1 Prologue --- TL and Indonesia, past and present
1.1 Metonymy and Metaphor
1.2 Church and Tetun
1.3 Epochalism and Essentialism
2 Indonesia as Metonymy --- Church
2.1 Goa, Dili and Jakarta
2.2 Holland, Indonesia and TL
2.3 1970s, 1990s and 2010s
3 Indonesia as Metaphor --- Tetun
3.1 If Wehale Had Been Destructed
3.2 If Wehale Were Inside TL
3.3 If I Were a Structuralist
4 Epilogues --- TL and Indonesia, future
Draft only ($Revision$ ($Date$)).
(C) Satoshi Nakagawa
Do not quote or cite without the author's
permission.
Comments are welcome
As summarised in Leach's paper, the Timor Leste nationalism has a few distinctive features. Some of them will be made more intelligible when seen from an Indonesianist's point of view. That is my contention of this short presentation --- to show what Timor Leste nationalism looks like when seen from an Indonesianist's view point. And the answer is: it looks like a ``a nationalism of absence''.
I am going to state my conclusion beforehand: it looks like a nationalism of absence.
Indonesia is important, of course, in terms of the fact that it's a neighbouring country as well as it's the country against which people fought for independence. Indonesia is important as well, I contend, in that its nationalism is quite similar to that of Timor Leste. One may say that Indonesia is a metonymy --- in that it's contiguous to Timor Leste or more precisely, perhaps, in that it is a part of the Timorese history as well as a metaphor (it's similar to Timor Leste in its nationalism).
In his paper today as well as in his book [Leach 2012], Leach as a political scientist, very carefully and succinctly, dissects the nationalism of Timor Leste and shows us its distinctive features. I as an anthropologist, blatantly and outrageously, would like to suggest that there are two brands of nationalism discernible in Timor Leste: that is, (1) nationalism of the Church persuasion and (2) nationalism of the Tetun persuasion
Later we'll have one paper dealing with TL nationalism in general (by Leach) followed by five ethnographical papers. I would say that, among them, Ueda san's and Okuda san's papers deal with the former type of nationalism (of Portugal persuasion) and that McWilliam's, Morita san's and Fukutake san's papers deal with the second kind (of the Tetun persuasion).
Most of the Timor Leste researchers would agree that those (Church and Tetun) are the the most important elements of the nation building process in Timor Leste. Yet, at the same time, they do look rather out of context (as nationalism).
I know the fact that (1) more than 90 percent of the inhabitants are Roman Catholic and (2) that most people in Timor Leste can now speak Tetun; it is just remarkable how rapid the spread of Tetun is, as a `national language'. [1]
Still questions remain. First about Christianity. It is not an autochthonous religion, isn't it? It's a religion brought by the Portuguese, the colonial power. Worse still, the number of Christians drastically increased only at the time of the Indonesian occupation.
Now about Tetun. Tetun as is adopted as a national language, that is Tetun Pra\c{c}a, is not one of the native languages. Yes Tetun Therik is; but Tetun Pra\c{c}a is not. It's a creole language spoken merely in the town of Dili and its surrounding areas.
One could argue that the pair (Church oriented nationalism and Tetun oriented nationalism) is yet another variant of the opposition between Epochalism and Essentialism, which, Geertz argues, can be found in almost any of nationalism of nascent nation-states [Geertz 1973].
Seen in that light, the two brands are expected to be facing the opposite directions, the former towards the outside, the latter towards the inside.
Yet it happens that they seem to go hand in hand; for example, it is a well known fact that it is the Church which supported the spread of the Tetun language.
So it seems that it's not enough just to assume that the two brands are yet another variant of Epochalism and Essentialism. We need something more to understand the TL nationalism fully well.
Well... I'm not going to answer all those questions in this short presentation. What I'm going to do is to try to shed some lights upon those ``mysteries'' concerning the Timor Leste nationalism, by comparing it with that of Indonesia.
Now first about the Church aspect of nationalism. In this section, I'm using Indonesia as a metonymy of Timor Leste.
Let me begin my discussion by introducing a short paper, ``Imagining East Timor'' [Anderson 1993] published in 1993 (that is, way before the referendum), by Benedict Anderson,
As I indicated in my opening speech, according to Anderson, many people who knew anything about TL thought that East Timor would be easily absorbed into "big" Indonesia. The question he asked is why it wasn't
One of the reasons is, Anderson argues, the Indonesian attitudes towards Timor Leste; They did not treat Timor Leste people as ``brothers'' How did they treat them?
Anderson writes that people in Jakarta were unable to imagine East Timor as Indonesian. They did not treat East Timorese as `` brothers''. Their attitude towards the Timorese people were, he contends, just like Dutch colonial officers:
. . . `ingratitude' was a typical accusation by Dutch colonial officials against `native' nationalism: `Look at all we have done for you, down there, in terms of security, education, economic development, civilisation'. The language is that of the superior and civilised towards the inferior and barbarous. [Anderson 1993].
This is the way Indonesia treated East Timor; they treated East Timor just like the Dutch officers had treated the Indonesian people. It would be striking, he continues, once we think about the Indonesian attitudes toward Irian, which has always been imagined as ``part'' of Indonesia. Just like the Dutch caused the nationalism in Indonesia, Indonesia caused the nationalism in Timor Leste. That's the irony of history.
Anderson is talking about the nationalism in the 1990s, at the time of Indonesian occupation; The nationalism of this period is quite different from the nationalism of the 1970s, when, for example, FRETILIN propaganda argued against the brutal colonial regime of the Portuguese. So strong was the presence of the Portuguese around that time. The nationalism of the 1970s is characterised by the presence of Portugal while that of the 1990s is by the presence of Indonesia. What characterises the present day nationalism in Timor Leste, say of 2015?
I specifically mentioned the year 2015, because it was the year when the Timor Leste government celebrated `the 500 year anniversary of the arrival of the Portuguese'. It was always emphasised that it also commemorated the arrival of the Church.
Without further ado, I would say that what characterises the nationalism of the 2010s is the absence of Portugal. In summary, we can say that (1) (in 1970s) it's the presence of Portugal, (2) (in 1990s) it's the presence of Indonesia, and finally (3) (in 2010s) it's the absence of Portugal, replacing Church with the absent Portugal.
In the 3rd section, I will deal with the Tetun oriented nationalism and will use Indonesia as a metaphor of Timor Leste.
First, simple facts. Indonesia became Indonesia as it is because it used to be one single territory under the Dutch government; Timor Leste is Timor Leste as it is because it was one single territory governed by Portugal. Early Indonesian nationalists were well aware of this fact; but they needed, desperately, something else for the legitimacy of their nation-state. Thus, they struggled to find a "lost territory" so that the independence could be told as a story of regaining the "lost territory" after the brutal colonisers.
In his article entitled ``The Image of Majapahit in Later Javanese and Indonesian Writing'' [Supomo 1979] Supomo brilliantly describes how Indonesian nationalists chose Majapahit as their ``home land'' --- it covered most of the present day Indonesia. The result of the ``discovery'' is that the Indonesian people can tell a story of the fight for independence in such a way as: (1) Once we were big and glorious; (2) then came the bad guys; (3) we fought them and struggled and (4) regained what is legitimately ours.
In case of Timor Leste a natural substitute for Majapahit would be Wehale kingdom as the lost ``home land''. As Fukutake san will tell us later, Wehale was a strong Tetun kingdom and once it covered most of the eastern part of the island.
If Wehale had been destructed (say, in 1642 by the Topasses), and had been discovered later by some nationalist historians, it might have followed the same path as Majapahit in Indonesia.
But the thing is ... it's still there. And it's a weak kingdom, one of surviving local kingdoms. And worse still, it's located in the Indonesian part of the island.
So it is just unthinkable for assimilados (elites) before and the Dili people nowadays to employ Wehale as a symbol of the home land.
In the history of Indonesia, the absence of Majapahit (and its discovery) contributed much to the nascent nationalism; while because of its presence, Wehale could have nothing to do with the nationalism.
I emphasised the presence of Wehale in the previous sub-section. But one might also say that Wehale is absent, in the sense that Wehale is outside Timor Leste --- Wehale is absent in Timor Leste. And this absence has contributed much to the nationalism in Timor Leste, especially of the Tetun persuasion.
Now back to Indonesian situations. One of the hard tasks for some early Indonesian nationalists was to suppress the Java-ness or the Java imperialism from the newly born nation-state (Indonesia). So big was the influence of Java at that time.
In an arena (later called "Polemic Kebudayaan", ``Culture Debate''), Pro-Java protagonists insisted that the Java language should be chosen as the national language. In the long run, con-Java protagonists won the battle and they made Melayu (the lingua franca of the area) as the Indonesian national language
My point can now be rephrased as another of IF in history: If Wehale had been still influential and located inside Timor Leste, [like Java was in Indonesia] Tetun would not have been adopted as national language [as Javanese was not adopted as the national language]
To conclude, in a structuralist way, we could say the following: The Indonesia nationalism revolves around two axes: (1) the presence of the Dutch and (2) the presence of Java The Timor Leste nationalism revolves around the two axes: (1) the absence of Portugal and (2) the absence of Wehale.
We could continue to say that: The two brands of Timor Leste nationalism can be traced back to the two absences: (1) In the Nationalism of the Portuguese persuasion, religion replaces the absent coloniser, while (2) in the Nationalism of the Tetun persuasion, the language replaces the absent kingdom.
Now to the last part of my presentation.
The last remark is more a kind of fantasy than an analysis of the present situation.
Leach and McWilliam repeatedly emphasises the importance of the idea of ``stranger king'' when we deal with Timor Leste nationalism. In that context, it is worth noting that Traube writes how the Indonesian people are excluded from the stranger-king slot (malai) of Mambai [Traube 2011: 129] the reason being that ``they had brought war rather than peace'' [Traube 2011: 129].
This incident reported by Traube did remind me of a Polish priest's memoir about how he was received first time in Indonesia. He had to repeat his nationality ("Polandia" in Indonesian) until people were convinced that he was not "Belanda" (that's Holland, Dutch). The point is at that time, around 10 years after the independence, the animosity toward the Dutch people was so strong among the Indonesian ordinary people. In both cases (one in Mambai, and one in Flores), we can say that nationalism needs a common enemy to unite the people and forget the differences among them.
In nowadays Indonesia, 70 years after the independence, people have no special feelings towards the Dutch people.
Later today, Morita san will tell us an incident, a skirmish, which occurred in the border between Timor Leste enclave (Oecusse) and Indonesia. I understand the nature of this conflict is quite different from that of national enmity.
One more episode. One of my Timorese friends once told me that he was worrying about his daughter's future; she wanted to go to a university, he said, and it was fine. What he was thinking was what university should be best for her. He suggested that he was thinking of sending her to one of the Indonesian universities.
What I'm suggesting is
that, in the people's imagination now,
Indonesia is changing its status
from
[1] I use the expression ``national language'' rather loosely here; wait for Okuda san's paper about ``national'' [Back]