The 1965–66 Violence in Upland East Java: A Reflexive Reassessment

Abstract: This essay draws on comparative ethnographic and historical research on the 1965–1966 violence in Indonesia to reassess the course and consequences of the violence in upland areas of the Pasuruan and Malang regencies (kabupaten) in the province of East Java. The essay seeks to reframe and update my earlier analysis of the violence in this territory by juxtaposing it to recent paradigm-changing studies carried out by a new generation of scholars examining the 1965-1966 violence and its aftermath. The essay makes five main points. First, it demonstrates that, even within rural settings separated by only a few kilometers, the timing and scale of the anti-communist violence varied significantly. Second, it shows that a key influence on this variation was not merely army ambitions or the relative strength of local Muslim militias, but the nature of the relationship between local Indonesian Nationalist (PNI) and Communist Party (PKI) activists in the years leading up to the killings. Third, the study reveals that, in some rural communities, there was significant ambivalence in NU circles about joining in the anti-communist campaign, because NU preachers worried that participation in the killings might undercut their recently-initiated programs of Islamic appeal (dakwah) in abangan villages. Fourth, the study confirms the demographic findings of Siddharth Chandra and Mark Winward concerning the scale and contemporary significance of the population movement within rural Java set in motion by the killings. Fifth, the essay argues that although a "conservative turn" in Muslim society since the early 2000s has set back efforts to promote reconciliation between Muslim organizations and survivors of 1965–1966 killings, the prospects remain for a modest but still thoughtful public discussion of the violence and its legacies.