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Theme: 2. From Oceanic Crossroads: Empires, Networks and Histories
Peter Schoppert
National University of Singapore Press, Singapore
Ivan Aulia Ahsan
Chief editor of NU Online
Dede Oetomo
Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia
David Reeve
University of New South Wales, Australia
Onghokham stands at an oblique angle to other Indonesian historians, with his multiple-minority identity, his role as a public intellectual for over forty years in the Indonesian press, his idiosyncratic hedonistic lifestyle, and above all for the breadth and richness of the topics that he wrote about. He was a favourite of embassies and journalists. Raised in Surabaya, he experienced at close quarters the last years of Dutch colonialism, the Japanese Occupation, the Indonesian Revolution, the fractured years of parliamentary democracy, the pressures of Guided Democracy, the massacres of 1965, and the long stultifying years of President Suharto’s New Order - all of which he thought about and wrote about, even though he was above all a historian of the later Javanese kingdoms under the encroachments of Dutch colonialism.
Onghokham (1933-2007) was fascinated with the richnesses of Javanese culture at the aristocratic level while also in deep sympathy with the villages and the sufferings that drove peasants to rebellion. He drew out the parallels between modern Indonesia and its past history, tracing the links between them. He drew parallels with events across Southeast Asia and Asia more widely. But most important is the richness of his themes: Javanese history, aristocracy and peasant, the ‘jago’ bandit-hero, the changing role of the Chinese in Indonesia, Sukarno’s place in Indonesian history, modern politics, corruption, Indonesian food, the history of sexuality in the archipelago, the thinking of the post-Revolutionary generations, marginal people, and Indonesian painting.
This panel on leading Indonesian public intellectual Onghokham discusses the richness of his social and historical themes, and the ways his life and his writings open up space for newer narratives in modern Indonesia.
Presenter: Ivan Aulia Ahsan – Chief editor of NU Online
Presenter: Dede Oetomo – Universitas Airlangga
Presenter: David Reeve – University of New South Wales