A Historiography of Violence and the Secular State in Indonesia: Tuanku Imam Bondjol and the Uses of History pdf

Tuanku Imam Bondjol and the Uses of History 997 In the 1910s and 1920s, colonial West Sumatra was a world turned upside down. For Minangkabau it was not unreasonable to believe that the day of reckon- ing, foretold in the Qur’an, was imminent. In smaller villages, the conflict between reformist and traditionalist religious leaders had proved divisive; in separate mosques and prayer houses, doomsayers awaited Judgment Day and final arbitra- tion. 5 This religious factionalism was particularly significant for the nagari—the Minangkabau autonomous village republics” whose ideal composition included 16 a single prayer house. Two decades of social and bureaucratic intervention had transformed the nagari, and in 1914 the Nagari Ordinance formally reorganized local authority. Dutch-sanctioned headmen, panghulu, administered taxes through a new nagari council. Its mollifying nod to tradition and restoration fooled nobody (Oki 1977, 82—91). Less visibly, dogmatic disputes began to cleave families. Uncles, nephews, fathers, and sons were set against one another in their allegiance to particular ideological groupings—traditionalist, reformist, and so forth. With both religious authority divided and the traditional leaders corrupted, the sacred pillars of Minangkabau society were teetering precariously. This social uncertainty made the figure of Tuanku Imam Bondjol, whose life was a tale of missteps, reversals, and disillusionment, appealing and familiar. West Sumatra was unusual in that the most factious debates took place in small villages, many of them with local printing presses. Politics and modernity” did not originate in the provincial capital. As villages fractured, so, too, were the urban centers caught up in the pergerakan and movements of political and social awakening. In the hill town of Padang Panjang, the famous modernist Thawalib schools became the loci of a form of intellectualized Islamic communism. Disaf- fected civil servants in Silungkang allied with Ombilin coal mine workers, and in the final hours of 1926, a communist uprising broke out in the nearby industrial town of Sawahlunto (Nasution 1981, 83—91). The period following the communist Silungkang uprising brought increased Dutch surveillance and repression to West Sumatra. The dynamic years of move- ment and intellectual strife were coming to an end in the Minangkabau high- lands, as they were in the rest of the Indies. In 1930 the ulama were united one last time, in successful opposition to the colonial Guru Ordinance.” This was a revision of a law that had been in place in Java and Madura since 1905, requiring any would-be Islamic teacher to obtain permission from a district chief before speaking publicly (Abdullah 1971, 110—13). And in fact, there was a final flare of political activity in Minangkabau in the early 1930s. New parties 15 On the religious schisms, see Zaim Rais (2001). Literature on the period has been dominated by Muhammadiyah-influenced Minangkabau (particularly Hamka and Mahmud Yunus), who charac- terize the traditionalists as superstitious bumpkins. In pedagogical techniques and political net- works, the traditionalists were no less sophisticated or modern” than the reformists. 16 The nagari comprises five fundamental institutions: It must have a road (berlebuh), bathing place (bertapian), meeting hall (berbalai), mosque (bermesjid), and field or square (bergelenggang) (Sanggoeno di Radjo 1919, 96).