Talking with Agustinus Wibowo: Syncretic Indonesia

©Agustinus Wibowo

Agustinus Wibowo is a young Indonesian intellectual who ranges from writing, with highly successful books, to travel photography.

In his travels, he has crossed the Himalayas, South Asia, Afghanistan (where he lived for three years), Iran, and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

Agustinus is fluent in Indonesian, English, and Mandarin Chinese; he learned Russian, Japanese, German and French academically; and he also self-taught many languages including Urdu, Farsi, Tajik, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Uzbek, Mongolian, Turkish, and Tok Pisin.

One of his favorite topics is the religious syncretic tradition of Indonesia, which is one of the topics that fascinates me, not just related to Indonesia.

But given that very little is yet known about the archipelago of 17,000 islands, it seems like a good opportunity to have a chat with Agustinus.

 

First of all, thank you for your time, Agustinus. I have introduced some news about you, if you want you can add more to make yourself known to the public of readers of my blog.

I really like traveling. Travel is, in a sense, a part of my life. For me, traveling was initially an adventure to foreign and unknown lands. Perhaps it's part of my search for identity, to figure out who I truly am. However, lately, my journey has been more spiritual, as I want to understand how religion and belief may affect people's lives and how we might achieve ultimate happiness.

 

Agustinus Wibowo

So, let's start from the last article written in your blog.

This is for me one of the themes that I try to tell with my stories and photographs, even here in Rome. That of the syncretic origin of the different religions and the fundamental importance of language to understand this. You write:

“Indonesia is truly a country with the largest Muslim population in the world. However, Islam has only spread widely in the archipelago in the last five or six centuries, whereas thousands of years earlier, the dominant religions in this archipelago were Hinduism, Buddhism, and local religions. Therefore, although more than 80 percent of the Indonesian population is now Muslim and a large number are Christian, the Hindu-Buddhist influence is still very strong in religious life in this country, often without most people noticing. From a linguistic point of view, much of the vocabulary relating to religion in Indonesian actually comes from the Hindu-Buddhist tradition.”

When I was teaching at the university in Penang, Malaysia, I had the opportunity to give a seminar on homophony between the Indo-Malay and Tagalog languages. The students, most of them Muslim, were amazed at how many of the words they used were derived from Sanskrit, including Islamic religious terms.

Explain this topic well. I do not hide the fact that I was surprised, and I admit that I learned it from you, that the Indonesian motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika itself has Hindu-Buddhist origins.

Human culture is dynamic and ever-changing. Religion, as a cultural product, continues to evolve and influence each other in inter-community relations. Through trading routes, Indonesia had interaction with the Hindu-Buddhist culture of India from a very early period, and Sumatra had been a prominent center of Buddhist study during the Srivijaya dynasty in the 7th century. Islam first appeared in Indonesia in the seventh century, but it was only about 500 years ago that it spread extensively, taking on a syncretic form.

In Aceh, for example, a suluk tradition still exists, in which a small group of Muslims in remote coastal areas meditates throughout Ramadan. In Java, Hindu-Buddhist influences are still very prevalent in the traditional Islam adopted by the community, such as respect for the spirits of nature.

Sukarno and many of the other founders of the nation were from Java and were undoubtedly influenced by a strong Javanese Islamic culture, therefore modern Indonesian identity still contains strong Hindu-Buddhist elements.

Furthermore, modern Indonesia claims to be the heir to the ancient kingdom of Majapahit, which practices a separate Javanese Hindu-Buddhist religion. That is why the Indonesian ideology's name, Pancasila, is in Sanskrit and is the same as Buddhism's five precepts or basic rules.

That, I believe, distinguishes Indonesia from other Muslim countries I've visited, because Islam in Indonesia coexists peacefully with Hinduism, Buddhism, and local culture and beliefs.

I was very impressed by the work of art created by Alfiah Rahdini for the Jakarta Biennial. It reminded me of the visual shock I felt back in 2014 when I entered the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, known as Ganjuran Church, in Bantul, the oldest church in the regency, from 1924. The church in pure Javanese style has the Christian iconography that blends incredibly – and totally new to a Western visitor – with the Wayang style of Java. The same Dutch scholars described this church as the most dramatic manifestation of a Catholic church adapted to the Javanese culture, of pure Hindu imprint: in short, I seemed to see Jesus and Mary in the Ramayana version.

Tell us about this work and its meaning.

 

Ganjuran Church. Bantul. Yogyakarta, 10 August 2014. ©Stefano Romano

This work was recently exhibited at the Jakarta Biennale, and to me it beautifully captures the mix of civilizations (rather than the term “clash of civilizations”) that shapes Indonesia today. A visit to a Buddhist temple in Java inspired the artist who created this piece, and it made her realize how foreign she was to her own ancestral culture. She then mixed ancestral culture, represented by a Buddhist statue in a meditation pose on a temple stupa, with the phenomenon of Indonesian women today, who are both modern and veiled.

This sculpture shows not only the process of civilizational mixing but also a social criticism of the current pressure from certain religious groups on art, particularly sculpture. They view iconoclasm as a sort of religious devotion. In fact, art should not be taken literally, and every work of art is made through serious meditation, which is spiritual in certain aspects.

Indeed, rejecting or banning works of art on religious grounds will further exclude modern Indonesians from spiritual introspection and lock them in narrow religious fanaticism.

“Sri Naura Paramita”, Alfiah Rahdini. Foto: ©Agustinus Wibowo

You have been in Afghanistan for three years. This experience led you to write the book “Selimut Debu” (A Blanket of Dust, 2010). What was the experience or memory that will forever remain indelible in your memory from that battered country?

One unforgettable journey is a trip to the Wakhan Corridor, on the borders of Tajikistan, Pakistan, and China. This area is inhabited by the Wakhi minority who adhere to the Ismaili sect of Islam, which is a small sect of the Shia group. It's the only place in Afghanistan where no one inquiries about my religious beliefs.

And also the ladies here don't cover their heads and have no trouble conversing with the other sex (in other parts of Afghanistan, we men can't even casually talk or make eye contact with women). An Ismaili religious leader from Wakhan Afghanistan told me: “Religion is not in the mouth, not in the clothes, it is in the heart. Our religion is humanity.”

Indonesia remains one of the largest and most experimental territories as regards the coexistence of different religions. We know well how religious clashes are one of the plagues that afflict humanity for centuries, as between Hindus and Muslims in the Asian sub-continent, the struggle between the southern Philippines and the post-colonial Spanish Catholic part, between Hindus Tamils of northern Sri Lanka and the rest of the country. Then when the religion is linked to an ethnic group then the mixture becomes dramatic, as for the Uyghurs, the minority of Muslim religion and of Turkic-speaking ethnicity in Xinjiang, in northwest China, or the Rohingya in Burma. Do you believe that Indonesia is winning this challenge and can become a model for other countries as well?

I don't believe there is a black-and-white answer to this. Inter-religious friction has been a major issue in Indonesia since the country's inception. After 1965, when the battle between communists and anti-communists took on a strong religious dimension, Indonesians have been required to follow one of the government's five accepted religions. The definition of religion according to this central standard leads to rigid divisions of religion and belief.

People whose faith is not recognized face difficulties in receiving proper governmental services, or worse, are suspected of being communists. Many local religions are also forced to merge with one of the official religions, forcing them to alter in order to satisfy the criteria of the religion they follow.

Religious tensions continued to proliferate at the community level during the Reformation era. Furthermore, some politicians have a significant interest in politicizing religion, which can lead to huge public disagreements. This is because religion is frequently utilized as an identity in general elections to attack political opponents or obtain popular support. Politicizing religion can cause widespread conflicts that are hazardous to the country's integrity if people's understanding of religion is not steered toward a moderate and open one.

©Agustinus Wibowo

Besides being a successful writer you are also an excellent photographer. Is there any photographer who inspired you and how do you see the photographic situation in Indonesia?

I was originally inspired by James Nachtwey in the documentary “War Photographer”, and that inspired me to become a journalist on battlefields like Afghanistan. I believe, even in places that humans avoid such as conflict zones or disaster zones, there are many stories that can inspire us and make us better human beings.

Regarding the current situation of photography in Indonesia, frankly, I don't know much, because in the last few years I have focused more on writing research.

One last question before I leave you. What are the Indonesian writers that everyone should read, especially to get to know the soul of Indonesia in depth? And what have you been working on recently?

“Bumi Manusia” (“This Earth of Mankind”) by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The book is a masterpiece in Indonesian literature, and beautifully describes the spiritual characteristics of Indonesians, especially Javanese society with a strong feudal culture, in looking at the past and the future.

I am currently working on a book that explores the roots of identity and the roots of human identity conflicts. Also another book about the meaning of Indonesian nationalism.

 

©Agustinus Wibowo

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