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Resources of Indonesian soft power diplomacy (By: Siswo Pramono)

Monday, 28 June 2010

The Jakarta Post

 Power, according to Joseph S. Nye (2004), is your “ability to influence the behavior of others”. Soft power is your ability to become “attractive” so that you can “co-opt” others. The main resources of your soft power are your foreign policy, culture and value. 

As the foreign policies of regional powers are geared toward the formation of regional culture and values, which make up the template of Asian political architecture, the soft-power contest in Asia begins. What are we going to sell?

The Asian market demands values that are both universal in character (to help Asians integrate with globalization) and original in nature (to help Asians preserve their cultural identity).

 Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh commented: “The Indian influence across much of Asia has been one of culture, language, religion, ideas and values, not of bloody conquest. Does that not also make India a ‘global superpower’, thought not in the traditional sense? Can this not be the power we seek in the next century?” (www.pmindia.nic.in).

 Yes, the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism to East Asia represented a fraction of India’s investment on soft power dated back in the first century. Now it is likely the time for India to harvest its dividends.

 India then established the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) in countries with large Indian diaspora communities. The Asian market is now flooded by Bollywood products and Indian contemporary art, including Indian fashion (Kirsten Bound (et.al.), 2007. Cultural Diplomacy).

 In the same token, China has established 100 Confucius institutes abroad to promote culture and knowledge about China. The name Confucius is deliberately chosen since Confucius (551-479 BCE) has always been associated with a system of philosophy that has been internalized in the Asian cultures for more than a millennium. Meanwhile, the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language — NOCFL, has been preparing 10,000 volunteers to teach Mandarin in 23 countries.

 Thus, for China and India, the issue at stake is not the fact that they are now the emerging powers in global politics, but how, if geopolitics matters, they could gain acceptance, and support, from their fellow Asians.

 If Indonesia is to embark on the contest of soft power, it should look for a home-grown, credible value which is attractive to the Asian market. We need to trace our perceived cultural resources back during the glorious era of the Kingdom of Majapahit (1293-1527).

 Majapahit, as a decentralized archipelagic kingdom stretching from Samudra (in North Sumatra) to Wanin (the western coast of Papua), with an effective sphere of influence covering the whole of Southeast Asia, as documented in Nãgarakretâgama (1365), is, for me, a historical template for tmodern Indonesia.

Majapahit had been successful in coping with the tension of a multicultural society and of three competing religions — Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam (which was by then a fast growing minority).

While on many occasions Majapahit resorted to military power, the main mantra of the political integration was the value of “accommodative pluralism”.  The value was translated into a Siva-Buddha syncretism, which was then adopted to become the philosophical foundation of the kingdom and its foreign relations.

The syncretic policy — well documented in Mpu Tantular’s Kakawin Sutasoma — can be extracted into two sentences: “mangkãng Jinatwa kalawan Siwatatwa tunggal” (Buddha and Siva essentially teach the same truth), and thus, “bhineka tunggal ika tan hana dharmma mangwra” (while difference, the teachings essentially present one truth, since there is hardly a diversified truth).

The value of accommodative pluralism was, again, apparent during the great transformation of the archipelago from Siva-Buddha to Islam, as depicted in the book Babad Tanah Jawi 1647 (The History of the Land of Java 1647).

The dramatic event was captured when the last king of Majapahit, Brawijaya, relinquished his power to his son, Raden Patah, the first Sultan of Demak, who was converted to Islam.

The value of accommodative pluralism survived the era of transformation because not only was Islam then considered as sharing “the one Truth” with Buddhism and Sivaism, but also the propagation of Islam was spearheaded by Sufism (Tasawwuf).

Indeed, Babad Tanah Jawi attributes the Islamization of Java to the Sufism of Wali Songo (the Nine Saints). And, interestingly, the book begins with a chapter, depicting the kings of Java as both the descendants of Nabi Adam (Islamic attribution to the first man Adam) and the Hindu gods (i.e. Brahma, Visnu, Siva, etc).

The Demak Mosque is the monument of such accommodative pluralism. While the mosque is a place of worship for the Muslims, its architecture features Hindu tradition. The structure of the mosque is sustained by the “eight pillars of Majapahit” and the mosque itself is devoted as the resting place for the coat of arms Surya Majapahit (www.demakkab.go.id) 

The Sultanate of Mataram (1588-1681), as successor of the Sultanates of Pajang and Demak, continued the syncretic policy. While, from time to time, invoking the glory of Majapahit, Sultan Agung of Mataram and his successors were engaged in bitter campaigns against orthodox Muslim rulers who strive for a more religiously pure Islam (R. Jay in B. Effendy, 2005).

During the decolonization period, Sukarno promoted the value of accommodative pluralism by promulgating Pancasila as the philosophical foundation of the nation. Following the failure of the Jakarta Charter, which attempted to inject sharia into our state ideology, the value of pluralism was finally vested in the 1945 Constitution.

 The beauty of this story is that, after 600 years of its inception, Bhineka Tunggal Ika (unity in diversity), which was originally a Siva-Buddhist syncretism, was finally adopted as a peremptory norm of modern Indonesia — a nation state with the largest Muslim population. 

As Indonesia respected the power of pluralism, decolonization of Nederlands Oost Indië gave birth to a Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia. India failed to respect such power, and decolonization of the British Raj-led India to the path of bloody religious partition (with a note, though, that India has developed into a secular democracy). Bhineka Tunggal Ika should thus become the inspiring source of our soft power diplomacy and a home-grown value worth selling in the Asian market.

 The writer is a researcher at the Policy Planning Agency under the Foreign Ministry, and a lecturer at the Graduate School of Diplomacy, Paramadina University, Jakarta. This is his personal opinion.