Indonesia’s Eucatastrophe
In his essay “On Fairy Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien coined the word “eucatastrophe,” adding the Greek prefix eu meaning “good” to the word “catastrophe” as used in literature, the denouement of a drama.
He defined it as “the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn.’” He said that the eucatastrophe was an essential part of any fairytale.
“It is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur.”
In Tolkien’s stories, eucatastrophes make up some of the most memorable moments. At Helm’s Deep, just at the moment when all hope seems lost, Gandalf arrives with Erkenbrand (or Éomer in the movies) to turn the tide. At the Pelennor Fields, the Rohirrim appear just in time to stop Minas Tirith from falling, and Aragorn makes it just before the Rohirrim are overrun. And, of course, at the climactic battle in front of the Black Gate, the One Ring is destroyed and the Eagles arrive right before the Army of the West is defeated.
The reason I’m writing all this, thus exposing myself as the world’s biggest nerd, is because I feel that Indonesia has experienced its own eucatastrophe in the past few days.
I’ve been bemoaning the direction that this country is going in for the past few years. But, since mid-August, it feels things have gotten exponentially worse. Racial abuse and democratic suppression of Papuans, raging forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the selection of problematic KPK leaders, the rushing through of the KPK law, and the seemingly imminent passing of the RKUHP bill all seemed to all come right on top of each other. Even before all this happened, scholars and experts were saying that Indonesia’s democracy was at its lowest point in 20 years.
On Monday, Sept. 16, I covered a small demonstration rejecting the RKUHP bill in front of the DPR, attended by a crowd of around 100 people, mostly activists. In the morning, ICJR reported that the government and DPR members had apparently agreed to pass the bill during closed meetings at a hotel over the previous weekend. By noon, lawmakers had confirmed this and expressed their determination to pass the bill by Sept. 24.
On the sidelines of the demonstration, I interviewed a researcher from an NGO that had been involved in the deliberations on the bill for years. I asked her, given that everyone seemed to be in agreement on the bill now, how could anyone hope to stop it.
She said that the activists were looking to lobby DPR faction leaders, just in case the party leadership had different views from the members who were actually involved in the deliberation process. They would try to convince the Law and Human Rights Minister, Yasonna Laoly, to hold off on signing as well. I looked at her and I felt like we both understood that what she was saying was little more than a pipe dream. That the bill had virtually been passed already.
Yet, lo and behold, at the moment when all hope seemed lost, a sudden and joyous turn.
On Tuesday, a slightly larger demonstration was held in front of the DPR by supporters of the anti-sexual violence bill (RUU PKS). On Wednesday, there were protests against the new KPK law in front of the KPK building.
Then on Thursday and Friday, much larger protests, spearheaded by hundreds of university students, blocked the road in front of the DPR.
The moment I felt that the tide truly was turning, was when I saw this tweet from Tirto photographer Bhagavad Sambadha. Students from Trisakti, a university that was crucial to the fall of the New Order in 1998, had joined the fight.
“This building is confiscated by the students,” a banner hung in front of the DPR’s gate proclaimed.
The result: on Friday, Jokowi finally caved and asked the DPR to postpone the RKUHP bill.
But, knowing the fickle ways of both the executive and the legislative branches, the protesters did not stop there.
Last Monday, tens of thousands of students took to the streets in cities across the country in the largest student protests since 1998. Coming prepared with a list of seven reasonable and righteous demands, they left their classrooms to *literally* save our democracy.
The next day, they returned, despite being infantilized and condescended to by many.
The result: the DPR agreed with Jokowi’s request to hold off on four bills, including the RKUHP bill.
Still, they did not stop there.
On Wednesday and Thursday, university, as well as high school and vocational school, students came out to the streets again.
The result: on Thursday, Jokowi said that he would consider issuing a Perppu to cancel the KPK law.
I’m old and jaded enough to know that this does not mean that Indonesia is miraculously cured of all its ills; or that democracy is now definitely here to stay. Indeed, the arrests of Dandhy Laksono and Ananda Badudu, not to mention the deaths of protesters in Kendari and Jakarta show how hard the road ahead still is. Jokowi has not actually issued a Perppu yet, and the next DPR, set to be sworn in next Tuesday, could easily decide that it will pass the problem bills after all.
But faced with a rolling back of the hard-won freedoms of the past two decades, the Indonesian people stood up and said: “Not today.”
As Tolkien wrote:
“[Eucatastrophe] does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance.”
This is Arda Marred after all; a fallen and tainted world.
But eucatastrophe does deny the “universal final defeat” and gives “a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”
Thank you, all the students and everyone else who took to the streets to come to our rescue, for giving us a glimpse of Joy.