CONFLICT BETWEEN TWO SACRED PLACES Markus Dominggus Lere Dawa

Doctoral Student in Religion and Society at Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga. Fullbright Grantee in 2006-2008. Address: Jl Kalibodri 302, Salatiga 50742, Jawa Tengah.

I Right after Koja riot last Wednesday, one television channel interviewed two persons from different side, who stood closely to the grave of Mbah Priok. This was the place where couple minutes ago had been the bloody battlefield between people and the government police unit. The first person, who confessed as the descent of Mbah Priok, told the channel that this was not the first attempt of removing that ever took place. During the period of New Order, there were several attempts being launched to remove this grave. Even in the time of Dutch colonialism, there was an attempt to remove it. However, all those attempts did not succeed. Then he expressed his concern. He asked Why sacred place such as this, a place that is able to remove catastrophe, has to be removed? Should it not to be preserved and protected? Other person, who is the head of Jakarta Public Order Agency (Satpol PP), told the reporter that this removal must be done for the sake of enlarging the area of Koja Container Station. This enlargement would certainly bring great benefit for the economy, he said. These two statements are quite interesting to be further analyzed for I believe it would reveal to us some explanations on how this bloody clash could happen. In this following analysis I would like to try to investigate the root of this clash on the based on those two statements above and present some suggestion on how to handle the problem and problems like this in the future. I would like to treat it through the lens of social-religious analysis. II It was Emile Durkheim that firstly introduced the issue of sacred and profane in peoples talk about religion and society. He employs the idea of sacred and profane to understand 1

the phenomenon of human religiousness. He takes different route from most people of his day who think that the core of human religiousness must be sought in the idea of supernatural and natural beings. Durkheim denies that idea and argues that the core of human religiousness is in their thought and experience of the sacred and the profane. The sacred is everything being viewed as superior, powerful, holy, forbidden for routine contact and is worthy of highly respect. The profane is the opposite. It is everything that categorized as daily, routine things. (Pals, 2006: 96). On the ground of this concept, Durkheim believes that religion is not belief in spiritual beingspersonal or impersonal as is believed all the time but a system, a unified system of beliefs and practices that connected to the sacred, things that considered holy. These beliefs and practices unify people who believe and practice it into one moral community. (Durkheim, 1995: 44). Upon this concept, religion would always have two most important elements: the sacred and the profane. The sacred might show up in person or non-person, in plants or animals, even in the inanimate things. People would treat the sacred in a special way: guard it, respect it, honor it, and oftentimes defend it unto death! The profane would by no means have that kind of treatment. People treat the sacred that way not just because it has power or magical power but more than that it unifies and symbolizes the community where it belongs. The sacred is the heart of community, who calls them into being. It identifies, gives them a sense of similarity and belongingness. The sacred is the existence of the community itself. The resting place of Mbah Priok, as is heard from his descent interviewed, is holy. It is a sacred place. For this reason one should respect it, protect, and preserve its existence. Seeing from this point of view it is clear that it has religious value. It doesnt just a burial place of someone, however famous this person, more than that it is a sacred place, holy ground. And for the sake of this sacred ground, community who identifies itself to it would yield whatever it takes to defend and preserve its existence. How do we explain the acts done by the Public Order Agency? How do we understand the force that urges them to fight? Is it just an order of their superior? Looking through

the lens of the sacred, what kind of sacredness they represent? Investigating the way market has widely taken control all dimension of peoples life today, David R. Loy argues that market is now changing its face into a kind of religion. In this newcontemporary religion, the Market has become a new god, with economy as its theology. (Loy, 2000: 15). One fundamental religious doctrine of this new religion is profit. Temples, where this god being worshipped and served, are places where profits are being produced and gained. As is usual in other religions, temples are sacred. It has to be cared for, furnished, preserved and protected. It also has to be enlarged as fortune comes and in order to produce a lot more profit. From Loys point of view, container station is a sacred place, too. Although it is not the same kind religion as the one that surrounds the grave of Mbah Priok, it is really a holy ground. Why? Its because there the profit is being made and produced. As is heard from the argument of the head of Public Order Agency, enlarging the area of container station would bring great benefit to the provinceand also to the nation if one considers the importance of the Port of Tanjung Priok as the gate of national and international economic activity. Since it is a sacred place then one has to protect and preserve its existence; and whenever necessary it has to be widened for the sake of bringing a lot more economic salvation to the people. Thus, conflict that weve seen occurred in Koja area would no longer just about removing something. It is definitely a conflict between two sacred places and between two communities that belong to it. The grave of Mbah Priok and the Tanjung Priok Container Station are two holy grounds, two sacred places in the eyes of respective communities. The one is sacred because it is the resting place of a great ancestor, the propagator of religion, who is believed able to confer blessing and remove disaster. The other is sacred because it is where profit is being made and produced, which is believed might bring salvation and emancipation to many people, even to the nation of all. III

When sacred places are tainted what religious people usually do? Durkheim discovers that there are two kinds of sacred forces. The one is force that gives benefit, protector of physical and moral order and the giver of life, health and anything people value most. The other is force that is evil, bringer of chaos, causing sickness and suffering and death, and motivating people to do disgraced things. They contradict each other, even negate and exclude one to another. (Durkheim, 1995: 412). They cannot live side by side. They are to be separated away. Each community believes that their respective sacred place has power to confer goodness and benefit. The representative of each community confirms it. However, what is not revealed in each statement is recognition that each place is able to be useful to one another. One place can bring benefit to other. Thus one cannot avoid of hearing that they exclude each other. Meaning, one is unaccepted as capable to bring goodness and fortunes for the other. Or, further than that, one might view the other as an evil power that has to be negated and removed away. Were this view predominately control ones view of the other then it is not a matter of how this conflict can occur or not but it is just a matter of time. Sooner or later clash would break up. This kind of exclusivism, if its been there, would have to be broken through first had we expected this type of conflict not happened again. Both sides have to learn to affirm each power and benefit, and to highly respect it as well as to recognize that one may confer blessings to another. In addition, in order to heal all hurt and wound caused by this conflict, one of the best solution is to find a compensation that seriously considers the sacred dimension of respective places as is perceived by the its community. Court decision, compensation or erecting a monument in memory of Mbah Priok is all insufficient ways of settling the problem. It is because these solutions cannot guarantee the community of Mbah Priok the sacredness of their ancestor burial place. Those solutions more represent ways of settling problems in the sphere of religion of the market. It is not within the sphere of the religion of Mbah Priok. Thus, the primary problem is not whether this burial complex may or may not be removed but how the power attached to it all the time is not removed as well. Erecting a monument, as the government of DKI Jakarta plans to, in the eyes of this

community seems not a fit compensation for there is no monument that is able to preserve the power closely attached to a grave. Monument is just a memory. It is incomparable to a holy grave, which is more than a memory. A sacred grave has power; power that believed may push away misfortunes, disasters and catastrophes. Furthermore, as Durkheim states that behind religion there is a unified moral community, therefore, an onslaught to a sacred place such as Mbah Priok resting place would be meant as an attack to the community itself. Anger and fiercely resistance that was shown indicates that the grave means more than merely a resting place. The community, who is moving together to fight, clearly shows to us that it is more than a grave being threatened here; it is existence of the community itself. Thats why they have to fight, even unto death. Thus what all we need is a way of removal that is able to guarantee the power attached to the grave and the continuity of the community who respects and takes care of the grave. In the time of crises Durkheim finds community usually assembles and sits down side by side to sharing comfort. Through coming together in that way they find remedy to the malady and unluckiness that come in their way. (Durkheim, 1995: 350). The solution, the remedy would come when in this time of conflict, these two communities do not sit down separately in their own places but go their neighbors and sit down with them side by side. Let the communities, the governments and the mourning families meet and share comfort to one another, talk to each other in the spirit of finding common ways to bring goodness and benefits, which those sacred places believed might confer. Sources: Daniel L. Pals, Eight Theories of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). David R. Loy, Religion of the Market dalam Harold Coward & Daniel C. Maguire, eds. Visions of a New Earth: Religious Perspectives on Population, Consumption, and Ecology (New York: SUNY Press, 2000). Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, A New Translation by Karen E. Fields (New York: The Free Press, 1995).