LETTER FROM JAVA:The growing power of Indonesia's Islamist parties is damaging the nation's tolerant image, writes Pieter Tesch
AGAINST THE spectacular background of the 1,000-year-old Hindu Prambanan temple complex near the historical city of Jogjakarta in central Java, Indonesia, the Hindu heroine Sita submits herself to the purifying holy fire to prove her unblemished virtue to her husband, Prince Rama.
The Hindu Ramayana epic tells the story of the abduction of Sita by the lecherous demon king of Sri Lanka, Ravana, and the struggle to free her by Rama. It has been described as a kind of Asian Romeo and Juliet with a mixture of the Iliad, and became very popular in the ancient Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of Indonesia.
The story depicted on the delicate friezes of the Prambanan temple and in the court dances of Jogjakarta that have been developed over 1,000 years may now fall foul of the new anti-pornography legislation passed by the Indonesian parliament on October 30th.
Even though the old Javanese Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Mataram became a Muslim Sultanate 500 years ago, the Ramayana court dances remained popular and more or less the same, with bare- shouldered female dancers and their subtle gestures symbolising pure love and base lust.
A group of visiting foreign journalists recently enjoyed the spectacular show under a moonlit night heavy with the humidity of the onset of the rainy season - while their hosts, senior diplomats of Indonesia's department of foreign affairs, were pondering how to deal with the new law as well as the impending execution of three men convicted over the 2002 Bali bombings.
Privately they told the journalists that they thought the passing of the anti-porn bill was regrettable. They feared the bill could damage the image of Indonesia as a tolerant, multicultural, mostly Muslim country. The bill could also start turning against the ethos of the Republik Indonesia (RI) in the lead-up to the 2009 presidential and parliamentary elections.
The Indonesian diplomats had taken their journalistic guests on a tour of three of the four provinces, North Sulawesi with its Christian majority in the east, Hindu majority Bali, and Jogjakarta, the spiritual home of Javanese mystical syncretism, combining elements of earlier Buddhism, Hinduism and Sufi Islam.
After years of parliamentary agonising, the Islamist parties managed to push through the anti-porn bill as a belated "Ramadan gift". The two secular parties, Golkar and the Democrats of Indonesia's president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, were divided and offered little resistance, while the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) of former president Megawati Sukarnoputri walked out. Her father, Sukarno, was president of Indonesia from its declaration of independence from the Dutch in 1945, until 1967.
The role of religion in Indonesia had been hotly discussed even before independence, but Sukarno and his allies in the nationalist movement opposed the establishment of an Islamic state.
Instead they founded the new independent republic on the five principles of the Pancasila, guaranteeing equality for all Indonesia's majority and minority cultural traditions under the slogan Bhinneka Tungal Ika, or "Unity in Diversity".
But even during the war of independence against the Dutch, the Islamist militants of Darul Islam took up arms not only against the Dutch but also against the nascent republic.
While the majority of Islamists favoured constitutional means to achieve their aim of turning the independent Indonesia into an Islamic state, the violent minority remained active, eventually regrouping as Jemaah Islamiah - the organisation responsible for the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings.
Because Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX had invited Sukarno to set up the capital of the republic in Jogjakarta during the war of independence, before his return to the colonial capital of modern Jakarta, the Sultanate and city were given special status while the other traditional rulers lost all the privileges they had enjoyed under colonial rule.
However, the traditional rulers still regard the sultans of Jogjakarta as the primus inter pares, and have now declared their support for his son Sultan Hamengkubuwono X and governor of Jogjakarta province to run as the presidential candidate for the Golkar party.
He will have the support of the Golkar governor of Bali, Made Mangku Pastika, who as the island's former police chief led the successful prosecution of the 2002 Bali bombers.
Made has stated that Bali won't apply the new anti-pornography law.
But Sultan Hamengkubuwono X will face a strong challenge for the secular vote from Megawati.
Sukarnoputri, after her loss to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is profiling herself as the ideological heir to her late father.
It is Indonesia's "standing by the Republic" moment.
The struggle for the soul of the Republik Indonesia will be epic and complicated - like the legendary Ramayana itself.