Working Towards a Neohumanist History of Timor Leste’s Resistance to Indonesian Occupation
Setting the Scene
The government of Timor Leste has established a task force of scholars and researchers to put together a detailed history of the Timorese Resistance to the Indonesian occupation that lasted from 1974–1999. The Steering Committee 25 (CO25) have decided to take a Neohumanist historiographical approach to this as they feel a history of this tragic period is a very difficult and contested area — a political hot potato — and from their research they could see that neohumanism was unaligned ideologically and intellectually with any of the stakeholders. They also recognised that its approach to history was benevolent and inclusive. So they invited me to come to Dili and introduce the topic of Neohumanist historiography to scholars, researchers and the general public at a two day conference.
The following reflection is a distillation of my thoughts to date: they are only formative at this stage.
Dynamic Love
Neohumanism is a philosophy of dynamic love. It proposes the cultivation of a benevolent intellect and argues strongly that the rational mind is incomplete without a rational heart and a spiritual compass. Now this may sound paradoxical but in practice cognition is always tied to our emotions, and our emotions are shaped by our endocrine system. All those crazy hormones that are linked via the amygdala to environmental triggers such as trauma. This is an important insight for historians who work with highly charged memories such as those lying just beneath the surface in Timor Leste. No one seems untouched by the terror of the Indonesian occupation, the 25 year struggle for independence that claimed the lives of at least 200,000 people. The occupation ended in 1999 with the fall of the Suharto regime in Indonesia.
Tackling this difficult period from a neohumanist perspective operationalises a specific approach to analysis of the struggle, the suffering of the people, the nature of the resistance fighters themselves, the role of clandestine youth groups, the policy of the Indonesian government of genocide and the resilience of all involved in the resistance to a vastly more powerful enemy. Let me make two points. Firstly, it needs to be recognised that Indonesian aggression was not only focused on the people but also on the land itself. Large tracks of agriculture and forest were destroyed as part of the struggle to wipe out the opposition and grass root support. Second, that as the violence increased so did resistance but it changed from direct military conflict as the Indonesians vastly out numbered what was left of the guerrilla movement Fretlin and its allies. Some statistics suggest that for every three East Timorese there was an Indonesian soldier (I am yet to verify that).
This image, from my presentation firstly offers an overview of a Neohumanist approach to history which I have aligned with the East Timorese context:
Beyond Facts
I am still thinking this through of course, but Neohumanism is not simply focused on ‘facts’ it offers a flexible narrative that seeks to bring meaning to even the most painful past. History therefore has a function not well understood: It increases our love. In the context of the enormous death toll — possibly up to one third of the population — it is easy to focus on the heroic death of the warriors in the resistance, but the faceless men, women and children of both town and village also died, and they died as part of a silent resistance to injustice and violence.
In Neohumanist terms these people are the shudras, the folk who support society by producing the food and other necessities needed to keep everything moving. They are always the ones to pay the price for struggles within the warrior class. Resistance can be reframed as resistance to enforced limits such as occupation. A history such as the one being worked on by the CO25 has the opportunity to address this issue, to make sense of resistance beyond the confines of what Jörn Rüsen would describe as exemplary history: the history of great and inspiring leaders.
Social Cycle
Now I mentioned the ‘warrior class’ and that was intentional. Neohumanism proposes a social cycle based on specific psychologies — the worldviews held by people in society that at different times come to define reason and set the rules for solving problems and generating meaning. The shudras mentioned above are the first group in this cycle, and they are followed by the warriors. Intellectuals are next in all this and then finally comes the merchants. This cycle is based on the Indian concept of varnas and was clearly developed by Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar who also proposed a universalist philosophy that he came to call Neohumanism. In simplistic terms shudras build and grow, warriors defend and fight injustice, intellectuals measure, assess and explain whilst merchants value, network and distribute.
Applying the social cycle to the expectations of the consumers of a history of the resistance will mean that we need to take into account all four categories both as actors in the history but also as consumers of the history.
Struggle for Liberation
Neohumanism offers a teleology or story where the end is known, but not the kind that this project could easily fall into if we are not careful. The danger is that this history could be written with the end in mind — that the ‘good guys’ were destined to win, that hero’s sacrifice was worth it and this history would sit alongside the numerous statues around the country. This is not the kind of history we want, as it would be like the triumphalist histories of progress produced in the 20th Century.
The teleological element in Neohumanism takes a different approach. It offers an interpretive open ended narrative of struggle to overcome limits. This struggle morphs over time but is what has driven individuals and cultures to do the most vile and also the most uplifting things.
From a Neohumanist cosmology the terminus is liberation both individually and also collectively — this is the evolutionary thrust at the heart of a Neohumanist historiography. It is played out differentially all the time all over the planet and it does not often end well. The East Timorese have overcome some serious obstacles, but many more still constrain them. Read teleologically, it is a heroic story of overcoming obstacles. Yet is is of necessity an unfinished story.
This project can help in identifying obstacles in the current period and perhaps even in addressing them. For instance, the leaders of the country are mesmerised by the trauma of decades of fighting in the jungles. The jungle acts as a metaphorical cage for their imaginations. This is what trauma does. It makes us prisoners of memories and patterns of problem solving. It acts as a creativity cap. Perhaps, this history can release many from the jungle of the past? Perhaps this is what those who died would want to see: a society emerging that is more just and equitable; a place where happiness is more important than affluence and where collaboration and inclusivity replace the metaphors of fight and resistance? Perhaps?
Ever the Optimist
This optimistic vision is with the young who are creatively painting the streets and agitating for change. They are the new ‘planet warriors’ — where Timor Leste is a metaphor for planet Earth. But this new cohort are working not in the jungle but in the world of media, growing inequity and late capitalism. It was the young who set up clandestine groups to resist the Portuguese and later the Indonesians. Perhaps it will be the young who take over, pulling the guns from the hands of an enfeebled warrior class and, as we see in this image of a young woman with a gun, shooting new imaginative and Neohumanistic possibilities into the future.
See I am always the constructive optimist — every form of resistance requires consistent work and a resilient and benevolent vision!
As this new memorial project points out, to invest in memory is to invest in the future.
