Many thanks, Gus Dur!

Aimee Dawis ,  Jakarta   |  Tue, 02/09/2010 9:19 AM  |  Opinion

The first time I became acquainted with Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid’s pluralist stance was back in 2001. During one of my vacations back to Indonesia while pursuing my doctorate at New York University, I had the honor of attending a wayang orang (traditional Javanese dance drama) performance at the Gedung Kesenian Jakarta (The Jakarta Performing Arts Center).

An avid fan of wayang orang, Gus Dur attended the event with his family and his then vice president, Megawati Soekarnoputri.

The 2.5-hour performance was stupendous. All the actors and actresses wore fine Javanese costumes and sang ancient Javanese songs in perfect pitch. It was only at the end of the event that I realized all of the performers were Chinese-Indonesians from Surakarta, Central Java.

Gus Dur, who could not watch the performance, was listening intently to everything that happened on stage. When invited to speak to the hundreds of people that made up the audience, he said, “I am proud of my brothers and sisters. The leading cause of Islam is harmony. We must fight to spread pluralism in Indonesia. There is no place for discrimination in Indonesia!”

His speech met with tremendous applause and a standing ovation by the audience. Touched by Gus Dur’s statements, some of the older Chinese-Indonesian audience members were misty-eyed.
“We have Gus Dur to thank for all this,” they explained.

Indeed, it has only been 10 short years that Chinese-Indonesians have been able to celebrate Chinese New Year freely. As soon as Gus Dur came into power as the fourth president of Indonesia from November 1999 to August 2001, he abolished the 1967 presidential instruction by Soeharto, which restricted the practice of Chinese customs and religions to private domains.

He formalized this act by signing the 2000 presidential instruction which allows public celebration of Chinese New Year. Under Megawati, who headed Indonesia’s government from August 2001 to September 2004, Chinese New Year was made a national holiday on Feb. 1, 2003. 

Growing up in the Soeharto era, but spending most of my childhood and teenage years in Singapore, I often envied how my Singaporean friends could celebrate the most important Chinese cultural event with so many festivities.

They seemed to take for granted the lion dance performances, as well as the huge red-and-gold lampions bearing various Chinese characters that symbolize prosperity and good fortune.

When I returned to Jakarta during the Chinese New Year holiday, I was happy to spend time with my family, but could not see any signs of Chinese New Year festivities outside of the home. 

My best friend, who grew up in Jakarta during the Soeharto era, was well aware of these restrictions. Although she now resides in Northern California, she makes occasional trips back to Jakarta to see her family for Chinese New Year.

When she returned to Jakarta in 2003 and saw employees at Sogo department store in Plaza Senayan wearing traditional Chinese clothing, she exclaimed: “This was all forbidden before!” She was even more astounded when she saw a hong bao (red envelope) tree bearing vouchers, long red ribbons fluttering from the high, domed ceiling of the mall, and cherubic dolls wearing traditional costumes in the department store windows.

Seven years later, in 2010, the Chinese-Indonesian community has made great leaps and bounds.
Hundreds of Chinese organizations have sprung up. Schools offering Mandarin as a main subject have mushroomed all over the archipelago, while the Chinese media have flourished in the post-1998 era.

Bolstered by China’s increasing economic might, Indonesia has embraced the renaissance of Chinese culture and language in the past decade.

The euphoria surrounding the renaissance, however, should not go “overboard”, as cautioned by Harry Tjan Silalahi, a board member of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Benny Setiono, a leader of the INTI (Perhimpunan Indonesia Tionghoa, or the Chinese-Indonesian Association), shares the same sentiments.

According to them, social sensitivity and responsibility must be encouraged in the Chinese-Indonesian community to avoid creating jealousy within the larger Indonesian society.   

This is perhaps one of the reasons why Chinese social organizations have contributed a substantial amount of financial aid to various natural disasters and the building of Muhammadiyah schools. In the weeks leading up to Chinese New Year, Buddhist temples have also distributed thousands of food parcels to the poor.

These efforts are important to educate the younger generation of Chinese-Indonesians, who will have no memory of the Soeharto era. Thanks to Gus Dur, they are finally able to lay claim to their cultural heritage without any restrictions. However, they must be cognizant of Indonesian history and learn social, religious, and ethnic tolerance.

For these lessons and more, duo xie (many thanks), Gus Dur! May your legacy live on in our beautiful country.


The writer is a lecturer at the University of Indonesia’s Departments of Communication and Humanities and author of The Chinese of Indonesia and Their Search for Identity: The Relationship Between Collective Memory and the Media.

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