A ‘Pancasila-ist’ Ramadhan
Ramadhan is soothing. Even before it arrived, the fires that had been burning Indonesia recently – thanks to hotheadedness and vicious hearts – seemed to have dissipated, leaving behind small broken pieces that adorn the environment like the starry sky at night.
For Indonesian Muslims, the holiness of Ramadhan is a collective sacredness that has been well maintained in the nation for hundreds of years, and is resilient against the disruptions and temptations of the modern-global lifestyle. We receive a reflective moment to regenerate, reread and recheck ourselves after being involved in so much of the furor and chaos caused by the intermingling of political and religious interests. The face and the heart of religion (Islam) in the nation reveals itself as an entity that can silence the nearly uncontrollable anger, desire and libido of our thoughts, minds and bodies that have consumed us recently.
Our solemn prayers, the silence of our i’tikaf (spiritual retreat at a mosque) and the collective diversity of our daily religious congregations have driven the corruption and wickedness out of the thousands of words, phrases and idioms, insults and accusations, that not only ruined our language, but also insulted ourselves and our nation. What is truly behind such rhetoric that is filled with so many manipulations and trickeries that has led our hearts and minds astray?
What are the slogans of “goodness” that we see as the direct opposite of such negative rhetoric? What is the meaning behind such linguistic expressions? What kinds of communication truly occur? Is Pancasila, as an inherent part of our goodness and the birth of which we have always celebrated, able to curb the negative movements within our nation in a real and substantive way?
Is it true that the values – those we see as the defining characteristics of our nation – of tolerance, mutual assistance, egalitarianism and others have truly become praxis in our lives? At the very least, is it true that we adequately understand the meaning and wisdom behind each principle or term mentioned above?
Five fundamental traits
In several small and informal (personal) researches that I conducted, assisted by my postgraduate students, into unearthing realities from past and current eras (through historical, archeological and sociological explanations), I have been able to identify, to date, 40 unique traits of Indonesians as a people with an ancient culture. These traits, which are also become attitudes, fundamental values and moralities that form the identity/character/integrity of the nation of Indonesia, are proven to be essential and a model of praxis for the life of our people in old times and in the present.
Only, the fact is that in the field, these traits, the nature or basic character of our people are most adequately implemented among the “little people” – the grassroots. In the social classes above this grassroots level, these traits fade away. Among the elites, there is even a rejection or betrayal of these traits. There are several causes for this.
However, rather than explaining the causes, which would require too much space, I will try instead to summarize some of the findings of this research regarding the roots of our national traits and values, in order to avoid the traps of slogans, illusion and obstruction in their implementation.
This all began from the reality of the people, the country and the culture of the land of Nusantara/the Indonesian islands. It is an ancient reality of nature that more than 70 percent, or a third, of its region is water (the ocean), not including rivers, lakes, reservoirs and other bodies of water. It is a reality of nature that, like the earth, the human body is also one-third water.
Such a reality created a people – as a logical consequence – that is more oriented toward the seas and oceans rather than toward land. They became more “alive” through their closeness to the sea, making them experts in seafaring and in maritime technology (including shipbuilding), and resulting in them adventuring across the seas with diaspora all over the world. It is no wonder that archeological data has identified remnants of people from Nusantara on the eastern shores of Africa (to our west) and on Easter Island and Tahiti (to our east).
All of this happened from 3500-4000 BCE, when continental people, with their excessive fear of the sea, served as a counterpart to maritime culture. Historical records show that even in the 300s, or the Pre-Copernican era, European continental societies saw the horizon as the end of the world, beyond which lay the bottomless pits of hell (Inferno).
In our maritime culture, the horizon serves as a major symbol of our culture, comprising our social and spiritual lives. The horizon was seen as a straight line that connected the earth and the skies, a line that had to be transcended in order to reach a certain spiritual place filled with all the possibilities of socio-cultural life. This is the foundational dimension of the psychology and spirituality of a maritime people, of the men and women who have lived in hundreds of port cities all over this archipelagic territory from a long time ago.
It is from this psychological-spiritual basis that the maritime people and culture based in port cities developed their life principles. The straight line of the horizon, for instance, serves as a symbol of the life of the people who were open to “the other”. Seafarers and traders from foreign lands arrived in our ports to trade with locals who were highly open to their presence. An open people and society, and consequently, open in heart and mind.
Inertia of our national unity
This is a basic explanation as to why Indonesians actually possess the traits and life values of open-mindedness, open society and open hearts. This first trait, in turn, makes for a pluralistic society as the secondary trait and multiculturalism as the tertiary trait. Such a reality does not always come to pass everywhere. In many European countries, for instance, they cannot escape the modern reality in which the currents of migration have quickened due to technological advances, resulting in instant pluralism. However, are they also multicultural? Even German chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders have said that multiculturalism has failed.
Multiculturalism, in the sense of people whose lives fulfill one another and of culture enriching and maturing through symbolic and practical exchange, is the inevitability of a maritime nation from the beginning. So if problems arise in our country from the concept and praxis of such values (as has happened in Europe), clearly they are not an expression or manifestation of our character, or our fundamental reality and traditions. It is certain that new or foreign vectors or variables are playing with, harnessing or interfering with the original reality, or third trait, of our nation.
Such is the case in the following identity, in which the inevitability of the reality forms a value that is deeply ingrained within maritime individuals and society, namely egalitarianism, or equality. The natural reality of our character as open, plural and multicultural, as explained above, should naturally and consequently be supported by an attitude, both individual and communal, that places other people in a position equal to ours. If the opposite is occurring, the relationship becomes hierarchical or dominative and it will never lead to the intermingling of ethnicities that we see today in numerous places across the nation. Instead, there will be reluctance, apprehension, or even endless conflicts in the life of the port city, as eternal as conflicts in cities on continental lands.
These four traits that are the parts that form the character of Indonesians, once again, are just a few of the 40 traits that I have identified in my informal research. From these four traits that later become the values and even norms of our cultural life, another trait is then created concurrently as a natural and nurturant consequence that says: “I cannot say this any other way, my life needs you (your life)”. Basically, in a practical or ideal sense, this means: I live only because I am completed by the lives of others (liyan).
The values of openness, pluralism, multiculturalism and egalitarianism understandably help in understanding how we can be whole and useful because we are also made complete with the selves of others. You are in me, and vice versa. Tat twam asi, a Sanskrit phrase, the Hindu-Balinese interpret as having exactly the same meaning, with the same basic values: “I am you”. There is no “I” without “you, and vice versa.
This is the most fundamental value in the existence of a maritime individual and that which is in direct contrast to continental existentialism, in which “you” are my negation, my enemy and my hell – according to the pioneer of existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre. This is also the most fundamental existential value of the creation and preservation of the Indonesian nation that later came to be. Indonesia will never fall if its people keep on developing such existential relations, in which “I” can be an individual or can represent a community or an ethnic group, even an entire nation.
On this point, the inertia of Indonesia’s national unity (in the positive meaning, like Newton’s Law of Physics) is not a miracle, as a political/religious expert once said. An unbreakable unity (like “Poci”in Goenawan Mohamad’s poem) is a highly historical fact. The fact is that the integrity of Indonesia’s national character as a maritime nation is strong, internal, deeply roots and highly resilient.
Upon these five fundamental values or traits alone, we can rely and measure in a practical manner the extent of our way of life as an individual, as a member of a community, and as a child of the nation. Whether or not we have implemented these five fundamental values as part of our integrity during the calm and wisdom of Ramadhan, we can examine within ourselves before we judge others. Which of these five fundamental values are manifest or embodied in the principles of Pancasila.
Thus, it will be comforting and wonderful if we could fill this Ramadhan with reflection and contemplation, especially as a form of self-criticism (an ever increasingly rare trait among us, despite it being one of our 40 unique traits) of our behavior so far; our manner of understanding and practicing Pancasila, which we often cite as our undisputed ideology – our “fixed price” or the “price we set”. A Pancasila-ist Ramadhan– a Ramadhan based on the ideological tenets of Pancasila– is a form of political-religious integration, instead of a symbiotic relationship between religion and the state that many experts see as negations of each other.
Citizenship and spiritualism is an ordinary thing, a natural thing, a commonplace thing, and the inevitable nature of the life of our nation. From ancient times, the time of our ancestors, “we are seafarers”.
RADHAR PANCA DAHANA
Humanist