Is Indonesia's social fabric disintegrating? Or are the peasants simply revolting? It is time to take a serious look at the accepted wisdom on what lies behind the epidemic of social unrest around this vast archipelago.

Our television screens have been filled with images of smoke-blackened shops and Indonesian parents weeping over their dead children. The voice-over is peppered with the phrases 'a society tearing itself apart' or 'as Indonesia's social fabric unravels'. Indonesian commentary has been similar. Cabinet minister for security Feisal Tanjung, for example, says the unrest was caused by religious decline.

Indeed when neighbour is killing neighbour the feeling of decay is difficult to put aside. Ambon is today experiencing the worst inter-religious and inter-ethnic strife the island has known this century. And there have been many such cases recently, in Jakarta, in Kalimantan, in West Timor, in Sumba.

But the very universality of the interpretation that we are here seeing the 'breakdown' of a society that once functioned reasonably well should lead us to be suspicious. Common sense is often uncommonly wrong.

In 1997 I visited the location of a riot in West Java. The question 'why did it happen?' had triggered an enormous public discourse. The 'breakdown' view came through strongly in that discourse. Before heading to the location, I went to see popular Islamic opposition leader Abdurrahman Wahid in Jakarta. Better known as Gus Dur, he explained to me that this particular riot had been instigated by a number of intellectuals from Jakarta, whom he named.

I then went to the small town called Tasikmalaya where the riot had occurred. There, no one seemed interested in the Jakarta intellectuals who were supposed to have instigated it. The talk was all about insensitive local police, about overconfident young activists, about well-connected local Chinese businessmen - all of them local causes. It struck me that, for all his popularity, Gus Dur had been out of touch with the grass roots.

Today, my impression of a Jakarta elite out of touch with the 200 million who live in the regions is stronger than ever. Whether among the old guard or the 'opposition', there is a widespread view that Indonesian society is traditional, religious and (therefore!) harmonious and obedient. That the bulk of the people are inert, not to say dumb. That the people prefer to do nothing until prodded to action, either by good Jakarta government policy, or by evil 'provocateurs', usually also sent out from Jakarta. (Someone should do a study comparing the latest mythology of 'provocateurs' with that of 'communists' in the Suharto era).

But this is surely a paternalistic view of one's own society. It reminds me of the smug Dutch minister for colonies 70 years ago, who used to say that the Javanese peasant wanted nothing more than to be left alone to produce rice.

Meanwhile, unbeknown to the elite, there is life, and hope, and clear thinking, in rural and small town Indonesia. You won't often read about this in the Jakarta press, which fears to report it because it is dangerous to 'national unity', but there is an alternative discourse going in the regions. Hidden it may be, but it is a lively, and highly political discourse.

Being local, the alternative discourse is different everywhere. Being hidden, we outsiders can as yet say little about it with confidence. However, as a first guess it perhaps goes like this:

More examples abound. Exactly what they all add up to is not yet clear. But one thing is clear. It would be a mistake to think of the unrest only as evidence that the 'social fabric is unravelling'. What could rather be unravelling is an elitist concept of statehood, and the authority of an elite whose world this has always been. For the people, it could be just the beginning of something new.

[A version of this appears in the Far Eastern Economic Review, Fifth Column, 18 March 1999]

Gerry van Klinken, editor, 'Inside Indonesia' magazine.