Janus

A NATION is not born through magic. It is born with two faces. Like 'Janus" an intellectual said--and a yelling Janus, it seems.

When I was fifteen, I sang for Bung Karno. The first President was visiting and staying at the official residence (of the former colonial government Resident) in our city. A thousand junior high school children had been readied to appear at 6:30 in the yard of that old ornate house, to sing a morning chorus for the Head of State. As one of the members of that huge choir I stood tall and trembling when Bung Karno appeared at the door, waved his baton and a thousand voices were heard, "Since ancient times...."

I still remember that song so to this day, and its feeling: for we sang of Indonesia, our land of birth, a country that came from the dawn of history, and we were the people of that country, from ancient times of this day, and would persevere 'until the end of the world'.

That song, certainly, was one element in the nationalist narrative. This narrative circulates because Janus's face has differing voices. The first face yells to show itself as unique. 'Our nation is not the same as yours, we are different from them, and because of this, our nation had to be born'. And thus a thesis is expounded about unique cultural expression, specific national customs, and about the wholeness of all this--an eternal wholeness because it can traverse centuries. One of the creators of this Indonesian narrative was Muhammad Yamin, a nationalist figure from the early twentieth century: to him,Indonesia's flag--the Venerable Red and White--was one thousand years old, just because its two colors were found in sacred expression in times past.

But nationalism also has another form, just as a nation has yet another face. The second face yells out ambition for modernity. On that morning, one part of Bung Karno's message to us that I still remember was the need for youth to deviate from or abandon the direction determined by the older generation. It was as thought Bung Karno was echoing the voice of modernists (including the Marxists) who resolved: 'Our nation is a new emerging force'--a force in a new era.

A new era, including 'globalisation' these days, certainly needs some principles--which precisely oppose all that is hailed as the unique, as identity, of a nation. With Weber we know that modernity demands a power that is efficient and effective, and therefore has to be compact, one-directional. In forming this power, all that is considered various, untidy, 'wild', 'primitive' and wasteful is cut out.

Two faces, two yells. And not only this: with their hands, called 'the state', these two face sometimes oppress each other. Or compromise. And so the Indonesian communications satellite that was bought from the United States is called Palapa, a world tapped from the fourteenth century story of the Majapahit kingdom. And the planed assembled in Bandung is called Tutuka, the name of a character from the hadow puppet repertoire.

Yet we know that such compromise is merely powder and lipstick.For modernity is often synonymous with worry, trembling, but also the sense of sin, in facing things out there in the undergrowth of times past--like the Dutch colonials in Couperus's famous novel, The Hidden Force (Stille Kracht), who confront a mysterious force disturbing their colonial home. "Where are those stones being thrown from,Addie?" Young Theo is ashen-faced, as is his pretty stepmother. Those who threw them are certainly 'the impudent Javanese.' Yet the stepmother knows in her heart of hearts that is not 'the impudent Javanese' doing the throwing--but what is the difference between the magical, the primitive, and the impudent?

Modernisation indeed has many theorems and much ammunition. It does not inspire tranquillity forever. When various conflicts between the modern and the 'non modern' occur--and more often that not there is something surely despicable in this--we even become anxious.We are nervous seeing the tremors of the country tugging in all direction. We want to create a barricade. We want to build a space where people can be carefree in a world of living, not a world of system and administration. And so, at some moment, people have yelled for custom and the authenticity of tradition to be defended against the claws of the state, because it turns out that modernisation is an sanction for repression.

But--and here lies the problem--repression is not only here. What about polygany, female circumcision, jumping into the pyre as a sign of loyalty to one's dead husband? Janus's second face usually replies: there has to be the ambition for modernity.Strange, at times. When South Africa was under white government, the world was divided into two under apartheid: and so the Black tribal groups were left alone to follow their customs, including polygamy. When the black nationalists won and apartheid was wiped out, then it was precisely the Parliament that introduced marriage legislation forbidding men to take more than one wife.

Confusing, perhaps, but maybe there is nothing wrong with that: Janus's faces will keep on speaking, rustling, jostling, and contradicting each other.