Crisis 22

Behind the Scenes

An Asian Shift - Five Points - The Wayang Kulit

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An Asian Shift

In this section, 4. Puppet Masters, I examine The Year of Living Dangerously (1978), an Australian novel which highlights the way Indonesians use the Wayang puppet theatre to understand politics. I also look at Rushdie’s two novels about politics and paradigms in the Indian subcontinent: Midnight’s Children (1981) and Shame (1983). Much of what Koch and Rushdie deal with in their novels — dictatorship, mass violence, war, inter-cultural tensions — has direct application to the Ukraine Crisis. Yet I also want to highlight aspects of the two novels which at first glance don’t seem to have that much to do with Europe or European conflicts: Asian politics, culture, and paradigms.

This shifts my discussion in two ways — 1. to the practical politics and human geography of the global south, and 2. to the more abstract or artistic paradigms in use there. The reason this shift may be helpful in the present crisis is that it focuses on understanding nations in the global south which are often reluctant (for historical, political, and economic reasons) to back the West against Russia. In order to communicate with the global south, it may be helpful to step, at least to some degree, out of our Western context, and ponder the world in terms of alternative paradigms — the Wayang theatre in the case of Indonesia, and the Sufi conference of birds in the case of the Indian subcontinent. The Wayang is a good place to start, since it integrates a wide range of cultural aspects, including Hindu, Muslim, and indigenous narratives, as well as commentary on local, regional, national, and international politics.

5 Points

Given that my shift from Europe to Asia is unorthodox and also multi-layered, I list below five topics I deal with in Year of Living Dangerously. I then explain in more detail how these might be helpful in dealing with the present crisis in Ukraine.

# 1. The old Cold War vs. the new Cold War

# 2. Collateral damage caused by political and military conflict

# 3. Paradigms used in the global south

# 4. The difficulty of understanding what’s going on in upper echelons of power

# 5. Complex layers of narrative and understanding

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# 1. 1965 Indonesia is a fascinating case of how Cold War tensions operated less on a country than within it. Historically, East Asia is where two of the worst Cold War conflicts played out — in Korea and Vietnam. In both cases, the influence of the superpowers was overt and on the battlefield: China and the U.S. in Korea, and China, Russia and the U.S. in Vietnam. The same dual forces of capitalism and communism bore down on Indonesia, yet these created an internal crisis in 1965.

Leaning to the side of the communists and the Chinese, President Sukarno glamorized this tension somewhat by calling 1965 “The Year of Living Dangerously.” Suharto then swings the pendulum to the right, which is horribly cemented by the massacre of communists and Chinese Indonesians. Koch’s novel allows us to see how superpower conflict worked in the past compared to how it works today. It also shows us how the communist-capitalist tension tore the country apart, and how China and Russia both played a shadowy role. Clearly in the present crisis Russian ambitions mimic those of the previous Soviet State, and China is still a powerful (although less direct) influence. Year’s shadowy world of superpower spies, propaganda, threats, and influence is with us once again.

# 2. Year looks at the big political picture, yet it also looks at the national cultural picture and at the way Indonesian citizens are affected by politics, economics, conflict, and war. We see this most clearly in the fate of Ibu, the woman who Billy tries to help: she is so poor that she sells herself for money, and her living conditions are so bad that her son Udin dies from drinking canal water. Koch creates an intricate network of connections between Billy’s compassion for Ibu, the betjak drivers hard working conditions, and the faraway manipulations of the wealthy and the political elite. The Wayang links them all through subtle imagery and symbolism, yet Koch also uses blunt realism to depict the dilemma of Hamilton’s assistant Kumar, who vows to fight for an egalitarian system even when it’s likely he’ll die for his cause.

# 3. Year illustrates the way Indonesians use the paradigm of the shadow theatre — the Wayang Kulit — to understand politics. My detailed examination of this Indonesian paradigm may seem something of a detour from the Ukraine situation, yet it fits with my point that we need to understand the cultures of countries that don’t see the Ukraine Crisis the way we see it in the West. Koch’s novel is both about how we see politics and about how Indonesians see it differently. By understanding more about the intricacies, the ambiguities, and the different modes of understanding prevalent in the global south, we might enlarge our appreciation of global culture, and we might better advance our own political position regarding Western democracy and sovereignty rights. (In ✊ Fearless Leader of the Global South I also touch on the Indonesia doctrine of Pancasila, which highlights both democracy and sovereignty rights).

The paradigm of the Wayang shadow theatre requires a complex understanding of ambiguous and enigmatic scenarios. Some of this complexity derives from the use of a linen screen, which allows the Wayang viewer to see from the point of view of the audience or from the point of view of the puppet-master.

Some of the complexity also derives from the plots and messages of the Hindu epics Mahabharata and Ramayana, which are combined with Muslim and indigenous narratives as well as with contemporary social and political commentary. My larger point here is that looking at this type of complexity and ambiguity helps us to think in complex and at times foreign terms, which is necessary in the Ukraine Crisis because it contains A. a bewildering number of aspects and levels, strategies and narratives, and B. foreign perspectives from Ukraine, Russia, Europe, the U.S., India, China, Iran, North Korea, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, etc.

# 4. Year explores the difficulty foreigners have in penetrating behind the scenes — or behind the linen screen of the Wayang — to see the complex, opaque manoeuvres of the Indonesian elite. At times, their machinations seem as difficult to see as those of the Kremlin and Pentagon. Koch gives us multiple points of view in this regard: his protagonist Hamilton sees the least, while his cameraman Billy sees a great deal more. His assistant Kumar sees even more, although his political involvement is a puzzle to the narrator, who understands yet disagrees with his decision to follow a revolutionary communist path.

Koch leaves the question of right and wrong up in the air. Should Sukarno direct his nation toward a radical form of communist equality or should he direct it toward the democratic and capitalist West? Instead of answering the question, Koch refers his reader back to the Wayang vision of blurred morality, to the predicament of the refined Wayang hero Arjuna (who in the Bhagavad-Gita must wage war on his own cousins), and to a quote from Bhagavad-Gita 3.38:

The West asks for clear conclusions, final judgments. A philosophy must be correct or incorrect, a man good or bad. But in the wayang no such final conclusions are ever drawn. The struggle of the Right and the Left never ends, because neither side is wholly good or bad. The kasar [coarse] can have noble qualities; the alus [refined], mean ones. So it was with you, Bung Karno [Sukarno]. Unlike Arjuna, you failed to heed the advice of Krishna — that advice which Billy was so insistent about. All is clouded by desire: as fire by smoke, as a mirror by dust … Through these it blinds the soul.

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Arjuna needs the advice of the god Krishna to understand why he must enter into battle when this means killing his own cousins. (I imagine many Russians and Ukrainians are secretly asking themselves much the same question…). Billy initially identifies Arjuna with both Hamilton and Sukarno, although Billy’s high expectations are disappointed in both cases. Ironically, although Billy presents himself as an expert in the Wayang, he fails to understand that Sukarno and Hamilton are neither completely refined in their virtue nor completely coarse in their vice. They’re a mix of the two, like everyone, even Russians and Ukrainians …

# 5. Year also presents us with the complex, multi-layered paradigm that begins with the simple fact that we can watch the drama from either side of the screen. One side gives us a close view of human suffering, which leads us to compassion and to a better understanding of # 2. the collateral damage caused by political and military conflict. The other side gives us a more distanced view, in which horror and catastrophe can be dealt with in a tragic cathartic way, yet also in an optimistic way that contextualizes them within the realms of mythology, religion, philosophy, astronomy, and mysticism. Point # 5 connects to point # 3 above, since it’s this complex, foreign paradigm allows us to see multiple layers of reality and narrative, and to look for the way these layers might be linked into a larger fabric or narrative reality. This type of understanding can make us see into complex issues like the Ukraine Crisis yet also beyond these issues, extending the narrative into the regions of myth and astronomy, giving us a sort of philosophic escape from the relentless anger, conflict, and violence.

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The Wayang Kulit

Because many readers won’t have read the novel (although they may have seen the excellent Peter Weir film), I’ll spend much of this page and the following page (⚔️ The Dangerous Years) explaining how the novel works. In explaining its complex and intricate structure, I’ll increasingly suggest how this understanding might be useful in the present crisis.

Much of Koch’s novel is about trying to see behind the scenes, that is, about trying to find out what’s happening in the dim corridors of Indonesian power, where political players are moving among shadows and saying things we can barely make out. It’s therefore quite appropriate that Koch makes great use of the Indonesian shadow-puppet theatre, the Wayang Kulit, in which the puppet-master, the dalang, literally sits behind the screen, on the other side from the audience. From that other, more mysterious side, the dalang uses a lamp to throw images of light and dark, heroes and villains onto the translucent screen. The audience can then watch the drama as if it took place in a magical floating world, with its darting shadows and its gamelan music and its song and commentary orchestrated by the dalang.

The main plot-line in Koch’s novel concerns an Australian journalist’s attempts to see behind this Wayang screen both literally and metaphorically, in order to find out how the politicians (mainly Sukarno, Suharto, & the communist leader Aidit) are tilting Indonesia toward communism (the Russians and Chinese) or toward capitalism (Australia, the U.K., the U.S., and the West).

Indonesian society and politicians use the Wayang theatre as a way of discussing current events and politics. In the first chapter one journalist notes that to the villagers, Sukarno is “Vishnu, coming down from heaven in his magic car.” Sukarno cultivates this godlike Wayang persona, and in Chpater 5 we see that Sukarno (or ‘Bung Karno’) literally and metaphorically plays the role of the dalang:

this February, certain highly placed officials and Cabinet Ministers take the precaution of sleeping away from their homes at night, as they fall from grace in the nightmare game devised by Bung Karno. There have been many imprisonments, and some enigmatic deaths among those whose thinking is out of line with the new orthodoxy charted by the PKI [the Communist party, which Sukarno is favouring]. All Ministers are summoned to week-end Cabinet meetings in the palace up at Bogor, where Sukarno makes them watch the wayang: the classical shadow-show, which he loves. But the classics are re-written to the President's orders, and in one of the darting silhouettes a Minister may suddenly recognise himself — his corruptions and deviations ruthlessly caricatured. Then he ceases to laugh and grows inwardly sick, for his fall has been signalled.

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Next: ☯️ Unified Sensibilities

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