open-minded town. Transsexual musicians openly walk the streets even during the day. Our delegation visited a private university managed by Protestant Christians and catering for Yogya’s large Christian community.
A large number of non-government organisations operate in Yogya. Among them is Interfidei, an organisation managed by people of all faiths devoted to promoting religious tolerance. An Interfidei T-shirt shows a young child asking the question, “Mummy, what is God’s religion?” One Muslim Interfidei activist told us of her project to have Indonesia’s tiny Jewish community receive official recognition by the government of this, the world’s largest Muslim country.
We also visited an NGO managed by Muslim women’s activists. Called the Rifka Annisa, the organisation runs a crisis centre and refuge for women and children who are victims of domestic and other violence.
The workers of Rifka Annisa educate and lobby governments, judges, religious organisations and community leaders on issues relating to violence against women. Their crisis centre provides counselling and support services to women of all faiths and from all sectors of Yogya society.
Rifka Annisa workers told us of their most painful work in Yogya’s red light district. They told us of otherwise religiously observant women of all faiths forced by poverty to become sex workers, either on the streets or in brothels. Many such women suffer violence at the hands of clients, including a large number of foreign tourists.
During our question and answer session, I asked the Rifka Annisa workers whether they faced resistance from conservative sectors of Indonesian society. One told me, “If we were in Jakarta or elsewhere, that might happen. But Yogya is different. People here aren’t afraid of reality.”
Perhaps the most awesome experience was watching a ballet of the ancient Hindu epic known as the Ramayana. The ballet was performed in a small auditorium in the shadow of an ancient complex of Hindu temples. Part of the temple was damaged in the recent earthquake.
The Ramayana is the story of an Indian prince, Rama, whose wife, Sita (or “Cinta” in Indonesian), is kidnapped by a demon, Ravana. Rama fights Ravana with the assistance of an army of monkeys and rescues his princess.
The birthplace of Rama is a North Indian town known as Ayodhya. This has been the scene of bloody rioting between Hindus and Muslims after a mosque there was destroyed by Hindu extremists in 1992.
The Ramayana story may be the basis for rioting in Lord Rama’s birthplace. But in the city of Yogya, Muslim artists regularly perform the Ramayana ballet in the shadow of the city’s Hindu temple and to a mostly Muslim audience.
And in case anyone thought Yogya was just a place for Muslims to celebrate Hinduism, it is important to note that Yogya was also the place where the progressive yet orthodox Muhammadiyah movement was founded in November 1912.
The movement was started by Shaykh Ahmad Dahlan in the humble Kauman district of Yogya. Its emphasis was on al-Maun, a concept of small kindnesses expressed in Chapter 107 of the Koran. The shaykh taught his young students this chapter of the Koran repeatedly, telling them that the essence of Islam is to serve and care for others and to be aware of the needs of the broader community.
Shaykh Dahlan established this small movement, hardly 3,500-strong at the time of his death in 1923. Today, it has a membership of over 29 million, making it one of the largest Islamic organisations in the world.
The vibrant, progressive and lively city of Yogya is now overcome with grief following the massive loss of life from the recent earthquake. Yet for anyone who has spent time in Yogya, it isn’t hard to imagine this cultural heartland of Indonesia reviving itself from among the rubble.