After the post-independence era, santri credibility has to transform simultaneously with globalization. According to KH Makruf Amin on santri definition, santri is a person who obedient to ‘Kiai’, the fact whether he lived a pesantren live and is capable of reading Islamic heritage book, well-known as ‘Kitab kuning‘, or not is unnecessary.
The title santri is appropriate. Whoever is obedient to Kiai cares about what Kiai struggling for and contributed to it. Considering this as a valid definition of santri, we will identify many public figures as santri. Our first president is an example. Since plenty of sources on the History clarify, he was once admitted as santri of a KH Ahmad Dahlan.
Another example would be KH Idham Chalid, who had a crucial political position as a deputy prime minister in the Soekarno era. Specifically, he sits at cabinet Ali Sostroamidjojo (24 Maret 1956 – 9 April 1957), cabinet Djuanda (9 April 1957-9 Juli 1959, and two periods as Minister at cabinet Dwikora (22 February 1966-25 Juli 1966). Then we got KH. Wachid Hasyim, who served as a cabinet minister. And there are more well-known figures we can identify as santri.
The existence of the santri struggle on nation freedom once again could be emphasized by the Djamaluddin Malik resolution. It was 1967 when General AH Nasution still served as MPR speaker. In the middle of the general assembly of MPR, the resolution of Djamaluddin Malik proposed two things in general: to remove Soekarno from his president position and replaced him with Soeharto.
But, instead of publishing of Djamaluddin Malik resolution, the Indonesian history lesson says supersemar is what caused the removal. But thanks to a nahdlatul ulama santri at DPR GR who succeed to clarify this to the public. However, this resolution might still seem unfamiliar to some historians since it is not published well. Therefore, I want to add two more great examples, which everybody knows for sure. First, Gus Dur, a phenomenal santri, succeeded in being the number one person in the republic in 1999. Second, the fact that the current vice president is a santri.
As History started to roll over and globalization accelerated the change of culture and trend. Plenty of culture shape transformation begins to take place to grow on the worldwide community, including Indonesia. Westernization of local culture started to be introduced to us. Much of the novel, either bad or good, value successfully brought into the civilization. Moreover, santri and pesantren culture has also developed in many aspects, including technology and media, but remain the same in the knowledge and value transfer principle.
Due to this status quo, some societies create inconvenient views about pesantren as an out-of-date education culture. Although pesantren is one of the oldest education cultures in Indonesia, pesantren has successfully managed to survive in the era of globalization. Moreover, it has gorgeously made many of its scholars – santri – successful and seized a lot of achievements during globalization. For example, a North Sumatra santri, namely Ja’far Hasibuan, has brought a gold medal from the China Shanghai International Exhibition of Inventions due to his invention transforming shrimp waste into medicine.