International Ruins:
Preservation, pt. 7

August 25, 2006

For his book Among the Believers V.S. Naipaul made his way through Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In his description of Indonesia he becomes interested in the attitudes of the people toward their Hindu ruins. As is his habit, Naipaul reports conversations with various local informants:

'You've been to Canberra?' he said. 'You've seen the Indonesian embassy there? It's a Hindu building. This isn't a Hindu or Buddhist country. This country is ninety percent Muslim.'

'Borobudur and Prambanam are great Indonesian monuments.'

'Borobodur is something for the international community to look after.'

The international community, the universal civilization: providers of tape-recorders and psychological games and higher degrees in electrical engineering; and now, also, guardians of Indonesian art and civilization. [435]

His Muslim informant dislikes the Hindu influence, seeing it as something to be cleansed away.. despite the country's Hindu past and the continuing presence of the religion on the religious practice of the people. Naipaul brings up two great Hindu monuments, which must be counted as "Indonesian." But the informant demurs and casts the monuments as something for the international community to look after.

For Naipaul this exchange buttresses one of his main arguments, made repeatedly in the course of this book: fundamentalist Muslims have developed a parasitic relationship with the modern world. The modern world offers lots of things to use, like some great goody-tree, but they see no connection between the cultural values of western civilization and those convenient goodies. His informant can thus nonchalantly assume that the "international community" will step in to preserve Indonesia's Hindu monuments, but that is no concern of Indonesia's Muslims.

I approach this brief exchange from a slightly different angle. I think Naipaul takes for granted the mental achievement of efforts such as that by UNESCO to establish World Heritage Sites. The concept seems so easy to us: such ruins testify to human progress and excellence. As I argue in my dissertation, that line of thought depends upon an unspoken narrative of human progress.. a narrative which large numbers of people in our world do not share. Christians in Syria are not interested in Muslim monuments; Protestants in America do not care about Mormon monuments. From this brief conversation reported by Naipaul, it is possible to see that some Muslims in Indonesia don't have a strong connection to their old Hindu monuments.

I think this complements Naipaul's point about the parasitic nature of Islamic fundamentalism. That is a perspective that takes for granted the western world, but also inhibits the ability of people caught up in the modern world.. its complexities and odd mixtures.. from developing an international perspective. Or, more accurately, it leads modern people to adopt a counter-international narrative.

Naipaul provides more evidence of this fundamentalist viewpoint earlier in the book:

The excavated city of Mohenjodaro in the Indus Valley—overrun by the Aryans in 1500 BC—is one of the archeological glories of Pakistan and the world. The excavations are now being damaged by waterlogging and salinity, and appeals for money have been made to world organizations. A featured letter in Dawn offered its own ideas for the site. Verses from the Koran, the writer said, should be engraved and set up in Mohenjodaro in 'appropriate places': 'Say (unto them, O Muhammad): Travel in the land and see the nature of the sequel for the guilty... Say (O Muhammad, to the disbelievers): Travel in the land and see the nature of the consequence for those who were before you. Most of them were idolaters.'

So theology complicated history for the people of Pakistan. [163]

Again, I think an alternative point can be made. Islam indeed imposes a theological lens on human history, but it also offers some surprising ways to look at the preservation of monuments. Setting up Qur'anic verses at this ruin may strike us as misguided.. but it is much to be preferred over the destruction of the ruins of a past culture (such as the Taliban's destruction of the stone Buddhas in Afghanistan). The fact that ruins of a past culture may have a positive message to teach— "God judges peoples that reject him"— allows, ironically, for the maintenance of those ruins. One can even imagine the writer of this letter to the newspaper Dawn encouraging someone to visit the ruins, as a moral lesson. It is a different narrative than the international human development narrative, but it can accomplish something similar in allowing for the preservation of a site.