Indonesian Literature vs. New Order Orthodoxy

Indonesian Literature vs. New Order Orthodoxy: The Aftermath of 1965-1966. By Anna-Greta Nilsson Hoadley. Copenhagen: Nias Press, 2005. xiii, 159 pp.

Since the Reformasi movement of 1998, which toppled the thirty-two year-long New Order government, historical narratives, fiction, memoirs, essays addressing the previously taboo subject of the 1965-66 communist cleansing events--which cost around half a million Indonesian lives--have been widely published. Books previously banned, such as those written by authors marked as having leftist orientation, and books on Communism and Marxism are on display. In this climate of reopening and confronting past issues, Anna-Greta Nilsson Hoadley's book on the literary depiction of the 1965-66 events and its aftermath cannot be more timely and pertinent.

The book discusses a dozen novels, one autobiography, a number of short stories and individual short story and poetry anthologies, published mostly in the 1980s and 1990s. Those literary works are written by well-known Indonesian authors, including three who had been marked as leftist and experienced imprisonment by the New Order government, i.e., Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Putu Oka Sukanta and Hr. Bandaharo. Thematically organized in seven chapters, including the introduction and conclusion, the book examines the literary depiction of political violence, the killings, the Indonesian Communist Party, the actors in their relations to Hindu-Javanese Culture, and to political leaders.

Employing the sociology of literature as its method, Hoadley digs out facts about the 1965-66 events, and its aftermatth--which are absent in the official version (the National History text book)--from literary sources. These facts include the gruesome details of political repression, abritary arrest and detention, torture and other inhuman treatments, the killing and massacre of civilians, either by the army or by other civilians, and the ostracization of ex-prisoners and their families. In the fourth chapter, Hoadley discusses the way the Indonesian Communist Party was depicted, and the strategies of class consciousness raising which they employed, as seen in fiction. Most of the literary protagonists are portrayed as innocent victims of these political strategies, so in the next chapter Hoadley shows how the Hindu-Javanese cultural ideology of submission to authority, acceptance of fate and attraction to power explains the characters' susceptibility to political maneuvers. Another ideological explanation was the "urge to oneness" seen in President Soekarno's effort in uniting nationalism with religion and communism (known as the NASAKOM policy), which served as the "guiding star" of many protagonists, who became victims of the communist cleansing.

As a work in the sociology of literature, Indonesian Literature vs. New Order Orthodoxy is valuable in two ways. It gives a comprehensive, informative contextual background of the 1965-66 upheaval in Indonesia, and it succeeds in showing how, during the time of political repression, fiction served as a means of voicing that which was silenced, although they did not succeed in stirring up public discussion on the subject (p. 50). There is one crucial problem, however, which needs to be discussed further, that is, the ideological positioning of ...