Cultural Transfer in Early Historical Maritime Asia

A number of recent articles have rekindled the debate on agency in the production of Southeast Asia's Indic religious monuments by suggesting, on the basis of specific readings of architecture, that an initial period of Indian involvement must have occurred. Roy E. Jordaan (2006) argues for a dichotomous periodization: that a “foreign, Indian” Central Javanese Mahāyāna Buddhist period preceded a more indigenous East Javanese period. To bolster this claim that Indian agency and tutelage was necessary in eighth-century south Central Java, Jordaan quotes the opinions of Willem F. Stutterheim (1925) and Horace G. Quaritch Wales (1961) that Central and East Javanese art represents, respectively, “Hindu art in Java” and “Hindu-Javanese art”.

Michel Jacq-Hergoualc'h (2002, p. 229) has meanwhile opined that the temples of Kedah were the work of “foreign merchants” who were allowed to build there—a surmise based on an overview of extant masonry remains. Like Jordaan, Jacq-Hergoualc'h's claim rests on a reading of masonry remains that has excluded their larger physical setting and the epigraphic evidence connected with their construction or sociocultural milieu.

This chapter re-evaluates the architectural and art historical evidence from early extant monuments in Central Java, Sumatra and Kedah and their architectural innovation and literary references with a focus on highlighting two aspects. First, architectural or iconographic innovations in the early Indic monuments whose significance can be connected to original syntheses expressed in epigraphic or literary sources have been overlooked in the above claims. Second, the syntheses between Indic and Austronesian form typology occurred not only in masonry structures but in aspects of built form that extend well beyond these and involved not just architectural form but conceptual and literary integration and innovation. In some cases, the sources make it clear that literate Western Malayo-Polynesian (WMP) cultures were consciously refashioning Indic ideas, sometimes through their synthesis with autochthonous conceptions; where concepts of Indian origin were expressed in architectural or iconographic schema these translations into form often had no precedence in India and even occurred earlier than the śāstric canonization of the Indic ideas concerned.

The U.S.–Japan–Australia Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) was the first formal trilateral security mechanism in the Asia-Pacific, and one of the earliest and most important nodes of what former U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter calls the “principled security network” that the United States and its partners have been constructing in the region. Since it was established in 2002 the TSD has become institutionalized at the ministerial level and has met twice at the leaders’ level, becoming the most developed and substantial trilateral involving the United States in the Asia-Pacific. Augmented in 2007 by a Security and Defense Cooperation Forum involving defence as well as foreign ministry officials, the TSD has developed into a useful mechanism for coordinating policy positions on regional issues such as North Korea and the South China Sea, and for driving deeper strategic cooperation between the three countries in areas including defence, security, intelligence, development assistance, capacity building, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR). It has also helped to foster stronger defence and security ties between Japan and Australia — the weakest leg of the strategic triangle.

The strategic logic of trilateral U.S.–Japan–Australia defence and security cooperation remains compelling. Threats to the United States and its allies in the Asia-Pacific are intensifying — whether from North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, China's assertiveness in the Western Pacific (increasingly backed by sophisticated area denial weapons), or the resurgence of Islamist terrorist networks in Southeast Asia. These threats will increasingly stretch the constrained resources of the United States and its allies. The only cost-effective way to remedy the ensuing capability gaps in key areas such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), undersea warfare, missile defence, and amphibious lift is to develop greater interoperability and, ultimately, integration among U.S. and allied military forces. Japan and Australia are two of the United States’ most capable and dependable allies in the region, as well as longstanding economic and diplomatic partners, who over the past decade have been steadily building their own substantial bilateral strategic relationship. Moreover, their respective strategic geographies complement each other and the United States’ maritime strategy in the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific region. Current trilateral defence cooperation focuses heavily on combined exercises, with the three countries steadily increasing the frequency, scale, and sophistication of their three-way exercise programme.

Growing strategic uncertainty has defined much of the Southeast Asian context for the last decade. Much of this has been due to changing great power dynamics created, on the one hand, by the growing capacities and confidence of China as a rising power in Asia, and, on the other, the intensified anxieties of the United States and Japan as the region's status quo powers. Developments of 2016 were unlikely to change that basic structural condition, but it did prove to be a year of some notable developments nonetheless. Among the most anticipated was the 12 July ruling on the South China Sea by an Arbitral Tribunal housed at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which unanimously ruled in favour of the Philippines on almost all the fifteen points brought to the court. In a different region such a development might be more decisive, but this is Southeast Asia, where uncertainty remains a defining feature of the strategic environment, where mixed incentives associated with large states produce forces of both repulsion and attraction, and where hedging and the pursuit of autonomy remain the hallmarks of security strategies. Moreover, domestic developments in 2016 may prove to be as, if not more, defining in their implications for regional security and strategic trends.

In the face of heightened flux, three related dangers and imperatives that have long defined the Southeast Asian predicament remained outstanding in 2016: (1) how to ensure that Southeast Asian states are not made casualties of great power conflict; (2) strategies of hedging in defence of Southeast Asian autonomy; and (3) the future of the ASEAN project as a means to greater comprehensive security and in defence of Southeast Asian voice and institutional centrality.

The South China Sea Arbitration Ruling: Dramatic and Not?

After a decade of intensified tensions in the South China Sea, 2016 stands out as the year that the Arbitral Tribunal issued a devastating ruling against China's position and activities in the South China Sea. Among its most notable points, the tribunal ruled that China's nine-dash-line claim based on historic rights had no standing under UNCLOS, which China had signed and ratified and which now “superseded any historic rights, or other sovereign rights or jurisdiction” beyond those set by UNCLOS.

Anyone familiar with Philippine politics knows that the hundred-million strong nation is very passionate about holding elections. As an election year, 2016 proved that elections remain important and complicated political events in the country. But rather than just another exercise of peacefully transferring power from one faction of the Filipino elite to another, the main outcome of the 2016 elections resembled a powerful earthquake that shifted the tectonic plates of Philippine politics. On 9 May 2016, more than 55 million voters cast their ballots in what many described as one of the most electrifying, fiercely contested, and politically significant electoral contests since the restoration of democracy in 1986. At stake were national posts for the presidency and vice-presidency, seats in the bicameral legislature, and local government positions. Expectedly, political dynasties and members of the country's elite once again dominated the polls of Asia's oldest democracy — with one glaring exception. Less than a day after voting officially ended, maverick city mayor and political firebrand Rodrigo Duterte secured an overwhelming victory in the presidential elections with almost forty per cent of the popular vote.

Electoral politics in the Philippines is a game mastered by the Filipino political class. This level of comfort was seen when outgoing Philippine President Benigno Simeon Aquino delivered his State of the Nation address to Congress in July 2015. With the members of the political establishment in attendance, and watched by millions of Filipinos, Aquino confidently declared that the coming elections would be a referendum on his “Daang Matuwid” (Straight Path) legacy of accountable governance. The television screen then split into three showing his likely successors — Vice-President Jejomar Binay, Senator Grace Poe, and Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas III. Not invited to the all-elite affair, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte was sitting on a plastic stool watching the event hundreds of kilometres south of Manila. The 2016 elections proved that even masters of the political game can be prone to miscalculation, especially during times when they think the odds are overwhelmingly in their favour.

The statement above issued by the Chief Minister's office partly explains why Sarawak's politics took a slightly different trajectory after Adenan Satem took over as the new Chief Minister for Sarawak from Taib Mahmud on 28 February 2014. He argues in his speeches that Sarawak had been left behind and needs to catch up with other states in the Federation of Malaysia. In Sarawak's local dialect, Adenan Satem used the word “ngepong”, referring to catching up with other states. His catching-up strategies are central to the current centre–state relations in Sarawak. This chapter discusses centre–state relations between Putra Jaya and Kuching, specifically after Adenan Satem took over from Taib Mahmud. Responses from the centre to this political realignment are also discussed.

Federalism in Malaysia

A federal system divides power between the national government and the smaller local governments. The advantage of a federal government is that it helps to address the needs of a geographically large country. The needs at the local level of each state differ, and they should have different local governments to address those needs. In theory, federalism assumes that there exist diverse and separate communities who want to unite but which are at the same time eager to maintain a separate existence.1 More often than not, centre–state relations in a federation are quite fluid. However, they should be stable if local leaders support the concentration of power at the centre as a means to safeguard the integrity of the country. In cases where states are controlled by a different political party, relations between the centre and state might be quite fluid.

The Federation of Malaysia was established in 1963 by an agreement between the governments of Malaya, the United Kingdom, and the leaders of the people of Sarawak, Sabah (North Borneo), and Singapore, through the 1963 Malaysian Agreement signed on 8 July 1963. Sarawak has a population of almost 2.5 million, made up of some twenty-six ethnic groups.

Vietnam in 2016 went through a crucial leadership transition at the 12th Congress of the ruling Vietnamese Communist Party in January. Its economy stands at a crossroads, after thirty years of doi moi, or renovation, turned Vietnam into a lower-middle-income country with a thriving manufacturing-based, export-led economy, but which still leaves much to be desired. Vietnam still occupies the lower end of the global supply chain, and remains bridled with a largely inefficient state-owned sector and a weak financial sector. The government, however, aspires to achieve “modernity, industrialization, and a higher quality of life” by the year 2035, when Vietnam will have been reunified for sixty years.

On the international front, Vietnam has forged a wide range of partnerships with foreign countries — including with both neighbouring countries and larger powers — and has managed to redefine its relations with the West, in particular the United States. Yet it faces ever more complex foreign policy challenges, which emanate primarily from an increasingly aggressive posture by China in the South China Sea — where Vietnam is an active claimant in the maritime territorial disputes — and an evolving regional order. The leadership and populace alike seem to be looking for a game changer that can help address the host of geostrategic and socio-economic challenges facing Vietnam. If the past thirty years were foundational in Vietnam's charting of its post-war history and the terms of its relations with the outside world, the period from 2016 onward is slated to usher in a new, more dynamic era in this country of nearly a hundred million.

Leadership Transition and Contest

After a decade of freewheeling politics under the controversial former Prime Minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, large parts of Vietnam's leadership preferred to return to an equilibrium in domestic politics where collective leadership, the unwritten rule of Vietnamese politics, was the norm. Political infighting has always existed among the elite, and competition to varying degrees between the country's top four posts — Party Chief, President, Prime Minister, and Head of the National Assembly — is not a new phenomenon. But during his rule, Dung's relentless pursuit of power and personal wealth, as well as his outspokenness and brash rhetoric that defy the parameters of Vietnamese politics, alienated many within the party leadership and bureaucracy.

In the lead-up to presidential and parliamentary elections in 2017, Timor-Leste in 2016 occupied a seriously ambivalent political space. The ambivalence arose from what appears to be the aspiration for national unity and the actuality of what appears to be the end of opposition politics in Timor-Leste, and therefore a possible diminution of democratic representation. The creation of a Government of National Unity (GNU) in February 2015 set up what Arend Lijphart has termed a “consociational democracy” in Timor-Leste, an arrangement where the opposition, in effect, surrenders that role and possibly the opportunity to replace the government at the next national elections in return for a share in government. It is an arrangement between previously rival leaders and their parties, where national elites agree to share power. This is a type of “controlled democracy” intended to replace political conflict with political cooperation. What it actually may entail is a loss of accountability and transparency and a consequent tendency towards political collusion, or worse.

The Redefinition of East Timorese Democracy

To understand the operation of national politics in Timor-Leste in 2016 it is necessary to consider again the major changes to the political system that occurred in 2015. These have been reviewed by Maj Nygaard-Christensen in Southeast Asian Affairs 2016, but they will be further discussed here in order to explain the transition that the country is undergoing between the formation of the GNU in February 2015 and the expected presidential and parliamentary elections in 2017.

In its second year of operation, the Sixth Constitutional Government continued to redefine democracy in Timor-Leste. This redefinition began on 6 February 2015 when Xanana Gusmão resigned as Prime Minister. He appointed as his successor Dr Rui Maria de Araújo, who on 16 February was sworn in to lead a Government of National Unity. Araújo is a senior member of FRETILIN, the party that formed the government upon independence but lost power in the 2007 election to the CNRT. The CNRT was created in that year by then President Gusmão as his vehicle to win the Prime Ministership and replace the FRETILIN government with his own.

President Rodrigo Duterte's ascent to Malacañang has been hailed as the best chance to resolve the challenges of secessionism and terrorism in Mindanao. Hailing from Davao City, Duterte has emphasized his Mindanao roots. Coupled with the curated image of an everyman, the new Philippine President has promised a definitive end to the Mindanao conflict. Lofty promises aside, it would appear that Duterte has yet to craft a coherent and consistent policy to steer Mindanao out of conflict.

Instead, contradicting policies reflecting volatility and continuity appear to be the Duterte model for peace. For extremist groups such as the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and the Maute Group, Duterte appears to take a hard-line combat and intelligence-driven approach — for now. However, volatility has also characterized Duterte's stance against these fringe extremist groups, from casting them as “desperate” poverty-stricken individuals to criminals “slaughtering people as if they were chickens”. In contrast, continuity appears to be the direction his administration has taken as it deals with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), as seen in the reconstitution of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC).

It is uncertain whether Duterte's ambivalent policy towards Mindanao peace will suffice to address the complexity of conflict in the southern Philippines. Duterte can ill afford missteps, considering the growing salience of external factors that impinge on Mindanao; namely, the spectre of violence inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the outcome of peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front (NDF). A cohesive policy to address the socio-economic roots of conflict would be more effective than gallivanting from continuity to volatility and back.

The Current State of Play in Mindanao

On 26 November 2016 the Maute Group occupied the abandoned portions of Butig municipality in Lanao del Sur province. Nearly ninety per cent of the town's population were displaced, as another round of clearing operations by the Philippine Army (PA) was under way. After a five-day campaign the military declared that eighty per cent of Butig had been retaken, with the Maute Group on the run. Just a few months ago, in June 2016, the military declared that the final Maute stronghold, Camp Darul Imam, had been captured and the group defeated — the supposed culmination of months of sporadic skirmishes in Lanao del Sur that began in February

At the end of 2015, ASEAN did not any more become a community of nations than remain an association of states. Words matter for the expectations they raise. ASEAN slow marched in 2015 towards the “milestone” that it was to be proclaimed a “community” at the end of it, but in reality this remains an admitted work in progress.

The term “community” had been adopted in communion with, although not as a replication of, what existed in Europe. It seemed like a good idea, this approximation, which got more distant as Europe further integrated into a union of twenty-eight nation-states. Of course, nowadays, ASEAN may congratulate itself on its superior wisdom of not rushing into forming a community, let alone a union, seeing the strains and stresses in the European Union (EU). But the term “community” remained.

For the private sector there are clear expectations of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), perhaps even more so than from constituents of the politicalsecurity and sociocultural pillars, the two other legs of the community proclaimed in the Kuala Lumpur Declaration of November 2015. It is in the AEC that the ASEAN Community shows the greatest promise of development. Indeed, it may very well be the AEC that will hold ASEAN together, even if it does not necessarily drive greater integration with the other two pillars. There are however challenges ahead, both internal and external to the AEC, including from geopolitical and geoeconomic forces beyond ASEAN's loose organizational control.

What is the AEC to the Private Sector?

When an integrated regional market, open to the outside world, is offered with a single production base complete with the free movement of goods and services, capital and investment, and skilled labour, it is a huge attraction. If the market proposed is the third largest in the world, with a population of over 630 million people, a combined GDP in excess of US$2.4 trillion — the world's seventh largest — growing at about five per cent in an anaemic world economy, businesses are attracted to make decisions and plans for their future expansion there. And, with sixty per cent of the population under thirty-five years of age, there is the further enticement of current investment yielding a demographic dividend not better available elsewhere.

Introduction

This chapter intends to raise the question as to whether the socio-religious movement we now call “Tantrism” may represent a wider Monsoon Asian areal phenomenon, with roots in a past that predates the earliest available textual data. It has been directly inspired by, and it engages with, three thought-provoking essays by anthropologist Robert Dentan on a common religious base in South and Southeast Asia (2002a, 2002b, this volume). As a scholar trained in Sanskrit and Classical Indology focusing on the adoption of Indic religions across Southeast Asia, I intend to take up the challenge cast by Dentan, namely that “speculative reconstruction of Semai theological history… suggests that serious students of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism, need to pay attention to the indigenous religions of Peninsular Malaysia” (2002b, p. 207).

I begin the discussion by surveying the historiographical parameters concerning the complex process of cultural and religious transfer between premodern South and Southeast Asia, and the origin of Tantrism. Next, I revisit the idea, advanced by early twentieth-century French scholarship, of a shared cultural matrix in Monsoon Asia, within which framework Dentan's hypothesis may be situated. I then move to review Dentan's main argument that a comparison of similar religious tropes found in the late Vedic tradition and in the oral lore of the Austroasiatic languagespeaking ethnic group of the Semai in Peninsular Malaysia would suggest a common ancestry. By taking into account additional evidence from premodern and modern South Asian, Javano-Balinese, and Malay contexts, I suggest that many of the similarities detected by Dentan extend to the post-Vedic period, i.e. to Tantric Śaivism and Tantric Buddhism in the mediaeval or post-Gupta period (ca. 500–1300 CE).

Indonesia's decentralization — with which some authority has been passed to the regions — has produced popular leaders such as the current president Joko Widodo (Jokowi), Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok), Bandung mayor Ridwan Kamil, and Surabaya mayor Tri Rismaharini (Risma). This new breed of Indonesian leaders are popularly elected in direct elections, unlike their appointed predecessors under Suharto's New Order. These appointed local leaders were essentially individuals chosen by the Ministry of Home Affairs with the approval of local legislatures. Often, they were retired military generals or former bureaucrats who were appointed as extensions of the central administration. Now held regularly, direct elections often see the rise of ambitious rich individuals with questionable leadership skills, but they have also elected self-made leaders with a strong track record in either the government bureaucracy or as professionals.

Among those who rose from bureaucratic circles is Surabaya's mayor Tri Rismaharini (fondly known as Bu Risma). This article investigates her popularity by looking at how her policies have been perceived by the Surabayan voters. Risma's popularity is fascinating and important to investigate, particularly as Jokowi himself launched his presidency based on his credentials first as mayor of Solo and then as governor of Jakarta. Such a trajectory has amplified the positions of local leaders and meant that they are closely watched as possible upcoming national leaders.

This paper selects specific policies in certain areas under Risma's administration, and investigates how they have been perceived by voters. By doing so, it aims to formulate an informed answer on what voters want, and the extent to which a leader's popularity would translate to votes. It is argued here that the case of Risma in Surabaya points to the positive outcome of direct local elections when voters are presented with candidates with a good track record. Cases such as in Surakarta where Jokowi was re-elected with more than 90 per cent of votes in 2010, and Ridwan Kamil who won the Bandung mayorship in 2013 by more than 27 per cent of the votes, show that voters do scrutinize their potential leaders. The success of Risma demonstrates that beyond the aspects of popularity and celebrity status, many more voters inspect the track records of candidates closely. This development may lessen the influence of money politics and vote-buying in elections, and in turn lessen the preponderance of personality cults.