"Semar went on, 'Many wrongly use the term ‘nationalism’ as a synonym for ‘nation’. Nationalism refers to a set of beliefs about the nation. Any particular nation will contain differing views about its character; thus, for any nation, there will be different and competing beliefs about it that often manifest themselves as political differences. Some may view their nation as standing for individual liberty, while others may be willing to sacrifice that liberty for security. Some may welcome immigrants, and support policies that make it easy for them to become citizens; while others may be hostile to immigration. To take another example, consider disputes today in India. Some members of that nation have a narrow, intolerant view of their country by insisting that it should have only one religion, Hinduism; while others think that there should be freedom of religion such that Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians are rightly members of the nation.Distinctive of nationalism is the belief that the nation is the only goal worthy of pursuit–an assertion that often leads to the belief that the nation demands unquestioned and uncompromising loyalty. When such a belief about the nation becomes predominant, it can threaten individual liberty. Moreover, nationalism often asserts that other nations are implacable enemies to one’s own nation; it injects hatred of what is perceived to be foreign, whether another nation, an immigrant, or a person who may practise another religion or speak a different language. Of course, one need not view one’s own nation and its relation to other nations in such a manner. In contrast to nationalism, the nation is a particular kind of society.If there is one point on which there is agreement, it is that the term ‘nationalism’ is quite modern. Its earliest recorded use in anything like a recognizably social and political sense goes back to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder and the French counter-revolutionary cleric, the Abbé Augustin de Barruel at the end of the eighteenth century. It was rarely used in the early nineteenth century; in English, its first use, in 1836, appears to be theological, the doctrine that certain nations are divinely elected. Thereafter, it tended to be equated with national egotism, but usually other terms, such as ‘nationality’ and ‘nationalness’, with the meanings of national fervour or national individuality, were preferred.It was really only during the last century that the term nationalism acquired the range of meanings that we associate with it today. Of these usages, the most important are: (1) a process of formation, or growth, of nations; (2) a sentiment or consciousness of belonging to the nation; (3) a language and symbolism of the nation; (4) a social and political movement on behalf of the nation; (5) a doctrine and/or ideology of the nation, both general and particular.No single political doctrine has played a more prominent role in shaping the face of the modern world than nationalism. Millions of people around the world, have willingly laid down their lives for their ‘fatherlands’ and this almost ritualistic mass self-sacrifice continues unabated. Obviously, not everybody displays extremism on the level of Salutati. But as Elshtain remarks, that sort of extremism has been ‘the norm in many of the great and horrible events of our century’Despite this pervasive influence, however, nationalism was not taken seriously by the social scientists until relatively recently. For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, it was seen as a passing phase, by liberals and Marxists alike, hence as ‘intellectually unproblematic.' It was only in the 1920s and 1930s, with the pioneering works of historians like Carleton Hayes, Hans Kohn, Louis Snyder and E. H. Carr, that nationalism became a subject of sustained academic inquiry. Unlike their predecessors who were mainly interested in ethical issues, these historians took nationalism as a ‘discrete subject of investigation’ and made use of sociological factors in their accounts. The number and diversity of the studies of nationalism increased in the following decades under the impact of the experience of decolonization and the ‘proliferation’ of new states in Asia and Africa. Subscribing to some version of the then ascendant ‘nation-building’ model, most of these studies saw nationalism as a concomitant of the modernization processes. The 1980s, on the other hand, mark a turning point in many respects.With tire publication of John Armstrong’s Nations Before Nationalism (1982), Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983) , Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism (1983) , Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger’s The Invention of Tradition (1983) and Anthony D. Smith’s The Ethnic Origins of Nations (1986), among others, the debate on nationalism completed its ‘adolescence’. In this period, the theories grew more sophisticated and the ‘lines of battle’ became clearer. Nationalism, which had to wait until 1974 to have its first academic journal, finally had a stimulating, even polemical, literature.Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent. Nationalism as a sentiment, or as a movement, can best be defined in terms of this principle. Nationalist sentiment is the feeling of anger aroused by the violationof the principle, or the feeling of satisfaction aroused by its fulfient. A nationalist movement is one actuated by a sentiment of this kind.There is a variety of ways in which the nationalist principle can be violated.The political boundary of a given state can fail to include all the members of the appropriate nation; or it can include them all but alsoinclude some foreigners; or it can fail in both these ways at once, not incorporating all the nationals and yet also including some non nationals. Or again, a nation may live, unmixed with foreigners, in a multiplicity of states, SO that no single state can claim to be the national one.But there is one particular form of the violation of the nationalist principle to which nationalist sentiment is quite particularly sensitive: if the rulers of the political unit belong to a nation other than that of the majority of the ruled, this, for nationalists, constitutes a quite outstandingly intolerable breech of political propriety. This can occur either through the incorporation of the national territory in a larger empire, or by the local domination of an alien group.In brief, nationalism is a theory of political legitimacy, which requires that ethnic boundaries should not cut across political ones, and, in parricular, that ethnic boundaries within a given state—a contingency already formallyexcluded by the principlein its general formulation—should not separate the power-holders from the rest.The nationalist principle can be asserted in an ethical, 'universalistic' spirit. There could be, and on occasion there have been, nationalists-in-the-abstract, unbiassed in favour of any special nationality of their own, and generously preaching the doctrine for all nations alike: let all nations have their own political roofs, and let all of them also refrain from including non-nationals under it. There is no formal contradiction in asserting such non-egoistic nationalism. As a doctrineit can be supported by some good arguments, such as the desirability of preserving cultural diversity, of a pluralistic international political system, and of the diminution of internal strains within states.In fact, however, nationalism has often not been so sweetly reasonable, nor so rationally symmetrical. It may be that, as Immanuel Kant believed, partiality, the tendency to make exceptions on one's own behalf or one's own case, is the central human weakness from which all others flow; and that it infects national sentiment as it does all else, engendering what the Italians under Mussolini called the sacro egoismo of nationalism. It may also be that the political effectiveness of national sentiment would be much impaired if nationalists had as fine a sensibility to the wrongs committed by their nation as they have to those committed against it.The recognition by the individual that he or she is a member of a nation is but one among a number of the parts of the image that one has of oneself. It is but one layer of a multilayered self-consciousness. The layer that represents the recognition of being a part of a territorial kinship may or may not coincide with the recognition that one is a citizen of the political and legal relation of the STATE. Discussion of the state may begin with Max Weber's celebrated definition of it. Weber defined the modern state as a community that successfully claims a monopoly over violence within a geographical area, which required it to have legitimate and legal authority. The concepts of violence, territoriality, and legitimacy are the definitive factors of Weber's modern state.The STATE may be loosely defined as a structure that, through institutions, exercises sovereignty over a territory using laws that relate the individuals within that territory to one another as members of the state.The legal and political relation of the state is analytically distinct from the cultural community of the territorial relation of kinship, the nation. For example, the imperial states of the AustroHungarian Empire and the Soviet Union contained many different nations. Furthermore, nations have existed in the absence of a state, as did Poland during the 19th century and as does Kurdistan today.The necessity for distinguishing nation from state does not imply that there does not exist a complex connection between these two forms of social relation. On the one hand, nations have been consolidated through a state’s exercise and extension of sovereignty over time; for example, the expansion of what was becoming the French nation during the 12th through 16th centuries from the Capetian Île de France to encompass today the territory of France from the Atlantic Ocean, on its western border, to the Pyrenees, on the southern border, with the northern and eastern borders fluctuating over the years depending upon the outcome of war, the latter being often an important factor in the formation of both a nation and a state.The nation seeks a state out of the necessity to protect and preserve the lives of its members; that is, so that the nation, through its representatives and institutions, can act to secure its protection and preservation in the world. If the national state fails to fulfil this purpose (through military defeat or other means), then it risks the possibility of breaking up, because the attachments of the members of the nation to that nation may be withdrawn. New loyalties may then emerge, thereby undermining the existence of the nation. Be that as it may, the determination as to whether the nation forms the state or the state forms the nation is beside the point, as, to varying degrees, depending upon the nation in question, both complicated processes are involved.'Semar ended his explanation because Batari Durga had arrived. Batari Durga asked Sahadeva to restore herself, back into the previous beautiful Uma as she was before. However, Sahadeva did not accept it. This refusal made her angry and will prey on Sahadeva.Batara Narada, who witnessed all these events, immediately reported the matter to Batara Guru. They rushed to meet Sahadeva. Batara Guru asked Sahadeva to restore Batari Durga. He assured Sahadeva that he would soon infiltrate Sadewa's body so that Sang Hyang Wenang would help him.Finally, Sahadeva managed to restore Batari Durga so that she returned back to normal, transformed into the beautiful Uma. And as an expression of gratitude, Uma gave the title Sudamala to Sahadeva. In addition, Batari Uma also helped Sahadeva, slew Kalantaka and Kalanjaya.
Seeing all this, Semar and the Panakawan, singing,
Sudikah dirimu membuka hatimu?[Are you willing to open your heart?]Untuk sang perindu[For the Longing]Yang s'lalu ingin kehadiranmu[Who always wants your presence]'Tuk melindungi hati *)[To protect this heart]
Citations & References:Laluna wrapped up the story by saying, "In Javadvipa, there is a division of territory where Wayang Golek is placed in the West, Wayang Wong in the Central, and Wayang Kulit in the East. However, they are still regarded as one world, the Wayang Universe. Likewise, human beings who formed nations to distinguish 'us' from 'them,' will be able to remove the differences, if each of them, realizes that they are part of Humanity. And Allah knows best."
- Steven Grosby, Nationalism - A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press
- Antony D. Smith, Nationalism, Polity
- Umut Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, Macmillan Press
- Drs. H. Solichin, Dr. Suyanto, S.Kar. MA, dan Sumari, S.Sn MM, Ensiklopedi Wayang Indonesia, Mitra Sarana Edukasi
- Ir. Sri Mulyono, Apa dan Siapa Semar, CV Haji Masagung
*) "Kembali" written by Muhammad Devirzha
