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The Javanese Kijaji: the Changing Role of a Cultural Broker

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Clifford Geertz
Clifford Geertz
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

One of the most serious problems facing the post-revolutionary Indonesian political élite has turned out to be the maintenance of mutual understanding between themselves and the mass of the peasant population. The attempt to build up a modern national state out of a plurality of distinct regional cultures has been hampered by the difficulty of communication between people still largely absorbed in those cultures and the metropolitan-based nationalist leadership more oriented to the international patterns of intelligentsia culture common to ruling groups in all the new Bandung countries. On the one hand, the activist white-collar nationalists of the large cities are attempting to construct an integrated Indonesian state along generally western parliamentary lines; on the other, the peasants of the Javanese, Sundanese, Achenese, Buginese, etc. culture areas cling to the patterns of local community organization and belief with which they are intimately familiar.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , January 1960 , pp. 228 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1960

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References

1 For the concept of levels of socio-cultural integration, see Steward, J., Theory of Culture Change (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1955), chap. 3.Google Scholar

2 See REdfield, R., Peasant Society and Culture (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, III., 1956), esp. chap. 3.Google Scholar

3 These concepts were first set forth in Marriott, McKim, “Little Communities in an Indigenous Civilization”, pp. 171–222Google Scholar, in Marriottt, McKim, (ed.), Village India, Memoir No. 83, The American Anthropological Association, 06, 1955Google Scholar.

4 Redfield, op. tit., pp. 101–2.

5 Wolf, Eric, “Aspects of Group Relations in a Complex Society”, American Anthropologist, Vol. 88, No. 6 (12. 1956), pp. 1065–1078.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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9 For pasisir culture, see Pigeaud, T., Javaanse Volksvertoningen (Batavia, 1938).Google Scholar

10 Ibid., and Burger, D. H., “Structural Changes in Javanese Society: the Supra-Village Sphere”, authorized translation by Palmier, Leslie H., Modern Indonesia Project (Cornell University, Ithaca, 1956), pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

11 The term “kijaji” is also still used to refer to heirlooms - spears, krisses, etc. - which are considered to possess magical power.

12 Although “we already hear in the oldest legends concerning the penetration of Islam into the East Indies something of Mecca as a center-point of the Mohammedan world and of the hadjis as industrious preachers of the Prophet's message.” (Hurgronje, C.Snouck, “De Hadji-Politiek der Indische Regeering,” in his Verspreide Geschriften, deel IV, Schroeder, Bonn and Leipzig, 1924, pp. 173–199)Google Scholar, it was not until the first half of the nineteenth century that the difficulties of the long sea voyage were reduced enough so that rapidly increasing numbers of individuals dared the journey. By 1852–58 about 2000 a year were going; by about 1900, 7300 (ibid.).

13 Hurgronje, C.Snouck, Mekka in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century(transl. Monahan, J. H.) (Brill, Leyden, 1931), p. 243.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 231.

15 Djajadiningrat, Pangeran Aria Achmad, Herinneringen van Pangeran Aria Achmed Djajadiningrat, (G. Kolff, Amsterdam and Batavia, 1936), p. 155.Google Scholar For a similar, but more sympathetic, discussion, for Sumatra, see Hamka, Ajah Ku, Widjaja (Djakarta, 1950).Google Scholar

16 Santri in addition to referring to a pesantren student, is used of any very pious Moslem, as opposed to abangan, which refers to any “lax”, less puristic individual. For a further discussion of these terms and the differences in religious belief and practice associated with them, see Geertz, Clifford, The Religion of Java, in press (Free Press, Glencoe, III.).Google Scholar

17 Djajadiningrat, op. cit., p. 21.

18 Snouck Hurgronje remarks that in the commercial coffee areas at the end of the nineteenth century, great numbers of santris were at work in the gardens, to such a degree, in fact, “that they sometimes pay less attention to their studies than they do to the coffee.” Hurgronje, C.Snouck, “Brieven van een Wedono-pensioen,” in Verspreide Geschriften, deel IV, p. 178.Google Scholar

19 Djajadiningrat, op. cit., p. 22.

20 “It was brought to my attention recently that although only 30 % of trading and manufacturing enterprises are in Indonesian hands (the rest being in Chinese or European hands), most of these Indonesians are products of a pesantren education, because formerly the religious schools (unlike the Dutch-founded government schools) did not train clerks in the schoolroom.” Arifin, M., The Renovation of Elementary Education in Indonesia (Djakarta, 1953), unpublished manuscript, by the head of the education section of the Indonesian Ministery of Religion.Google Scholar

21 Pentjak can also be performed as a fighting dance; thus an art form rather than genuine combat.

22 Op. cit., p. 21.

23 Javanese Moslems all follow the Shafi'i school of legal interpretation.

24 Cf. Hurgronje as quoted in Kern, R. A., De Islam in Indonesie (Van Hoeve, 's-Gravenhage, 1947), p. 92.Google Scholar

25 See, in this connection, Drewes, G. W. J., Drie Javaansche Goeroes, Hun Leven, Onderricht en Messiasprediking (Leiden, 1925).Google Scholar

26 Sukarno, , Surat Islam Dari Endeh (Persatoean Islam, Bandoeng, 1937).Google Scholar These letters, written by Sukarno from a Dutch prison camp in which he was at the time incarcerated, to T. A. Hasan, a leader of the modernist Islamic Union (Persatoean Islam) in Bandung, provide perhaps the clearest, most succint statement of the intelligentsia criticism of kijaji Islam.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 For Abduh, see Gibb, H. A. R., Modern Trends in Islam (University of Chicago Press, 1947).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 von Grunebaum, G. E., Islam, Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition, Memoir no. 81, The American Anthropological Association, 1955, p. s.Google Scholar

32 Hurgronje, C. Snouck, Mekka in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, p. 248.Google Scholar

33 For the Dar Ul Islam movement, see van Nieuwenhuijze, C. A. O., “The Dar Ul Islam Movement in Western Java,” Pacific Affairs, 1950, 23, 169–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also, Kahin, George McT., Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1952), pp. 327 ffGoogle Scholar. The Dar Ul Islam movement continues operative, and has since spread to south Celebes and, sporadically, to Acheh in North Sumatra.

34 For a general review of the intellectual background of the Negara Islam idea, see Ahmad, Z. A., Konsepsi Negara Islam (N. V. Alma'arif, Bandung, 2nd ed., 1952)Google Scholar. For a more general discussion by an important Moslem politician, see Anshary, M. Isa, Falsafah Perdjuangan Islam (Saiful, Medan, 1951), pp. 196–260Google Scholar, and especially the essay in the same volume by Moh. Natsir, “Agama dan Negara,” pp. 261”285, although this latter is a rather modernist analysis.

35 See Kahin, op. cit., for a history of the pre-war nationalist movement, pp. 64–100. For an example of a political split over the role of the kijajis, see p. 94.

36 The following description of party structure and functioning is based on a field study carried out during 1953–54, in a town-village complex in Eastern Java, but in its major outlines it should hold for most of the island. The study - the so-called –Modjokuto Study” - was carried out by six anthropologists and a sociologist under the auspices of the center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A summary report is in the process of preparation.

37 A third way by means of which the urban leadership reaches the peasant rank-and-file is through mosque sermons given on Friday noon. In theory, political comment within the mosque is banned, but many mosques, particularly those in pesantrens, are in NU hands, and politics and religion are mixed in much the same way as they are in the mass rallies and prayer meetings.

38 See above, note 31.