People/paulstange/voices/6.html

Ancestral Voices in Island Asia

by Paul Stange

chapter six
FORMATIONS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

--neotraditional ideologies & the politics of contending values
--policies of integration, regulation & constraint on religious discourse
--the Sabdopalon prophesy under Suharto

For most Southeast Asians World War II involved two and a half years of deprivation under Japanese occupation. After the close of the war, in August 1945, local societies become independent of colonial rulers, a process which was virtually complete, at least in legal terms, by 1960. In Malaysia and the Philippines diplomatic transitions were achieved; in Burma, Indochina and Indonesia violent revolutions marked transition. But economically, with the partial exceptions of Burma and Vietnam, every state in the region has been increasingly integrated into global and multinational systems. This trajectory, which counterpoints political independence, does justify questioning of the conventional sense that states are freer from outside influence in the postwar era than under colonialism.
In social terms the consolidation of modern states and increasing interpenetration clearly cross the boundary between the eras of colonialism and independence. The fruits of the industrial revolution tie local states to global patterns and bond peoples within them to each other with new force. Modern states entail instruments of intervention, through the reach of print and electronic technologies, far more pervasive than those available to earlier states. Systems of government and taxation; forces of warfare, trade and tourism; state education and electronic media all intrude increasingly in the lives of remote peoples. Nevertheless recent trajectories are still shaped by or refracted through persistently religious cultures and do not always match expectations suggested by economic logic. Southeast Asians are claiming new voice through adaptation of industrialised media.
Every shift in the region crystallised new classes. Germinal intelligentsias of the prewar era, drawn from elites who were already products of earlier fusion, became the seed for cosmopolitan national super-cultures. Transitions of the postwar era brought other groups into elite status. The economic strength of migrant Chinese and Indians gives them a central position, however ambiguous and uncomfortable, in cities. Military systems, prominent due to their especially coherent communications, have also been prime avenues for new upward mobility. Secular education, if tied to patronage and old class divisions, offers a channel for others who had less scope through monastic or religious schooling. The newly independent elites were initially very small but, like earlier royalty, they have magnetic power in their environment. Now, as the prime mediators of industrial culture they channel influences and lead in producing local modes of modernity.

neotraditional impulses and the politics of contending values

Although social historians define nationalism as the rise to power of westernised elites we have noticed that for the mass of the population revolutionary movements were shaped by both modern ideologies and popular utopian yearnings. Here my aim is to identify cultural trajectories within postwar transitions and politics. Politically liberal ideologies have been short lived in the region and the consolidation of authoritarian structures has been the clearest line of development. Authoritarianism, whether in military or communist form, has in each instance meant that tight hierarchies have cemented control over increasingly modern media and power structures. In cultural terms styles of political leadership, especially immediately following independence, resurrected earlier moulds. Expectation that modernity would produce European styled polities was crosscut by revivalistic quests for identity.
Spiritual impulses are implicit within political cultures and cultural policies as well as in everyday popular practices. Thus reformulations of religion are evident through politics as well as through institutions we conventionally recognised as religious. Insofar as political cultures have been neo-traditional, they have implicitly or explicitly infused religious meanings within politics. Generally spiritual nuances and essentially religious meanings are clear within neo-traditionalism. But when elites now invoke indigenous cultures it is within contexts which make the process one of reinvention rather than strictly of preservation. Viewed in that light neo-traditionalism is a major theme of cultural politics in independent states, it is a process of creative reinvention which aims to syncretically encorporate the modern within local frames.

Most of the dominant political philosophies of the postwar period can be characterised as 'neo-traditional'. New national rituals, including ostensibly western elections, clearly build on senses of state ceremony embedded within earlier societies. If reading the national elections of postwar Indonesia against idealistic democratic notions, which in any event rarely translate into western practice, we fail to notice their ritual function, as celebrations aimed at forging unity. Religious holidays are designated national holidays and new public memorial rites now commemorate revolutionary heroes as the founding ancestors of states, modern guardian spirits. Even if dirt paths have become concrete highways these patterns reflect choices guided by deeply worn tracks. This is to speak of a positive rather than strictly negative process. When modern actors appeal to Buddhism or the wayang they actively construct as well as cynically manipulate older popular symbols.
Confucianism resonated in Diem's South Vietnam, U Nu's socialism was also Buddhist and Sukarno's Nasakom reflected how Javanist impulses could guide the formation of national ideologies. Vietnamese communists prioritise communal values, consonant with Confucian tinged spirituality, which western Marxists have found hard to either grasp or correlate with their understanding of communism. Suharto has built a striking family grave, next to the grave complex of the Mangkunegaraan court, and modeled it on the temples of Indic Majapahit. He may aim to memorialise his role as the man who has guided the nation into modernity but his manner of doing so emmulates the way Indic kings commemorated their accomplishments. Even Lee Kwan Yew, the Cambridge trained lawyer who guided Singapore into hyper-modernity, prioritised Confucian family values and maintained a mandarin autocratic style.

Though the power of kings is circumscribed, royalty as such is a continuing centrepoint of ceremonial life in significant parts of Southeast Asia. Wherever it remains it carries religious resonance. Kingship remains a central institution within national politics in Thailand and Brunei, it continued in Laos through the 1950s and it existed in modified form in Cambodia until 1975. When the courts are considered more widely, beyond their overt political functioning and as complexes of ritual, belief and art, their residual role is obviously even more significant. In Java and Malaysia the sultanates retain special religious influence even though their political role is very limited. In Thailand and Brunei, where courts are central to the state, their vigour is political as well as social and religious.
When Sultan Hamengku Buwono IX, of Yogyakarta in Java, died in 1988 the commemoration of his passing drew extraordinary crowds and was widely noted in the press. Ironically he maintained the magical power of royalty precisely by the strength of his support for the revolution and his role as Vice-President of the Republic in the 1970s. In Cambodia Sihanouk evoked similar sentiments and for similar reasons throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Precisely through having adjusted to constitutional monarchy he preserved the sacral power of royal tradition and continued to receive the homage due to earlier kings. This respect has made him a key player within peace negotiations, even in opposition, into the 1990s.
Modernisation was spearheaded by royalty in the Thai case and the nexus bonding the court to the sangha, to village and to distant regions has been gaining strength consistently. The 1932 constitutional revolution turned what was Siam into today's Thailand and repositioned, but did not eliminate, the kingship. Kings thus retain a powerful ritual and ceremonial place within Thai society. In the postwar period Buddhism has been even more firmly enshrined, theoretically at least, than ever. Along with the monarchy it is as a key ideological basis of the nation. Marshall Sarit, whose views dominated the 1950s and early 1960s, reinstated some of the lapsed ceremonial functions of kingship and looked to Buddhism as a bulwark against what he perceived as the threat of communism.
Ironically the strength of continuity with tradition has allowed a less ambiguous pursuit of modernity in Thailand and it is especially clear that religious purposes inspire modern state construction. On the other hand modern Buddhism, as promoted by the state, simultaneously reflects creative adaptation to the 20th century, there has been a shift of emphasis from esoteric spirituality toward social action. Thus traditional institutions have been reformed while their power has been enhanced, underpinned by modern media, as a basis for integration of the state. In Thailand some correllates of modernity, repudiated as too western elsewhere, have been embraced. Variations on traditional images of the relationship between religious and political domains continue to apply throughout the region.
In Burma virtually all residues of the monarchy were eliminated by British colonialism. Nevertheless the independent state resurrected traditions rooted in local religious notions of kingship. U Nu, who was Premier for most of the period from 1948 to 1962, adhered to a version of socialism which departed from that of his more secular Thakin colleagues of the 1930s. Observers uniformly note the genuine qualities of a personal spiritual commitment he underpinned with a simple lifestyle and there is no doubt he sincerely believed the spiritual health of the population would be enhanced by proclamation of a Buddhist state.
At the same time U Nu's Buddhism was inseparable from the cult of the nat. He justifed propitiation ceremonies through reference to scriptures, his Pyidaungsu Party gave annual offerings to the spirits and he spent periods at sites sacred to them even when deciding economic matters. In 1961 he initiated the construction of 60,000 sand pagodas with iron spires and, as opposition to the declaration of Buddhism as the state religion grew, he spent 45 days in spiritual retreat on Mount Popo, a sacred site interwoven with the nat cults. Elements of the sangha accused him of prioritising the cults at the expense of Buddhism, but for U Nu himself these two aspects of his commitment did not appear in conflict.
National regeneration and the enhancement of Buddhism were seen as coterminus within a vision of the socialist state framed by Buddhist values. The revival U Nu led emphasised the Buddhist nature of Burma and the importance of its world role as 'the strongest home' of its contemporary practice. Under his leadership the Ministry of Religion was established in 1950 and from 1952 onwards the government employed monks to facilitate its objective of fully encorporating of hill tribes into the nation. It sponsored Mahasi Sayadaw's insight (vipassana) meditation centre in Rangoon, which became a showpiece of modern Buddhism, one foreign visitors of the time were regularly introduced to as an example of truly modern Buddhism.
The Sangayana, the Sixth Great Buddhist Council of 1954-1956, was the centrepiece of revivalism and associated activities coloured the whole decade. It marked the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha and to some extent became the world event it was intended, as representatives from thirty countries met. Building of the Kaba Aye Peace Pagoda began in 1950, on a site which was selected on the basis of a visionary experience, and the Council took place in what was called 'the Great Sacred Cave', a huge hall constructed next to the Peace Pagoda to house the projected 10,000 Buddhist representatives expected. At the same time the rebuilding of old derelict pagodas, of which there were thousands became an object of government policies.

In Indonesian prewar nationalism, in the Pancasila, the national political philosophy, and in the formulation of the constitution, at the time of the proclamation of independence, traditional preoccupations were already apparent. Later the concept of Guided Democracy elaborated by Sukarno, which framed politics from 1959 to 1965, more explicitly revived the ethos and style of kraton culture. Within it both purist senses of Islam and western pluralistic notions of democracy were excluded in favour of syncretic thought and the politics of consensus. Magical senses of power may have been implicit in the government's effort to concentrate energy on glorification of the capital and on its unifying struggles to liberate Dutch New Guinea and confront 'neo-colonialist' Malaysia. He certainly actively recalled the traditional glories of Majapahit, presenting it both as a peak of the past and model for the present.
Sukarno's populist imagery, of the primal peasant (marhaen) and of principles of cooperation (gotong-royong) and consensus (musyawarah-mufakat), were elevated as national ideology. Nasakom (the acronym for 'nationalism-religion-communism') was proclaimed as a synthetic and transcendent ideology and Sukarno presented himself as the mouth-piece of the people, meaning that he conceived of his personal consciousness as linked to the collective as its prime mechanism of representation. His charismatic invocations of the spirit of 1945 came with opposition, inflation and unresolved ills so that in retrospect even Javanists, who were generally sympathetic to his enterpise culturally, eventually felt that it fell short in practice. If Sukarno aimed to transcend ideology through synthesis Suharto has aimed to purge politics of ideology; if the 'theatre state' called Guided Democracy resurrected Indic courts the New Order can be seen as representing a surfacing of village temperament.
Suharto is a committed Muslim, but like Sukarno his grounding is in syncretic Javanism. Along with a foster father and several early advisers he participated in a prominent cult of the guardian spirits. The group emphasises pilgrimage to the power points at Dieng and Srandil, both linked to Semar as the guardian (danhyang) of Java, as a route to power. Within it activation of the throat cakra, associated with mediumistic reception of spirit messages, takes place in rituals framed by modern versions of courtly dress and attention to power objects, like the kris. Though privately pursued even by those in power within government, ironically this Javanist ethos is obscured by cultural defensiveness. It is less articulate than either Indic styled syncretism or traditional religions and the official status of such mysticism remains insecure. Nevertheless the underlying spiritual ethos of the governments led by both Sukarno and Suharto have been inspired by syncretic Javanist rather than orthodox Islamic or exclusive modernist sensibilities.
Observers, in stressing the crisis of 1965 which unseated Sukarno, fail to note that Suharto has accomplished what Sukarno intended. He has enshrined the principles of Guided Democracy, which Sukarno articulated, as the basis of polity. A 'family principle' rationalises New Order politics and was articulated in the philosophy of Dewantoro, the founder of the Taman Siswa movement in the 1920s. It fed into the state educational system and emphasises corporate identity and consensual politics. It is tied to commitment to develop the whole person in balance, engaging the mind, feeling and will through awareness of all of the senses. Taman Siswa was connected to the mysticism of Suryomataram, a famous prewar mystic of Yogyakarta, and with teachings of both the Theosophical Society and Maria Montessori. This philosophy converged with what was to become the dominant philosophy of the nation as expressed in the 1945 Constitution, the Pancasila (the five principles articulated by Sukarno, which underlie state philosophy), Guided Democracy in the late 1950s and, not least, the Golkar organisation under Suharto.
In Indonesia we may imagine a reversal of historical sequence in the cultural domain. Historically animism, the Indic, Islam and then the modern follow each other. If the revolution was a 'zero point', then unwinding is evident. Parliamentary Democracy was modelled on European images and led by the most westernised elite. That broke down in the 1950s at the same time as Islamic separatism, in Java, the Celebes and Sumatra was suppressed. Sukarno's Guided Democracy has been interpreted as a resurrection of the Indic, as attempt to construct a modern state inspired by the logic of kingdoms focusing on the ruler and capital. Sukarno's roots were at the lower level of the court oriented elite; Suharto's are in villages. The pragmatism of Suharto's village style contrasts with the theatrical, symbolic and intellectualist politics of Sukarno. While heralding internationalism the New Order did resurrect animistic culture linked to Semar and other guardian spirit cults. Sukarno legislated requirement for Indonesians to belong to world religion; Suharto initially encouraged legitimation of syncretic cults. Religious trajectories in the decades after the revolution can be read as an unwinding and, in the least as a component of popular consciousness, a resurfacing of Semar.

Political tensions within every state have converged with differences of religious outlook. In many contexts, as in the case of dar al-islam movements, explicitly religious ideas of the state competed with secular modernisms of all stripes. In others the constitution of political parties has drawn explicitly on distinct religious communities. Even when such links are not explicit in the formulation of parties, groupings implicitly embody contrasting values which inform local politics. The region wide prominence of religion means that politics has not been only competition between social classes or political ideologies, but can also be read as competition between divergent worldviews.

Among Vietnamese activists spokespeople like Thien Minh held that Buddhism represented a choice of values not present in either western or communist countries. He commented that "...we are convinced that Buddhism can build up a nation because it represents a unified force and because it teaches the doctrine of tolerance and understanding." But Buddhist views were strongest in Central Vietnam and the national sangha was relatively small. The appeal to Buddhism, as a potential basis for nationalism, was undermined by the presence of a strong Catholic community, Cao Dai cult dominance of Tayninh Province, syncretic Hoa Hao power in the western Mekong delta and the semi-autonomy of the Montagnard animists, Khmer border people, and Muslim Cham remnants.
Though he was a Catholic, Diem's policies also appeared to be based on old patronage models of government more than on Catholicism as such, in fact the Vatican was at pains to dissassociate itself from them. Postwar revival of Buddhism began in 1951, when a national conference was attended by fifty monks and lay people in Hue. They joined the World Fellowship of Buddhists, which had been formed in Sri Langka in 1950, and took issue with the Diem government, because it was unwilling to recognise a role for them. In 1963 tensions peaked around Waisak, the celebration of the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and passing in early May. When a crowd in Hue was met with tanks nine people were killed. Petitioning and demonstrations spread to Saigon as well. The self immolation of Thich Quang Duc on June llth followed repeated unsuccessful petitioning to Diem on behalf of Buddhists. In August 1964 Buddhist antagonism to the Diem government led as far as rioting in Danang, where Buddhist led mobs burned down the huts of Catholic refugees.
As General Ky assumed power in mid 1965 and the war situation worsened, lay Buddhists backed off their activism to concentrate on education and social welfare activities. They published magazines and periodicals, ran 135 primary, 35 secondary schools and a university and recruited youth to increase their strength. tense Tense negotiations continued throughout 1966 between Catholic, Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, Buddhist groups and the Ky government over the holding of elections and prospective representation in the constitutional assembly. Periodic violence between the military and Buddhist student groups in Danang and Hue failed to bring responses from the government. In May Thanh Quang, a fifty five year old nun, immolated herself before the Dieu De pagoda in Hue. Her expression indicated the depths of distress at American support for Ky's government, it was an appeal to the hearts of Americans and symbolised commitment to the spirit of non-violence. But the power of Buddhist activism, strongest in 1963, dissipated gradually in 1966.

When U Nu campaigned for reelection in 1959 he announced his preference for establishment of Buddhism as the state religion, but ensuing controversies even divided Buddhists. Recurrent disciplinary and factional problems, a residue of the fragmentation resulting from colonial removal of royal patronage, plagued the sangha throughout the 1950s. In 1951 a fight followed a refusal to allow pongyis, Burmese monks, free admission to a theatre; in 1954 two pongyis died in a clash over control of a temple school (kyaung); in 1956 factionalism led to rioting of monks in Mandalay; and in 1959 the police resorted to tear gas, arresting 89 monks after student rioting in Rangoon. When the legislation to amend the constitution was pending monks objected to the protection it offered to minority religions. By promising minority religions a share of state religious funds it appeared to allow them increased scope for growth. In November 1961 monks went so far as to burn down mosques on the outskirts of Rangoon. When the constititional change went through in 1961 the minorities seethed because the bill did not bring the expected counterbalance of federalism. Mild as the proclamation superficially appeared, even the sangha remained split or neutral in relation to it.
State sponsored revival of Buddhism lost momentum with Ne Win's coup of 1962. The philosophy of the military has been relatively secular, though even it has theoretically prioritised material development only 'in balance with spiritual life'. The Revolutionary Council announced its guiding philosophy through the Burma Socialist Program Party in January 1963. Elements of both Marxism and Buddhism found a place in that philosophy, but key traditional notions relating to the nats, Buddhist philosophy of samsara (the wheel of rebirth) and kamma (karma) were ommitted. Its thrust was essentially humanistic, even while appealing to spiritual values and affirming that the state had responsibility for improving the spiritual life of its citizens. Ne Win has not tolerated respect for nats. His government launched a concerted attack on spirit beliefs and even baned film productions centring on them. Following Ne Win's coup, attempts to pacify minorities forced retraction of the religion bill and worked to exclude pongyis from politics. After 1962 the Union Buddha Sasana Council was abolished; in 1965 the Vinasaya Act of 1949, the Dhammacariya Act of 1950 and the Pali Education Board Act of 1952 were all repealled and thus the major elements of U Nu's legislation of the 1950s, which had consistently aimed to strengthen the sangha were all eventually eliminated.

Most Indonesians do believe in God, as their state requires them to, and experience a spiritual dimension as real. One corollary of that is that they see the national identity as palpable, a spirit rather than just abstraction. Insofar as identities are spiritual a reflexive implication has also been that national reconstruction involves spiritual struggle. But for some this has meant movement toward collective realisation of submission to the will of Allah; for others it has meant repetition of endless tension between desires, linking us to the material plane, and impulses toward spiritual release. These views, one Islamic the other Indic, are suggestive of the major contenders which have been asserting the right to define the spiritual identity of the national entity in independent Indonesia. The western notion of division between secular and religious spheres has had only narrow purchase and the few genuinely secular nationalists have always had to address religious, especially Muslim, people, movements and interpretations.
At the same time though 90% of the population profess to be Muslim the nation is not characteristically Islamic in the way its cousins of that religion's heartlands are. Variants of animism and mysticism remain significant counterweights to the strength of Islam. Within Sukarno's PNI Javanese spiritual philosophy underpinned political thought and even the communist PKI converged with millenarianism insofar as it extended into Javanese rural life. The Dutch aimed to prevent Islam from becoming a focaliser of nationalism and especially forged bonds with adat, or customary, elites. This alliance deepened existing polarity between religious and political elites, continuing subordination of mosque officials (penghulu) to a bureaucratic elite (priyayi). Under the Japanese Islam gained momentum, as they recognised the influence of religious teachers and aimed to mobilise support. They gave authority to the Office of Religious Affairs and in effect established the basis for postwar Muslim power through Masyumi.
Strengthened by this leadup, Muslims demanded establishment of an Islamic state. But Japanese reliance on Sukarno had given him an access to radio other nationalists never had and his effective domination of it elevated him to primacy in the public eye. Secular nationalists regained relative strength as the occupation closed even though the new institutional basis of Islam irrevocably altered the balance of powers. The place of Islam was a key issue in the lead up to the proclamation of independence. Some Muslims thought the Jakarta Charter, a draft preamble to the Constitution, stating that Muslims would be required to adhere to Islamic law, would be official. Secularists prevented the compromise, arguing it would endanger the revolution. Until the 1970s recognition of the Charter remained an objective for Islamic politicians. Subsequent social tensions have still corresponded with religious cleavages. Divergence between Muslim orthodoxy and Javanism underlay the rhetoric of the 1950s, helps explain the crisis of the mid 1960s and remained an explicit focus of tension into the 1970s.
The Ministry of Religion and Islamic parties initially held a Muslim interpretation of commitment to freedom of religion. As Van Nieuwenhuijze observed, at the time of independence many Muslims viewed religion as synonymous with Islam and interpreted religious freedom as meaning 'freedom for Islam'. Until the 1955 elections the leading Islamic parties assumed that Muslims would vote for them and were shocked when only 42% of the population did. This contributed to Islamic and outer island separatism in the late 1950s and led even purist Muslims to reassess their assumptions. Muslims gradually and reluctantly accepted that they remain a fractional element within a plural religious scene. But notions of Islamic domination remain strong and many feel even now, as under the Dutch, that essentially foreign political repression prevents them from establishing the mould for a nation Islam ought to dominate.
Darul Islam movements continued in Aceh, West Java, and South Sulawesi through the 1950s and in Aceh active separatism has voice to the present. But the elections of 1955 and 1957 remain the best marker of religious commitments within the nation as a whole. In those Masyumi, modernist Islam, was strongest in the outer islands, West Java and in urban areas. The traditionalist Muslim Nahdatul Ulama, the nationalists (PNI) and communists (PKI) all had roots in the heartlands of Java, but each within different social groups. After the elections Muslim and Christian fears about growing PKI strength and resentment of Java oriented policies contributed to regional revolts. Association of Masyumi with the PRRI-Permesta rebellion, in Sumatra and North Sulawesi in 1958, meant that Islam was thoroughly marginalised by the end of the 1950s.
The nationalist party of Sukarno, based on courtly sense of patronage and rooted in the bureacracy, expected that claim to the 'mantle of nationalism' made little effort to seek votes. Muslims parties also assumed in the 1950s that people would vote Muslim. In contrast the PKI campaigned down to the village level to bridge urban and mass nationalism. At the same time the PKI leadership accepted its situation and accommodated Sukarno, hoping he would pass the mantle of nationalism to them. In this they perhaps themselves acted more in terms of Javanese mystical notions of power than of Marxist strategy. The Aidit led PKI had implicitly become a vehicle for what was then known as abangan sentiment, rooted in nominal rather than even syncretic village Islam. Land reform laws of 1959 were never put into effect and this led communist cadres to stimulate unilateral seizures of land, which in turn provoked powerful Muslim counter offensive. These tensions set the stage for the killings of the mid-1960s.
The suppression of communism meant that populism, like Islam, was marginalised by a military dominated centralising state. Suppression of the widespread Darul Islam movements and the regional revolts of 1957 and 1958 also coincided with the nationalisation of Dutch businesses and the movement to claim Irian Jaya. Each of these processes drew the military further into civilian administration, combining to eventually make it the prime vehicle of national integration. Social tensions led toward the coup of 1965. After the coup and the pogroms of late 1965 and early 1966, Suharto consolidated control through the army. Within the New Order the role of the army within civilian administration has been legitimated as a foundation of the state.
The ethos of the New Order is suggested by its emphasis on the Pancasila--in 1981 Suharto conflated criticism of himself with that of the Pancasila. In 1983 the MPR (Parliament) formalised separation of religion and politics, undermining Islamic parties by legislating requirement that all political organisations had to adopt the Pancasila as their basis. This principle was subsequently extended to all social organisations and is tied to consistent and self conscious argument that democracy had to be tuned to the 'Indonesian soul'. Islamic parties commanded around 30% of the vote nevertheless, despite adverse circumstances in elections in the 1970s, and it has been clear that Islam remains the clearest opposition to the New Order.Nevertheless, recent assessments of Islam in Indonesian politics point out that Muslims have become a majority with a 'minority mentality' and that the faith is 'an outsider'.

Elsewhere in the Islamic zone, as in Sulu and Mindanao, changes have been especially coloured by social dislocation. From the vantage point of the Manila government its policies in the south have been strategies for development and national integration. The government has promoted the migration of northern Christian settlers and businesses into what they deemed a relatively underdeveloped south. For Muslim locals these programs have represented the imposition of a new and more intense colonialism even if disguised as national development. It is impossible to separate changing religious practices, in this context of intermittent bloodletting, from the socio-economic and political strains of relations between poor Muslim southerners and relatively rich northern patronage powers.
Marcos policies provoked the founding of the Philippine Muslim Nationalist League (PMNL) in 1967. That became the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), with a military arm which grew rapidly through the 1970s. Misuari, the most public and astute leader of the movement, eventually sought support from Libya and blended Islamic nationalism with Marxist populism. Religious connections also became a bridge, along with ethnicity, complicating relationships between Manila and Kuala Lumpur. The Tausug, living in both Sulu and Sabah, established a working relationship across the border. Between 1973 and l978 important steps were taken to regularise trade between Sulu and Sabah and to adjust the national legal system to account for local Muslim law. These steps took some of the fire from separatism, but it has remained a running sores, among the many inheritances of the Marcos era which now also plague the Aquino government.
In the largely Catholic Philippines the church has been basically conservative and closely tied to elite dominated governments. There were less than 4000 priests in the 1960s and the priesthood has a very different relationship to the general population that Theravada monks. Notwithstanding currents of liberation theology from Latin America and the critical stance of some Church leaders, such as Cardinal Sin against Marcos, the general tenor of the church has been conservative. This stance is rooted both in the social origins of its leadership and in its staunch anti-communism. Since the Huk movement of the 1950s communism has remained an active social issue and there have continually been a scattering of underground cells and guerrilla bands operating in its name.

Resonances of traditional ethnic and religious difference continue to underlie or converge with politics. Tensions have been explicitly religious within the archipelago. The Muslim south and Catholic north have been at odds throughout the history of the modern Philippines. In Malaysia religion converges with race and the intensity of requirement that Malays practice Islam implicitly reflects tensions between Chinese and Malay groups. Indonesian politics have certainly been shaped significantly by the underlying division between syncretic traditional and modern orthodox Islam. In the 1950s the communists drew support mainly from syncretic Javanese and opposition was strongest among the Muslim youth who helped the army eliminate it in the l960s.
Though less prominent, similar tensions have been clear through the mainland states as well. Religious issues wove into the politics of the thirty year long Vietnamese revolution. Catholics from the north sometimes worked together with syncretic southern cults during the 1950s and 1960s in opposition to the socialist revolution. In Burma (Myanmar), Buddhist Burmese speakers from the lowlands have been resisted by Christian Karens ever since independence. In Thailand the Malay speaking Muslim minority of the south has not easily endorsed or been integrated into a state which makes so much of the conjunction of Thai ethnicity, Indic syled royalty and Theravada Buddhism.
The religious revivalisms of the postwar era make nonsense of assumption that Muslims would separate, any more than Confucianists or Buddhists ever did, between spiritual and social spheres. Religious impulses intersect with political-economic purposes in underlying postwar state construction throughout the Islamic and Theravada regions. Political process has been consistently construed by most local peoples as a sphere of cultural and spiritual contention. This has often remained the case even when revolutionary actions and political ideologies have appeared secular on the surface. At the rice roots of village societies even ostensibly secular ideologies such as Marxism have intersected with millenarian spirituality. Nevertheless it is apparent that economic concerns and secular politics have appeared to be increasingly separable from spiritual concerns during recent decades and that as those divide preoccupation with economics has also increased at the expense of spiritual concerns.

policies of integration and regulation

If colonialism defined current maps of the region, independent states have been left with the task of effecting integrating policies. Religious and ethnic identities within each state have been multiple and competing claims to national identity have thus produced prominent fracture lines within all postwar societies. Ethnicities were subsumed within colonial territories and those relationshipls carried into national structures. States like Aceh and ethnic groups such as the Karen and Meo were drawn, more through colonialism than by earlier states, into social units dominated by Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese, Javanese, Malay and Tagalog speakers. These majorities, for the most part occupants of core areas, dominate the new states. At the same time social boundaries between local peoples and migrant Indian, Arab and Chinese groups hardened from the turn of the century. Fragmentation of local identities has been self-evident and the fragility of unity transparent. Throughout the region constructions of national culture have self-consciously aimed to produce a dominant mould which would override these profound differences.

We relate the rise of nationalism and religious modernism to the impact of print technologies. In considering cultural processes of integration within the new national states, especially since the 1970s, we are dealing with the impact of electronic media. In the past several decades electricity has reached villages, in tandem with centralised bureaucratic administration, and with it radio and TV convey messages carefully orchestrated by governments. The appropriation of media is not simply a matter of the obvious, of indigenous control over print, radio, film and television technologies. It is also a way of talking about wider correlates--forms of entertainment, militaries, bureaucracy and government. Cultural integration is especially carried out through schools and bureacracies and we can read their technical underpinings as tools. The extension of modern institutions and media into village societies has been remarkable. Radio, TV, education and government policies are deployed to alter attitudes and family life along with agricultural practices.
Newspaper and radio communications were widely disseminated before World War II, but now electricity and TV reaches villages as well as towns. Burma has been least affected by modern media, as it has remained relatively isolated under Ne Win. But increasing consumerism and the urban classes who benefit from it, in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, is linked to a new phase of communications revolution which has accelerated since the early 1970s. Now integrative revolutions aim to bring all the peoples of each national territory into a single socio-cultural frame. Beyond linking peasant villagers to urban centres each state in Southeast Asia is challenged by the struggle to integrate diverse ethnic groups within one territory. During the past several decades this effort extends far beyond what colonial systems attempted, as the new national states are not satisfied with the pluralism imperialism both generated and enshrined.
Appropriations of new media and the apparatus of statehood have been taking place within a context of severe limitation. The legacies of colonialism, including international imbalance and the dislocations attending warfare, poverty and rapid urbanisation, impose heavy costs. Internal migration, new agricultural regimes and deforestation have restructured the physical as well as social environments of tribal minorities and shifting cultivators. Grasping recent changes in culture clearly depends on awareness of how, among other things, economic shifts and population movements threaten the capacity of village communities to sustain old rituals. Such stresses condition social process and establish a frame for understanding changes in popular culture and religion, as indeed similar factors do through earlier history.

Policies of integration which verge on effort at monocultural homoginisation go hand in hand with the formation of new national cultures. Resulting programs often imply cultural genocide and mirror the green revolution in agriculture. There hybrid species increase the uniformity of genetic stock and crops become at once more productive and more vulnerable to pests. Through the self confident modernism of current governments monocultures extend in the social domain with vigour and the same double edge. Prewar European colonial governments subordinated local populations politically, but often also worked to insulate them from cultural change. Sometimes, as in Bali, they claimed this was to protect local peoples and preserve their cultures. In other instances, as in British or Dutch containment of local religions, insulation aimed to prevented locals from competing with colonial enterprises. In the postwar era the independent states, dominated by Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Malay and Javanese speakers, have spearheaded a new wave of polices geared much more toward cultural integration than those of the colonial era.
Since World War II the residual autonomy of communities in the remote zones of the Shan plateau and previously relatively untouched parts of Mindanao, the Mentawi islands and interior Borneo or New Guinea. This process particularly threatens the tribal and ethnic beliefs of the Karen and Chin of Burma (Myanmar), the Meo of Thailand, the Jarai in the hills of Vietnam and the Mentawai, Punan or Asmat in the archipelago. Visayan and Tagalog migrants to Mindanao and Javanese migrants to Kalimantan, Sulawesi or Irian displace and marginalise indigenous peoples. Resettlement programs, like the rapid expansion of forestry, also work to destroy the habitats which underpinned shifting lifestyles and the earlier rich diversity of local cultures. At the same time tribal peoples, even outside areas of internal migration, have been brought into direct routinised contact with institutions of government, foreign capitalised businesses and national education and health systems. These factors combine to threaten, ironically more than colonialism, and lead to disappearance of the hundreds of tribal minority ethnic groups which have inhabited the less trafficked zones of the region.
Similarly even in rice growing villages of dominant populations there has been a penetration of state control far surpassing colonial interventions. Through most of the region village heads and councils had functioned to represent local communities, and by their mediation they always muted the intervention of outside forces within village life. Now village heads are increasingly the bottom rung of bureaucracies and their responsiveness to local demands has weakened along with the claims of residents to land and the strength of ritual contacts with spirit realms. Even dominant ethnic communities and recognised religions have been subject to a restructuring which has been facilitated by instruments allowing previously impossible regulation--extending to licensing of folk healers.
Warfare, the most obviously disruptive mode of intervention, has shaped the experience of most tribal areas of the mainland through much of the past four decades. The Vietminh defeated the French in the hills at Dien Bien Phu through alliance with hill peoples who they had depended on throughout their struggle. This alliance laid the basis for an unusual degree of autonomous tribal power in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which adopted Chinese policies with regard to ethnic minorities, promotion of literacy was channelled through indigenous tribal languages. But the Annamite chain, bordering Vietnam, Kampuchea and Laos, has for decades also been a key channel supplying guerrilla armies. First it was used by the Vietnamese against the French and then Americans, then as a supply line to China for the Khmer resistance against the Vietnamese. As a key communications line it suffered intensely from both bombing and the movements of armies, so much so that the ecology of those hills has been, very likely permanently, altered.
In Thailand extension of Theravada into the hills is underway, but some hill groups have become Christian instead. Missionary Biblical translation has facilitated conversion of predominantly oral traditions into writing, providing a route to literacy which is especially relevant for minorities interested in maintaining their language while accessing modern education. This has competed with nationalist policies which have usually emphasised literacy through schooling in the language of the dominant ethnic group. In Thailand's Northeast, North and South there have been periodic communist or ethnic guerrilla movements and since the war the Thai government has felt that the security of its borders depended on assimilating the minorities into lowland Theravada culture. Thus in 1963 the Dhammajarig (travelling Dhamma) program began self consciously to promote the extension of Buddhism to the hill tribes with an assimilationist objective. By 1967 one hundred monks were sent and instructed to explain their practices whenever local people inquired.
Similarly until the early 1970s Sihanouk self consciously considered Theravada Buddhism as the prime instrument of national integration for Cambodia. Since 1962 the Ne Win government has actively pursued a policy of assimilation, but militant Karen nationalism remains in residual form along the Burmese-Thai border. In the Shan plateau the mainly Christian Karens, separate communist groups and opium warlords have been fighting intermittently since 1948. Among the Karens, many of whom were converted by Baptists or Buddhists during the past century, natural (Y'wa), ethnic cultural (Mu Kaw Li) and ancestral (bgha), spirit forces continue to interact even among the large number who became Christian. Traditional ceremonial, political or economic exchange between hill and valley peoples had built in mechanisms to moderate inequities and maintain distance; modernising governments work to encorporate local chiefships or village councils into national administrations. As in the colonial era conversion to Christianity sometimes appeared an attractive counter option.
In the archipelago periodic military conflict in Mindanao relates to government efforts to subordinate the Moros within the Catholic Manila dominated state. In Malaysia the so-called 'Emergency', a war between Chinese, British and Malays extending through the 1950s and drove guerrilla fighters into the forest areas of the Semang, forcing some of them to cross the border into Thailand and others into resettled villages. Indonesian confrontation with Malaysia in the early 1960s similarly drew armies to the boundary area of Sarawak and Kalimantan. Indonesian action against the Dutch, in what became Irian Jaya, established a military channel for integrating Irian into the state. Previously Christian missions became intensely active there in the 1950s, in the last decade of Dutch control, and since its defacto encorporation into Indonesia in 1962 they remain the major alternative network to the government in Irian Jaya. Subsequently the protracted war against Fretlin in East Timur, beginning in 1975, has had a similar complexion, aiming to subsume ethnic identities into the nation and facing resistence which has drawn on Catholic networks.

Here we will consider religious change at the macro level, in its external dimensions, by dealing with intersections between governments and the institutional levels of religious life. The consolidation of new states has led to increasing centralised control over institutional religious life, the same powers which limit smuggling or collect revenue have been exercised in regularising religious hierarchies which are increasingly articulated at national level. This is a corollary of the general process of forming national cultures, and is also due to the special interest governments have had in mobilising religious institutions for other, political, cultural and economic, purposes. As many neo-traditionalist philosophies carry religious senses of purpose, intervention by governments in the religious sphere have usually been sanctioned by postwar states. Policies with respect to religion are based on the view, one governments share even when they are ostensibly secular, that the ambit of state authority includes the spiritual welfare of its population.

The establishment of national educational systems has been a mechnanism of integration. Consolidation of public education, spreading literacy and secularism into villages, has been notable throughout Southeast Asia, as only the Philippines had a relatively advanced state school system in the colonial period. There have been massive rises in adult literacy since the 1950s. However, despite the fact that governments emphasise secular education, religious schooling continues to occupy strong ground in every part of the region. At the same time the lines between traditional religious and modern secular education have blurred. Religious schools everywhere now give increasing attention to secular subjects, government sponsorship has extended to supporting religious education and at the same time religious education has expanded even within secular systems.
The role of religious specialists at the local level has been changing. They are direct agents of change, whether on behalf of governments or through their perception of themselves. Local religious leaders generally conceive of themselves now as agents of social, as well as specifically religious, change. This shift in the role of religious specialists was noted by Geertz, who observed that in the 1950s the politicisation of rural life through parties led the rural kyai, Javanese Islamic teachers, to become brokers for modern politics and ideas, as well as continuing to function as teachers within the religious schools, the pesantren, which housed them. At the same time other local Islamic authorities, such as the penghulu, in charge of mosques, and hakim, religious judges, have become directly part of national structures through their integration, via the Ministry of Religion, into the national bureaucracy.

Though failing to claim the Indonesian nation fully for Islam, the strength of Masyumi as an umbrella Muslim party, was sufficient to ensure rapid establishment of a Ministry of Religion. This was dominated by the traditionalist Nahdatul Ulama until 1971, at which point the New Order effectively displaced that party as the dominating force behind the Ministry. Though responsible for all religious communities funds within it are allocated according to census statistics and Islam has thus dominated it heavily. The Ministry administered government subsidies to more than 13,000 primary, 776 secondary and 16 higher madrasasin 1954 and to a total of 22,000 madrasasand pesantren by 1965 and these figures kept increasing in the 1970s. The separate Islamic educational network has come increasingly into its own, especially since the 1970s through the tertiary level IAIN (State Islamic Institutes), as substantial oil revenue has been channeled toward it
This relatively autonomous educational network has been the basis for a new wave of nationwide Islamisation. The Ministry became the main stronghold of Muslim influence within the bureaucracy and a counter to Javanist domination of the Ministries of Information and of Education and Culture. Given the importance of law within Islam the establishment of the Ministry of Religion had immense practical implications for local religious life. Islamic courts came under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Religion rather than the Justice Department. In issues of family law, notably divorce and inheritance, a legal basis for religious authority was established. From the mid-1950s to 1974 there was intermittent and severe controversy over marriage legislation, especially concerning polygamy and non-Muslim marriages.
Muslim reaction to the government's proposed civil legislation of 1974 provoked such extreme reaction the bill was withdrawn. For Muslims frustration has often focussed on the codification of customary (adat) law undertaken by the Dutch. The Ministry channeled funds and created institutions in a way that strengthened Islamic organisations. At the same time it also implicitly limited the potential for Muslim activists to challenge the basis of the state, as its very establishment implied Muslim endorsement of the state. NU control of the Ministry, which was firm by 1954, led that party to endorse the state which underpinned it. Other Muslims protested because they wanted to challenge the basis of the state more fundamentally.
At the local level in Indonesia the prewar Muhammadiyah has remained a powerful organisation through its own school system. It has been joined since the 1970's by a series of newer dakwah movements and religious impulses of all sorts were strengthened through the coup of 1965, as they had been earlier through the revolution. A combination of political pressure and personal trauma led many Javanese to fill the mosques for Friday noon prayers in the late 1960s. Many people since 1970 have undoubtedly found renewed and genuine commitment to a more purely Islamic faith in the process, but these movements clearly reflected political enforcement of necessity to activate religious commitments. But Islamic effort to purify Islam of syncretic beliefs and insistence that Muslims must rigorously obey the injunctions of their faith had unintended effects, often pushing committed Javanists to define themselves in non-Islamic terms.

In the Malaysian context Islamisation has been intensified through its role as a vehicle of Malay cohesion. Governments have contributed by proclaiming Muslim holidays, upholding Islamic values in education and economics and by encouraging internal conversion (dakwah) movements. The relationship between Islamic and national law in Malaysia remains complex, partly due to variations between states. In the sultanates colonial policies allowed distinct religious rights to remain with sultans and in the modern states local authorities still retain significant powers in this area. Tun Mustapha, for example, made especially notable appeals to Islam when he was chief Minister in Sabah, working against Christian influences and promoted conversion to Islam.
Since 1960 the Malysian government has administered collection of the zakat, the religious tithe. States administer the collection of 10% of the paddy and at the same time villages levy their own zakat. In urban areas people pay an extra tax instead. In 1968 roughly US$3.5 million was collected and funds have gone for religious buildings and education, in direct subsidies to the poor, even to some business oriented programmes. Elsewhere national governments have no direct involvement in collecting religious taxes. In Indonesia it is only through private organisations, such as the Muhammadiyah, that zakat is collected and disbursed at a local level. The haj has also been facilitated by the combination of government offices and, since the war, air travel. By the 1980s over 70,000 Indonesian pilgrims went to Mecca annually; Malaysian pilgrims increased from about 5,000 to 15,000 between 1965 and l980 and in the same year over 7,500 pilgrims went from elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Within Theravada states the spread of modern education, whether through reorganisation of sangha based education or the creation of new national schools, reshapes popular perceptions of Buddhism. Secular education competes with the sangha as a vehicle of social mobility and recently fewer have choosen the monkhood as a long term vocation. The proportion of monks relative to the male population halved in Thailand between the 1920s and 1970s, although remaining high, at about 1:34. In both Burma and Thailand the number of village youth who ordain briefly, for the annual rain retreat, is still high. In Burma the sangha declined from perhaps 100,000 in royal times to 70,000 in 1941 then even more rapidly, to 45,000, in 1958. In Kampuchea and Laos the sangha has lost ground more dramatically, but it has not disappeared even under communist governments and notwithstanding brief almost total eclipse under Pol Pot in Kampuchea.
Naturally neither Christian Karens nor animists were attracted to the prospect of Buddhism as a state religion. In deference to the Karen, Kachin and Chin minorities Burma was not declared as a Buddhist state, to induce them to join the union. Nonetheless its first constitution, of 1947, recognised a 'special place' for Buddhism and once U Nu was in office, in 1948, he concentrated on promoting Buddhist revival as part of his vision of the national revolution. For example, The Vinicchaya-Htana Act of 1949 aimed to remove religious disputes from the jurisdiction of civil courts by establishing ecclesiatical courts at the town level throughout the country. It was modified in 1954 to take account of the strength of divergent sects within Burmese Buddhism. Sectarian fissures have been prominant there and local abbots have had more power within their temples (kyaungs) than their colleagues elsewhere, so centralisation ran into resistance.
The Ministry of Religious Affairs was established in 1950, partly to restore cohesion to what had become a fragmented religious structure. Meanwhile the Ministry of Education engaged actively in regulating and supporting monastic examinations and standards within the larger monastic universities. From 1947 onwards there was discussion of establishing a Pali University. These moves countered the long absence of royal sponsorship and strengthened government intervention in the affairs of the sangha. Periodic debates through the 1950s, over the registration of monks and the holding of monastic parliaments, provoked Buddhists, such as those of the Anti-Hluttdaw Association, to demand the abolition of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in 1959. Revolutionaries in many instances worked through the sangha, gaining a mobility through that they would not otherwise have had, so registration was an touchy political issue.
One notable intervention in Buddhist developments, the Institute for the Advanced Study of Buddhism, was founded through collaboration with the American Ford Foundation in 1954. It implied a mixture of secular and religious objectives which sat uncomfortably within Burmese traditions, which had separated those spheres under colonialism. Emphasis on English language learning and missionary expansion of Buddhism went hand in hand with what became a Burmanisation of the curriculum and personnel. This new style of government and foreign sponsored training was tied to notions of social service. Promotion of Buddhism was linked at once to consolidation of the state internally and to projecting its image in the international environment. In Burma by 1962 there were 84 temple schools (kyaungs) which had enough highly trained monks to register as colleges. More recently the Ne Win government has given no encouragement to kyaung schools, but they remain a vital component of Burmese education, even if the 70% who attended religious schools in 1952 must have declined significantly since.

The Thai government has been in the strongest position to patronise Buddhism and it has not held back from fostering and attempting to manipulate the strong local sangha. The government attitude was reflected in a 1963 pamphlet which indicated that: "...the complexities of living in the modern world...necessitates a close cooperation and mutual understanding between the State and the Sangha working harmoniously together for the economic and spiritual well-being of the people." The 1963 Sangha Act, initiated under Marshall Sarit, constituted a powerful intervention in the life of the sangha. The previous Acts, of 1902 and 1941, had contained more democratic features. The 1963 Act centralised power in the name of defusing sectarian rivalry between the cohesive, and hence relatively better represented, modernist Dhammayut, and more diffuse Mahanikai sects within the sangha.
This restructuring reflected Sarit's recognition that Buddhism and the monarchy remained critical to achievement of modernising objectives. Each adjustment in state policy with regard to the sangha has matched modernising reforms, relating first to the reforms of the nineteenth century, then to 1932 revolution, and finally to Sarit's coup of 1957. Continuous strengthening of the bonds between religion and the state, as hierarchical ties have tightened through the Ministry of Religion, has decreased the prestige and autonomy of local wat. In Thailand monastic examination regulations came into effect in 1910 and remain in force. According to figures from 1968 there were about 25,000 wat and 185,000 monks, perhaps one third of them 'temporary', in a Thai population of around 34 million.
Schools both linked the state to religious institutions and introduced religious specialists to secular learning. In 1967 half the primary schools were still wat schools, where teaching was done by monks and there were 6,634 Nak Dhamma schools and 615 Pali schools. Two wat institutes in Bangkok, Mahamakuta Rajavidyalaya and Mahachulalongkorn Rajavidyalaya, became the basis of modern universities in 1945 and 1947, and from that point offered a wide range of technical and secular subjects along with Buddhist Pali studies. The hierarchy of monastic institutions, leading up toward these elite 'university wat' of the capital, matched the socio-political hierarchy of cities. As in earlier times, the sangha offered a channel for upward mobility and status, especially for the relatively poorer villagers of the Northeast.
It is recognised in all village studies of the Theravada countries that through the period since the war monks continue to play a key role as consellors and advisors, as well as as officiants within religious ceremonies. Now their traditional centrality in this respect has been counterbalanced with community development training. In the late 1960s Mahachulalongkorn University in Bangkok sponsored community development training for monks in centres dispersed though the country. Monks who attended were expected to return to their villages and apply the skills and perspectives gained in whatever way they could. There is little doubt that many, as in the purely secular cadre training programs in Vietnam, absorbed and applied the lessons learned.
Similarly in Cambodia Sihanouk held that "...our 70,000 monks are the 'officers' conducting our people to work, just as the officers conduct the troops into combat...." Because the French did not cut the tie between royalty and the sangha in Laos or Cambodia it remained relatively tight until the socialist revolutions of the mid-1970s. In Cambodia, as in Laos and Thailand, the state and sangha were much closer than in Burma. There Buddhist schools included 600 primary, two secondary and one tertiary, the Preah Sihanouk Raj Buddhist University of Phnom Penh. Traditionally schooling reached young males in most villages through the wat but by 1967 all but 10% of schools were in the government system and enrolments were increasing rapidly.
In Laos roughly 25% of schools were religious and in 1962 there were 95 Pali schools. There were only a few vernacular high schools up to the time of Pathet Lao victory in 1975. The French and Americans looked to the sangha as a potential counterweight to communism in Laos throughout the 1950s and 1960s and its strength was undermined as a result. The sangha was particularly deeply divided between Mahanikai and Dhammayut sects, a tension lending itself to factionalism, and at the same time strongly committed to a vision of itself as the prime vehicle of Lao culture, a mission easily construed as counter to American secularism.
By the early 1970s, especially as the Pathet Lao gained strength through growing anti-Americanism. The politicisation of the sangha was ironically facilitated by its own initiatives to broaden its base, through lay missionising and meditation, and undermined its role within Lao society. With its victory in 1975 the Pathet Lao made every effort to use monks in order to extend its message to the population. It anounced policies of religious freedom and there was already a strong basis for collaboration, as notions of Buddhist socialism were well established. At the same time the new government set out to reeducate monks, restrict their privileges and bypass their central social and symbolic role. By 1979 the number of monks was said to have dropped from 20,000 to 1,700 and the subordination of the sangha to politics appeared to be complete.

Christian missions and churches have remained active through most of Southeast Asia, representing an avenue of continuity for western influence through education and health work. In areas like Timur, Irian Jaya or among the Karen, as noted already, Christian institutions have constituted independent networks which may threaten, or at least appear to undermine state control. In this respect churches may parallel the function of Muslim networks in Mindanao and Sulu. In Indonesia and Malaysia governments have been pressed to respond to Muslim sensitivity by actively restricting Christian missions, especially in areas like Aceh, where there have been popular protests against even locally rooted Christian church construction. In the late 1970s the Indonesian government pressed overseas missions to replace foreign missionaries with local people.
Even in the secular and materialistic city state of Singapore the government has actively concerned itself with both promoting and regulating religious life. By the late 1970s Confucianism was promoted as an ethos convergent with government interest in social stability; in the 1980s this encouragement was underlined as a way of promoting extended family support for the elderly--to reduce welfare demands on the state. By the end of the 1980s the government was concerned with the rise of fundamentalisms and contingent discord. A white paper on the Maintenance of Religious Harmony was tabled in Parliament in December 1989 and noted incidents of social conflict in the late 1980s involving aggressive Protestant and Muslim fundamentalists. Muslims reacted indignantly when Protestants used the term 'Allah' for 'God', a translation which had already been banned by the Malaysian government. Dravidian and Aryan Hindus complained of each other and that Christians were too aggressive. At the same time Sikhs and Hindus brought the tensions of South Asia into Singapore.

In Indonesia a subordinate position in political terms has limited Muslim influence over national institutions but in the cultural and religious arenas the balance of power differs. In that domain other parties respond to Islam in the sense that discourses about religious issues are framed increasingly by Islamic idiom. The state endorses an Islamic sense of God, requires citizens to identify with a religion Muslims can acknowledge as such and sees itself as having active responsibility in the religious sphere in terms no secular western state does. In each of these spheres Islamic discourses define the context of spiritual life, influencing other strands of religion implicitly and pervasively. Muslims still associate mysticism in many forms with the residue of pre-Islamic traditions and it is very often seen now as irrational projection or fantasy, as contrary to the realities of development and modernity.
Dominance of Islam within the Ministry of Religion, especially up to 1972, is reflected in its definitions of religion and its role in promoting Islamic senses of what can be religious. When the Ministry was established in 1946 it was acknowledged that Protestants and Catholics deserved places, as even in the strictest Islamic terms Christianity is legitimate, a religion of the Book. Other religions were initially lumped under the rubric of 'ethnic' and those of Asian origin had to struggle for recognition, their status remaining problematic in some respects to the present. Each had to reorganise to match essentially Semitic senses of what constitutes religion--they are legitimate now to the degree that they emphasise belief in one God, a clear system of law, a holy scripture and a prophet. To date the official list of acceptable religions is that promulgated in Sukarno's Presidential decree of 1965: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. The only exception is Confucianism, which has been relegated to the status of Judaism, being viewed essentially as an ethnic faith rather than an international religion.
This restricted sense of the term does not allow animism, folk spirit cults, new religions or independent mystical practices as 'religion'. Even the Balinese had to struggle actively before gaining official recognition in the 1950s. Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucian communities were forced to conform to monotheistic conceptions of divinity. Whether in scholarly debate, public discussion or government legislation, the accepted Indonesian definition of religion now accords with the Islamic model of what can constitute one. The recasting of Buddhist idiom gave an advantage to Mahayana groups, as Theravada Buddhists faced particular difficulty before they agreed finally that the Adi Buddha, roughly referring to the innate Buddha nature in everything, could be identitifed as God. In the process of gaining recognition scriptural factions within each community gained strength at the expense of traditional syncretists.
More critically, Islam conditions government views of its responsibility in the religious arena. The government sees itself as having the responsibility to ensure that citizens follow an acceptable religious faith as an obligation of citizenship. In the Five Year Plan for 1969-1974 (in Chapter IX on 'Religion') it is stated that:

...the Government of the Republic of Indonesia has the responsibility of giving guidance and assistance to facilitate the development of each religion according to its own teachings, and to maintain supervision such that each citizen maintains their religious practice according to their beliefs...

This sense of responsibility distinguishes Indonesian views of religious freedom from those of western liberal regimes. In western states professions of belief in God play a passive role, meriting rhetorical invocation. Indonesia may not be an Islamic state, but it takes from Islam its sense that authorities should intervene to guide the spiritual lives of citizens. Under the New Order the first principal of the Pancasila, belief in the God, is read as a programme for action, citizens have to list religious affiliation on identity cards. This view of religious freedom, obviously in marked contrast to that which pertains in the west, is essentially consistent with the Muslim view of the responsibility of the state vis-a-vis religion.
Government regulation of mystical movements extend colonial policies. Traditional courts were transformed through colonialism into an element within the new state, but policies aimed mainly to contain Islam. This alliance, with what were coincidentally the syncretic, mystical and Indic segments of the population, continued an opposition between Islamic and court powers of the pre-colonial era. That opposition is consistent again with the tension between Islam and the New Order. The Dutch were sensitive to the dangers of millenarian and mystical movements and surveillance of them has been continued since independence through Pakem, an agency of the Department of Justice since 1954. Offices in major cities supervise meetings and keep records. Even routine sessions of a spiritual nature in individuals homes and the practices of traditional healers (dukun) require license and registration. The Ministry of Religion also researched folk practices, indicating until 1978 that mysticism lay within its authority. It aimed to guide adherents toward orthodoxy by clarifying that mysticism originated from Islam.
In 1973 independent movements were recognised as legitimate options within the terms of the 1945 Constitution, making it legal for citizens to list a mystical movement instead of a religion on their identity cards. But in practice when the census took place in 1980 no record of mystical affiliation was registered. Legislative changes have had limited effects and in many areas it has been considered provocative to publicise the new laws. The Marriage Law of 1974 resulted in broader guidelines, easing requirement to adhere to Islamic ritual. Though the government attempt to establish civil marriage was withdrawn, some mystical groups conducted their own marriage ceremonies after 1974. In 1978, responsibility for kepercayaan was shifted from the Ministry of Religion to that of Education and Culture, weakening the claim of Islam to jurisdiction over it.
Recently changes indicate another shift in government thinking about the relationship between mysticism and religion. Now affiliation with mystical movements is separated from the question of religious membership, which is again seen as essential. The pendulum has swung back toward the position of the late 1960s and affirmation of religious committment is again seen as essential. In any event there is strong pressure behind the growth of a literalist monotheism. The first principle of the Pancasila is an underscoring of the profession of faith in one God, though omitting reference to Muhammad, in Islamic terms. Islam may not have established itself as the religion of Indonesia, but there is no doubt that its sense of religion defines, shapes and constrains discourse about religion and spiritual life. This pressure is conveyed through the bureaucracy and influences private practices as well as public expression of religious life.

Sabdopalon prophesy under Suharto

Though anthropology is concerned with culture as such and arose in the context of intensified cross-cultural interactions tension between Western origins and aspiration toward universals remain. When we speak of 'millennial' or 'messianic' movements our terms evoke deeply rooted Judeo-Christian motifs even though reference is to movements which span the globe. Anthropology does not ensure escape from the hermetic grasp of our tradition. In this context I am referring to the Sabdopalon cycle in Java as an example of 'millenarian' imagery. However, the escatology of Java is cyclical rather than linear and in the Sabdopalon myths there is no sense of a cataclysmic end to the world, emphasis is on renewal, return to a balanced state presumed to have existed in the past. This emphasis approximates Indic mythologies more than the linear escatology of the Semitic religions. Nevertheless the Sabdopalon cycle is recognisably 'millenarian' and I will not linger on definition or typology as my aim is to use the cycle to uncover a meaning of 'Indonesian' identity for Javanists influenced by it. Modern identity has for them implied cultural and spiritual purposes which remain obscure when focus is on external social and political-economic realities. Understanding local ideology depends on recognition of the way images are grounded by dialectic with experience; cultural images must be related to the inner lives of those who employ them.
Java's population of around one hundred million, roughly two thirds of them Javanese speakers, is overwhelmingly Muslim, though significant groups are Christian, Buddhist or Hindu. Within each of community 'Javanists' are those committed to traditional rituals, influenced by courts and engaged with philosophy contained in the Indian derived mythology. The term originally denoted the geographical zone centring on the courts of Surakarta and Yogyakarta, but now refers more often to a cultural style placing primacy on 'Javaneseness', meaning religious commitment is conditioned by a 'culturalist' gestalt. Others within the same language family, and no less 'Javanese', hold their 'religious' beliefs as a more exclusive frame of reference. Semar resurfaced as a prominent focus of Javanist sentiment during the seventies and many prominent people, including some close to the President, have belonged to cults which focus on him. Semar occupies a key place within Javanese mythology, drama, and prophetic cycles and he is important in a number of mystical sects. The prophesy of Sabdopalon, Semar's incarnation, intersects with Javanist forms of Indonesian national aspiration, inspiring aspects of formally articulated government ideology and underlying the ethos of significant sectors of the national elite.
I begin by placing Semar within current myths and folk histories and then explore the roles he plays within recent Javanese religious and political movements. The practices which focus on Semar are built on ancestral spirit cults and tied in with power points in the Javanese landscape. Finally I present an interpretation, based on a composite of the faces Semar presents within Javanese tradition, which is self-conscious, articulate and sophisticated. In it visions of macrocosmic transformation are explicitly linked to internal and individual spiritual transformation. Indigenous explanations converge to present a coherent theory of the interplay between image and experience and my presentation is essentially ethnographic.
Literally, millennial movements focus on radical social changes leading to a socially realised utopia and on those grounds their prophecies seem illusory. On the basis of this representation of Javanese folk imagery we may confirm the relevance of Burridge's emphasis on the 'redemptive' functioning of millennial movements, especially of his conclusion that the "meaning" of millenarian activities is found in provision of "A new situation and status which, providing the basis for a new integrity, will enable life to be lived more abundantly". Here, as in his works, it is clear that millenniarian movements gain their force through the effect of participation in the present rather than according to whether predictions of the future prove accurate when interpreted literally. Once the dialectic of image and experience assumes a central place in analysis the sterility of purely structural analysis is also evident. 'Meaning' does not arise only intertextually nor reside exclusively in relations between symbols. Underlying oppositions are readily identifiable within Javanese myths and those who are engaged with them find significance through extended and rich play with related symbolic contexts, but finally meaning eludes us until we connect images to inner experience. This is a key to understanding the symbolic language of revivalistic movements and allows us to frame analysis without remaining captive to the ontology of our own culture.
A caveat is necessary. Explanation of internal logic is in one sense rationalisation, but it is not justification or defense of practices shaped by the ideology at issue: to elucidate the logic of a system does not imply evaluation of the uses to which it is put. My aim is restricted to indicating how the myths of Semar operate as a cultural system, it is essentially hermeneutic. I intend only to clarify how this ancient Javanese image continues to live and how, as old beliefs are translated into new national ideology, it contributes dynamically to the formation of a national culture.

Javanese cultural history has been complicated through extended interaction with Indic, Sinic, Islamic and western influences. Those influences began in the first centuries of the Christian calendar and their impact has been profound. As a result we cannot approach Javanese mythology as though it were a pristine system and it is difficult to determine which elements derive from purely indigenous roots. For instance 'Semar' is often invoked, whether by Javanese or by western scholars, as a prime example of indigenous content within the wayang mythology, yet his origins are uncertain. The actual historical evidence need not concern us, what is relevant here is that among Javanists he is thought of as having occupied a prime place prior to the influence of Indian mythology. Contemporary Javanists, including some urbanised elites as well as rural villagers, think of Semar as the chief guardian spirit (danhyang) and original ancestor of the whole ethnic group. Twalen is an equivalent figure among the Balinese, who are linked to the Javanese in ethno-linguistic and historical terms, and he is also related to Semar according to the mythology .
Semar is tied to the origins of 'Javaneseness' because he is supposed to have reached the initial accommodation with nature which made wet rice cultivation on the island possible. Semar did this by planting a magical talisman (tumbal) at Mount Tidar. The function of Semar's talisman was to control the demonic power of Java's wild forest spirits. Until Semar's magic effectively restrained the forest spirits it was impossible to clear the forest, plant rice and in other ways to take up the style of life which has for so long been fundamental to being Javanese. Thus Semar is thought of as the Promethian figure who made human (meaning "Javanese" as distinct from earlier inhabitants) existence on the island possible.
The nature of Semar's original contribution reveals the Javanese sense that their origins as an ethnic group are inseparable from the beginnings of sedentary wet rice cultivation and that also ties him immediately to the village basis of Javanese society. Tidar is close to the geographical centre of the island, near Borobudur. The myths state that when the island was originally drawn from the sea it was unbalanced. To correct that the gods (dewata) moved Mount Semeru to the east, toward the island of Bali. At the same time they drove a spike through the centre of the island to stabilise it. That spike became the hillock now called Mount Tidar. Tidar is immediately south of the town of Magelang and other evidence suggests that these rice fields may indeed be among the oldest paddies on the island.
Village rituals, insofar as they are still maintained, continue to focus on harmonising of human, spirit and natural dimensions. According to the Javanese tradition the human and natural dimensions are balanced through the mediation of spirits. Within the spirit realms there is clear distinction between ancestral and natural realms. All natural forces are represented and among the natural spirits perhaps the most important is Dewi Sri, the goddess of rice. Among the ancestral spirits the most critical have been Semar and, as a more immediate focus of attention during past centuries, Nyai Loro Kidul, the Queen of the South Sea.
Generally within the ancestral category the most important spirits are those of powerful ancestors (Jakal bakal or danhyang) who are the guardians of either specific settlements or natural power points. Usually these figures are thought to have been associated with the specific village or power point when they were alive. They are thought to have mediated between realms as living human beings, because of their special powers (kasekten), so their subsequent role as guardian spirits is an extension of their role in life. Thus Semar's role in establishing the basis for wet rice cultivation underpins his subsequent function within the realm of guardian spirits.
Semar is still especially associated with Mount Tidar but the places which are thought to allow easiest access to him are the caves at Srandil, near Cilacap, and at Dieng, the high plateau which holds some of the earliest of Java's monumental ruins. One of Semar's sons, Petruk, is sometimes associated with Mount Merapi, the volcano just north of Yogyakarta. The sacred power points associated with Semar are predominantly natural phenomenon rather than human constructions. In the myths Semar is conceived of as half-god/half-human; half-male/half-female. His ambivalent status is reflected in the fact that 'he' has one breast. In all of these respects he is intimately connected with the transition from the natural to the human order. The critical position he occupies in mythology, as a linking point between planes, is amplified in the way he is encorporated within Indian derived myths. Within the spirit realms Semar's position has not been static--it has altered with every major phase of Javanese history.
With the influx of Indian religious ideas the vocabulary of the local culture was extended and became more universalised, but the 'grammar' remained indigenous. This conclusion seems justified because even in the court sphere, where Indian influences and Sanskrit language have had the most impact, the structure of the language remains Malayo-Polynesian. This observation could be extended to apply to later development of Indonesian language through extensive borrowing from other archipelago languages, Arabic, Portuguese, and later Dutch and English. Through analysis of structure we can identify a recognisable religious substratum of Javanese life which is indigenous, even though a substantial proportion of the "lexicon" of Javanese religious life is borrowed.
Within the mythology this argument may seem hard to maintain. Although the process spanned centuries, Indian epic traditions became thoroughly woven into Javanese culture at the village level. As a result the most visible framework of folk mythology is Indian; The Mahabharata became the key element within rural drama as well as courtly epics. Indian impact certainly touched the structures, as well as the content, of Javanese myth, but the process was characterised by synthesis. Local nature spirits became Indian deities and over time the Indian figures came to be seen as ancestral to the Javanese themselves. While contemporary Javanese acknowledge Indian influences, even the people who do so will see figures from Indian mythology as associated with local places. In all important respects the Javanese came to see the Pandawa as their own.
It is through Semar's role in the wayang that he is best known. In contrast with most of the other characters he is supposed to be of local origin. In addition he is the prime representative, together with his three sons, of the common folk, of the peasant Javanese. Most of the figures in Javanese shadow drama represent either knights (ksyatria) or priests (brahmana). Those two classes occasionally interact with the gods (dewata) but commoners are hardly represented. Semar and his sons appear as servants to the Pandawa, the five brothers who symbolise the right. As servants they and their few counterparts are rough in manner and coarse in language.
Although appearing in many scenes, they take centre stage regularly in the scene called gara-gara. This comic interlude takes place about midnight within performances which last the nine hours from nine at night until dawn. Within these scenes the punakawan, as Semar and his fellows are called, touch the pulse of ordinary folk. They speak the language of everyday life, in contrast to the extremely refined speech of the main actors. Their jokes serve as a bridge linking cosmologically framed events and abstract philosophy to everyday life and the political realities experienced by the audience, often in the form of implicitly critical commentary.
According to the epics Semar was originally a god (dewa) called 'Ismaya', and as such had his place in heaven (kahyangan). In fact he was the elder brother of Siva, thus one of the highest gods. He chose to become an ordinary human being because he like crude jokes and tended toward gluttony, so he left heaven and ended up working as a servant of the Pandawa, in the grotesque shape of Semar. Through this device Javanese myths make their own statement about the relationship between Javanese and Indian culture. Tacitly their myths acknowledge the displacement of the primal guardian, yet secretly they maintain that his status was with the highest of the "imported" gods.
This feature of Semar's role has further significance. There are rare occasions within the wayang when Semar intervenes in the affairs of knights. Usually he does so only in response to 'unfair' meddling by the gods, otherwise his role is as a retainer and spectator, though he often comments on events. When Semar does intervene it is dramatic. He is transformed into his divine form (tiwikrama) and obliterates opposition to restore balance. Even in his normal role as retainer, there is significance in who Semar follows--standard lore dictates that whoever he follows must be in the right and will ultimately also win. Thus it can be assumed when he appears following an unknown character that eventually we will discover that the 'unknown' is actually a son of Arjuna, the most prominent of the Pandawa brothers.
The significance of these aspects of Semar's role is not lost on Javanese audiences. They identify with Semar not only because he speaks and behaves as they do, not only because he is their guardian spirit, but also because he represents the peasant 'masses' in both political and spiritual terms. Semar's role within myths suggests that according to tradition and despite the glory of the courts, ultimate power lies with the people. His interventions remind audiences that the masses have the capacity to overturn dynasties. When rulers fail to maintain balance between heaven and earth they are vulnerable, their status as 'godkings' (devaraja) questionable. Thus within Java's Indic civilization Semar's position as ancestor and guardian became linked to notions of popular intervention in the affairs of the courts.
This symbolism is linked to patterns of Javanese rural unrest. Ever since the Indic era peasant movements have crystallised around the expectation that a new just king (ratu adil) would surface to restore order after times of trial by returning society to balance with nature. Van der Kroef sees a 'stasis-seeking mechanism', rooted in village animistic ritual, as a fundamental characteristic of Javanese messianic ideas. In the complex of ideas surrounding Semar that timeless impulse converges with the cyclical sense of history implied by the rise and fall of dynasties. Folk movements have been consistently interpreted cosmologically, as a response to imbalance between human and natural realms. Millennial aspirations have thus generally centred on the hope that social welfare and natural harmony could be restored if a new ruler, perfectly attuned to the cosmos, surfaced to replace corrupted practices.
The Indic millennium of Java's classical states progressed through a cycle which culminated, at least as Javanese memory would have it, with the empire called Majapahit. Within the early central Javanese kindoms of Mataram, under the Sailendra's, the "great tradition' of the courts stood in stark contrast to the 'little tradition' of the folk. Claire Holt has said that the temples of early Mataram could have been constructed from Indian manuals but later the styles were adapted to Javanese contexts and the "psychological distance" between village and courts was less. Within Majapahit, from the thirteenth to the mid-fifteenth centuries, the Javanese substratum had become synthesised thoroughly with Indic imports (as the integration of myths already suggests). Whatever the historical 'realities', many contemporary Javanese continue to look back to the Majapahit period as the last 'golden age', as the last period in which Javanese identity was fully autonomous.
Majapahit crumbled under the impact of socio-economic changes which were associated with the roots of Islamic expansion on the island--at least this is the later Javanese story. A coalition of north coast (pasisir) states brought the downfall of the empire toward the end of the fifteenth century. As most Javanists in the seventies reckoned it this was in l478. According to later Javanese histories (babad) Semar was incarnated in those days in the form of Sabdopalon, a minister in the last court of Majapahit. As the kingdom fell, Sabdopalon and a few others left the court and retreated into Central Java. There they paused at Tidar and Sabdopalon spoke to his friends. He explained that they need not be concerned at the momentus changes which were in process, that they were about to enter into a five hundred year period during which Java would be dominated by external forces, during which he would be in 'retirement'. But he went on to say that at the end of that cycle he would return, ushering in a new golden age, a jaman buda'.
As an incarnation of Semar Sabdopalon represents quintessential Javaneseness, the identity of the ethnic group. At least this is how I would have us 'read' the stories I refer to. Hence the popular notion that Semar was incarnated in the last days of the empire can be connected to the Javanist sense that in the last days of Majapahit their purely indigenous identity was fully 'alive'. In announcing his 'retirement' Sabdopalon indicated that he, and with him 'Javanese identity' (insofar as my suggestion holds), would lie dormant. At the same time he promised to return bringing a new age in which Javanese could feel fully themselves once again. In any case this is how subsequent Javanist tradition has seen the transition from Indic to Islamic Java and this set the stage for an interpretation of the period of Dutch colonial influence.
Semar appears in contemporary tales of spirit encounter just as in old myths. In recent years stories of him have mushroomed. While climbing Tidar with several Javanese friends in 1973 I encountered an army sergeant performing a ritual on an old grave. One of his regular functions at AKABRI, the military college located just beneath Tidar, was to perform rituals to ensure it did not rain during military ceremonies. If he succeeded, as he assured us he always did, he received a payment. He said the grave was the site of Sabdopalon's stopover at Tidar and then told his version of the significance of that event. On several occasions I was shown a widely circulated 'photograph of Semar', taken at the cave at Srandil. The group of Javanese tourists who were visiting the cave do not appear but "Semar" does.
The Sabdopalon cycle has been woven into many others and there is no doubt that during the seventies, within Suharto's New Order, it rose to special prominence. It clearly serves as a framework within which some Javanese interpret their present and it is that role of the Semar system that I am centrally concerned with.

Millennial movements have been far more than a mere undercurrent within modern Indonesian nationalism. Although most frequently identified with expression through peasant movements, they have often been linked to urban based organizations led by western educated elites. Throughout the nineteenth century rural outbreaks almost always found expression through millennial forms--and there were literally hundreds of movements. While most nineteenth century movements were restricted in scope, the Java War crystallised resistance throughout the ethnic heartland of the Javanese. That movement may be seen as a "last stand" of the traditional courts in political-military terms--it was clearly cast in millennial terms, evoking and playing on expectations of the ratu adil as well as of the Islamic Mahdi.
With the emergence of modern nationalism in the first decades of this century, peasant movements were linked to urban centres. The first mass movement, the Sarekat Islam, was founded in l912 and became, virtually overnight, a movement of millions. Part of its attraction has been attributed to the charismatic appeal of Tjokroaminoto, its major public spokesman. Villagers saw it as no coincidence that his name recalled "Erucokro", another traditional name for the ratu adil. The peasant followers of Sarekat Islam expected violent natural changes, the elimination of Dutch power, and the rise of a new order.
During the Japanese Occupation of Java, in fact for some years prior to it, popular gossip recalled the prophecies of Joyoboyo, the twelfth century ruler of Kediri in East Java. They interpreted his forecast as an indication that Java would be released from foreign domination through the intervention of 'yellow people' from the north. Then, as the deprivations of the war years turned into the chaos of the revolution, peasants recalled Ronggowarsito's nineteenth century prophecy, his clarification that the new era of justice and prosperity would be preceded by a phase of mass insanity, the "jaman edan". Within the revolution many of the popular guerrilla units saw themselves as agents of a new order. Frequently their experience of the revolutionary struggle was framed by magical practices and martial arts (kanoragan) designed to achieve invulnerability (kekebalan).
With the establishment of the national government the position of millennial movements naturally changed. Like the early rulers and Dutch authorities, the new national leaders have been very sensitive to potential unrest phrased in millennial terms. While Islamic utopianism, in the form of the Darul Islam movements, was repressed, Sukarno's Guided Democracy often invoked the millennial tones of pre-Islamic tradition. To some degree the PKI, the Indonesian Communist Party, identified itself with millennial aspiration and in fact most of its followers came from among the most traditionally inclined of the Javanese--this was evident indirectly in the sensitivity attaching to debate about wayang within it.
During the fifties and sixties, many other movements began to distinguish more emphatically between magical, millennial and mystical inclinations. Within traditional Javanism (kejawen) those strands had been fused together and spiritual practices inevitably brought the potential of political power. Although many movements have begun to separate spiritual practice from aspiration to power, others have not and some of them have been forcibly repressed, especially in the early years of the New Order. Millennial impulses are expressed not only through the discrete movements which some individuals may belong to, but also through the way many Javanese interpret the meaning of their national struggle.
A central feature of national debate, under Sukarno as well as Suharto, has been the struggle to define a new 'national personality' (kepribadian nasional). Western observers have often failed to note the significance of these debates, perhaps because they centre on something which appears, to most of us, to be purely abstract and symbolic. From the standpoint of most Indonesians, however, these debates centre on a national spirit which has substance in precisely the same way that individual personality does. The undercurrents of ethnic, religious, political, and secular thought interact within a field in which a 'new being' is emerging, and the struggle to define it is framed by the perspective we might bring to decisions about our children's education in relation to their future career. The 'birthing' of a national spirit is vital and contentious--establishing a context which frames debate over definition of national political structures.
If Sukarno's charismatic style and symbolist efforts invoked the Indic patterns of early Javanese courts, then Suharto arguably represents a surfacing of village ethos. A number of observers have suggested that Sukarno claimed power in the same sort of cosmological terms which underlay traditional notions of the devaraja, even if in modern symbolic guise. Certainly some of his ideological preferences resonated suggestively with the ancient ideal of the kingdom as a self-contained microcosm of the world. Suharto is as thoroughly Javanist as Sukarno in his cultural origins--though it is important to note that both have been thoroughly "modern" and cosmopolitan in other respects. Even the way he assumed power, through a delicate and gradual process of undermining Sukarno's claims and manouevering himself on to centre stage, has been related to traditional Javanism. Both leaders have been Muslim in the traditional Javanese fashion--which is to say they combine the profession of faith with openness to Javanese mystical teaching and shamanic healing practices.
The New Order has never had the dramatic flair of Sukarno's Guided Democracy. Instead of elaborate effort at ideological synthesis there has been effort to deny the validity and relevance of ideology. Perhaps we can correlate this to contrasting social roots. Sukarno's family roots lay in the lower reaches of the priyayi; Suharto's claims to elite status are through his wife and his own social origins are much more firmly in the village. If Sukarno spoke the courtly language of elaborate syncretism, we might suggest that Suharto has brought the 'pragmatic' tones of village animism into national politics.
This fact remains obscure, partly because of the cultural defensiveness of primal Javanese tradition. Despite Javanese dominance of national politics, in the religious sphere modernist Islam has made the strongest claims on Indonesian identity. As a result the cultural and spiritual tradition of the Javanese has been struggling for recognition. Since independence these movements have generally been called 'aliran kebatinan'. During most of the past four decades these movements, and there are literally hundreds of them, have had an ambiguous legal status. Although not defining themselves as 'religions', they have been under the jurisdiction (until the late seventies) of the Islamic dominated Ministry of Religion and subject to controls exercised through the Justice Department.
During the seventies, with covert support from Suharto and overt backing by Golkar, the government sponsored 'functional grouping', the kebatinan movements gained firmer claim to independent legitimacy. They have been clearly 'legal' since l973, when the "General Outline of State Policy" (Garis Besar Haluan Negara) clarified that the constitutional guarantee, within the constitution of l945, of freedom of religion, also intended freedom of 'beliefs' so long as they remained focussed on the One God. Then in l978 the movements, by then more generally known as 'kepercayaan' fell under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education and Culture and the control of their own independent Directorate.
The sympathies of the Suharto government have been revealed in other ways as well. When Suharto edged Sukarno out of power the final step was a letter of authority which Sukarno gave to Suharto on the llth of March l967. That letter has been known since as 'SuperSemar' (an acronym for the Indonesian: "Surat Keputusan Sebelas Maret"). Suharto's claim to a connection with Semar is far from incidental. From the perspective of traditional Javanists the claim was interpreted within the framework of the Sabdopalon prophecy, it is linked to their sense of the national struggle as an effort to reassert purely indigenous identity within the modern national context, and this in turn obviously connects directly with the increasing legitimacy given to kebatinan during the early years of the New Order.
Suharto's connections with Semar are evident in other respects. As a teenager Suharto had roomed for several years with Romo Dariyatmo, whose home was outside Wonogiri, south of Surakarta. He was a leading guru within a loosely organized collection of movements which belong to the traditionalist wing of the kebatinan sphere, that is to say to the cults most strongly connected to pedanhyangan, the cults of the guardian spirits. In the early years of his leadership he is known to have regularly visited the sacred sites most closely connected with Semar--for instance his famous visit with Gough Whitlam, then Prime Minister of Australia, to Dieng just prior to the Indonesian invasion of East Timur.
Among Suharto's closest advisers during the early seventies was General Sudjono Humardani, a Jakarta leader within the pedanhyangan group until his death in early l986. Another leader of the same cult group, Romo Sudiyat of Semarang, told me that he was commissioned by Suharto to find the Kembang Wijayakusuma, a rare flower associated in Javanese court lore with affirmation that rulers indeed hold the 'wahyu', or divine claim to power. Prior to each of the first three national elections Sudiyat sought this flower on Suharto's behalf at Nusa Kembangan, an island off the south coast of Java. It is said that on his last quest for the flower Sudiyat went to a different site, the island of Bawean in the Java sea, and was unsuccessful.
More recently Suharto has became estranged from this group of teachers and practices. Early in l987 a number of well placed informants commented on a break between Suharto and the Semar group. Some of them drew attention to this break to assert that the President had lost his mandate--arguing that he was no longer willing to listen to his best spiritual advisers. Others commented with an affirmation that he had never 'belonged' to the Javanese spirit cults, that he had always been centrally focussed on God. Certainly Suharto was never a 'devotee' in the way some reporters have imagined, people of his status are 'above membership', though there is no doubt that at earlier stages of his career his connections with the Semar cult were very important. It is also quite likely that as his career has progressed his beliefs have shifted increasingly toward the Islamic end of the spectrum of Javanese mysticism. Quite apart from these speculations connections between Suharto and traditional Javanism have been widely noted and are significant on that account alone.
The practices of the pedanhyangan styled kebatinan groups involve traditional styled selametan in traditional Javanese dress, wearing of kris and the collection of other power objects, meditation and fasting carried out at sacred sites (such as the spring, Sendang Semanggi, outside Yogyakarta), flower and incense offerings to propitiate spirits, meditation involving entry by specific spirits (usually for leaders of the group including Semar as was the case for Romo Budi in Yogya or others of the punakawan); and an emphasis on the throat cakra (reflected in automatic speech while possessed).
All of these are fundamental to, and typical within, the wider context of village styled spirit cults. However, many of the prominent members of these groups, both in central Java and in Jakarta, have been extremely well placed members of the national elite. Apart from the cultural defensiveness I have referred to, it is not in the nature of such practices to announce them publicly. These movements have not, for instance, been among those officially noted and registered with the surveillance bodies which keep tabs on kebatinan movements--though some individuals from these cults have been both active and important within the umbrella movements which have represented kebatinan efforts on the national stage.
I have noted that movements of this type claim legitimacy to the extent that they abjure politics. We might interpret this as an indication of growing secularisation, of distinction even within the mystical sphere between sacred and secular realms. Whatever force there may be in that argument, and there is some, religion remains an intensely political subject and the status of the kebatinan movements has been an active issue of debate between syncretic and orthodox Muslims. More to the point, the pressure for mystical movements to avoid 'politics' arises precisely because neither the government nor significant sectors of the public distinguish those spheres. Ironically the Javanist roots of the ruling elite are directly connected to its especially fervent rejection of millenarian currents.

Dozens of movements have been either de-registered, banned, or crushed, by the New Order. The most famous incident occurred in March l967, coinciding, not incidentally, with SuperSemar and the consolidation of Suharto's authority. In that month government troops moved in on the small East Javanese village of Nginggil and killed about eighty followers of Mbah Suro. Mbah Suro's movement had risen to prominence in the wake of the mass killings associated with the elimination of the PKI. The movement apparently had drawn considerable support from ex members of the PKI, at least that dimension of it was highlighted by the government in its reporting of the event. That, along with para-military organization, populist tones, and the circulation of chain letters with a millenarian message of impending doom combined to bring government reaction.
The movement itself was local and seemed insignificant, according to most outside perspectives, but talk of it and 'attunement to it', if we may speak in such terms, spread far, certainly reaching urban populations from Surabaya to Yogyakarta and Surakarta. As is often the case with these movements they lock into wider popular sentiment and imagination and therefore become an active concern for the government even if their membership as such remains small. They are more prominent in government strategic thinking than most outside observers would credit them as being and serve some of the same function in the Indonesian context our political polls do.
Not much more than a year later the Manunggal movement was banned . It had been a much larger movement with a following throughout Java, including highly placed naval personnel. Like Mbah Suro, Romo Semana spoke of a coming new age in intensely Javanist terms. His followers made offerings and showed deference which, from the government perspective, conjured images of a competing court, of a new Ratu Adil. The movement has continued, quietly and on a smaller scale, though it was banned twenty years ago.
Another incident with a millenarian flavour has a different nature. In September l976 the Suharto government announced that there had been an attempted coup. On first glance the 'coup' appears to have been a non-event, the main question for many outside observers was why it generated such a strong reaction. The document at the heart of the affair seemed relatively innocuous from a western perspective--it seemed that Suharto's government had made trouble for itself by taking the affair so seriously. In the aftermath of the announcement there was worldwide press reporting, incessant domestic coverage and eventually a lengthy and complex public trial. Paradoxically, the trial became a dramatic forum for innuendo and criticism of the regime.
The "coup" in question centred on Sawito, until then an unknown minor civil servant. Its immediate substance was in a document which criticised the moral fiber of Suharto. The document was written by Sawito and he had managed to get a remarkable range of luminaries to sign it. These included ex-Vice President Hatta and the recognised leaders of every one of the major religious groupings in the country. As soon as the government caught wind of the document, all of the luminaries in question were pressured to retract publicly by signing documents to the effect that they had not been aware of its contents. In the end Sawito was sentenced to an eight year prison term and left the courtroom smiling.
In fact, Sawito's letter resonated with widespread discontent and thus in substance was a potentially serious challenge to the government. Bourchier has clarified that it became a challenge in more than symbolic terms, in part because so many Indonesians agreed with the sentiments expressed--even those who engineered the trial had axes to grind. Had the government allowed the document to stand it could have seemed to the public an admission of the truth of the critique--which did speak to the heart of the legitimacy claimed by the regime. Throughout the Suharto period the most consistent framing of criticism has been on moral grounds--"corruption" has been the key word. This is in part due to the constraints on political dissent within the New Order, but it is also connected with the political culture of Javanism. The significance of the Sawito affair lies in the weight given to moral forms of criticism.
We need to treat the notion of corruption with some caution when interpreting Indonesian political process. It is easy to assume that the same reasoning underpins talk of corruption by westerners and Indonesians. But we may arrive at the same conclusion from reasoning of a different sort. In Indonesia a variety of perspectives are applied and I would not argue that there is a uniform view. However, I would argue that the very prominence of corruption as a theme is tied to traditional ideas of legitimacy. From the western perspective corruption is evidenced when official state functionaries appropriate as personal goods and services which we, from our "rationalised bureaucratic" perspective, view as belonging to the state.
From the traditional Javanese perspective the "corruption" lies not so much in whether this coincidence occurs, but in whether the official in question actually uses the resources which flow to him (usually) for the benefit of the collective. The patronage system (often referred to as 'bapakisme") still effectively operates and it "works" when leaders function as channels through which goods are distributed. To the extent that wealth is recycled outwards and downwards there are not likely to be complaints of corruption. However, to the extent that upward flow predominates and leaders become personally wealthy without channelling benefit to followers, then the system is morally corrupt in Javanist terms. Several informants commented that corruption is mainly attributable to members of Suharto's family. They criticised Suharto more for not disciplining them than for personal failings. Some argued forcefully that all systems naturally involve family ties, that everyone 'wants to work with people they can trust'.
As Moertono and Anderson have described it, in Javanese terms the basis of authority was supposed to be the 'wahyu', an almost concretely conceived divine saction which indicated that the ruler is indeed attuned to the cosmos and capable of maintaining harmony between human and natural realms. The greatest threat to legitimacy is thus "pamrih"; that is narrow self interest, which in itself limits the capacity of the ruler to attune to cosmic and collective spheres in order to keep them balanced. In more colloquial terms, we might say simply that 'ego' limits awareness, and that where this is the case a ruler does not have the breadth of vision to deserve the position of collective responsibility he occupies.
Similarly whereas our assumption of how democracy works emphasises elections as demonstration that there is a popular mandate for the leadership, in the Indonesian context other reasoning may apply . Elections may serve mainly as rituals to demonstrate support for the ruling group, just as in the traditional context visible demonstration of elite support for the king would be demanded regularly. As the works of Ricklefs suggest, traditional rulers sought not just an abstract or symbolic mandate, but also a consensus of elite support to substantiate it. Though 'elections' originated in a western context, it may be incorrect to 'read' Indonesian versions of them by the 'democratic' rules we believe ought to apply. The holding of elections may involve substantial modification, not just poor imitation, of western theories. Suharto has indeed been consistently concerned with establishing his mandate, not only through elections, but also through ritualised quests such as that for the Kembang Wijayakusuma.
Sawito was of no public significance prior to the affair. He had been a minor official in the Department of Agriculture until the late sixties. Then he was removed from his position, for reasons which remain obscure, and entered into a period of mystical quest. During the early seventies he became associated with a number of well placed mystics, most notably Sukanto Tjokrodiatmodjo. Sukanto had been the national chief of police under Sukarno and the leader of Indonesian Freemasons. Sawito knew him in his capacity as the leader of Orhiba( short for: "Olah Raga Hidup Baru", or "New Life Exercises"), one of the recent kebatinan movements, and as (at that time) one of the principal leaders of the SKK (Sekretariat Kerjasama Kepercayaan), a national umbrella movement of mystical sects. Association with Sukanto brought Sawito into contact with Hatta and the religious leaders who later signed his document.
Prior to the circulation of the document, Sawito had begun to make claims to power in the classical style--though on the surface these events were unconnected to the protest document. With a few friends he went on a series of pilgrimages (lelana brata) to sacred sites scattered through Central and East Java. According to people who accompanied him, he acquired a series of power objects (pusaka), some associated with Majapahit royalty. In addition on Mount Tidar Sawito is supposed to have been given the responsibility of replacing Semar as the guardian of Javanese welfare. In other ways his experiences explicitly suggested that he was to be the ratu adil.
In Java many mystics have claimed wahyu and some of them have always thought it implied connection with the cosmic powers upon which political authority is supposed to rest. In most cases these individuals remain obscure. But Sawito took the concrete step of linking his claim to a document signed by people of publicly acknowledged status within the elite. By doing that he began to translate his claim to power into definitive statement that the New Order lacked both the moral integrity and elite consensus which together were supposed to support its claim to legitimacy. That step transformed his otherwise unlikely claims into a serious challenge and it was naturally treated as such.
The Sawito Affair has been the most prominent example of the continuing significance attached to millennially framed discontent. Others have also claimed connection to potent spirits, several have claimed to be incarnations of Semar, and these movements are treated seriously rather than simply being dismissed. One way or another Semar has definitely returned to public awareness and consciousness. Symbolically and emotively he returned to prominence in the seventies, though in the eighties his "presence" has again receeded. This resurfacing can be linked to the Sabdopalon prophecy--as its fulfilment within the context of cultural movements since independence. This comment is not tongue in cheek. To understand it it is necessary to reframe our interpretation of the imagery which operates in the Javanese context. The meaning of my suggestion becomes clear when the abstract "symbols" referred to in the movements are linked to "experience" within the individual.

symbolism inscribed in the body

Indigenous interpretations of Semar are legion and no orthodoxy asserts a definitive explanation. Indeed different individuals and groups present us with ostensibly divergent readings of the same image. While there are substantive differences, an underlying framework of interpretation does link most senses of Semar to a single, if complex, pattern The pattern of meaning becomes clear when adopt two procedures. First we must juxtapose the varied images by treating them as parts of a single field of interpretation. When we do that, which is consistent with the syncretic style of Javanese thought, then we are presented us with a convergent image. Secondly we can begin to make sense out of this image once we realise that the different faces of the image are understood as manifestations of the same force within different dimensions of experience. Appreciation of this depends on extension of our understanding of the significance of the traditional notion of correspondence between "microcosm and macrocosm"--it reflects an ontological posture rather than being simply a component within an 'alternative ideology'.
In elaborating on the images presented so far I will draw on the specialised interpretations of Javanese mystics. Obviously their perspective differs from that of many other members of the society. Anthropologists have sometimes been criticised for generalising on the basis of specialised knowledge presented to them through informants who are among the 'initiated' elders of their societies, thus being the equivalents of 'professors' or 'theologians'. Certainly we should not confuse specialised knowledge with general belief. It is also vital to distinguish differences of perspective within the culture, especially those separating urban elites and rural villagers. At the same time many such specialists are also acknowledged spokespeople, they often articulate clearly what others sense intuitively. There are also continuous dialectical interchanges connecting rural and urban, specialist and public, literate and oral. In drawing on explanations given by mystics I am not suggesting either that all Javanese see Semar as they do nor that they reveal what is definitively 'true' about him. Nevertheless the fundamental structures applied within the interpretive process are shared.
In the court city of Surakarta there are a number of cults focussing on Semar. In l976 I visited Pak Darmodjo, a teacher within one such cult. He held a ceremony designed to summon Semar. The ritual involved incense and centred on the floating of a button sized ruby in a glass of water. Afterwards Pak Darmodjo explained that magical phenomenon were at a low stage of spiritual life, that unusual events should not be seen as an aim. He said we could meet Semar in a variety of ways. It was possible to smell him, in which case we would smell a very sweet (wangi) odor not unlike that of the offerings he had made. Semar could also appear as either a starlike light or very much as he does within the wayang. Finally, and he gave this the most emphasis, in his divine form as Ismaya, Semar is the 'harmoniser': the one who balances all aspects or dimensions of the cosmos. In this sense he is clearly seen as being more than the localised guardian spirit of the Javanese.
Within the Manunggal sect, one of the banned movements already mentioned, there is another sense of Semar. According to Romo Suwarso Kartadinata, who in the early seventies was the leader of that network in the Salatiga area, Semar is associated with the lowest of the three major occult centres in the body (triloka). Within Manunggal, which has a Tantric orientation, the experience of union and enlightenment is seen as being similar to the instant of conception, when the sperm and egg meet. He also compared that moment to the meeting of positive and negative currents, producing light in a light bulb for instance. The three main bodily centres are linked to the head, heart and genitals--thus Semar is in this image tied to the forces of procreation, to the source of life.
Ibu Sri Pawenang, the leader of the Yogyanese centre of Sapto Darmo, suggested a very similar sense of Semar. Within the Sapto Darmo system there is an elaborate theory of the 'tali rasa', of a network of inner organs of psychic perception. In its framework these organs, very much as within the Indian kundalini framework, are linked both to different fuctions and to individual wayang characters. Each wayang character is seen as representing a specific psychic force. Semar has a special place within the Sapto Darmo scheme. In fact he appears at the centre of the group symbol. But Sri Pawenang explained with some emphasis that he was not seen, in their terms, as a guardian spirit. Instead he symbolically represents the life essence, an essence which exists equally within all people.
In drawing attention to these mystical senses of Semar I am clarifying that even within the terms of Javanese tradition the symbolic significance of mythic frameworks is unravelled--the tradition contains its own sophisticated phenomenology and hermeneutics. It would be incorrect, however, to hold that one interpretation is 'more real' than another. Within the Javanese framework, which is both holistic and syncretic, each version serves to amplify meaning within a different dimension. Thus Semar can be seen simultaneously as original ancestor, guardian spirit, transmuted god, symbol of the common folk, personification of ethnic 'essence', life force, and cosmic principle.
As Javanese understand them, spirits exist not only within a shadowy dimension of the outer world, but also internally in the blood and elements which make up the physical body. So when rituals work to 'propitiate ancestral spirits' their function is not only to provide food to sustain 'spirit beings', but also to bring peace to living people by helping them come to terms with the inner forces which have moulded them. In this respect there is a substantive link between shamanic practices framed by spirit beliefs and the functions of psycho-therapy in our context. Even if many Javanese do not see Semar in the terms I am suggesting, very few see him in the literal terms commonly underpinning the discounting of spirit beliefs in our culture.
There are underlying structures, beneath the variation of indigenous interpretation. Each of Semar's faces presents us with a fusion of fundamental dualities--an underlying structural opposition is clearly at work. Semar sits at the interface between natural and social dimensions; he is human and also divine; he is male as well as female. In the wayang context he is described as having neither beginning nor ending--his shape is round. His name is linked to the word "samar", meaning "hazy" or "indistinct". He appears in the first instance as quintessentially Javanese, as purely ethnic. Then we find him presented as a representation of universal life force, of a cosmic principle of balance.
Once we link these variant interpretations we can begin to seen the way in which beliefs, contained within traditional culture, function as redemptive systems and hence, in the Javanese context, the continuing relevance of Burridge's interpretation of millenarian images. When the Javanese speak of Semar's 'reincarnation' they are speaking simultaneously of a rediscovery of self and a discovery of universal principles. When they speak of their history as a movement toward 'true inner identity', or when they refer in political rhetoric to the issue of 'national personality', they are not just speaking of a renaissance of parochial traditions. They relate renewed personal integrity to an autonomy of indigenous patterns based on release from definition in other people's terms.
Javanese traditions are on the defensive in the face of Islamic and modernist trends. Even the national elite does not feel it can publicly acknowledge what has at times been its preferred spiritual style. This is a reflection of the fact that national autonomy has not yet been achieved in the cultural and spiritual spheres. Preoccupation with 'Semar' is a direct reference to struggle toward autonomy in those spheres. In the Javanese context this internal dynamic becomes clear because there is a self-conscious linking of events and patterns within the microcosm and macrocosm. Images are interpreted not only as forecasts of macrocosmic transformation, but also as statements about inner experience. With this gestalt we can see that the 'new golden age' is not just a reference to a projected physical achievement of balance and harmony in the visible social world. It refers also to a rediscovery of self, a realisation which may happen internally even when it is not manifested on the outer physical plane.
In interpreting Javanese cultural dynamics from outside the ambit of its images we need to link seemingly abstract images to the personal experiences of those who hold, or who are held by, them. This lesson applies to any exploration of religious patterns. If we treat images as just segments within an alternative framework of thought, then we imply that symbols function for other people in the way they do for many of us--as pure abstraction. But religious images find their meaning in experience rather than just as systems of abstraction. Symbols which seem local and obscure may function in redemptive terms we normally associate only with "world religions"--even apparently parochial systems of thought are directed toward resolution of fundamentally human and universal issues.

Benda and ref to gen field

As Tambiah observed, religious purposes inspire government visions of progress:

"...from early times Buddhism has been positively related to a conception of an ideal politico-social order, whose cornerstone was a righteous monarch who would promote a prosperous society and religion....Given this interlaced totality of religion and politics, of national consciousness and religious identity, of righteous morality and politics, it is difficult to see in Thailand a secular nationalism dispensing with Buddhist referents in the near future."

M. Mendelson , Sangha and State in Burma (J.P. Ferguson ed), Ithaca, 1975, pp 273-4 & 350.

B.R.O'G. Anderson, "The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture" in Claire Holt et al eds, Culture and Politics in Indonesia, Ithaca, 1972 and C. Geertz, Islam Observed, Chicago, 1972.

D. Reeve, Golkar of Indonesia, Singapore, 1985, pp 355-356 .

. Geertz, Anderson and others have

J. Schecter, The New Face of the Buddha, New York, 1967, p 160.

Ibid. p 210.

D. Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma, Princeton, 1965, pp 206-7 and Mendelson, Sangha and State, p 353.

H. Benda, The Crescent and the Rising Sun, The Hague, 1958

W.F. Wertheim "Moslems in Indonesia: Majority with a Minority Mentality" (Townsville, Queensland: Southeast Asian Studies Committee, James Cook University, 1980) and R. McVey "Faith as the Outsider: Islam in Indonesian Politics" in J. Piscatori ed, Islam in the Political Process, Cambridge, 1983.

ref to Geertz integrative revolution

Ibid. pp 28-29.

Lester, Theravada Buddhism, pp 123-125.

C. Keyes, The Golden Peninula, London, 1977, p 38.

von der Mehden, Religion and Modernization, p 86.

C. Geertz, "The Javanese Kijaji: the Changing Role of a Cultural Broker", Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol II (1959-1960).

B.J. Boland, The Struggle of Islam in Modern Indonesia, The Hague, 1982, p 117.

D. Lev, Islamic Courts in Indonesia, Berkeley, 1972, p 50.

von der Mehden, Religion and Modernization p 58.

Ibid. p 62.

Mendelson, Sangha and State, p 336.

Mendelson, Sangha and State, pp 240-62 & 341-5.

Ibid. pp 299-306.

F. von der Mehden, Religion and Modernization in Southeast Asia, Syracuse, 1986, p 136.

Quoted in Lester, Theravada Buddhism, p 104.

S.J. Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer, Cambridge, 1976, pp 252-5.

R. Lester, Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia, Ann Arbor, 1973, p 97.

S.J. Tambiah, "Sangha and Polity in Modern Thailand", in Bardwell Smith ed. Religion and the Legitimation of Power in Thailand, Loas, and Burma, Chambersburg PA, 1978, pp 123-4.

Lester, Theravada Buddhism, p 126.

Ibid. pp 96-7.

C. Keyes, The Golden Peninsula, London, 1977, p 293.

The fieldwork which forms the basis for this essay was carried out principally in the period from January 1971 to February 1974.

I am using "Javanist" (kejawen) in preference to the term "abangan", which became enshrined in works on Indonesia on the basis of Geertz's work (1976). In doing so I am agreeing with Koentjaraningrat's framing (1985). It has been common to identify Javanists as "nominal" in their commitment to religion but this is not strictly correct, at least not if it is taken as meaning that they hold their religion superficially. They are typically far more profoundly commited, even to their professed religious ideology and quite apart from their "cultural" preferences, than those who are "nominal" Christians in an Australian environment.

Burridge 1969, p171

J. Kats, "Wie is Semar?" Djawa III (1923 p 55) conjectured that Semar was an old indigenous deity (in Holt1967 p145). Ulbricht (1970 p 22) cites Semar as Javanese because he is "unknown in Hindu mythology". Mulyono (1982 p 26) stresses Semar's local origins (quoting Dutch scholars for backing) and provides an extended review of his role. On the other hand Poedjosoebroto's Wayang: Lambang Ajaran Islam (1978 pp 44-47) includes an argument that Semar was introduced to the wayang by Islam as a representation of worship directed to Allah. The symbolism of Semar may have been reconstructed with the advent of Islam but archaeological evidence supports earlier origins. Among the 8th-9th century Dieng temples are three named after his sons Holt (1967 p 53) equivocates but allows that these names could have been maintained by the surrounding population since the construction of the temples.

(Forge 1978 pp 74-7)

(Geertz 1976 p 23)

The proximity of Magelang to the early temples at Dieng and Borobudur is the clearest suggestive evidence. Geertz (1963 p 41) nominates the Magelang area as one of the most likely early centres. Van der Meer(1979 pp 1-9) summarises evidence relating to the earliest irrigation systems, making clear we cannot be certain precisely where the earliest sawah were located.

Javanese spirit belief are remarkably pervasive, consistent and coherent. Geertz's discussion of them (1976 pp 16-30) fails to clarify their coherence. Koentjaraningrat does slightly better(1985 pp 338-45) but he relies too much to textual sources. Hefner (1985 pp 46-64 & 99-125) gives far more grounded insight into a pattern which has force well beyond the Tengger region he speaks of.

Wolfgang Linser has reported (in conversation) that in areas of new hybrid rice production villagers in recent years have spoken as though the spirit planes are "receeding". Changes have been especially rapid in the past several decades but the force of these beliefs nevertheless remains stronger than most observers imagine.

The suggestion that Nyai Loro Kidul "stands in" for Semar is from Drs. Warsito of Magelang.

The most forceful form of this argument is that of the Solonese Hindu mystic Hardjanta Pradjapangarsa, who has gone so far as to argue that the Ramayana and Mahabharata originated in Java rather than India. He connects them through reference to the Theosophical notion of Lemuria (1972 pp 1-8). Localisation of the wayang is also evident in linkage of the Javanese landscape with figures and events from the mythology--Gatotkaca's kingdom of Pringgodani being at Tawangmangu, the Pendawa's forest kingdom at Dieng, the site of Rahwana's fall at Gedongsongo etc (Stange 1978 pp 115-6; Keeler 1986 p 246).

The political function of wayang has declined--clown scenes are more purely humorous and the wayang is less ritual and more purely entertainment (Sears1986 p162). In my experience choice of lakon can still read as political commentary. A Solonese wayang orang performance, during the 1971 election campaign, of the story (lakon) "Petruk becomes king" led to the arrest of the actor playing Petruk. More recently, during a performance at the Yogya kraton, a Javanese friend related the Sultan's choice of lakon to his decision not to stand again for Vice-President and to a trip he was making, at the time of the performance, to Sukarno's grave at Blitar. Significance generally attaches to and resonates with any events which coincide with a performance.

(Holt1967 p144-5)

Self consciousness in Javanese use of this imagery is demonstrated in a populist novel published in1965, just before the coup and elimination of the PKI (the Indonesian Communist Party). Sardjono titled it "Ismoyo Tiwikrama" (1965), and used the image of Semar's transformation as a way of referring to the rising of the masses politically.

(van der Kroef1958-9 pp 299-301)

Claire Holt (1967 p 63 & 71

Slametmuljana (1976 pp 253-4) accepts this date as consistent with the "Serat Kanda" and with the "Chinese Chronicles of Semarang". Once again, however, I would stress that historical accuracy is not the issue, what matters in this context is what contemporary Javanist have believed.

Literally this means 'Buddhist Era', but this is generally taken by Javanese as indicating a return to "the religion of Majapahit", which was a syncretic mixture of Shaivite Hindu and Tantric Mahayana doctrines.

Kartodirdjo's works have been the most important treatments, especially his Protest Movements in Rural Java (l972).

(Dahm1971 pp 1-20)

(Mataram l948)

(Stange 1978)

(McVey 1986)

(Geertz 1971 p86; Anderson 1972)

(Mulder 1978 pp 1-13)

(Stange 1986)

(Roeder1969 pp 89-90)

(MacDonald1980 pp1-2)

(interview 1972)

Description of practices is based on presence during ceremonies at Sendang Semanggi, Romo Budi's residence in Yogyakarta and local meetings in Surakarta (during 1973-4) and at Sudjono Humardani's home in Jakarta (in 1985).

(Hanna 1967)

(Kartodirdjo 1972 pp121-2)

Bourchier (1984)

Moertono (1968) and Anderson (1972 pp 38-43)I have outlined the spiritual logic underpining this complex of ideas, which tie personal consciousness to social power and responsibility, in my essay (1984) on "The Logic of Rasa in Java".

(Schulte-Nordholt 1980)

Ricklefs (1974 pp19, 55, 362)

(Bourchier 1984 pp 39, 50-53)

(Narto1978 pp 28-9)

This interpretive point is linked to an earlier essay (Stange 1977) and I am stressing again that this is only my presentation of a Javanese theory. It is distressing, after ethnoscience prioritising of indigenous categories and post-modernist recognition of the power relations of interpreter and interpreted, to see the violation committed by Keeler (1987). In his beautifully crafted book, he dismisses the indigenous tradition of esoteric interpretation as though it is only a fabrication of the Theosophical Society (p244), ignoring the rich Indian mystical roots common to both and claiming that "In Java...interpretation does not begin with an opening onto experience" (p260). Finally he presents (p267), as though it is his elaboration of Geertz and Ricoeur, a reduced version of precisely the kebatinan reading (Stange 1977 p122) which he has dismissed. Keeler was obviously so concerned with the canons defining anthropological interpretation (involving its own "sacred lineages of transmission") that he became blind to the sophisticated and self conscious theorising of the Javanese--appropriating their message to his voice and thus disempowering those he represents.

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