To his admirers and political foes alike, Gus Dur has been credited with siding with the people, especially with the obviously marginalized ones like Christians and those of Chinese descent.

Yet few realized that once Soeharto stepped down from power, he had been an “ordinary” person – despite his lingering influential political claws – just like other Indonesian people. But Gus Dur regularly met with Soeharto.

Gus Dur’s opponents accused him of betraying national reform. On the contrary, he exemplified his multiplicity of self, often interpreted as being ngawur (“arbitrarily absurd”), to get Indonesian people accustomed to a plurality of ideas (of himself, in particular).

I believe he was saying that it was one thing to denounce a repressive regime, but it was another to respect Soeharto as a fellow human being.

Gus Dur seems to have not wanted to oppress Soeharto the way he was oppressed by Soeharto. In the view of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Gus Dur indirectly warned the Indonesian people not to be trapped into a vicious cycle of the once oppressed becoming the oppressors.

In fact, Gus Dur’s plurality of self, again at the expense of being regarded as absurdly inconsistent, transpired throughout his life.

Elected as the chairperson of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) in 1984, he called for a return to the 1926 stance in which the NU stayed away from politics and yet accepted Pancasila, endorsed by Soeharto, as the “single” over-riding principle of the nation.

And at the rise of the reform movement about a decade ago, Gus Dur initiated the PKB (The National Awakening Party), calling it the official political channel for NU members.

A myopic view on his apparent lack of integrity from time to time fails to appreciate his vision of unity and democracy.

I believe Gus Dur conceived the idea that unity did not necessarily mean the same opinion invariably held for ages.

Rather, unity could be achieved through democratic (not hostile) dialogue across regimes (recall his meetings with Soeharto), across religions, ethnic groups, and through an evolving sense of self.  

In his unique integrity, Gus Dur gave some room for himself to evolve – to change his stance and compromise – within the purview of his vision of unity and a democratic nation.

In 1984, he might have predicted that political confrontations through political parties were not going to be fruitful.

A bit of compromise at first glance to “defend” Soeharto’s “consecrating” Pancasila was strategically congruent with his nationalistic vision regardless of Soeharto.

As the situation allowed him to aspire to his (and other people’s) political views through political parties such as PKB, he moved his followers to another stage of maturing democracy, while avoiding political sectarianism.

Indonesians were flabbergasted by Gus Dur’s sacking of the late Matori Abdul Djalil, the chairperson of PKB. “Close to being literally insane – thanks to the stroke he had suffered”, some people contended. Such people might have missed Gus Dur’s being consistently critical even of his own followers who he supported at the beginnning.

Gus Dur might have been wrong, too, but I respect his attempt to avoid the political complacency of being pampered by his followers.

Some people were seemingly tired of Gus Dur when another recent internal conflict in PKB happened between his side and that of Muhaimin Iskandar, his own nephew. This time, Gus Dur alluded to such democratic issues as law enforcement and legally dared to be different even in his “own political safehouse”, in the PKB.

The hidden message I learn is that reforms start from the inner circle of power. Reforms are nonsense when the inner circle of one’s own party is problematic and only concerned with its “good” public image.

Regarding the plurality of self, I also learn that Gus Dur did not hesitate to admit his own mistake of his previously “erroneous” self. Jaya Suprana, Gus Dur’s friend, recalled when he asked Gus Dur about the complexities following his controversial comments that members of parliament were like “kindergarten students”, which led him, among other things, to be ousted from the presidency. Gus Dur admitted humbly to Suprana that he was wrong.

Admitting his own mistakes is certainly another of Gus Dur’s democratic legacies — a value scarcely shown by his predecessors or contemporary leaders who have been inclined to swearing “by God” when blamed for mistakes or misconduct.

Interestingly also, when Jaya Suprana tried to defend Gus Dur, disclaiming some organizations’ indictment that Gus Dur had defamed Islam after saying that the Koran was a “pornographic holy writ”, Gus Dur jokingly (and seriously) commented, “Biar saja, biar rame” (Let it be, let it be noisy).

Once more, Gus Dur has displayed his multiplicity of (or ambivalent) self. I do not think he was libelous to the Holy Koran, though he may have sounded so.

More at issue was how he made a breakthrough in personalizing religious views and how he called for others to go down the path of making “noise” – of making multiple voices that toppled the singularity of voice which at times was oppressive.

Gus Dur, as well as Bakhtin – the  father of polyphony that celebrates multiple voices and selves – paved the way for dialogue in which discourses from multiple philosophies were to be (re-)interpreted in harmony, amidst the unity and diversity of a nation like Indonesia.

Gus Dur, thank you for opening up your diversity-in-unity self that challenged us to think ahead of our time, which is still full of oppression, injustice, and sectarianism.

Au revoir, Gus.


The writer is a lecturer in the Faculty of Language and Literature, Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga, Central Java.

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