Javanese symbolism was once again used on the political stage
span>Javanese symbolism was once again used on the political stage. This time, a 28-year-old sculpture artist from Blora, Central Java, Lilik Yuliantoro, walked more than 500 kilometers from Yogyakarta to Jakarta to hand over a leather puppet of Javanese folklore character Sengkuni to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.
Lilik, who started walking from Yogyakarta’s landmark Tugu Pal Putih on July 22, arrived in Jakarta on Aug. 7 and is now staying at a fellow activist’s house in Cibubur, East Jakarta.
A Jokowi supporter, he said the walk aimed to mock senior politician Amien Rais, a vocal critic of the President who reportedly made a nazar (sacred vow) that he would walk from Yogyakarta to Jakarta if Jokowi won the 2019 presidential election. When Jokowi won, Amien never made the walk.
“As a fellow Javanese person, I feel humiliated by Amien’s attitude, which is becoming more and more like Sengkuni’s,” Lilik told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Sengkuni is an antagonist in the Mahabharata epic.
“In the epic, Sengkuni is a senior politician and he is defeated by Bima, a younger candidate,” Lilik said proudly.
Heddy Shri Ahimsa Putra, an anthropologist at Gadjah Mada University, said Lilik displayed a typical Javanese method of a mocking political opponent.
“Symbolism [is used] to mock Amien; it’s blatant but smoothly done. Javanese people will not directly criticize others to their face, so Lilik used the leather puppet and carried out a nazar that was not fulfilled by someone who claimed he would do one,” Heddy told the Post over the phone on Friday.
According to Heddy, Sengkuni is evil and cunning, and he is responsible for triggering a war between the Kurawa and the Pandawa. He takes advantage of tensions between the two by using chaos to seize power.
“He likes to bring people into conflict through lies. That’s why in the epic, Sengkuni is killed when his mouth is ripped open by Bima; his mouth is the reason why people hate Sengkuni so much,” Heddy said.
He added that for the Indonesian people, Amien is similar to Sengkuni, who likes to make controversial statements to pit people against one another. He cited as an example Amien’s claim that the country’s political parties could be divided into two categories: God’s parties and the devil’s parties.
“Maybe the Javanese people are fed up with him and think that his attitude is outrageous,” Heddy said.
Moreover, Amien’s empty nazar can also create a problem in the Javanese spiritual point of view, he added.
“Usually, people will not easily declare a nazar. They usually make one that can be easily fulfilled, such as sacrificing a lamb and donating the meat to the poor; not something that can easily be done, like a long walk.”
When a nazar is not fulfilled, the Javanese believe that the person who made it will face certain consequences.
“We call the consequence kualat, or bad karma, which might fall upon us in the form of material disasters on this Earth or a spiritual doom in the afterlife,” Heddy said.
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