1996 Reactionary Resistance Sisterhood V PDF

REACTIONARY RESISTANCE:
SISTERHOOD VS. BROTHERHOOD IN INDONESIA∗
Thomas Gibson, University of Rochester
Rough draft: not to be quoted or cited without written permission
We are still ‘in focus’ so far as the French Revolution is concerned, but so we
should have been in relation to the Fronde had we lived earlier. The former will
rapidly cease to afford a coherent image on which our action can be modeled, just
as the latter has already done. (Levi-Strauss, 1960: 254)
In this paper, I describe an example of ‘resistance’ by a ‘sisterhood’ to the
‘hegemonic values’ of a ‘brotherhood’ in a village in Indonesia. This resistance takes the
form of the dogged performance of rituals in which the leader of the women is possessed
by the spirits of her grandmother and their remote royal ancestors. This is despite more
than half a century of vigorous repression by village leaders who denounce the cult as
satanic and its practitioners as witches. Paradoxically, the values implicit in the spirit cult
are those of ascribed social hierarchy, the priority of the past over the present, and the
dependence of individuals on elders. The explicit values of the current ‘hegemony’ stress
equality of opportunity to achieve higher wealth and status, the priority of the future over
the present, and individual autonomy in thought and practice.
∗ Presented in a conference on Poverty, The Politics of Marginality and Cultures of
Resistance held at the London School of Economics, 27-29 September, 1996.

Reactionary resistance 2
Today’s resistance was yesterday’s hegemony, however: between 1860 and 1910
the spirit cults were a central feature of a feudal social order that Dutch liberals viewed as
a barrier to capitalist progress. And today’s hegemony was yesterday’s resistance:
between 1910 and 1950 the Dutch colonial state changed sides and encouraged local
custom and hereditary chiefs as a bulwark against socialist, nationalist and Islamic
agitators. Between 1950 and 1965 new provincial and national elites led an all-out attack
on reactionary local practices, recalling the Dutch liberal policy of the previous century.
But after 1965, the national state changed sides again and began encouraging local
‘culture’ as a bulwark against socialist and Islamic ‘agitators’.
While policy at the national level has oscillated between radicalism and
conservatism, at the local level the hereditary feudal outlook has been steadily losing
ground to the achievement oriented democratic outlook. It has now become the last
refuge of those for whom the competitive individualism of the modern political economy
holds least promise of security: village noble women who were at the center of the old
system and are at the margins of the new.
In conclusion, I will argue that what counts as ‘resistance’ depends on one’s point
of view, and must be determined anew for each time and place. Further, I will recall
Levi-Strauss’s caution in the epigraph that the political motivations of those acting in
other times and places are likely to appear obscure to us. Our own intuitions are a poor
guide to diagnosing political struggles in which we are not directly involved.

HEGEMONY AND RESISTANCE TODAY
This paper is based on two relatively short periods of field research in the village
of Ara in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.1 Ara was chosen as a field site because I was
interested in studying a group which had been on the cross-roads of maritime trade for
many generations. Ara is one of a group of four villages including Bira, Lemo Lemo and
Tanaberu which currently compose the Kecamatan of Bonto Bahari on the rocky
southernmost tip of South Sulawesi. The inhabitants of all four must make their living as
artisans or merchants because of the barrenness of the soil. The men of Ara and Lemo
Lemo have been famous for the building of large wooden sailing ships since at least the
sixteenth century. In 1988 there were 4,622 inhabitants living in Ara, of whom 1,076
were males aged 13 and older. 702 of these made their living building boats. The men of
Bira and Tanaberu are predominantly merchants and sailors by trade, not boat builders.
While I lived in Ara, the close economic and kinship ties between Ara and its
neighboring villages drew me into them on many occasions.
I spent four months in Ara in 1988 and three months in 1989. In addition to the
normal round of interviews and participant observation conducted in Bahasa Indonesia, I
also managed to collect manuscripts and genealogies which I had transcribed from Arabic
and Makassarese characters to Roman, and translated into Bahasa Indonesia. Since then,
I have made an extensive review of Dutch publications on the province, and a more
limited review of archival materials held in the Netherlands. Ara became a vassal of the
1 Fieldwork in 1988 and 1989 was made possible by a grant from the Harry Frank
Guggenheim Foundation. Library research in the Netherlands was made possible by a
Senior Fellowship from the Fulbright Commission.

Makassarese empire of Goa in the 1540s. When the Dutch defeated in Goa in 1667, Ara
and many other dependencies of Goa were ceded to the East India Company (VOC) by
the Treaty of Bungaya. The VOC first received tribute from Bira in 1728. There are thus
over three hundred years of scattered references to Ara and its neighbors in Dutch reports
and publications. The availability of these materials has led me to integrate synchronic
and diachronic analyses.
In the first half of this paper, I describe how I came to learn about local concepts
of power and knowledge while in the field. I try to remain as true as possible to the order
in which they were revealed to me, and to be explicit about the motives informants may
have had for revealing and concealing knowledge. I began by getting the ‘official’ or
orthodox version of the village’s history, of the proper relation between Islam and
custom, and of what sorts of esoteric knowledge were legitimate. Only gradually did the
unofficial, heterodox version emerge.
As will become clear in the second half of the paper, Europeans have exerted a
powerful influence over which knowledges are considered legitimate and which
illegitimate for well over a century. When I first arrived in Ara, I was slotted into the
pre-existing role of Belanda, ‘Dutchman’, and addressed as Tuan, ‘Lord’, by the older
villagers. During the second period in the field, my identity became more ambiguous,
and I was addressed as Daeng Emba, a Makassar nick-name rather than as Tuan. My
presence or absence in certain houses and at certain events continued to have implications
for their legitimacy, however.
Abdul Hakim and the hegemony of modernism
My host and colleague in Ara, Abdul Hakim Daeng Paca’, was also my most
important informant. I shall refer to him in this paper as Hakim. He was the almost the
first person to greet me upon my arrival in Ara in July, 1988. He is a highly intelligent
and reflective man, the sort of outsider in his own culture that so often becomes an
anthropologist's best informant. In 1957, when he was 19 years old, he was recruited
from the Elementary Teacher’s School in Bulukumba by the Darul Islam guerrilla
movement fighting to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia. He spent a year in the bush
in command of seventeen men. This interruption in his formal schooling meant that he
could not pursue a career in secondary education, but has remained in village-level
elementary education. Most of the employees of the Department of Education and
Culture at the Kecamatan level have bachelor degrees from the Teacher's Training
College in Ujung Pandang (IKIP), or from the Universitas Hasanuddin. In 1958 he
returned to Ara and married his wife. He taught at the local Darul Islam school from
1958 until 1961 when the government regained control of the village. In 1960 he became
the village secretary and recorder of marriages. He continued in that capacity until 1965,
when he got a job as a teacher in the local elementary school. He taught elementary
school for the next seventeen years, when he was made a Principle of an elementary
school in Bira.
Hakim’s closest friends are men like himself who take Islam seriously and are
much influenced by the modernist positions of the Muhammadiyah movement, without
being formal members. Modernist Islam stresses the responsibility of individuals to
achieve a rational understanding of sacred scriptures, the Koran and ‘strong’ Hadith, and
to perform only those ritual actions explicitly prescribed in those scriptures. It rejects
both taqlid, the unquestioning acceptance of traditional authority, and bid’ah, innovation
in religious ritual. It is equally prepared to criticize both the neglect of religious duties
and overindulgence in non-canonical spiritual practices. The latter is seen as a distraction

from the drive to develop the nation. Modernist Islam presupposes literacy, an
understanding of Arabic texts or at least the availability of translations of them, and direct
access to the texts through print technology, radio broadcasting or mass meetings. In all
these respects it is sharply opposed to traditional methods of acquiring Islamic
knowledge, which began with the rote recitation of uncomprehended Arabic texts. Only
a few students then went on to master Arabic grammar and vocabulary. The elite
continued to learn new texts by listening to a master recite them accompanied by his
commentary, and by laboriously hand-copying the texts themselves (Robinson, 1993).
Modernist Islam is thus part and parcel of modernity more generally: it
presupposes the capitalist institutions of an individualizing market place; the mass
production of books, journals and newspapers; and mass education with competitive
examinations. Not surprisingly, its most fervent advocates at the village level tend to be
school teachers like Hakim. Their careers are based on a subjective identity which is
individualistic, egalitarian in principle, and oriented to achievement. The guerrillas of the
1950s saw themselves as fighting not just for shariah law but against ‘feudalism’: the
hereditary ascription of rank and the inheritance of high office characteristic of
Makassarese and Bugis society.
The Darul Islam guerrillas may have lost their bid to impose scripturalist Islam on
South Sulawesi, but the values they advocated have become ‘hegemonic’. They are the
familiar bourgeois values of individual liberty, social equality and nationalist fraternity
that accompany a capitalist market economy. There is also a less familiar side to this
hegemony, deriving from local cultural views of ‘knowledge’ and ‘power’. For the
secular scientific knowledge acquired in school is only one side of a coin which includes
esoteric mystical knowledge acquired through ascesis.

Mysticism, known as tarekat after the Sufi path to enlightenment, was a
preoccupation of all the modernist Muslims I met in South Sulawesi, including the son of
a famous Minangkebau radio preacher in Makassar. A particularly striking example of
the coexistence of high bureaucratic position, advanced formal education and mysticism
was presented by Abdul Hamid, the head of the Department of Education and Culture for
the Kecamatan of Bonto Bahari. He holds a bachelors degree. One day he showed me
his collection of magical objects including a 'fossil man', an eight inch long rock dressed
in sarong, shirt and cap, and an even weirder rock dressed in 'Arab clothes'. I asked if he
wasn't afraid his collection would be stolen. He laughed and said the house was so well
protected by invisible guards there was no need to worry. Local people got goose flesh
just looking at it. They often heard voices coming from the empty store room.
Now, Maming considers himself a rigidly Modernist Muslim who will have no
truck with spirit cults. He strongly condemns the cult of To Kambang, which is kept up
by his neighbor two houses away, Haji Sanusi. He disapproves of all visits to the graves
of saints, the recital of the barasanji, and submission to Sufi masters. All his knowledge
and power has come to him directly through visions and chance discoveries of powerful
objects. Maming's vision first came to him only in 1978 at the age of 49. He was in Java
when an angel, malaikat appeared to him. Ever since, he has had the power to cure
people anywhere in the world. He even believes that his mystical intervention helped
turn the tide of the holy war in Afghanistan against the Russian occupation.
Knowledge and gender
The sort of magical knowledge described in the above extract from my field notes
may be referred to by the Indonesian version of the Arabic term for knowledge, ilmu, by
the Makassarese equivalent, isse, or by the Makassarese term erang, meaning ‘to carry’.
For men, this knowledge takes the form mostly of incantations, mantera, learned either
from a male relative as in the case of boat building magic, or directly from spiritual
beings like saints, jinn, angels or God himself. Men, especially educated men,
increasingly pursue mystical knowledge and power directly from God through the
practice of austerities and meditation, rather than from a human kinsman or spiritual
master.
Erang Kabura’neang, ‘The Burden of Men’
The most frequently sought form of mystical knowledge is invulnerability magic,
kabbala (Malay kebal), also known as erang kabura’neang, ‘the burden of men’.
Possession of kabbala has highly ambiguous consequences for the owner. Closure to
danger also closes one to good fortune, dalle. Thus men who make too much use of
kabbala end up poor, no matter how hard they work. Wealth is always a product of a
combination of hard work and luck or blessing, and much magical effort is devoted
toward securing the latter. As both Acciaioli and Errington have argued for the Bugis,
the use of invulnerability magic is most appropriate for wandering young men who are
beyond the protective boundaries of their kin group. But once one marries and settles
down to raise a family, one should throw it away (see Acciaioli, 1989, Errington, 1989).
Hakim’s son-in-law, Mustari, told me of a brother-in-law of his in Tana Beru who is so
poor that he was only able to afford walls for his house after living in it for twenty years.
This he attributed to the power of his kabbala. The same man's father had behaved more
responsibly. When he married, he wrote his magic onto a piece of paper and cast it into
the sea.
Erang Kabahineang, ‘The Burden of Women’

Aside from invulnerability magic, the form of magic most commonly sought by
men relates to childbirth. While men do not directly minister to pregnant women or
attend childbirths, many claim to know incantations which can ease the passage of a baby
during difficult labor. The more hands-on part of delivery is the preserve of female
midwives who acquire their knowledge through long apprenticeship. The important point
to note here is that while men are primarily concerned with sealing their bodies against
penetration by weapons in fighting, women are primarily concerned with opening their
bodies so that children can emerge in childbirth. From one angle, warfare and childbirth
play similar roles as the times of greatest danger but also highest achievement in the lives
of men and women. From another angle, they are opposed, as death is to life, and
penetration is to emergence. The contrast between warfare and childbirth goes further.
While those practicing invulnerability magic are also closed to the reception of good
fortune, women and newborns are in a highly receptive state to it. The implication of this
contrast between male and female bodies for spirit possession is that women are always
more vulnerable to penetration.
At first, I only got hints of another conception of mystical knowledge existed in
the village, one which relied on the hereditary transfer of power from one woman to
another. I asked Hakim to list all the kinds of ritual specialists he could. Among them
was the karihatang, a kind of shaman who could diagnose and treat illnesses by calling
spirits, dewata, into their bodies. This sparked my interest because of my earlier work on
spirit mediums in the Philippines, but I could not get any of the male magicians to whom
Hakim introduced me to talk about it very much. Hakim did say that spirit possession
was now almost confined to women, both because the softness and porosity of their
bodies made them more vulnerable to it, but because they were in general less well
educated than men. Education developed your powers of reason, akal, and reason itself
served as a barrier against mystical influences.
Eventually I found some women who were quite willing to talk about karihatang.
While my wife was visiting me in the field, some women at a ritual to feed house spirits
told us that the last famous karihatang had been called To Ebang. Or rather, that another
name for Karihatang was To Ebang. It was unclear to me during this conversation
whether they were using the term as a title or as a personal name. They added that when
(the) karihatang had died, she had transferred her powers to her grand daughter, Titi
Daeng Toje. Titi lived with another woman, Denni, and the two slept together as
husband and wife. Titi spent much of her time traveling around the province trading
locally woven sarongs, and returned to the village after 2-3 month trips to get more
merchandise. She would therefore be difficult to meet.
These women went on to describe one of Titi’s seances: the medium bathes, puts
on clean clothes and goes to sleep in an empty room. At midnight she starts up possessed
by a spirit, and the petitioners come in. When I asked who it was that possesses Titi, they
answered that she was possessed ‘by karihatang’, which seemed to mean, ‘by her
grandmother To Ebang’. Already I began to sense the complexities of an institution in
which the identities of person, spirit and office blurred and overlapped. Titi seemed to be
both male and female, an assertive woman who traveled extensively on business and a
passive vessel for the spirit of another, a substitute for her grandmother who was in turn a
substitute for the dead kings of the past.
I began to hear more and more about feuds over the exercise of mystical power.
It turned out that another acquaintance of mine, Hayati, was the daughter of a man who
was famous for his ability to combat parakang. One of his fiercest opponents was his
first cousin, Saeda, whom he claimed was a parakang. Hakim said that Saeda was the
daughter of a karihatang, a woman called Jaminang. He said that many people refused to
use her for healing, however, because of the evil reputation of her daughter. The head of
the village, Daeng Pasau, later commented that Jaminang’s familiar was nicknamed Red
Hat, and lived in a hole called Buwi that had been excavated in the 1930s for rocks to
build the road. In his opinion, all spirit familiars were seytan, devils, and all mediums
were parakang. This did not prevent him, however, from employing Jaminang’s skills in
massage. He also said that women were more likely than men to get involved in black
magic. At this point, I had to leave Sulawesi and return to my University for a semester,
still without having met the elusive Titi.
Demma Dg. Puga
The following July, when I had been back in the field for just one week, I heard of
the existence of another medium, one who made my host Hakim nervous in a different
way than Titi. This was a hermaphrodite called Demma. Hakim did not want to enter his
house, so he tried to find me an intermediary. At last I was taken to visit Demma by a
man called Saturuddin. Demma’s parlor was painted in baby blue and was furnished in a
manner that set it apart from all other front rooms in Ara. On the wall hung a black and
white photograph of Demma, to which he had added both red lipstick and a mustache, a
beauty mark on the cheek and a pair of men’s eyeglasses, as if to emphasize his
hermaphroditic character. There was a blond doll wearing mascara in one corner, and
lots of fussy decorations on the walls and furniture made from cigarette boxes, painted
seashells, and folded paper.

Hakim came into the house when Demma first arrived and treated him quite
aggressively, even pulling down his shirt to see if he really had a woman’s breasts. He
soon went off, however, and said he would meet me on the main road when I was done.
Demma turned out to be anything but shy. He was dressed in a woman’s sarong and
shirt, and had his hair pinned up. He was perhaps forty years old, and had a broad
somewhat coarse face and a deep voice. But his gestures and intonation were those of an
urban bar maid. The whole effect of the room and its owner can only be described as
high camp, designed to ‘subvert’ the normal bounds of gender. He succeeded in making
many men uncomfortable, including myself, but always seemed to be accepted as a
harmless buffoon by women. Saturuddin commented that Demma had had a series of
‘temporary husbands’, but no one permanent.
Demma said that he was first possessed by a female spirit as an adolescent, and
from that time his penis had shrunk and his breasts had grown.2 Unlike the karihatang,
who is only possessed by her own ancestors, Demma said he was only possessed by the
spirits of foreign princesses, and more rarely, princes from Bone, Luwu’, Goa and Java.
His principle familiar is a fifteen year old princess from Bone called Andi Muliati. The
familiars each speak in the appropriate foreign languages and each demands he dress in a
different way. As he cannot predict who will possess him, he must travel with a whole
wardrobe when he conducts a seance away from home. He claimed that his familiars
were ultimately more powerful than those of the karihatang because they are drawn from
2 It is possible that he suffered from the syndrome known as koro’ in South Sulawesi, a
condition in which the sufferer develops a phobia that his penis is about to shrink back
inside his body, but no one used the term in Ara.

a wider area. He then pressed me to spend the night with him, rather suggestively. I
politely declined, and said I would wait to observe a regularly scheduled ritual.
Titi Dg. Toje
I was finally taken to see Titi by the same man, Saturuddin, one week later. The
atmosphere in her home was poor but respectable, quite a contrast with that of Demma.
There were almost no decorations or even furniture. Titi herself had a rather regal
bearing, thin and erect but not haughty. She dressed as a conventional business woman,
and wore gold earrings. But she sat with me and my male companion at the parlor table,
and was served coffee along with us, although she did not drink it. Normally in Ara,
women do not sit with first time visitors, and are not served refreshments. Her ‘wife’,
Denni, was dressed in a similar manner but appeared less reserved and more friendly.
But both were gentle and refined in speech and gesture.
They began by saying that Denni had no special knowledge of Titi’s rituals or her
role as karihatang. Her relationship was a purely personal one with Titi as a private
person. As Titi was unconscious during rituals, she knew no more than did Denni. Her
juru bahasa, interpreter, was her father’s brother’s daughter, Olong, and it was really she I
should be interviewing. As time went on, they relaxed and soon were telling me all kinds
of stories. I was surprised to find that the hesitation with which Hakim replied to
questions about them was not matched by an equal reticence on their part.
Titi and Denni went on to list a series of royal ‘pre-Islamic’ spirits who came
during seances to possess Titi. Each was associated with a specific feature of the
landscape. In addition to Karaeng Mamampang, there was another spirit at Pilia called
Karaeng Makkilong; Bakka’ Tera’, ‘The Great Belcher’, a son-in-law of Karaeng
Mamampang who used to have a large tomb in the middle of Ara; Pua’ Janggo’, ‘Lord
Beard’ on top of the high hill in Bira which overlooks the Strait of Selayar; Datu Tiro,
buried by a miraculous spring in Tiro; Sapu Hatu, ‘Rock House’ entombed in a large
boulder on the beach between Ara and Tiro; and Tuan Demming Parangia, ‘Lord
Demming of the Field’ from Bira. Once one determined in the course of a seance which
had entered the body of a medium, one would have to prepare a ‘complete offering’ for
them and carry it to the place with which they were associated. Such offerings are very
elaborate and expensive. She was herself a direct descendent of the spirits possessing
her.
Mediums and magicians
The opposition between magicians like Abdul Hamid and mediums like Titi is in
a sense only an exaggeration of a more general opposition between women and men.
While women have only a female nature, men have both a male and a female aspect, one
or the other becoming dominant at different times. For example, when the female is in
the ascendant, a man is highly vulnerable to penetration by weapons and will surely lose
any battle. In this phase, he will father girls. When the male is in the ascendant, he is
hard and invulnerable, and will father boys.
Modernists say that Islam requires all men and women to pursue the proper
cultivation of the intellect, akal, and the subordination of bodily desires, nafsu. This
process ‘closes’ them to spiritual influences. Women's akal is naturally less developed
than men's, and among those who have little formal education it is still less. They are
thus ‘open’ to all kinds of spiritual invasion. Thus modernists do not deny the reality of
the experience of possession, so much as they question its conformity with Islam.
The experience of possession is a kind of penetration, normally of female bodies
by male spirits. At one level, this leads to a degree of masculinization of women as they
become identified with their male familiars. At another level, they remain feminine
precisely because they are repeatedly penetrated.
Something rather different happens in the case of male mediums. Male mediums
like Demma occupy a paradoxical marginal space between male magicians and female
mediums. When male mediums are penetrated by spirits, they may become
‘hermaphrodites’, their bodies are transformed in that their penises shrink and their
breasts grow. They may also take on a passive role in homosexual relationships and thus
open their bodies to physical penetration. As Demma told it, penetration by the spirit
preceded his sexual reorientation. Thus male mediums undergo more of a feminization
than female mediums undergo a masculinization. If a man like Demma loses his male
aspect completely, he ‘becomes’ a woman, while a woman like Titi has no inherent male
aspect that can develop. Hence the lack of symmetry between their cases.
Titi’s Rituals as Resistance
The Ritual Reproduction of the Corporate Group
Eventually I was able to observe Titi conduct a ritual for the first time. It
transpired that in addition to being a vehicle for the ancestor spirits, she was also a skilled
ritual specialist in her own right, who took care of many aspects of the life cycle rituals of
her close relatives. Indeed, she served as the focus of a corporate descent group deriving
from her grandmother To Ebang that was engaged in a continual round of life cycle
rituals which reproduced this group in classic Fortesian fashion. Figure I shows the
relevant people in Titi’s kindred.

FIGURE I: TITI’S KINDRED
In these rituals, the actions of a diverse array of specialists were interwoven, from
midwives to Imams to Titi herself. A large kindred network was activated to carry them
out, and migrants to distant islands returned to Ara renew their ties. There was nothing
incongruous to members of the group about including a visit to a group ancestor like
Mangga with a visits to the graves of locally recognized Islamic saints.
Bringing the Dead to Life
After several months in the field in two annual visits, I had still not seen Titi
perform in her role as karihatang. The leadership and knowledge she exhibited in the
course of these sequences in her own persona stood in sharp contrast to her protestations
of ignorance about matters relating to her persona as vehicle of the ancestor spirits. As
the group gained more confidence in me, they became eager to have me attend a seance.
I got the clear impression that felt my presence would legitimize the ancestor cult.
Hakim felt the same way and wanted to prevent it.

Finally, one day I was called to Titi’s house and told that the spirits had kept her
up all night demanding a model boat ritual before she left on her next trip. When I
arrived at 8 p.m., six young men were just finishing a cup of tea and soon left. I was
alone in the house with 20 women and girls. I was told that Titi had already been
possessed by a spirit at 7:30 p.m., much earlier than expected and Titi was already in
trance. Titi was possessed by her grandmother To Ebang when I arrived. To Ebang was
telling the gathering, including almost all the individuals in Figure I, both how upset she
had been that she had to wait so long for this boat, and how pleased she was with it. It
was the interpreter, Titi’s cousin and sister-in-law Olong Daeng Sinnong who carried on
most of the direct conversation with To Ebang. At 9:30 the tempo picked up and Titi
began chanting more vigorously, scattering uncooked rice about the room and blessing a
bowl of oil. I was told the next day that this was when Karaeng Mamampang had entered
her. At 10:00 p.m. a group of six young men, 3 young women and an older woman set
off with the offerings and the boat for the beach. We moved quietly through the night,
keeping away from other houses. A live chick was placed with the offerings in the boat,
and two of the youths swam the boat out into the surf.
During this seance, it began to become clear to me why the current karihatang
was often said to be To Ebang rather than Titi: the high point of many of these seances
was the chance to chat with the grandmother from whom they were all descended. The
following To Ebang had built up before her death in 1962 continued to cluster around her
after her death. Titi seemed to be acting quite normally, except that her eyes were half
closed and she seemed more animated and talkative than usual. The atmosphere was
relaxed and informal, at times even jocular. It was more like a warm family reunion than
the supplication of some awesome supernatural power - a matrifocal household extended
to the spirit plane.
Soon after the model boat ritual, Titi left on her marketing trip and sailed to
Buton. She returned a month later but planned to leave again almost immediately for
Ambon. Before she left, she wanted to perform a songkobala, or ritual to ward off
danger, so that I could record all the major rituals she conducts for her followers. This
ritual displayed the quality of domestic feminine warmth and intimacy even more
markedly than had the model boat ritual.
Titi and To Ebang
During the month of August, 1989, I had in effect observed three complex
sequences of rituals conducted on behalf of a variety of To Ebang’s great great
grandchildren. While some of these rituals had a distinct Islamic phase, presided over by
a man or men skilled in reciting Arabic prayers, they were for the most part presided over
by senior women who were closely related to the other participants. Almost without
exception, the male specialists were not directly related to the participants. Indeed
attendance at these rituals served to define a bilateral descent group of women focused on
To Ebang (G6).
When Titi goes into trance, it is usually the voice of her grandmother, To Ebang,
who speaks first. Titi acquired her status as karihatang, the liability to possession by
royal ancestors, upon the death of To Ebang in 1962. But she also appears to have taken
on other aspects of To Ebang’s persona: everything happens as if it is still To Ebang who
is the medium, and Titi is only a vehicle for the continuation of the former’s vocation.
Titi is thus the medium of a medium: To Ebang retains the power to put the worshippers
in touch with the remote royal ancestors.

The blurring of identities between To Ebang and Titi is sustained by the circle of
mostly women devotees who attend her seances. They all count themselves as
descendants of To Ebang, not Titi, and in the course of seances, and sometimes even
outside them, address her and treat her as their ancestress. There are now five
generations of descendants from To Ebang. Potential membership in the cult now
focused on Titi is actually defined in terms of the bilateral stock begun by To Ebang and
her husband Mangga.
Titi is not ‘possessed’ by To Ebang in the same way as she is possessed by male
ancestor spirits: in some sense she is To Ebang. Where ordinary possession implies
difference between spirit and host, the relationship between To Ebang and Titi is one of
identity. Indeed, for a long time I was quite confused about whom people were talking
when they referred to the karihatang: they often referred to her as To Ebang. Any
discussion of the ‘life and times’ of Titi as karihatang requires consideration of a social
identity as least a century old: from To Ebang’s birth in the 1880s to Titi’s practice in the
1980s.
In her life, To Ebang’s ‘interpreter’ was her husband’s aunt, Dg. Anni. It would
have been Dg. Anni who would have had ‘expert’ knowledge concerning the ancestors,
just as it is Titi’s interpreter, Olong, who is said to have such knowledge today. It is the
interpreter who maintains knowledge of the genealogical connections between the living
and the ancestors, and who can identify the spirits as they successively enter the
medium’s body, and who can communicate with them in the appropriate languages.
Many of the ancestors were actually born elsewhere and married local women. During
seances, they speak in their mother tongues, so that Karaeng Mamampang speaks in the
dialect of Goa, Puang Rangki speaks in Bugis, Sapo Hatu speaks in the dialect of Luwu,
and so on. Unfortunately, Olong never overcame her suspicion of me and I had to get
most of my information from Titi and her partner, Denni.
To Ebang would appear to have gained her own voice only beyond the grave,
since it is one of the dogmas of spirit mediumship that the medium is unconscious during
a seance and can remember nothing of afterwards. In the 1980s, the rituals conducted by
Titi functioned to perpetuate a corporate group of close female kin descended from the
charismatic figure of To Ebang. It was a group which felt itself under extreme attack,
and which persisted only because it felt the alternative was death. It had all the hallmarks
of a cell of feminists fiercely resisting the oppression of a masculinist hegemony. Werer
we to leave the matter here, Titi would seem to be an analog to the proto-feminist shaman
Uma Adang described by Tsing in neighboring Southeast Borneo.
FEUDALISM AND BUREAUCRACY
Does the synchronic, functionalist account really get at the heart of the matter?
After all, Hakim’s objection to the cult was based in part on his egalitarian ideals and his
belief in individual agency and achievement. The values implicitly fostered by the cult
are those of ascripitive social hierarchy, as only the descendants of the royal ancestors
could belong; of the subordination of the individual to the group, as the well-being of
younger members rested on the mediation of their elders with the spirit world; and of the
surrender of individual agency to higher human masters. The values are in fact those of
the ancien regime. That this is not just a rhetorical claim can be shown by reviewing the
available historical evidence.

The Rise of Bureaucracy, 1847-1926
The Dutch gradually instituted a more rational-bureaucratic system of government
in Indonesia in the course of the nineteenth century. This was due in part to the threat
posed by the presence of the British entrepot in Singapore. The British pressure exerted
increasing pressure in the 1830s and 1840s on the Dutch to open their ports to foreign
traders and to make good on their claim to be overlord of the whole archipelago. In 1840
James Brooke made a trip to Bone and sold the Arumpone some guns. The Dutch
became quite alarmed at his motives, as the British had been allies with Bone between
1790 and 1812, and Brooke went on to found his own state in Borneo.
The port of Makassar was reopened to foreign vessels in 1847, but at the same
time the Dutch changed the title of their top official at Makassar from Governor of
Makassar to ‘Governor of Celebes and Dependencies’, staking an implicit claim to direct
rule over such allied states as Bone, much to the annoyance of the latter. In order to give
some plausibility to their claim to govern the interior of the peninsula, an effort was made
to incorporate the native rulers of the directly ruled areas into the colonial bureaucracy.
In 1848 the Regeerings Almanak listed all the native Regents of Selayar for the first time.
The Regents of Bonthain and Bulukumba were included in the following year. The
Regent of Bira is given as Baso Daeng Raja.
At the same time that the Dutch were extending their administration on land, they
were able to assert better control of the seas through the use of the new technology of
steamships. The steamship Hekla was first deployed in 1850 against the Tobello pirates
based in Kalatoea, an island off Selayar they had intermittently occupied since the war
between the Dutch and Sultan Nuku of Tidore in the 1790s. A series of patrols over the
next three years managed to create a pax Neerlandica for the first time which proved a
boon to local shipping in the province. One of the first areas to take advantage of these
developments was Selayar. Selayar was also favored by a tremendous boom in copra
production after 1850. By 1860, Selayar had over seventy percent of all coconuts in
South Sulawesi (Heersink, 1995: 108).
Much of the new wealth was used to finance pilgrimages to Mecca. In 1859 a
new ordinance governing the hajj was issued. Every hajji required a certificate from his
Regent that he had sufficient means for the hajj and to maintain the family members left
behind, and every hajji had to pass an examination on his return proving he had actually
visited Mecca. Only then was he allowed to use the title and dress of a hajji. The
examination was abolished in 1902 and the certificate of financial means was abolished
in 1905 on the recommendation of Snouck Hurgronje (Vredenbregt, 1962: 100-103). The
status of hajji thus received official recognition by the colonial government between 1859
and 1902.
In 1863, 40 people made the hajj from Selayar. By 1879, there were 179 hajjis in
Selayar, among whom were 42 women. Not only did Selayar have a disproportionate
share of hajjis within Celebes and Dependencies, but they were largely concentrated in
one regency: of the 179 hajjis in 1879, 111 were from Batangmata. Since family and
commercial ties between Bira and Selayar were close, the new currents of opinion which
were developing in the ‘Jawi’ community in Mecca were not long in reaching Bira.
Liberal and Ethical reforms 1870-1926
Between 1860 and 1870 the extremely profitable policy of forcing Javanese to
cultivate certain cash crops and deliver them at fixed price became the subject of intense
debate in the Netherlands. As the Liberal Party began to win elections and influence
colonial policy, forced cultivation was gradually eliminated and a new philosophy of
fostering private as opposed to state enterprise in the Indies was adopted. The next fifty
years were characterized by a new hegemonic belief in progress for both Dutchmen and
natives, although the nature of that progress was disputed between free-market liberals,
‘ethical’ religious conservatives, and socialists.
The corruption and oppression fostered by the ‘culture system’ among the native
rulers gave rise in this period to increasing criticism of these rulers by the Dutch. A new
generation of colonial officers presented themselves as the defender of the common
people against their own rulers. They began to bypass the hereditary rulers and to train a
new group of native assistants to carry out actual administration. ‘The higher aristocratic
elite of Java was, by 1900, at a low point in prestige, authority and self assurance.’
(Ricklefs, 1981 : 122)
In May, 1863, authority was granted to the Governor of Celebes and
Dependencies to ‘gradually decrease the number of regencies and gelarangships’ in the
area south of Bone (Goedhart [1920] 1933: 140). In November 1864, the Dutch
missionary Matthes made a tour through the area. His observations concerning the
fragmentation of political units and the incompetence of almost all local chiefs with the
exception of Baso Daeng Raja of Bira are typical of the Liberal Period:
[The etymological derivation of their titles] was a question which the people
honored with the titles themselves are unable to answer. After all, this is no
wonder, for the chiefs present there excel in anything but rational ability. There
is, n.b., a Regent of Borong present to whom one must endlessly repeat the
simplest request; and when one then asked him whether he had understood it, it
seemed that he could not give even a faulty account of the meaning of the words.
One cannot form the faintest idea in Holland, nay often even in Java, how much
effort it takes to conduct affairs with such men. (Matthes [1864] in van den Brink
1943: 269)
One month after this trip, the Government began a process of rationalizing and
consolidating units of local government in Bira, which were highly fragmented in this
area. Between 1864 and 1871 all the Konjo villages south of Kajang were placed under
the rule of Baso Daeng Raja, the young Regent who had impressed Matthes so favorably
in 1863. The chiefs of all the former Regencies under him were now given the lesser title
of Gallarrang, including those who had born the superior title of Karaengs from time
immemorial. This caused a good deal of resentment, as the Controleur Goedhart noted
fifty years later:
According to folk tradition, Tiro had a Karaeng before Bira. In view of this it
must be said that the majority of the chiefs and population of the division of Tiro
incorporated by Bira are against the incorporation. (Goedhart [1920] 1933: 141-
142)
It was intended that the Regent of Bira and his assistant, or Sulewatang, would
take over many of the functions of the rulers of the little Regencies that had been
absorbed, and that they would also take over their revenues. The revenues came in the
form of ‘customary payments’, pangadakang, that villagers made to secular and religious
authorities on the occasion of every life-cycle ritual, including birth, circumcision, hair-
cutting, marriage and death; as well as other ritually significant events such as the
launching of a new boat, the harvesting of fields or the payment of religious tithes. The
burden of paying these fees was disseminated throughout the village through a system of
rotating payments called assolo’ according to which the guests at a ritual each made a
cash payment to the host which was carefully reciprocated on a later occasion. The total
collected was then used to defray the costs of the ritual itself and the fees owed to the
officials. Taxation was in this way firmly embedded in the ‘natural’ course of the life
cycle and made to seem as inevitable as death. It bound the villagers closely to their
rulers. In this agriculturally barren area, these fees far out-weighed in importance the
income chiefs received from certain fields earmarked for the benefit of the office holder.
Reporting on the failure of the new system in 1901, Goedhart noted that no salary
had ever been assigned to the Regent or Sulewatang of Bira. They had been forced to try
to appropriate the pangadakang due the village chiefs for themselves.
In the original regency of Bira, this went smoothly; the people there were
accustomed to deliver the pangadakang to their regent, but in the added lands
where the people were also accustomed to pay the pangadakang to their chiefs,
they thought that the galarangs [i.e. those given this title after 1871] had the right
to the levies which previously had been raised on behalf of the regent [i.e. those
who lost this title when incorporated by Bira], to use for his own purposes; they
considered themselves to be the authentic chiefs and as such took the part that
formerly came to the regent; the people also did not understand it differently. If
now the regent of Bira explained that he also had a claim on the part that formerly
came to the regent, it did not help him; only after long insistence and if the regent
of Bira had a tough personality did the galarangs pay over that share. What is
more, the regents of Bira did not restrain themselves from introducing new taxes
or from increasing existing ones. This especially took place with regents who
were impecunious or who had need of a great deal of money for gambling.
(Goedhart [1901] 1933: 223-224)

Baso Daeng Raja was dismissed in 1884 after a critical report by Controleur de
Haes, in which he noted:
that it was remarkable how little influence the chiefs of the old regency of Bira
had in the lands added to it, for the galarangs remained the actual chiefs and
hardly bothered about the Regent and Soelewatang of Bira. (de Haes, 1883 cited
in Goedhart 1933)
The hajj and adat
While tradition seemed to be triumphing in Bira in 1884, Englehard was already
waxing nostalgic about the loss of ‘folk traditions’ in Selayar as a result of the attitudes of
the hajjis:
Among these [traditions] the exclusively Saleijerese national dances by young
maidens of noble status, called pakarena, ought to be mentioned in the first place
...
At the age of 10 to 12 the most beautiful young maidens with the most graceful
figures are chosen to be trained as pakarena. The training takes place in the
evening in the residence of the regent or if fair in front of the house in the open
light. Upon completion of the training, they perform in public, beautiful and very
seductively dressed, if the governing official, or indeed other Europeans or noble
natives bring the regent a request. . . .
As well as the just mentioned dances, they also have the so-called pakarena
boerane, or pakarena badili, which belongs particularly to the regency of Boneya.
It is done by younths of 12-16 years all originating from the glarangship of Loera
near the coast, which formerly belonged to that regency. Armed with a miniature
poke banrangan which must be carried as such they perform various steps
accompanied by the singing of war songs or kelong osong in honor of the
Company. Naturally one could expect nothing else from a worthy descendent of
the former rulers of Gantarang and Boneya, who owed their origin and existence
exclusively to the foreign overlordship. . .
It is alas to be regretted that all these innocent folk entertainments are
disappearing where the hajjis make their influence felt. Returning from the
pilgrimage, they try as much as possible to introduce other habits and customs, as
is clearly the case in the kampong Batamata-bara, with which the above
mentioned amusements are wholly incompatible in their opinion. (Englehard,
1884b: 310-313)
The pakarena was also performed in Ara and Bira.
The liberal government’s reforming zeal was not limited to the consolidation of
administrative units and the incorporation of hereditary chiefs into the state bureaucracy.
In 1878 Governor Tromp (1876-1885) introduced the first effective measures to abolish
slavery (Sutherland, 1983:278-279). He also tried to reform the entire legal system in
1882, to supplant a code which had been promulgated in 1824. In another paper
published in 1884, Englehard doubted whether the new legal code would have any more
success than the 1824 code in supplanting ‘Compendium of Native Laws’ prepared at the
height of VOC rule by Governor van Clootwijk (1751-1756):
As concerns [the 1882 laws], I am no longer in a position to follow their
application on Saleijer. It is however absolutely not premature to say that it will
be a long time, even a very long time, before the chiefs and the people will get
accustomed to them. In spite of the very defective means of control, many of the
new prescriptions, given the present social development of the chiefs and people,
combined with the relationship of the first with the Government, are entirely
impractical, especially in the regencies far distant from the centers of government,
so that total confusion is to be foreseen. They would rather keep to the old
provisions of the instruction of 1755 [the Compendium of Native Laws], which is
not forbidden them for that matter by a single provision. (Englehard, 1884a: 828)
In these extracts from Englehard we can see an early example of Dutch nostalgia
for ‘native traditions’ which were in fact a product of collaboration between local elites
and the VOC in the eighteenth century, and which were reproduced on demand for
Europeans in the nineteenth century. The enemy of these traditions are ‘pan-Islamic’
ideas emanating from Mecca, carried back to local villages by hajjis. The symbolic
opposition he creates between a traditional time of VOC paternalism and the threat of an
Islamic orthodoxy alien to the Indies was to dominate Dutch thinking for the next 65
years.
In 1884, Baso Daeng Raja was replaced as Regent of Bira by his Sulewatang,
Ende Daeng Solong. The latter was a noble from Lemo Lemo who had managed to
reserve all taxes raised in Lemo Lemo for himself. By the end of his appointment as
Sulewatang, these levies were estimated at F600 to F700 a year, twice as much as
Goedhart recommended in 1901. Baso Daeng Raja lived quietly in Bira until 1895 when
he made the hajj to Mecca in the company of the first hajjis from Ara, Daeng Mareha and
his wife, Dg. Nipuji, and son, Dg. Manguling.
Ende Dg. Solong was in turn removed in 1896 and replaced by Makawaru Dg.
Parani (1896-1900). The latter also managed to keep all levies for himself and gave
nothing to his Sulewatang, Borra Dg. Magassing (24/2/1896-1904). In 1900 Andi

Mulia, the son of Baso Daeng Raja, was made Regent of Bira. This followed Goedhart’s
sour estimate of his predecessors in the position.
On the basis of the agreement in national character, basic conditions, means of
livelihood and language, one estimated that within a year the authority of the
Regent then based in Bira would be fully recognized in the territories successively
added to his regency. This hope proved idle. Eleven years after the consolidation
the Controleur at the time, Udo de Haes, reported in his letter of 16 September,
1883 no. 502 that it was remarkable how little influence the chiefs of the old
regency of Bira had in the lands added to it, for the galarangs remained the actual
chiefs and hardly bothered about the Regent and Soelewatang of Bira. Now,
eighteen years later, this report is still valid. (Goedhart [1901] 1933: 223-224)
In this memorandum Goedhart proposed that the Regent and Sulewatang of Bira
be placed on a fixed salary to be paid for out of head taxes, harvest taxes and a subsidy
from the treasury. He suggested a salary of F900 a year for the Regent and F300 a year
for the Sulewatang. Goedhart became Controleur of Kajang in 1902, but it is unclear to
me when his reforms were put into effect. By the 1930s, at any rate, the Gallarrang of
Ara and the Karaeng of Bira were on fixed salaries (Batten, 1938).
The Spirit Cult 1860-1900: Hegemony or Resistance?
At the time To Ebang took over the cult of the royal ancestors at the end of the
nineteenth century, it still served as a major source of legitimation for the local nobility.
To Ebang became the karihatang when she was still a young woman. It was difficult for
me to discover much about her early life. One of her grandsons, Naja, told me that her
parents had died before she was married in about 1900, so that none of her children ever
met knew them. But Naja did know that her father, Raduna, had been a karihatang before
her, as had her brother Parra. This is important because it means that the office has not
always been exclusively female. Baso Marepa, an old man in his eighties, told me that
To Ebang had married the brother of Ganna, the Anrong Tau or chief of the settlement of
Lembanna in Ara.3 Ganna’s daughter Anni had served as To Ebang’s interpreter during
seances. According to Baso Marepa, To Ebang had only been possessed by the spirits of
kings who lived before the coming of Islam. And the principle spirit, the one whose skull
was kept in the caves of Pilia, was Karaeng Mamampang.
One day, a young man known as Muli he took me to a clearing among the caves
of Pilia where dances used to be performed in honor of the ancestors. Scattered about the
clearing in Pilia were the remnants of old offerings, such as plastic plates and bits of
cloth. There was even the remains of a wooden chair that To Ebang’s husband Mangga
had made for her to sit in while possessed. In a cave behind the clearing we found an old
skull and jawbone that might have been those of Karaeng Mamampang. Titi later
explained that the skull of Karaeng Mamampang and that of his wife, Mati’no Daeng
Mate’ne’, used to be kept in a little house built behind her aunt Sollo’s house. As To
Ebang’s eldest daughter, Sollo had inherited the house from her. Each skull was dressed
in a sarong appropriate to its gender. I was later told that the skulls had to be regularly
fed and kept warm.
3 Lembanna means the ‘lowlands’ or ‘seaward’. In the nineteenth century almost
exclusively by commoners and slaves. This was because it was more exposed to attack
by pirates from the sea; it was downhill so that human waste flowed toward it from
Bontona, the upper settlement; and it was to the west, the direction in which ones feet
were supposed to point during sleep.

Titi said the Karaeng’s chair in Pilia is so powerful that no dead leaves ever fall
on it. It is guarded by a male spirit in the form of a cock and a female spirit in the form
of a hen. She described the places where the dancers, the drummers and the players of
gongs used to perform. They said that in the old days, offerings to the ancestors would
be carried in a procession complete with seven dancing maidens carrying parasols and
flowers, youths brandishing spears, and musicians playing gongs, drums, flutes rattles
and oboes. These were the pa’karena dancers who had already drawn criticism from the
hajjis of Selayar in the 1880s (Englehard, 1884b). The reigning Gallarrang would preside
and only those of noble birth could attend. The karihatang would go into trance again
once the procession arrived at the place of the spirit.
The families who controlled the chief political, Islamic and ancestor cult offices
in Ara were all still intermarried and mutually supportive in 1900. It is possible to
reconstruct the close kinship ties existing between many of these office holders in the
four generations born between 1800 and 1900. If we take the Gallarrang of Ara who
ruled in the 1880s, Baso Sikiri, as our focus, we can see how these ties spread out in all
directions. His brother was married to a woman whose father, brother and son all served
as Kali of Ara. The Kali (Arabic qadi) was the highest ranking Islamic official in each
village. The daughter of the last-mentioned Kali was a dancer for the Karihatang. The
Gallarrang’s cousin (MBS) was married to the Karihatang, To Ebang. To Ebang’s father
and brother were both spirit mediums, while her cousin (FZD) was her interpreter.
FIGURE II: THE RULING KINDRED, 1900

The cohesiveness of the control exercised by this kindred over a broad range of
ritual practices indicates a sort of ‘hegemony’ on their part at the village level. It was this
cohesiveness that made it so difficult for both the Dutch and their servants to
bureaucratize ‘local government’ in the nineteenth century. The village nobility can thus
be seen as ‘resisting’ the imposition of a bureaucratic state in the late nineteenth century.
But their local control was also subject to resistance on the part of some commoners at
the time.
Early opposition to the spirit cult, 1890-1910
Opposition, or ‘resistance’, to the spirit cult in Ara goes back at least to the 1890s
when an itinerant goldsmith called Abeng arrived from Selayar. He married a first cousin
of Ganna, the Anrong Tau of Lembanna. Abeng brought with him the Islamic revivalism
that had grown up around Batangmata in the wake of the coconut boom on that island.
When he died in around 1910, Abeng insisted on being buried in an entirely new
graveyard because he regarded all the existing ones as contaminated by heathen practices.
Abeng’s son Gama was not yet married when he died, and so, as with the spirit medium
Raduna, none of his grandchildren knew him. One can only infer that Abeng and Raduna
were on bad terms in the late nineteenth century, given the hostility of their descendants.
In 1914, the Regent of Bira, Andi Mulia left on the hajj, as his father had before
him in 1895. His Sulewatang, Uda Daeng Patunru, became Regent of Bira, and his son,
Nape Daeng Mati’no became Sulewatang. Daeng Patunru seems to have been affected
by reformist currents in Islam even at this early date, for he soon replaced the hereditary
Kali of Bira with a reformer called Ongke. The position of Kali Bira had been hereditary
since the early seventeenth century, and the line of Kalis had been closely intermarried
with the line of Karaeng.
Meanwhile in Ara, Abeng’s son Gama was acquiring a reputation for fierceness.
When Ganna retired as Anrong Tau Lembanna in around 1910, Gallarrang Dg. Makkilo
appointed Gama to replace him. Not long afterward, in 1913, Dg. Makkilo was suddenly
struck down with cholera and died on his fish trap. His brother, Dg. Pagalla, took over as
acting Gallarrang, but was never formally installed. Two years later, the government
ordered elections to be held. Nape Dg. Mati’no, who had become the Sulewatang of Bira
in 1914 when his father became Regent, decided to back Gama, even though Gama was
not from the ranks of the traditional rulers. Running against him was Dg. Pagalla, the
younger brother of the last Gallarrang. Nape Dg. Mati’no knew that Gama was bound to
lose if the elections were held in Ara, so he had them moved to Hila Hila in Tiro. Fifty
men from Ara were deputed to go vote there. Forty-eight voted for Dg. Pagalla, and only
two for Gama. Tonang Dg. Paoha, the Gallarrang of Tiro since 1897, declared Dg.
Pagalla the winner. Dg. Mati’no intervened and said that his vote was worth fifty votes
from Ara and declared Gama elected (see Figure III).
FIGURE III: GAMA GAINS OFFICE

Another man called Akku had married into the family of the Anrong Tau of
Lembanna around 1890 (see Figure IV). He married a sister’s daughter of Ganna and
Mangga. Akku was an alcoholic: the drinking of palm wine was quite prevalent at the
turn of the century. The split within the ruling family of Lembanna came to a head in
1920. One night while very drunk, Akku had gone to stand outside the house of Mangga
and To Ebang. He began shouting that there were parakang about and people better keep
their babies safe indoors. Mangga came out and challenged him, daring him to name the
parakang. Akku lost control and attacked Mangga. Akku’s son Dg. Malaja came to his
father’s rescue and soon relatives of both principles joined in and a general melee ensued.
Hakim’s own father and grandfather were summoned from their fieldhouse high on the
plateau above the village (his grandfather was Akku’s brother-in-law). It was completely
dark and no one could see what was happening or whom they were stabbing with their
daggers and bush knives. When the dust settled Akku had been killed and Pantang Dg.
Malaja had been stabbed in the back but recovered. Another man who was neutral and
had been trying to stop the fight was also killed. Ever since this fight, the descendants of
Akku and Mangga have been on bad terms, although they will greet each other in passing
on the street.
FIGURE IV: AKKU’S FEUD WITH MANGGA

Akku’s son, Pantang Daeng Malaja, was virtually adopted by Uda Daeng
Patunru, who served first as Sulewatang (1904-1914) then as Regent of Bira (1914-1920).
Dg. Malaja was noted for his bravery and toughness. According to his son Pasohuki, Dg.
Malaja served as the chief henchman and tax collector of the Regent of Bira from 1904 to
1919, but for that very reason was able to prevent any of his excesses from harming the
people of Ara.
At about the same time as fight between Akku and Mangga occurred, Pantang Dg.
Malaja’s patrons were removed from office in Bira. Uda Dg. Patunru was fined for
corruption, and his son Nape Dg. Mati’no was exiled to Java for ten years, after having
been accused of torturing suspects. The Regency of Bira was dissolved in 1921, and its
ten constituent villages were placed directly under the Dutch Controleur of Bulukumba,
bringing to an end over fifty years of attempts to consolidate local government in the
area. This might be seen as an example of ‘foot-dragging resistance’ which was
successful in the end.
For many years after he took office, Gama had to face the implacable opposition
of the traditional nobility. They brought a lawsuit against him in the Dutch courts,
claiming he was unqualified for office. By the same decree that dissolved the Regency of
Bira in 1921, Gama was confirmed in office as Gallarrang of Ara and Masalolang was
confirmed as Karaeng of Lemo Lemo. Gama had finally won his case against the old
nobility. He named his third son, born the following year in 1922, Pasauri, from saura,
‘to defeat’. The fourth, born in 1925, he called Patoppoi, from toppo, ‘to surrender’,
because his opponents finally admitted their defeat. There were three more sons, but all
received normal names. Gama never lost his hatred of the local noble families who had
tried to keep them out, and when the local political situation became favorable to the
suppression of the rituals on which they based their claim to hereditary rank, he mounted
an implacable campaign against them based on Islamic principles.
Again, the question may be asked: is Gama’s attempt to rule Ara as a commoner
between 1915 and 1926 an example of one individual’s agency in resisting feudal
hegemony, or is he best seen as a collaborator with the new bureaucratic hegemony of the
colonial state?
Modernism and Conservatism 1926-1989
The requirements of a modern bureaucratic state forced the Dutch to create a class
of educated natives.
In 1928 there were almost a quarter of a million native officials on the state
payroll. To put it another way, 90 per cent of the colonial civil service was
composed of Indonesians, and the state’s functioning would have been impossible
without them. (Anderson, 1990: 98-99)
With the creation of this class the Dutch found themselves in the situation of the
sorcerer’s apprentice. Literate natives now became fair game for every Islamic,
nationalist or communist agitator who could print a newspaper or pamphlet. The Dutch
soon found themselves in the unenviable position of trying to encourage one sort of
‘progress’ while frantically trying to preserve another sort of ‘tradition’.
Before 1920, the only schools in Bulukumba were three-year Volksscholen in
Bulukumba City and in Kajang. The Dutch opened Volksscholen in Bira and Kalumpang
in 1922, and in Ara in 1925. The first teacher in Ara was Ramalan Dg. Pabuka, who had
been trained in Kajang. Instruction was in Malay, which children learned to write in the
Latin alphabet. They were also taught to write Konjo in the traditional lontara script.
Literacy levels in South Sulawesi lagged behind the rest of the Netherlands East
Indies: in the 1920 census it stood at 3.7% of the population, and by 1930 it had
increased only to 4.19%. By comparison, the rate in the Division of Menado in North
Sulawesi was 38.97%, due to the availability there of Christian missionary schools.
Literacy rates for the population as a whole may have remained low, but it became
common enough that a new elite was produced that could quickly pick up on radical
ideas. Modernist Islam, nationalism and socialism penetrated deeply into the countryside
in the 1920s.
The rise of Islamic modernism in Sulawesi 1926-1942
The pioneer of Islamic modernism in South Sulawesi was Haji Abdullah bin
Abdurrahman, who left Maros in 1907 to spend ten years in Mecca. Upon his return he
founded a madrasah in Makassar and in 1923 he founded the organization As-Sirath al-
Mustaqim. In 1926, his organization merged with the Muhammadiyah. The first branch
outside Makassar was formed in Wajo in 1928. By 1932 there were sixteen branches of
the Muhammadiyah in South Sulawesi, and by 1937 there were sixty-six branches
(Alfian, 1969: 465). One of these was set up in Bulukumba, along with a madrasah, or
school. By 1941, there were 7,000 members of the Muhammadiyah in South Sulawesi,
and 30,000 sympathizers (Pelras, 1985: 127).
The Muhammadiyah launched a number of campaigns against ‘feudal’ and
‘superstitious’ practices in the 1920s. Among these was a concerted attack on the
ancestor cult. In Goa, the shrines of the ancestor spirits were known as pantasa’. They
had served as a focus for opposition to the Dutch conquest in 1905-6. When the Dutch
determined that blood sacrifices to the pantasa’ led to new rounds of armed resistance,
Dutch troops began to destroy them. In the 1920s and 1930s pressure from the
Muhammadiyah prevented many households from replacing them (Chabot, 1950: 86-87).
The campaign against ancestor shrines and relics, or gaukang, reached the Konjo
area very quickly. In 1928 the old Karaeng of Kajang died. He was to be succeeded by
his son, Karaeng Yahya Dg. Magassing. The latter had come under the influence of the
Muhammadiyah, however, and refused to take part in the rituals surrounding the gaukang
of Kajang. Karaeng Yahya opened the sacred bundle in which regalia was wrapped and
found the head of a walking stick inside, which he derisively displayed to a gathering of
Kajang’s elders, who were deeply shocked. They reported his actions to the authorities,
and Bapa Dg. Matasa was appointed in his place. The well-known modernist writer
Hamka, who spent two years in Makassar from 1931 to 1933, remarked on this event as
follows:
This deed of Karaeng Jahja had results: the rulers of other areas also got the idea
to open their poesaka, which had been venerated for a long time as idols. Among
them was Karaeng Sultan Saeng Radja of Gantaran, near Bonthain, and many
others: they found heads of walking sticks, a kris, pieces of deer antlers, bamboo,
etc. And most of the rulers became convinced followers of Gods Unity. God be
thanked! (Hamka, 1965-, IX: 248-9, cited in Steenbrink, 1991: 229)
The gaukang of Bira was a little iron buffalo which was kept in a cave where a
spring fed the village bathing pool. It was honored with an annual offering of maize and
other food, following which the pool was drained and cleaned. By the late 1920s the
young men who had been to school had lost their respect for it. Upon resuming office as
Karaeng of Bira in 1931, Andi Mulia had the gaukang bricked up inside the cave. He
told Collins he was afraid the youths might take it out an lose it, but he may also have
been following Karaeng Yahya’s example (Collins, 1936: 142-143).
The gaukang of Tanaberu was a golden bird wrapped in dozens of white cloths.
Perhaps inspired by the example of Karaeng Yahya, a cousin of the Karaeng of Tanaberu
reached inside the bundle, although only the designated leader of the cult was authorized
to do so. He found the golden bird inside and broke off the beak to steal it. In 1989 I was
told that this had brought down a curse on the whole ruling family. The culprit, Dg.
Manais, was struck with leprosy. His cousin, Karaeng Sajuang, was dismissed from
office and sent to prison for the embezzlement of government funds. The gaukang
passed to his nephew Tandi who succeeded him as Karaeng of Tanaberu. Tandi too was
struck by the curse and was indicted for embezzlement. In 1934, a new Karaeng, Patta,
was installed (Batten, 1938).4 He and his successor appointed in 1940, Abdul Fattah,
both seem to have been happy to maintain the ancestor cult in Tanaberu. Abdul Fattah
was an outsider from Jeneponto, but he married a member of Tanaberu’s royal line, and
the gaukang passed into his possession.
The gaukang of Ara was the skull of Karaeng Mamampang. It was around 1930
that Gama began to conduct a serious campaign of repression against the rituals he
viewed as un-Islamic. He climbed right into people’s attics to throw out their palangka
ancestor shrines. But he was unable to destroy the palangka of some of the most
powerful noble families. The palangka of a Gallarrang of Ara who ruled in the late
eighteenth century, Sallung Dg. Masalo (G9), was in the possession of Dg. Elle in 1989.
The palangka of Gallarrang Baso Sikiri, who ruled in the 1880s (G7) still survives in the
house of his DDDD, Lebu. These two palangka represent separate branches of the
traditional ruling families of Ara. As long as they exist, the old dynasties still exist, in
some sense.
The palangka of the karihatang also survived. To Ebang owned a powerful
palangka which was as large as a regular bed. She saved it from Gama by covering it
with a mosquito net and pretending it was no longer being used for ritual purposes. It
was in this bed that Titi was originally possessed, and it still stands in her house, empty
except for the offerings that are periodically laid on it. From this time on, To Ebang had
to be increasingly discreet in her conduct of seances, holding them only in the dead of
4Kr. Patta was closely related to the nobility of Lemo Lemo. His wife’s mother was the
daughter of Dunrung Dg. Riada, Karaeng of Lemo Lemo until 1921, and the cousin of
Masalolang, Karaeng of Lemo Lemo after 1921.

night on the outskirts of the village. Even so, Gama would disguise himself in old clothes
and sneak up on seances, bursting into the room and putting a stop to them.
Dutch conservatism 1926-1942
In 1926, at the same time that the Muhammadiyah was beginning its campaigns
against local ‘superstitions’ in South Sulawesi, communist uprisings broke out in Java
and Sumatra. 13,000 people were arrested, and 4,500 imprisoned. In 1927 Sukarno
formed a new nationalist political party. He brought into one large umbrella organization
a large number of Islamic, Christian and regionalist groups which presented an
unprecedented challenge to the colonial order. In September 1927, Hatta was arrested in
the Netherlands for encouraging armed resistance to Dutch rule in Indonesia. In 1929,
Governor General de Graeff ordered the arrest of Sukarno, releasing him two years later.
The Dutch administration suddenly began to see the hereditary rulers of the Indies
in a new and more favorable light. At least they were not religious fanatics, communists
or revolutionary nationalists. In the immediate aftermath of the communist uprisings and
at the same time as the arrest of the nationalist Hatta, Governor General de Graeff visited
Makassar. There he met with the former crown prince of Goa, Mappanyuki, who
requested the return of certain heirloom jewels and weapons which had been captured by
the Dutch on the battlefield of Pakatto.
In 1929, L.J.J. Caron was appointed Governor of Celebes and Dependencies.
Caron had begun his career as Controleur of Bulukumba in 1907-1908. He later rose to
the position of Resident of Bali and Lombok, where he had taken an interest in local
culture and had founded an institute for the conservation of Balinese and Sasak palm leaf
manuscripts. He continued to pursue these interests upon his return to Sulawesi. Caron
created a new ‘adat community’ of Goa out of the afdeeling which had existed since
1905, and named Mappanyuki as its head. Caron then had the objects Mappanyuki had
requested from the Governor General in 1927 returned.
In order to revive moribund ‘native traditions’, it was deemed necessary to hire
government linguists and ethnologists to collect and codify the ceremonies and laws
under which the traditional rulers had been selected and installed. In 1930 A.A. Cense
was appointed ‘official for the study of Native languages’ in the Celebes. A string of
publications concerning ‘investiture stones’, ‘royal tombs’ and ‘ornaments’ (sc. gaukang)
came out in 1930 and 1931 which had a quite practical purpose despite the apparently
esoteric nature of their subject matter (van Eerde, 1930; Le Roux, 1930; van
Vollenhoven, 1931: 457; Friedericy, 1931). The Dutch were determined to restore the
old dynasties which had once been so loyal to the VOC. Or so they imagined.
One of Cense’s first tasks as ‘official linguist’ in April 1931 was to help organize
and observe the ritual installation of the newly reinstated ‘autonomous ruler’ of Bone,
Mappanyuki, the former pretender to the throne of Goa and the head of the ‘adat
community of Goa’ from 1929 to 1931. No such installation had been performed for
over 150 years, perhaps since the installation of Sultan Ahmad al-Salih in 1775. The
model for the ceremony actually seems to have come from the VOC Governor of
Makassar, van Clootwijk (1751-1756), who installed the Arumpone Jalal al-Din in 1753.
Andi Mulia was reinstated as Karaeng of Bira on 21 November, 1931. He
claimed to Collins in 1936 that he had merely bowed to the will of the people to become
Karaeng again when Daeng Makanyang retired from office in 1931 (Collins, 1937: 133-
140). It is just as likely that his reappointment was part of the same Dutch policy that
brought about the restoration of the Arumpone.

Three weeks after Andi Mulia’s installation Cense was in Kajang, where he wrote
an account of the ceremony used to install the Karaengs of Kajang (Cense, 11-12-1931).
The last installation had taken place in 1928 when Karaeng Yahya was set aside for his
refusal to respect the gaukang. In October, 1936, de Roock sent Cense a collection of
manuscripts from Bira, catalogued as number 274 of the Matthes Institute. The
collection consists of some fifty stem genealogies linking individuals living in the 1880s,
at the time of Engelhard’s researches, to the fifteenth and sixteenth century ancestors
whose exploits are described in the eight stories which follow. These stories constitute a
sort of mythical charter for the internal constitution of Bira, Ara, Tanaberu and Lemo
Lemo, and of their submission to Goa. The manuscript also includes a Konjo translation
of the Compendium of Native Laws commissioned by Governor van Clootwijk in 1755.
Thus at the same time that local rulers like Gama in Ara were trying to suppress
the old royal customs and traditions at the village level, the colonial government was
developing a new interest in them. The same dogged perpetuation of tradition that had
seemed so like resistance on the part of the village nobility to a modernizing colonial
regime between 1860 and 1920 now begins to look more like collaboration with a
conservative colonial regime. And the same persecution of ‘feudal practices’ that had
seemed so like collaboration on the part of officials like Gama between 1915 and 1926
now begins to look like resistance. But men like Gama knew had to trim their sails, and
he and Andi Mulia soon turned to a different strand in the bundle of ritual traditions.
The split in the Islamic movement
Sufi practices like visits to the tombs of Saints and the festive recitation of
religious texts such as the Life of the Prophet by al Barzanji on the feast of Maulid were
strongly condemned by the modernist Muhammadiyah movement. In 1926, however, a

traditionalist Muslim organization, the Nahdatul Ulama was formed in opposition to the
Muhammadiyah, and they strongly supported these practices. The split between the two
groups on the proper observance of the Maulid became official in September, 1930 when
the Nahdatul Ulama decided that standing during the recitation of the Maulid by al
Barzanji was a ‘legally accepted custom which was recommended’, in direct defiance of
Muhammadiyah doctrine (see Collins, 1936 for a colorful account of a recitation in
1935).
In Bira, Andi Mulia affiliated with the Nahdatul Ulama and became a great patron
of Maulid celebrations. In Ara, Gama became a great patron of the cult of the village
Saint, Bakka’ Tera’. Offerings made in his honor took almost an identical form to the
offerings formerly made at the caves of Pilia to Karaeng Mamampang: a procession of
seven maidens and seven youths led by the Gallarrang.
Another campaign launched by the Muhammadiyah was a direct attack on the
pangadakang, the customary payments made to civil and religious officials.
On religious subjects there remained a good cooperation between
Moehammmadijah and the older association [Assirat-Al-Moestakim]. . . Both
organizations fiercely protested in 1926 against the monopoly on the care of the
corpse that the adat priesthood had secured for themselves. According to reports
up to eight guilders had to be paid for these services. In a public gathering of the
Moehammadijah Mansoer Jamani censured this custom. He called it a selling of
the corpse (djoeal majat). The police considered this remark a criminal utterance
because the Pegawai-pegawai Igama Islam had been insulted. (Steenbrink, 1991:
219-220)
It is unlikely that either Gama in Ara or Andi Mulia in Bira would have sided with
the Muhammadiyah on this point, as they were both in a position to profit both from a
government salary as well as from ‘customary payments’. Although the top officials at
the village level had been placed on a salary by the 1930s - Gallarrang Gama’s salary in
1938 was f30 per month (Batten, 1938) - lesser officials continued to received substantial
pangadakang payments at weddings. Muhammad Nasir, the son of Pantang Daeng
Malaja, told me that in the 1930s fees continued to be collected in Ara at hair-cuttings,
weddings and funerals; at barasanji and prayer recitations; at a boy’s first recitation of the
Koran, appatama; and from each visitor to Bakka’ Tera’s grave. Such fees would be
shared out the following proportions: 5 parts to the Gallarrang and Kali, 3 parts to the
heads of the three Kampong, 1 part to the Khatib and 1 part to the Doja, a mosque
official.
Gama would have drawn the line, however, at payments for non-Islamic customs.
Above we saw how the religious functionaries, called sjarat, were criticized for
their high fees upon deaths. . . The sjarat was also frequently accused of activities
which were not in agreement with Islamic teachings on the oneness of God’s
being. This had reference to rituals carried out in connection with pre-Islamic
holy things such as the worshipping of unusual places such as the posi tana, navel
of the earth, the taking account of the uses of good and bad days, respect for
traditional valuables of the nobles, holy places such as springs, and the offering of
water buffalo on behalf of the well-being of a territory ([Muchson, 1983: 19-20;
Nooteboom 1937: 7-8], cited in Steenbrink, 1991: 223).
In 1932, the Assistant Resident of Bonthain wrote as follows:

The chiefs of the political communities are also chiefs of the religion; from old
times the secular and religious authority was united in the chiefs. Islam brought
almost no change in this until recently, only in recent times has a change come
about due to the actions taken by the Moehammadijah association, with its central
leadership directing it from Java. Also the lesser chiefs observe the recent
changes with regret because Moehammadijah acts against the ancient and high
religious adat taxes, which are not in keeping with Koranic prescriptions.
Moehammadijah thus causes the chiefs considerable monetary injury, which is
enough and especially in these times of crisis suffices for the association to be
condemned by them. (Assistant-Resident of Bonthain Boterhoven de Haan, 1932:
12 in Steenbrink, 1991: 223)
It was one thing for the Muhammadiyah to attack ‘pre-Islamic’ rituals. It was quite
another to attack the bread and butter of the village notables.
Colonial end-game, 1945-1950
The Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945, and Dutch officials soon attempted
to reestablish colonial authority. The Indonesian nationalists declared independence on
17 August, 1945. The Arumpone so ceremoniously installed under the observant eye of
Cense in 1931, Andi Mappanyuki, declared for the Republic, thus ensuring himself a
place in the ranks of National Heros, Pahlawan Nasional. He was arrested on 8
November, 1946 and replaced by Andi Pabbenteng, grandson of Arumpone La Pawawoi
(r. 1895-1905). The total number of traditional rulers from kampong chiefs to rajas
replaced by the Dutch in this period range from one quarter to one half. Of those
removed, about half were killed, 40 per cent were imprisoned, and the rest went into
agriculture or commerce (Harvey, 1974: 158).

The Dutch ceded Java and Sumatra to the nationalists after heavy fighting in
November, 1946. They then tried to set up a ‘United States of Indonesia’ under their
control, of which Negara Indonesia Timor (NIT) ‘State of East Indonesia’ was to be a
part with its capital in Ujung Pandang. All the old kingdoms were to be restored, and
even the areas like Bulukumba which the Dutch had theoretically had under their direct
rule since 1667 were to be recreated as ‘Neo-lands’, also known as ‘fictional lands’. For
example, Ara was made one of fourteen adat communities in the Neo-land of
Bulukumba. Bulukumba was then to exist on the same basis as the old centralized
kingdoms of Bone or Goa, with a governing council, or hadat and a chairman, or ketua,
chosen from a list of three names by the President of the NIT (Schiller, 1955).
Resistance to this plan in South Sulawesi was fierce. In December, 1946 the
Dutch began an all-out ‘pacification’ campaign under General Westerling during which
thousands were killed or imprisoned. The Republicans claimed that 40,000 were killed,
and this figure is still taught to school children as historical truth. The Dutch admitted
only to 2,000. In any event, there was great bitterness toward the Dutch all over South
Sulawesi (Harvey, 1974: 128).
The way in which the pacification campaign was carried out in the countryside
also involved Indonesians in the responsibility for the killings. The most usual
technique seems to have been to assemble all the villagers in a central area, and to
ask them to point out the "extremists" in the group. Those so designated were
shot on the spot. If no information was volunteered, several villagers would be
chosen at random and shot. (Harvey, 1974: 167)
Not surprisingly, these methods left a number of scores to settle throughout the province.
The Dutch also made some efforts to win over the ‘hearts and minds’ of the
population. Between 1947 and 1949 they sent about 3,000 pilgrims a year to Mecca from
the ‘State of East Indonesia’ (Vredenbregt, 1962: 109-110). No one had made the hajj
from Ara since 1895. In 1948, Daeng Parani was selected to go from Ara. He was the
son of Kali Baso Dg. Siahing and had been serving as Gama’s Sulewatang. The next
year, 1949, Gama was selected to go, along with the Karaeng of Lemo Lemo,
Masalolang, and the Karaeng of Kajang, Bapa Dg. Matasa (1928-1949). It was Bapa Dg.
Matasa who had replaced the Muhammadiyah sympathizer, Kr. Yahya, in 1928. He was
also selected to be the Ketua Hadat of the whole of the Neo-land of Bulukumba.
Gama clearly had aspirations toward acceptance by the local nobility. Toward the
end he required people to address him as Opu, the title of a noble ruler in Selayar,
implying that his father Abeng had in fact been of the noble class. In the 1940s he
married his son, Patoppoi (b.1925), to Hasanang, a follower of the royal ancestor cult of
Tanaberu. Hasanang’s third cousin, Nanro Daeng, was a dancer in the cult, and the
latter’s father, Dg. Mangelo, was its leader at the time. Both Dg. Mangelo and Nanro
Daeng lived in Ara. Nanro Daeng was also the sister of Hakim’s mother-in-law. In fact,
Hakim’s wife had contributed to the cult until control of it passed from Dg. Mangelo to
Haji Sanusi in the 1970s.
Gama’s son, Patoppoi, was an informant of mine. He became quite a devotee of
this cult. His son, Arifin, is now married to the daughter of Dg. Taleban, the woman in
whose house the gaukang are stored.

FIGURE V: GAMA AND THE CULT OF TO KAMBANG
With his acceptance of a free trip to Mecca and the marriage of his son to a central
member of a royal ancestor cult, Haji Gama brought his career to a successful conclusion.
He also marked himself out as an astute collaborator prepared to use the whatever
hegemony was prevailing for his own purposes.
Revolutionary nationalism 1950-1967
The NIT scheme soon unraveled, in part under U.S. pressure on the Dutch, and
the whole of the Netherlands East Indies except for Irian Jaya had joined the Republic by
1950. Beginning in late 1949, the Bugis and Makassar guerrillas who had been fighting
the Dutch in Java began to return to South Sulawesi and to form themselves into local
battalions. With independence in sight, the question arose of what to do with these
irregulars under the new Republic of Indonesia. Many were untrained and uneducated
and the professional officer corps was reluctant to admit them into the regular army. In
June, 1950 Kahar Muzakkar was sent from Java to Makassar to help resolve this
‘guerrilla question’. Muzakkar fully expected that his men would be inducted into the
regular army and that he would be put in command in South Sulawesi. They soon felt
they were being passed over as an untrained rabble. Muzakkar withdrew to the bush
almost as soon as he arrived, and engaged in a long series of inconclusive negotiations
with the authorities until August, 1953 when he declared his support for the Negara Islam
Indonesia (Islamic State of Indonesia, NII), also known as Darul Islam.
The ideology the movement advocated combined a rigid form of religious
Modernism together with an extreme 'anti-feudalism'. Strict sharia law was introduced in
areas under guerrilla control, sufism and the spirit cults were suppressed, and all symbols
of social ranking were excised from life-cycle rituals. After 1953, the guerrillas gained
control of much of the countryside, including all of Bulukumba except for the city proper.
All over South Sulawesi, village officials and school teachers fled to the cities for
protection. Local officials who stayed behind, including Haji Gama in Ara and Nape Dg.
Mati’no in Bira, were executed.
The Darul Islam forces organized a provisional government in the area. It
instigated an even more thorough-going series of social reforms than had Gama. All
bridewealth greater than the Koranic minimum of a 125 rupiah was banned, as were the
elaborate feasts, dances and decorations that accompanied weddings. When Hakim
returned from Bawakaraeng to marry Andi Sutra Daeng Kebo in 1958, there was no
ceremony aside from the signing of the nikah contract. The tomb of Bakka’ Tera’ and its
enclosure were torn down and replaced by a simple marker. All processions to it were
banned.
Government control over the countryside was slowly restored after 1960. In
1961, the old Gallarrang, Gama’s son Padulungi, returned from Bulukumba City and
served briefly as head of Ara again. Abdul Hakim was appointed village secretary. In
1967 elections were held for a new village chief. Dg. Pasau's younger brother, Haji
Mustari was elected. He was a firm believer in the principles of the Muhammadiyah and
a member of the government-approved Islamic Party. Although the extremism of the
Darul Islam movement had been defeated, the modernist ideas that lay at its core
acquired a new hegemony.
The New Order 1971-1989
In 1971 President Suharto formed a party, GOLKAR, to fight the national
elections. Haji Mustari refused to join Golkar and was removed from office. He was
replaced by his brother, Dg. Pasau, who had fewer scruples. It is from this point that a
new revival of local ‘culture’, kebudayaan, began again all across Indonesia, with the
explicit support of Suharto’s New Order. Suharto’s policy of embracing a sanitized
version of custom and tradition is reminiscent of the Dutch revival of the old noble
realms in the 1920s and 1930s as a buttress against the revolutionary forces of Islamic
modernism and nationalism. Many village leaders were able to rationalize all sorts of
rituals relating to non-Islamic spirits as an expression of local kebudayaan, culture, or, at
worst, kepercayaan, superstition. As such, they were not antagonistic to agama, religion,
but simply a politically and religiously neutral display of local color. For others, like
Hakim, elaborate marriage rituals intended to assert high rank are acceptable while the
invocation of ancestor and nature spirits is definitely not.
In the early 1980s he married his eldest child, Nurhadi, to Drs. Mustari. Not only
is Mustari from a very high ranking family in the neighboring village of Caramming, he
has a BA degree from IKIP. Mustari is a particularly devout Modernist Muslim, and
prays in the mosque several times a day. Soon after Nurhadi's marriage, Hakim married
his second oldest daughter, Nirnayadi, to Kudrat, a Bugis car mechanic from Bulukumba.
His oldest son, Ahmad Mahliadi, married the daughter of a local farmer in 1988 just
before I arrived. Hakim said he spent three million rupiah on this wedding, or $1,700,
more than twice what a high school teacher with a B.A. degree earns in a year. This
wedding stood in marked contrast to his own minimal wedding thirty years earlier, which
involved the payment of just Rp 125 in mahar and the signing of the nikah contract. It is
a good example of how moribund rituals have been revived in the past twenty years.
Toward the end of my last visit, I asked Hakim why both the Darul Islam
movement and the Dompe Army had failed. He commented philosophically that they
had each tried to ignore or to abolish one of the two fundamental bases of South Sulawesi
society: social hierarchy and Islam. He now saw that both were too deeply entrenched to
be overthrown by revolutionary means. The same week Denni told me that she and Titi
were planning to make the Hajj later in the year. They thought that perhaps once they
had been to Mecca, the spirits might not come back to haunt Titi anymore.
Conclusion
Hegemony and resistance should not be viewed as a thesis and its logical
opposite, but rather as a pair of contraries (cf. Colletti, 1975), not as A and not-A, but as
A and B. All societies contain a heterogeneous range of practices, both ritual and
‘everyday’ which generate contrary models of the political order. Which one is in a
position of ‘hegemony’ and which is in a position of ‘resistance’ depends on the balance
of forces at any point in time. Further, social knowledge is never entirely local: the
globalization of culture is a process which has been going on for millennia, as is
especially obvious in the case of the ‘world religions’ and most of all in the case of Islam.
Local struggles always have at their disposal ideologies developed in distant times and
places with which to challenge the ideology that is currently dominant. It is thus in the
interest of rulers to isolate subalterns from these broader currents.5
Domination and resistance is always a dialectic of global and local forces. These
are relative terms. The same group which may be trying to impose its hegemony on a
local area may be carrying on resistance against the attempts of a more global elite to
impose its hegemony on them. Thus the modernist Muslims of Ara may be said to have
achieved a fair measure of hegemony at the village level between 1930 and 1965, while
at the same time carrying out both legal and illegal resistance against the Dutch, Japanese
and Republican states. And those who are resisting local elites may at the same time be
carrying on a collaboration with more global elites. Hence the coincidence of interest in
royal cults on the part of To Ebang and Dutch ethnographers in the 1930s, and of Titi and
Suharto’s New Order in the 1980s.
In conclusion, I want to draw out some of the implications of this material for
current debates on ‘hegemony’, ‘resistance’ and ‘domination’. Most of these debates
seem to me to ignore the local-global dialectic I have described here, and to remain
firmly focused on micro-sociological analysis. But the main form of domination in the
world today is capitalism, and capitalism is a global project which has been striving to
penetrate every portion of the globe for several centuries. In this drive there was an
initial period of ‘primitive accumulation’ when resources were simply extracted from the
periphery (colonialism). Resistance took the form of military conflict when non-
5See Gibson, 1994, for a fuller account of this argument.

capitalist states were still able to challenge European armies in this way. This was true in
Asia, at least on land, well into the eighteenth century.
This period was followed by one in which the core economies imposed direct
political domination on peripheral societies in order to restructure them on capitalist lines
(imperialism). Among other transformations, this required the introduction of new
technologies of power/knowledge such as printing, mass education and the creation of
competitive individual subjects. Almost as soon as these technologies were introduced,
however, they provoked the formation of global currents of resistance. Pan-Islamic
awareness developed in the eastern Mediterranean and northern India in response to the
struggle between Britain and France for world hegemony between 1780 and 1815. Pan-
Asian awareness developed in eastern Asia in response to Japan’s successful
industrialization and militarization after 1860. International socialist awareness
developed throughout the world in response to the First World War and the Bolshevik
revolution.
By the late 1920s colonial governments everywhere were profoundly concerned
by the globalist threats posed by Islamic, nationalist and/or communist ‘agitation’. In the
face of these threats, the ruling classes in the core countries had to develop new
ideologies to legitimate their rule. In the nineteenth century, the main audiences for this
ideology were the populations of the core countries themselves. For these audience,
scientific racism served well. In the twentieth century, empire had to be legitimated to
the native bureaucrats who staffed the colonial states. For these audiences, racism had to
be abandoned and replaced with an ideology which would both seal them off from global
currents of opinion and promise continued economic and political development. The
ideology that developed in the 1930s valorized ‘traditional local cultures and morals’;
denigrated Islamic, communist and nationalist revolution; and promised future
‘modernization’ and ‘development’. Anthropological theory in Britain and the
Netherlands played a key role in developing this new ideology.
The Second World War put an end to the attempt to delay nationalist forces, but
Islamic and communist movements could still be ‘contained’ if nationalist elites could be
persuaded to collaborate. As the U.S. acquired global hegemony, American
anthropological theory took up where colonial anthropology left off. Concepts such as
‘peasant society’, ‘local knowledge’ and even ‘everyday forms of peasant resistance’ may
all be traced back to the American confrontation with international communism,
particularly in Southeast Asia (cf. Mitchell, 1990). Even liberal writers like Scott and
Geertz found Leninism and Islamism so repugnant they edited them out of their
descriptions of village life in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia (Scott, 1985; Geertz,
passim). This may be true of anthropologists more generally: we recognize as true
resistance only those acts indicative of values we share. Ultimately, these are the values
of the French Revolution: individual liberty, gender and class equality, social solidarity.
Resistance to the global capitalist system is more likely than not, however, to take forms
deeply disturbing to our own values.
The epigraph from Levi-Strauss quoted at the beginning of this paper is preceded
by the following comment:
I am prepared to grant that the contemporary Frenchman must believe in this
myth [of the French revolution] in order to fully play the part of an historical
agent . . . This truth is a matter of context, and if we place ourselves outside it - as
the man of science is bound to do - what appeared as an experienced truth
becomes confused and finally disappears altogether. The so-called men of the
Left still cling to a period of contemporary history which bestowed the blessing of
congruence between practical imperatives and schemes of interpretation. Perhaps
this golden age of historical consciousness has already passed; and that this
eventuality can at any rate be envisaged proves what we have here is only a
contingent context like the fortuitous ‘focusing of an optical instrument when its
object-glass and eye-piece move in relation to each other. (Levi-Strauss, 1966:
254)
References
Acciaioli, G. 1989. Searching for good fortune. Ph.D. Thesis, Australian National
University.
Alfian. 1969. Islamic modernism in Indonesian politics. Ph.D. Thesis, University of
Wisconsin.
Anderson, B. 1990. Old state, new society. In his Language and Power. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Batten, R. 1938. Aanvullende memorie van overgave van de onderafdeeling
Boeloekoemba. KIT Indonesia (SE-20, 115A) Memories van overgave Dab.2
Fiche No. 449.
Bowen, J. 1992. On scriptural essentialism and ritual variation. American Ethnologist 19
(4): 656-671.
---- 1993. Muslims Through Discourse. Princeton : Princeton University Press.
van den Brink, H. 1943. Dr. Benjamin Frederik Matthes. Amsterdam: Nederlandsch
Bijbelgenootschap.
Cense, A.A. 2-4-1931. De inhuldinging van den Aroempone te Watampone op 2 April
1931. Typescript, KITLV OR 545 (10-A).

---- 11-12-1931 De Patoentoengs in het Bergland van Kadjang. Typescript, KITLV OR
545 (14 A-F).
Chabot, H. 1950. Verwantschap, Stand en Sexe in Zuid-Celebes.Groningen: J.B.
Wolters.
Colletti, L. 1975. Marxism and the Dialectic. New Left Review 93: 3-29.
Collins, G. 1936. East Monsoon. London: Jonathan Cape.
---- 1937. Makassar Sailing. London: Jonathan Cape.
van Eerde, J.1930. Investituur-Steenen in Zuid-Celebes. Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk
Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap 47 (5): 813-826.
Englehard, H. 1884a. De staatkundige en economische toestand van het eiland Saleyer.
Indische Gids I: 519-544, 817-843; II: 134-152, 306-319, 470-486, 613-640.
---- 1884b. Mededeelingen over het eiland Saleijer. BKI 8: 263-510.
Errington, S.1989. Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Friedericy, H. 1931. De Gowasche Vorstengraven, de Gowasche Huldigingssteenen en de
Gowasche Ornamenten. Koloniaal Tijdschrift 20: 630-634.
Gibson, T. 1994. Ritual and revolution. Social Analysis 35: 61-83
Goedhart, O. [1901] 1933. De pangadakang in Bira. Adatrechtbundels 36: 222-243.
---- [1920] 1933. De inlandsche rectgemeenschappen in de Onderafdeeling
Boeloekoemba. Adatrechtsbundels 36: 133-154.
de Haes, U. 1883. Letter of 16 September cited in Goedhart [1901] 1933.
Hamka.1965-. Tafsir al Azhar Jakarta: Panji Masyarakat. (Cited in Steenbrink, 1991:
229)
Harvey, B. 1974. Tradition, Islam and rebellion: south Sulawesi 1950-1965. Ph.D.
Thesis, Cornell University.
Heersink, C. 1995. The Green Gold of Selayar. Ph.D. Thesis, Vrije Universiteit te
Amsterdam.
Le Roux, C. 1930. De Rijksvlaggen van Bone. Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en
Volkenkunde 70: 205-226.
Levi-Strauss, C. 1966. The Savage Mind. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Matthes, B. [1864] 1943. Verslag van een uitstapje naara de Ooster-districten van
Celebes. In van den Brink 1943: 242-282.
Mitchell, T. 1990. The invention and reinvention of the Egyptian peasant. International
Journal of Middle East Studies 22: 129-150.
Noer, D. 1973. The Modernist Muslim Movement in Indonesia, 1900-1942. Singapore:
Oxford University Press.
Pelras, C. 1985. Religion, tradition and the dynamics of Islamization in South Sulawesi.
Archipel 29: 107-136.
Pemberton, J. 1994. On the Subject of “Java”. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Ricklefs, M. 1981. a History of Modern Indonesia. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Robinson, F. 1993. Technology and religious change: Islam and the impact of print.
Modern Asian Studies 27 (1): 229-251.
Schiller, A. 1955. The Formation of Federal Indonesia. The Hague: van Hoeve.
Scott, J. 1985. Weapons of the Weak. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Steenbrink, K. 1991. Hamka en de nadere islamisering van Makassar. In (eds) H. Poeze
and P. Schoorl Excursies in Celebes. Leiden: KITLV Press.

Sutherland, H. 1983. Slavery and the slave trade in South Sulawesi 1660s-1800s. In
(ed)A. Reid Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia. New York: St.
Martin’s Press.
van Vollenhoven, C. 1931. Het Adatrecht van Nederlandsch-Indië Vol II. Leiden: E.J.
Brill.
Vredenbregt, J. 1962. The Haddj. BKI 118: 91-154.

1996 Reactionary Resistance Sisterhood V PDF

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Descrizione originale:

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

1996 Reactionary Resistance Sisterhood V PDF

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

REACTIONARY RESISTANCE:

SISTERHOOD VS. BROTHERHOOD IN INDONESIA∗

Thomas Gibson, University of Rochester

Rough draft: not to be quoted or cited without written permission

as the latter has already done. (Levi-Strauss, 1960: 254)

In this paper, I describe an example of ‘resistance’ by a ‘sisterhood’ to the

‘hegemonic values’ of a ‘brotherhood’ in a village in Indonesia. This resistance takes the

the present, and individual autonomy in thought and practice.

∗ Presented in a conference on Poverty, The Politics of Marginality and Cultures of

Resistance held at the London School of Economics, 27-29 September, 1996.

a barrier to capitalist progress. And today’s hegemony was yesterday’s resistance:

‘culture’ as a bulwark against socialist and Islamic ‘agitators’.

system and are at the margins of the new.

guide to diagnosing political struggles in which we are not directly involved.

HEGEMONY AND RESISTANCE TODAY

neighboring villages drew me into them on many occasions.

normal round of interviews and participant observation conducted in Bahasa Indonesia, I

Guggenheim Foundation. Library research in the Netherlands was made possible by a

Senior Fellowship from the Fulbright Commission.

and diachronic analyses.

unofficial, heterodox version emerge.

for their legitimacy, however.

Abdul Hakim and the hegemony of modernism

elementary education. Most of the employees of the Department of Education and

College in Ujung Pandang (IKIP), or from the Universitas Hasanuddin. In 1958 he

much influenced by the modernist positions of the Muhammadiyah movement, without

being formal members. Modernist Islam stresses the responsibility of individuals to

and overindulgence in non-canonical spiritual practices. The latter is seen as a distraction

these respects it is sharply opposed to traditional methods of acquiring Islamic

commentary, and by laboriously hand-copying the texts themselves (Robinson, 1993).

Modernist Islam is thus part and parcel of modernity more generally: it

presupposes the capitalist institutions of an individualizing market place; the mass

individualistic, egalitarian in principle, and oriented to achievement. The guerrillas of the

hereditary ascription of rank and the inheritance of high office characteristic of

Makassarese and Bugis society.

esoteric mystical knowledge acquired through ascesis.

Mysticism, known as tarekat after the Sufi path to enlightenment, was a

a famous Minangkebau radio preacher in Makassar. A particularly striking example of

Knowledge and gender

Erang Kabura’neang, ‘The Burden of Men’

The most frequently sought form of mystical knowledge is invulnerability magic,

Hakim’s son-in-law, Mustari, told me of a brother-in-law of his in Tana Beru who is so

Erang Kabahineang, ‘The Burden of Women’

more vulnerable to penetration.

At first, I only got hints of another conception of mystical knowledge existed in

served as a barrier against mystical influences.

merchandise. She would therefore be difficult to meet.

grandmother To Ebang’. Already I began to sense the complexities of an institution in

substitute for the dead kings of the past.

still without having met the elusive Titi.

Demma Dg. Puga

house, so he tried to find me an intermediary. At last I was taken to visit Demma by a

seashells, and folded paper.

many men uncomfortable, including myself, but always seemed to be accepted as a

‘temporary husbands’, but no one permanent.

inside his body, but no one used the term in Ara.

Titi Dg. Toje

But both were gentle and refined in speech and gesture.

Karaeng Makkilong; Bakka’ Tera’, ‘The Great Belcher’, a son-in-law of Karaeng

Mediums and magicians

hard and invulnerable, and will father boys.

The experience of possession is a kind of penetration, normally of female bodies