The passing away of Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid marks the beginning of the end of a generation that laid the foundation of Indonesia’s current democratic set up. This generation comprises those who were born in the late 1930s and 1940s.
These include Nurcholis Madjid, Sjahrir, Umar Kayam, Kuntowijoyo and Tawang Alun who contributed greatly, amongst others, through their writings and participation in mostly unrecorded and informal discussions organized in the early 1980s that ultimately helped shape the current set up in Indonesia
today.
Those who are still alive from this generation are in the sunset of their lives. Their ideas are still heard although those who champion them may no longer be seen in public. Dawam Rahardjo, for example, was known as director of the Institute of Economic and Social Studies and Development (LP3ES) and publisher of the then widely respected Prisma journal in the 1980s.
Adi Sasono known as founder and director of the Institute of Development Studies (LSP) and the champion of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as the backbone of Indonesia’s economic is also still alive. Some of this generation decided to live abroad. Arif Budiman and Djohan Effendi now live and teach in Australia.
This generation shares a common characteristic. Their ideas were moulded through their active engagement in study groups organized inside and outside campuses. The majority of them were active in student organization and some of them even occupied the highest posts in student organizations.
At the same time, this generation were enthusiastic readers on a variety of issues that they regarded as important for their understanding of what would be the future of Indonesia.
Their language proficiency both in English or Arabic helped them to understand academic literature from both Western and Middle-East sources. Some of them even had the opportunity to enter prestigious universities like Chicago, Columbia and Harvard.
Their horizons and understanding of the world could not be circumscribed by the Soeharto regime.
Their reading helped them to understand that the prevailing regime would not be the kind of regime that Indonesia would like to have in the future since it was repressive and anti-democratic.
The Debate “Islam Yes but Politics No” was a discourse strongly influenced by the idea of Nurcholis Madjid and these ideas continue to be seriously debated even today. Their exploration and intellectual leadership became a source of inspiration for numerous student leaders who finally led ‘people power’ to bring down Soeharto.
The decision of Gus Dur in his capacity as the chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Islamic organization in Indonesia to accept Pancasila as the sole ideology imposed by Soeharto was first seen at the time as a sign of weakness. But this acceptance paved the way for more cooperation between the NU and the New Order regime.
It was this very cooperation that helped various modernization program to be adopted by Nahdlatul Ulama and its network of Islamic boarding schools (pesantren). The modernization greatly contributed to the modernization of Islamic boarding school. Many of the alumni of these modernized programs now occupy most of the academic positions in state Islamic universities in Indonesia.
An outstanding contribution of this generation, although little recognized, was their participation in informal discussions organized inside or outside the campus. These were organized by student organizations who felt that campus rules and regulations prevented them from accessing a much better understanding of what was going on inside and outside Indonesia.
As an answer to the restrictions of this repressive rule, student discussion groups were established in almost all big campuses in Indonesia.
Not so surprising to find that in the early 1980s students discussed Marxism and theory of dependency in the corners of their campuses or even in their rented accomodation.
Today doors are open for those who have the ambition either through civil society organizations or campuses to pursue their ambitions without many restrictions. Previous barriers between secular universities like UI, ITB and UGM with State Islamic Universities are no longer there.
A large number of academics from State Islamic universities completed their degree from the very same campus where their colleagues from secular universities also got their degrees. Students no longer need to bribe the campus library staff just to read the prohibited section of the library collection.
The question that the current generation need to answer is whether they will have the courage and capacity to follow the footstep of Gus Dur, Nurcholis Madjid and Umar Kayam who creatively responded to the challenges of their generation.
The challenges may be different and the answers may also be different but the courage and capacity of Abdurrahman Wahid’s generation can be an example to be followed.
The generation of KH Gus Dur is slowly fading away. Nonetheless the historical footsteps that this generation left behind will remain. Many of them may no longer be alive but their ideas will remain for everyone to read and understand. The ideas that this generation left behind will not fade away.
The writer is Deputy Principal Advisor of the German Technical Cooperation Advisory Service Support for Decentralization (GTZ-ASSD) in the Ministry of Home Affairs and Member of the Steering Committee of the Germany-Asia Governance Sector Network. He was a member of the Masjid Salman Study Group in the 1980s.
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