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Abstract
A common theme that emerges in the history of modern Indonesia is the perpetuation of a political tension between centralist projects of national unity, and devolutionist tendencies expressed as regionalism and assertive cultural identity politics among local (adat) communities across the archipelago. The state territorial imperative combined with a sustained impetus, indeed obsession, with economic development is characteristic of both colonial and ‘post’-colonial governments in Indonesia. Although typically promulgated ‘for and on behalf of the people’ these ideological strategies have often worked to deny the legitimacy of customary or adat land law in contemporary Indonesian society. The present climate of reform and decentralisation has fostered widespread local aspirations for the recognition and acknowledgement of customary land rights and the assertion of indigenous claims to local resources and land; this paper offers some historical reflections on these processes.
I am grateful for the insightful criticisms of two anonymous reviewers and editorial guidance from Kathy Robinson.
Notes
1. See Anderson (Citation1990), in his studies of the ancient cultural heritage of Indonesian and particularly Javanese centripetal conceptions of power and the role of the ruler who personifies the unity of the traditional polity over and against the threat of diffusionist and regionalist tendencies.
2. Scott makes a similar point, observing that ‘the utopian, immanent, and continually frustrated goal of the modern state is to reduce the chaotic, disorderly, constantly changing social reality beneath it to something more closely resembling the administrative grid of its observations’ (1998, p. 82).
3. That said, from the late nineteenth century, the legal alienation of adat land by non-natives was significantly restricted by these measures (Fitzpatrick 1997, p. 175), a reflection of the genuine policy struggle within the Netherlands Indies government to pursue a consistent colonial administration of their subject peoples.
4. See, for example, the first of van Vollenhoven's eventual three-volume study, Het Adatrecht van Nederlandsch-Indië (Adat law of Dutch East Indies, Citation1918).
5. First articulated by the leading colonial administrator of his day, Snouck Hurgronje in 1893 (Haveman Citation2002, p. 5) and defined here as living law comprising an uncodified body of rules or operational principles.
6. Hooker (1978, p. 1) notes that these divisions substantially formed the basis of the provinces (Propinsi) of independent Indonesia.
7. As part of this process the colonial regime also recognised the existence and status of what it termed ‘indigenous tribes’ (inheemsche volksstammen) (Persoon 1998, p. 287).
8. It is noteworthy, however, that adat law and the administration of justice in terms of local adat principles continued for many years at the village level and was even legally recognised in 1935 (Haveman 2002, p. 16). The application of adat criminal law in village jurisdictions continued to be formally recognised until 1958 and is still considered by some to be applicable in Indonesia although the issue, like much of Indonesian law, generally remains legally ambiguous (Haveman 2002, pp. 19, 32).
9. A clause evidently deriving from the earlier Dutch efforts to develop the pluralist legal system incorporating adat or customary rights.
10. Suharto stepped down in 1998 but the New Order continued into 1999 under President J Habibie.
11. Schulte Nordholt suggests that most observers of the New Order period view it as an authoritarian interventionist developmental state (2003, p. 555).
12. Support for the so-called dual function (Dwi Fungsi) of the defence forces, which encouraged their active intervention in civil society and provided an important coercive support to government.
13. The intrusive prescriptions of the New Order state extended to authorised versions of religious belief and practice. Under the ideology of ‘Pancasila’, the requirement for a belief in one God only permitted the acceptance of five official religions (agama): Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Indigenous animistic beliefs were denied recognition, and their practices and rituals tended to be reclassified and devalued into secularised and aestheticised forms of customary practice and cultural performance (adat and kebudayaan).
14. The New Order development programme known as Inpres Desa Tertinggal (IDT), referring to villages ‘left behind’, was an exemplar of this state spatial formulation of modernisation and progress.
15. The consensus here had more to do with inter-sectoral government planning than any systematic consultative agreements with local populations (McCarthy 2000, p. 94).
16. Laws designed to adjust and reconfirm functional forest categories and other categories of land use in the light of forest conversion changed settlement patterns and improved land capability information. In practice, however, the original boundaries of the reserve lands remain largely in place.
17. This includes up to 15 per cent of designated nature reserves, 25 per cent of production forest areas, and fully 60 per cent of conversion forest areas.
18. Officially Undang Undang No. 22, No. 25 1999, and subsequently modified under Law 32/2004 covering arrangements for local decentralisation.
19. This involves some 66,000 villages across the nation.
20. Although frequently reported by government as solely ethnic, religious, or inter-communal conflict (TAPOL 2002, p. 10).
21. The Forestry Department (Departemen Kehutanan), for example, has to a significant degree resisted attempts to devolve its authority and control over the national forest reserve estate.
22. Estimated to comprise around 15 per cent of the 360 or so formal local districts in Indonesia as of 2003. Since then the proliferation of district formation known as the policy of pemekeran have substantially increased the number of districts (Kabupaten) especially in the ‘outer’ islands of Indonesia in what might be construed, in part at least, as a strategy of divide and rule by a still muscular political centre of Indonesia.
23. On average, Indonesian regions generated only 7 per cent of their budget revenues in 2002 through local taxes (Schulte Nordholt 2003, p. 567).
24. An example is the recent destruction of protected forest areas in Riau province (Sumatra) largely by local people reclaiming traditional lands and converting them to oil-palm plantations for the attractive economic benefits. Potter and Badcock observe that this process reflects the ‘complete breakdown of forest regulations which had previously restrained people's understandable desire to claim back their lands’ (Citation2001, p. 17). (See also Casson & Obidzinski (2002) for ‘illegal’ logging practices in Kalimantan.)