How are you Bangka-Belitung?

By: Tunggul Tauladan

It all began when I wanted to write about a kingdom in Bangka-Belitung (Babel) Islands. Frankly speaking, I don`t have any clue if there was ever any kingdom in Babel. I just believe that there was.

First of all, I`m going to tell you a short profile of Babel. These areas had never been merged until 2001, when they became a province called Bangka-Belitung. I have come in and out of many libraries looking for any source about the area. My hope was that there would be at least an evidence or data saying that there had been a kingdom or two in one of the islands.

For hours I jumped from one book to another in various libraries around Jogja. Of those hundreds of literatures, there was none that could quench my curiosity. There were only some sentences that alluded to Belitung. But they were not written using historic perspective, they were about tin mining.

Still I hadn`t got any information to start writing about a kingdom in Babel. Literary research had given me a zero result. I then moved my research into virtual world, i.e. the internet.

It was not bad though. From certain pages, I found some data, yet there was still a problem because they contained only modern history of Babel. None of the sources told me about an existence of any kingdom in the area.

Finding that data was very difficult to get, I drew a presupposition: there was not any kingdom ever set up in the lands of either Bangka or Belitung. The administrations that once controlled the islands were only vessels of bigger authorities that might count Babel as one of their colonies. You can mention Palembang and Majapahit Kingdom, for example, that stated that the two Islands were dependencies of theirs.

As to stories about the conquering and who was conquered, I have never found anything. The only clue was about local rulers that governed Bangka and Belitung as vessels of a certain kingdom that had conquered the areas.

In my opinion, this is an irony. Bangka and Belitung have been known to be the biggest tin producers in the archipelago since the 17th centuries. The English, French, and Dutch were all competing in exploiting the two wealthy islands. It was ironic that the resources of the rich Bangka and Belitung are almost gone now. Land surface and ecosystem have been damaged but there is not enough willingness to restructure the environment and society, even in post-colonial era. What is worse is that since colonial time, the rulers in control of Bangka and Belitung have never paid enough heed to tradition of writing history about these prosperous islands.

Bangka and Belitung are reflections of how authority neglects writing tradition (read: knowledge). Economic consideration comes first. Other aspects are not really important. Consequently the present generation are ignorant of the history of their own homeland, and they are just of today. Think about the next 100 years, would there still remain any historic records of the Islands?

The regional government actually has great potentials to unravel the history of Babel. With its autonomy, the regional government should play important roles in developing its territory. However, we cannot deny the fact that the people might think writing about their own homeland is not interesting, especially when compared to the government`s ambition in developing other sectors such as tourism and development of equipment and infrastructure.

But is really such situation going to be our culture? I remember a conversation between Farhan and Djaduk Ferianto in the TV show “Tatap Muka” on Sunday 22 November 2009. Djaduk, more or less, said that one of the functions of art is to build society. Event organizers around us are only concerned about the products of art, forgetting their duty in building art society. Djaduk asserted that art products could bloom perpetually, yet give a negative effect on the people if they don`t understand art. People (society) laugh when Butet Kertaredjasa performing his monologue, or are astonished with Djaduk`s music. But then it is all about being entertained because people are not aware of the essence of the artists` arts. They don`t realize that they actually laugh at themselves.

Let us back to Bangka and Belitung. The government is now working hard for the development of the area, especially on the equipments and infrastructure. This is good, indeed, but they forget to build the society. The people may be the ones who benefit from the government`s programs, but then they may also forget about who they really are.

Such condition may bring our memory to Emperor Matsuhito`s sentences in the movie “The Last Samurai”. He says, “I have a dream about Japan becoming a strong country in the future. We now have railways, ships, guns, and Western suits. But at the same time, we don`t remember anymore about who we really are and where we come from.”

Is Babel going to be like the Japan the Emperor worries about, pursuing modernity yet at the same time leaving their identity behind? Are we going to keep on forgetting tradition of writing the history of Babel or is there already somebody willing to take the job? The safest answer may be “time will tell”.

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Tunggul Tauladan, Researcher in the Center for Malay Culture Studies and Development (BKPBM)

Translation by Reza Daffi (terj/03/04-10)

Source of Photo: http://mediasholeha.wordpress.com

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