The Dynamics of Unity and Diversity in Southeast Asia: Lessons Learned?

The Dynamics of Unity and Diversity in Southeast Asia:

Lessons Learned?

Borders in Southeast Asia by the Early 19th Century

The Mainland and the Island Areas

Bhinekka Tunggal Ika: “Out of Many, One”

• History of the region has been conceptualized by scholars and politicians in linear fashion, moving from many disparate groups into a unity

• Precolonial (including early modern) histories thus perceived as “divided/divisive” (primitive), and colonial and modern periods as “united/unifying (progressive)

• This form of structuring ideas of Southeast Asia has been determined by scholars influenced by the relative wealth of materials from the colonial and modern nation state archives

• Evidence suggests that this heuristic division masks the reality of an oscillation between unity (state-sponsored programs) and diversity (local responses) from the past to the present

“Rescuing History from the Nation-State”

• Prasenjit Duara’s call (1997) to “rescue history from the nation-state” focused on China, arguing that “China” was more than the dynasties, emphasis on regions

• Vietnam often thought of as the oldest and most stable “state” in Southeast Asian history; historians continue to talk of the “thousand years” under the Chinese, followed by the long history of Vietnamese independent regimes

• Increasing studies on the Chams of central and southern Vietnam, and on the uplands in northern Vietnam expose the contested spaces and the presence of “Vietnams”

• Transnational links of Vietnam and littoral societies shown in new research using a sea perspective, undermining state vision of unity, continuity, and history as determined by the land

VIETNAM

Sea Perspective on Vietnam

Li Tana: “The Eighteenth Century Mekong Delta and its World of Water Frontier.” In Nhung Tuyet Tran and Anthony Reid, eds. Viet Nam: Borderless Histories. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

Wheeler, Charles. “Rethinking the Sea in Vietnamese History: Littoral Society in the Integration of Thaun-Quang, Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 37, 1(2006):123-55

Adopting Local Perspectives

• Island Southeast Asia characterized by nation-states that had origins in colonial entities; whereas, mainland Southeast Asia had kingdoms by early twentieth century that had distinct boundaries prior to colonialism

• The land- and seascape of island Southeast Asia and the persistence of many and diverse communities spawned various theories of the nature of the “state”

• Mainland Southeast Asian states tend to follow a linear historical discussion: How did we get to where we are?

• All of Southeast Asia shared ideas of authority flowing from a source of spiritual strength; rulers had most “power/authority” while local leaders had less

Authority/Power in Southeast Asia

• “[Wo]men of Prowess”• Shakti (Hindu): Java, Sumatra• Pon (Buddhist) with local variations: Theravada

Buddhist countries• Barakka or Berkat (Islamic): archipelago• Bertuah (Malay): archipelago• Mana: Polynesian• Both diversity and unity in Southeast Asia

revolve around these “people of prowess”

Mandala Polity

• Mandala (O.W. Wolters): idea of polities under “man of prowess,” whose authority/influence is likened to the beam of an upturned lamp: most intense in the center, gradually weakens toward the periphery; permeable “frontiers”; dynamism of peripheries because of overlap with other mandala polities

• Foreign ideas fragmented into local cultural statements in process called “localization”

• Idea continues into present at both national (unity) and local (diversity) levels in political, religious, business, etc., leaders

Galactic and Solar Polities

• Galactic polity (S. Tambiah) likened to a galaxy with a sun that holds a number of planets within its orbit, with the gravitational pull weaker the farther away from the sun

• Solar polity (V. Lieberman) is a refinement on galactic polity in emphasizing that each planet replicates the sun with its own “moons”, like the solar system

Kingdom of Words• Jane Drakard, using Minangkabau in central Sumatra as model of a

“kingdom of words”• Minangkabau had kings from 14th to 19th centuries, yet had no

armies, no administrative apparatus, only reputation• Ability to influence and hence govern activities of the Minangkabau

people based on cultural acceptance of the ruler as one possessing great spiritual powers; association of first ruler with Tantric bodhisattva Amoghapasa

• Manifestation of power in letters sent to Minangkabau living abroad (rantau) with preamble detailing the sacred genealogy and powers of the ruler

• Power conveyed both orally and in the missive containing the written word with special seals

• Letters carried by special emissaries seen to be bearers of the sacred powers of the rulers to Minangkabau in rantau proved higly effective in organizing trade and community abroad

MINANGKABAU

ADITYAVARMAN(mid-14th century),as Tantric BodhisattvaAmoghapasa

Jakarta Museum

Negara: The Theatre State

• Clifford Geertz uses nineteenth century Bali as model for understanding polities as “theatre”

• Idea of the “exemplary center,” where court and capital represent both the microcosm of the universe and the center of political order

• Competing dadias (agnatic descendants of a common ancestor) threaten unity, hence need for regular ceremonies and rituals by center to maintain unity

• Such ceremonies and rituals affirm king’s role as center of the world, while providing arena for rival dadia to demonstrate their loyalty to ruler, thus alleviating tensions

• Geertz: “These pageants constitute important features of the state; they are the state.”

Sources

• Wolters, O.W. History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Revised Edition, Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1999 [1982].

• Tambiah, Stanley. “The Galactic Polity: The Structure of Traditional Kings in Southeast Asia”. Annals of the New York Academy of Science 293 (15 July 1977), 69-97.

• Victor Lieberman. Strange Parallels, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

• Drakard, Jane. A Kingdom of Words: Language and Power in Sumatra. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 2000.

• Geertz, Clifford. Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Features of “Diversity”

• Various ideas of state reflect differing cultural responses to external influences; they exhibit dynamic absorption of external ideas and reformulated into new local concepts

• A strong motivating factor of localization is the need to harness the unknown force for benefit of community

• In precolonial Southeast Asia the diversity of forms of polity reflects the varied responses of community based on cultural ideas, the environment, and human agency

Continuity in Colonial and Modern Southeast Asian States

• Colonial regimes created the outlines of nations in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Burma; rest followed outlines of nations already established prior to the introduction of colonialism

• Southeast Asian states continue to be plagued by internal dissensions based on religious and/or ethnic differences; hence the need for ongoing measures to maintain these “unities” through various means

• Forms of unifying measures: “invention of tradition” in sense of selecting common experiences to create bond (revolutionary struggle against colonialism); histories, schools, national language, ceremonies

• Yet the ongoing need for such measures demonstrates the persistence of the local factors

Diversities

• Anti-state groups (James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 2010): view that marginal groups deliberately seek escape from state in periphery; perceived by center as “outside the law” or “outside civilization”

• Despite emphasis on a linear evolution into centralized polities, “family” or kinship alliances, is more typical of Southeast Asia with focus on personal following (cacique democracy)

• Anthony Day. “Ties that (Un)Bind: Families and States in Premodern Southeast Asia”, Journal of Asian Studies55, 2 (May 1996), 384-409

Strength of Precolonial Features in the Modern Period

• Dominant religions in Southeast Asian countries (Islam, Theravada Buddhism, Christianity) are all facing challenges from the “new” religions

• In Theravada Buddhism, efforts by the state-sanctioned sangha authority to standardize practices largely ignored; persistence of “saints” ([wo]men of prowess) in daily practice

• In Islam, strength of local Sufi brotherhoods led by individual leaders

Dynamics of Kinship Networks and States in Southeast Asia-1

• History of region is a record of the ongoing movement between powerful and extensive kinship networks forming “states” (unity), and their subsequent loss of power to other contending networks, becoming then the “factions” (diversity)

• Rivalry of kinship networks was the stimulus for localization of external forces (e.g. Indic, Islamic, Sinic, Christian ideas of kingship) to gain advantage through reformulated ideas of power

• Emphasis on family relationships (of blood, marriage, compadrazgo, milk siblings, ancestors, and spirits) and hierarchy

Dynamics of Kinship Networks and States in Southeast Asia-2

• World religions and colonialism have strengthened hierarchy and patriarchal tendencies

• Yet, “on the ground”, proliferation of women mediums, spiritual groups, new religions in continuance of “people of prowess” idea

• Gendered concepts in Southeast Asia based on ideas of world as divided into two basic patterns: male and female; challenged today by modern ideas of sexuality, creating more possibilities

In the Age of the Internet

• Benedict Anderson in his Imagined Communities (1983) never imagined a vitual community

• Internet has dismantled political boundaries by both expanding and contracting their borders

• Result has been greater participation and influence in the political (in broad sense) process: Orang Asli as part of world-wide indigenous communities; Sufi brotherhoods as part of a world-wide ummah or local ethnic community; like-minded individuals battling in the blogosphere against state domination

Lessons Learned?

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