But the conference venue at Surabaya’s Marriott Hotel could only accommodate 600 people and all the places had long been filled. The 170 offers of conference papers had been ruthlessly whittled down to just 50, the Marriott was overflowing and still the desperate calls kept coming. Wilting under the pressure the organizers relented a little and booked accommodation for extra delegates at the nearby Sheraton Hotel.

There were delegates from every part of the Javanese speaking world, including from its most distant outpost in Suriname in South America. I was one of the few foreigners who held a precious invitation to the iconic event held once every five years. I had attended two previous Congresses (in 1991 and 2001) and I was curious to see how Javanese was faring 10 years into the era of Indonesia’s decentralization.

Pride in Javanese identity, tradition and language was apparent in the demeanor of every participant. A number of men wore traditional Javanese dress: blangkon head cloths, beskap jackets and long sarongs. Several women had their hair rolled into luxuriant traditional buns held in place with ornamental konde pins that usually you see only at weddings.

Everyone else was wearing batik with characteristic Javanese motifs. Gamelan music echoed through the conference hall and from time to time delegates pushed to the front of the gathering to sing improvised snatches of comment in traditional tembang verse forms.

Not all the delegates were elderly traditionalists either. I estimate at least half were under 30 years of age. They brought youthful idealism to the proceedings and were interested more in the present and future of Javanese than in its past.

Two features of the congress really stood out. First, Governor Soe-karwo insisted that only Javanese be used in conference sessions. This was different from previous congresses where papers and talk had been dominated by Indonesian. Sure, a few delegates had trouble with this stipulation. They were not used to speaking Javanese before an audience and groped for words, sometimes falling back on Indonesian. But the majority of delegates had no problem at all, and plunged with enthusiasm into discussion on education, literature, sociology, linguistics and other topics in good, sometimes passionate, Javanese.

For me it was a revelation to see Indonesians stripped of their national language interacting wholly in Javanese with sophistication and enthusiasm in a modern, semi-academic forum.

Like all Indonesians, Javanese are proud of the Republic and its national language. But the congress showed me that Bahasa Indonesia – the strong face of Indonesia’s unity and national identity – has a rarely acknowledged dark side. It fits like an elaborate wooden mask over Indonesia’s regional cultures, hiding them from direct view, distorting them and covering up the pride, vibrancy, yearning and, in some cases, the emerging modernity that is embodied in these cultures. With the mask of Bahasa Indonesia lifted, congress delegates were able to celebrate their Javaneseness more freely, more publicly and more authentically than had been possible in previous congresses.

Second, the congress seemed to give expression to a new role for kromo, the ultra-polite, ultra-refined register of “high Javanese”. The Javanese themselves are divided about the character and future of kromo. Many see it as a relic of feudalism … difficult, esoteric and characteristic only of the overbearing “superior” culture of the Javanese heartland in Central Java. School students dread lessons in kromo.

Many teachers believe that kromo is so refined and so respectful that if you master it you are bound to become a better person: more civilized and more morally upright. So mistakes in using kromo are more than just mistakes of grammar and usage, they are moral blemishes. Pupils learn to wedi luput – to be afraid of making mistakes – when they speak or write formal Javanese, and as a result study of kromo is a boogeyman that kills their interest in their mother tongue.

But now a new, less problematic role for kromo as a neutral lingua franca may be emerging. Javanese is a very diverse language with a huge range of very different dialects that local speakers are proud of. At the congress, delegates from Banyuwangi, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Solo, Banyumas, Cirebon, Banten and Sumatra – each with their own unique way of speaking Javanese – were able to communicate fluently with one another through the medium of standard kromo. Even the delegates from Suriname, where kromo was once largely forgotten and who do not speak Bahasa Indonesia, are now learning kromo and were able to communicate much more fluently with other delegates than they did in past congresses.

In short, kromo is allowing Javanese to foster fluency and pride in the local variants of their language while at the same time communicating with speakers of other dialects through the medium of kromo. In some respects, the new kromo has the same relationship with local dialects that Bahasa Indonesia has with the regional languages of the Republic. Of course kromo has always been a kind of lingua franca, but now this function is becoming more prominent, and as it does so kromo will lose its overtones of snooty, esoteric aloofness.

I came away from the Javanese Language Congress elated at the resilience of Java’s ancient language and culture. I also came away with a small treasure trove of new books in Javanese – novels, anthologies of short stories, modern poetry and new editions of classic texts – more than 20 new titles altogether. This is still a modest harvest when we consider that around 80 million people are native speakers of Javanese, but it is a sign of continuing vitality.

Even more heartening was the appearance of at least two new computer programs that enable people to write Java’s traditional honocaroko script easily. When these applications make it into the hands of Java’s computer-savvy school students they may well help save this beautiful script from extinction.

George Quinn is an adjunct professor and visiting fellow at the Australian National University, Canberra. His paper for the Javanese Language Congress dealt with the special problems of teaching Javanese to foreigners.

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