In June 1978, a forty-five year old Indonesian named Sawito
Kartowibowo was pronounced guilty of subversion. He was charged
with having composed a number of inflammatory documents criticizing
the government's failings and requesting that Suharto stand down as
President. These documents would have been quite insignificant if
those who had endorsed them had not been so well known. Their
signatories included former Vice-President Mohammad Hatta and four
very prominent and well-respected religious leaders: the head of
the Catholic Church in Indonesia, Cardinal Darmoyuwono; the Moslem
publicist and writer, Hamka H. Abdulmalik Karim Amrullah]; leading
mystic and founder of the Indonesian Police, Said Sukanto
Tjokrodiatmojo; and retired General T. B. Simatupang, a Protestant
leader and former Armed Forces Chief of Staff. As it was, the
controversy over the documents became a national issue. The Sawito
affair is one of the enigmas of recent Indonesian history. Puzzles
abounded from the afternoon in September 1976 when the government
dramatically announced the discovery of a "plot to topple the
President," and a number of subsequent arrests. Had a coup been
planned? Who was behind it? And who on earth was Sawito, the man
the government declared had tricked Hatta and his fellow
signatories into the "dark conspiracy"? Much of the public interest
in Sawito, in the months following the announcement, derived from
the publicization of a diary written by a former Indonesian
diplomat describing a series of spiritual pilgrimages undertaken by
Sawito in the early 1970s. According to the diary, Sawito had
meditated on a sacred Javanese mountain-top and there received
supernatural signs that he was destined to rule Indonesia.
Subsequently, in a solemn and archaic ritual involving symbols of
the fifteenth century Majapahit Kingdom, Sawito had been invested
as Ratu Adil, the messianic Just King. The press, and later the
courts, drew the conclusion that Sawito, convinced of his regal
destiny, had then embarked on a mission to replace Suharto as
President. In order to achieve this, so the story went, he had
drafted a number of subversive documents and, with guile and
deceit, obtained the signatures of several gullible dignitaries.
One newspaper ran a cartoon of a demented-looking Sawito, praying
before a row of Javanese daggers (keris) and a fuming incense pot,
dreaming of the presidential throne. The tiny figure running
towards him and brandishing a piece of paper calls to Sawito: "It's
not the age for that sort of thing any more, mas " The general
impression was thus created that the affair was essentially a
product of Sawito's mystically inspired claim to power. This became
the accepted perception of the Sawito affair, both for a large
majority of Indonesians and in a number of Western academic
treatments of the subject. A classic historical pattern of
political challenge seemed to be repeating itself, and parallels
were drawn between the "Sawito challenge" and messianic Ratu Adil
movements of Java's past. Analysts also invoked Javanese cultural
tradition in an attempt to come to terms with the government's
remarkably severe response to the affair. Some sought to explain
the danger Sawito posed to Suharto by referring to traditional
conceptions of the linkage between earthly and supernatural
authority still exercising an influence in Indonesian society. As
some readers will be unfamiliar with the cultural-historical frame
of reference alluded to here and elsewhere in this study, it is
necessary briefly to identify a few key elements of the Javanese
cosmology.
General
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