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INSIGHT: The only 'pribumi' is Adam – others are hybrids
Indonesian Muslim hard-line populist movement went to a new low these past couple weeks when it employed the colonialist narrative of pribumi (native) to marginalize Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama and his supporters.
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On the campaign trail: Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama woos voters in Jatinegara, East Jakarta, on Nov. 15, 2016 as he bids for his second term in next year’s gubernatorial election. The police have begun their case screening on blasphemy allegations implicating Ahok. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
T
he xenophobic, anti-Christian, politically driven but religiously masked Indonesian Muslim hard-line populist movement went to a new low these past couple weeks when it employed the colonialist narrative of pribumi (native) to marginalize Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama and his supporters. This latest stunt came after a failed campaign to prohibit mosques from facilitating obligatory Islamic rituals for the remains of Muslims who allegedly supported Ahok during their lifetime.
Various posts on social media took notice of how these people who stuck pribumi stickers on cars, and who flaunted pribumi posters while protesting again in downtown Jakarta, wore Arabic-style clothing and supported the rival gubernatorial candidate known to be of Arab descent.
The idea of transforming Indonesia into a “sharia-based country” (whatever that means), which is being promoted by these groups, cannot be deemed an Indonesian idea. However, what is missing from these observations is that “tracing back authenticity” is not only futile but also dangerous for those arbitrarily excluded from the circle of “the indigenous.”
Not to mention that Islam as a civilization has always been characterized by multiculturalism, rather than by nativism. A fact that is true even for pathological groups such as the Islamic State (IS) movement.
Why is the pursuit of “authenticity” dangerous? There are three major answers to this. First, the search for authenticity and its ideology, nativism, comprises a never-ending chase for supremacy based on chronology.
Hence, the only winner of the race for authenticity in human civilization is Adam, if you believe in any of the Semitic major religious traditions, and Homo habilis (2.8 million years ago), if you hold on to theories of human evolution. Other than those two, we all are — to some extent — hybrids.
Second, just like any other ideology, such as racism and sexism, that uses physiological differences to distinguish “us” and “them,” nativism is arbitrarily built by those who make the indigenous claim based on their short-term, mostly economic, political and cultural interests.
