Ben Anderson: iconoclast scholar, larger-than-life, down-to-earth JUlIa sURYakUsUma Penulis, antara lain, State Ibuism (2011) dan Julia’s Jihad (2013)
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ike so many people, I “met” Ben anderson through Imagined Communities, one of the most referenced books in political science. I started using his seminal book when I was doing my msc at the Institute of social studies on the Hague (1986-88). as a child, my conception of “nation”, certainly of Indonesia, was as a given, that it had always been there. It was only much later, that I realized that nations are born of a historical and political process. nationalism is a recent and modern creation, Ben pointed out. Hmm, like romantic love. He also identified the paradox of how nationalism can stir up such strong passions, that people are willing to die for it, but at the same time, it’s actually an idea that was really pretty difficult to define. Far out. I love paradoxes, and as paradoxes go, it was a pretty big one that influenced peoples lives enormously. no wonder Imagined Communities fired up my imagination (no pun intended), in a way none of the works on nationalism by other scholars did. In my decades of work as a sociologist and political scientist, Imagined was definitely one of my “bibles”. The other work that influenced me greatly was of course Ben’s A Preliminary Analysis of the 1 Oct. 1965, Coup in Indonesia, co-written with Ruth mcVey — better known simply as The Cornell Paper. as someone who lived for 32 years under ret. Gen. soeharto’s oppressive regime, the Cornell papers was like the magic key which could unlock and expose the wicked lies which provided the “legitimacy” of the so-called new order. no wonder the government slapped him with persona-non-grate status, dangerous subversive man that he was. I met Ben in person in 1985, when I was doing a tour of the Us in search for a possible place to do a phD or a masters. my first stop was Cornell University. I made an appointment to see Ben, feeling pretty nervous at the prospect of meeting a scholar I so admired. It was approaching summer — Ben appeared in shorts. oh, so this is the great Ben anderson. amicable, friendly, not imposing or intimidating in the least. Besides talking about the possibility of studying at Cornell (which unfortunately I never did), I had with me a copy of a translation of MMM (Majelis Mencari Mufakat) (1954), a collection of fables written by my late father-in-law, prof. priyono, who had been
dean of the Faculty of letters at the University of Indonesia, and later minister of Culture and Education (1957-66) in sukarno’s cabinet. It was Ben who had done the translation of mmm. He said he did so because mmm was a departure from post-independence literature which on the whole, was “solemn and didactic”, and mmm was “one of the rare literary satires that survived”. obviously pak priyono and his mmm helped establish an historical connection between me and Ben. Was that the reason he gave me a copy of his Java in a Time of Revolution (1972)? Whatever the reason, I left Ben’s office walking in the clouds. Besides being a political scientist, Ben was also an historian and polyglot. You only need to google him to know the breadth and depth of his scholarly interest and intellectual curiosity. after the ban on Ben was lifted in the Reform Era, he finally returned to Indonesia in 1999 after a 27 year absence. I would often met him in these trips, and he always greeted me with a big bear hug and his characteristic warmth, like I was an old and dear friend. Goodbye dear friend. You are immortal, in our hearts and minds. Cinere, 20 Jan. 2016
