Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | Will Jakarta’s Prabowo Play More Active Role in Mideast?

With booming Israeli guns raining death and destruction on the Gaza Strip audible, figuratively speaking, in Java nearly 6,000 miles away, there is every reason for Indonesia to play a more prominent role in bringing West Asia’s crisis to an end.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Qatar’s Emir and Turkey’s President are the main players now, with US President Donald Trump inevitably pulling the strings. They are a reminder that Prabowo Subianto, head of the world’s most populous Muslim country, is missing from the dramatis personae.

The Palestinians obviously feel President Prabowo’s absence since Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, sent a special envoy to him with a letter in the midst of last week’s raging life-and-death struggle. “We have brought a letter concerning the relationship between Indonesia and Palestine, as well as the broader Palestinian issue, particularly the worsening conditions under Israeli aggression”, the envoy, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, declared in Jakarta. “We trust Indonesia and its position on the Palestinian struggle, and we believe that the Indonesian government and its people will continue to support Palestine’s pursuit of freedom and independence.”

The letter coincided with a new law in Jakarta extending the military’s participation in civilian governance and thereby strengthening the authority of President Prabowo, who was the chief guest at the recent Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi, which also marked 75 years of India-Indonesia diplomatic relations. His former father-in-law, Suharto, ruled Indonesia for 31 years. Although he and Suharto’s daughter Titiek separated shortly after Suharto’s presidency ended in 1998, Prabowo always saw himself as a potential successor and remained a strong supporter of Suharto’s regime.

Defying geopolitical practice, Indonesia, the world’s third most populous democracy and eighth largest economy in terms of PPP, has punched under its weight since the mid-1960s when the Americans were suspected of engineering the bloody coup that ended the 21-year reign of Jawaharlal Nehru’s old comrade-in-arms, the charismatic Sukarno. The chief guest at India’s very first Republic Day in 1950, Sukarno famously claimed at the United Nations that his country was the modern successor of the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit empire of more than 17,000 islands based in eastern Java from 1293 to around 1527. The ebullient Sukarno, who offered submarines to defend Karachi and planes to bolster Pakistan’s air defence against India in 1965, was a founding member of the United Nations, Asean, NAM, OIC and numerous other international bodies.

Not that Suharto did too badly. He initiated the Istiklal Mosque in Sarajevo, which he visited in 1995, to replace the hundreds of mosques destroyed during the Christian Bosnian rebellion and local Muslims still sometimes call it the Suharto Mosque. But although respected as the strongman of Southeast Asia, Suharto was focused on his own country and its growth. Despite bomb outrages by Arab fanatics, Indonesia has never been a fundamentalist society.

Among other Indonesian leaders, the seventh President, Joko Widodo, popularly called “Jokowi”, was India’s Republic Day guest in 2018 while the sixth President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, came in 2011. Positioned next to Merdeka (Freedom) Square, the Catholic Jakarta Cathedral and the Immanuel Church (Dutch Reformed), the Istiqlal Mosque reflects a Sufi heritage that keeps jihadism at bay. Even President Prabowo admits to not being very familiar with the Holy Quran.

No one knows whether he will follow a solitary course in governing or join Megawati Sukarnoputri, the grand dame of Indonesian politics and leader of Indonesia’s largest party, the PDIP. Sukarno’s daughter was President of Indonesia from 2001 to 2004, the first female in that position. Her other claims to distinction include being the first leader born after the country’s independence to become President, and the child of a Hindu mother who converted to Islam to marry Sukarno. It is also worth remembering that Mr Prabowo has sought the presidency since 2004, displaying patience and skill in chasing power. He has repeatedly promised to continue his predecessor’s development and infrastructure-oriented policies, portraying himself as heir to a long line of nation-building Presidents.

India’s involvement goes back to Indonesia’s war of independence in 1945 which was a catalyst for the 1947 Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi, the first Asian essay in global diplomacy. Not only did India staunchly support Indonesia and help it to establish relations with the Palestinian delegation, but Jawaharlal Nehru’s interim government placed restrictions on Dutch shipping and

airlines, affecting the movement of military supplies from the Netherlands. As Nehru’s colleague, Syed Ali Zaheer, reported after acting as the unofficial tour guide of King Abdallah of Jordan: “I stressed particularly the Indonesian question, and said that although Indonesia was a predominantly Muslim country, still we were doing our best to help it attain its freedom and that I was glad to say that we appeared to have very largely succeeded in our efforts.”

Renewed Dutch aggression prompted Pandit Nehru to organise another conference in 1949 in the teeth of American opposition. When the Dutch tried to reconquer Indonesia, Nehru sent the strapping young Bijayananda (Biju) Patnaik, who had helped to evacuate British families from Rangoon and whom he called “India’s Buccaneer”, to bring Indonesia’s leaders to Delhi. Piloting his single-engine Dakota to Java, Patnaik snatched Vice President Mohammad Hatta and Prime Minister Sutan Shariar from under the nose of the Dutch army and smuggled them to Singapore, disguised as crew members. Sukarno made him a “Bhumiputra”, son of the soil, Indonesia’s highest honour, and asked him to choose a name for his newborn daughter. Patnaik called her Megawati, Goddess of the Clouds. In turn Megawati named her own daughter Orissaputri, the Daughter of Orissa (as it was spelt then). Suharto honoured Patnaik in 1995 with the Chin Tunga Yashottam title.

Patnaik recalled these linkages many years later as we bowled along Odisha’s Bay of Bengal coast in his jeep. Driving from the pilot’s cockpit seat he had installed behind the wheel, Patnaik described the full moon festival when women set afloat oil lamps in hollowed-out plantain trunks symbolising boats, singing to their menfolk as the twinkling lights fanned out across the waters of the Bay of Bengal to bring back golden ornaments from Suvarnadwipa.

In his closing address to the Asian Relations Conference, Sutan Shariar welcomed Asia’s rise “not in any spirit of hostility or as a threat to those in other lands, but purely in order to provide Asians the opportunity to plan and execute orderly and coordinated development along humanistic and international lines”.

Indonesia’s active involvement might enable that hope to be realised in ravaged Gaza and the West Bank.