Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation by Elizabeth Pisani Page A
Authors: Elizabeth Pisani
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four hours a day fetching water up from the valleys below, but more defendable than villages on the plains. To this day Loli can’t stand Weyewa, Lamboya hates Ede, nobody likes Kodi. The smallest event can spark a conflict; in 1998 dozens were hacked to death and hundreds displaced when a complaint about favouritism in the civil service exams exploded into a full-blown clan war. Nowadays the outbursts are smaller but regular. As I headed up to Kodi on my motorbike one day, I got a text from Doctor Fajar: ‘5 corpses in Kodi. Because of elopement, apparently. Watch out for a war.’
I didn’t see any corpses that day, but I didn’t doubt they existed. In an attempt to reduce these fatal outbursts, the local government has banned machetes in town and at many traditional ceremonies too, with exceptions made for tribal elders. The banner at the airport reminded us that under Law 12 of 1951, carrying a sharp weapon without a licence could land you in jail for ten years. That law was made in Jakarta, by a parliament trying to put out fires lit during the five-year guerrilla war against the Dutch. It was a law for a modern, unified state, a state in which people no longer have to defend themselves against headhunting neighbours or wild animals.
Picturesque as the machetes are, arguing against restricting them is a bit like arguing against gun control in the United States. Yes, lethal weapons were a foundational part of the national culture in the US, when pioneers hunted wild animals and fought native tribes. But they are hardly necessary now that we hunt in the supermarket and expand our territory in courts of law. Machetes have far, far more uses than guns do, of course; most of Mama Bobo’s sons and grandsons used their weapons daily without ever, to my knowledge or hers, hacking someone to pieces. But over time, modern life erodes even the legitimate uses that still make machetes indispensable in rural Sumba. In most of Indonesia, disembowelling animals after ritual sacrifice is not a common pastime. And even in Sumba’s biggest city Waingapu and the modern part of Waikabubak, people have found other tools to do the job of the household machete. Pencil sharpeners, for example. Abattoirs.
Indonesia’s diversity is not just geographic and cultural; different groups are essentially living at different points in human history, all at the same time. In the early twenty-first century, some parts of the country are hyper-modern. In other areas, people spend their days much as their ancestors would have done. Often, more-or-less ancient and relatively modern coexist in the same space; farmers get to their rice-field on a motorbike, villagers film a ritual sacrifice on their mobile phones.
In Waikabubak, where modernity has dragged its feet, the two extremes are only now beginning to bump up against one another. But the aspirations of young people in a modern economy have been clashing with the demands of family and traditions in other parts of the country for nearly a century. Indeed the first modern Indonesian novel, Marah Rusli’s Sitti Nurbaya , deals with exactly this tension. It was published in 1922.
This presents the nation’s leaders with a headache. If ancient and modern Indonesia coexist, which should they make laws for?
When I was preparing to go back to Indonesia in 2011, I came across photographs I had taken in Sumba during my first visit, two decades previously. I scanned them onto my iPad, and, in a moment of rainy idleness on a veranda near the south coast, I showed them to Lexi, the young man I was chatting with. Lexi was taken as much with the iPad as with the photos, swiping between images just for the fun of it. He swiped up a photo of a small boy in a primary school uniform and a warrior’s head-dress, holding on to his pony and staring straight at the camera. The child exuded defiance. ‘So small but so fierce,’ I said. Lexi agreed. ‘He’s got that “don’t mess with me” look, like our
I didn’t see any corpses that day, but I didn’t doubt they existed. In an attempt to reduce these fatal outbursts, the local government has banned machetes in town and at many traditional ceremonies too, with exceptions made for tribal elders. The banner at the airport reminded us that under Law 12 of 1951, carrying a sharp weapon without a licence could land you in jail for ten years. That law was made in Jakarta, by a parliament trying to put out fires lit during the five-year guerrilla war against the Dutch. It was a law for a modern, unified state, a state in which people no longer have to defend themselves against headhunting neighbours or wild animals.
Picturesque as the machetes are, arguing against restricting them is a bit like arguing against gun control in the United States. Yes, lethal weapons were a foundational part of the national culture in the US, when pioneers hunted wild animals and fought native tribes. But they are hardly necessary now that we hunt in the supermarket and expand our territory in courts of law. Machetes have far, far more uses than guns do, of course; most of Mama Bobo’s sons and grandsons used their weapons daily without ever, to my knowledge or hers, hacking someone to pieces. But over time, modern life erodes even the legitimate uses that still make machetes indispensable in rural Sumba. In most of Indonesia, disembowelling animals after ritual sacrifice is not a common pastime. And even in Sumba’s biggest city Waingapu and the modern part of Waikabubak, people have found other tools to do the job of the household machete. Pencil sharpeners, for example. Abattoirs.
Indonesia’s diversity is not just geographic and cultural; different groups are essentially living at different points in human history, all at the same time. In the early twenty-first century, some parts of the country are hyper-modern. In other areas, people spend their days much as their ancestors would have done. Often, more-or-less ancient and relatively modern coexist in the same space; farmers get to their rice-field on a motorbike, villagers film a ritual sacrifice on their mobile phones.
In Waikabubak, where modernity has dragged its feet, the two extremes are only now beginning to bump up against one another. But the aspirations of young people in a modern economy have been clashing with the demands of family and traditions in other parts of the country for nearly a century. Indeed the first modern Indonesian novel, Marah Rusli’s Sitti Nurbaya , deals with exactly this tension. It was published in 1922.
This presents the nation’s leaders with a headache. If ancient and modern Indonesia coexist, which should they make laws for?
When I was preparing to go back to Indonesia in 2011, I came across photographs I had taken in Sumba during my first visit, two decades previously. I scanned them onto my iPad, and, in a moment of rainy idleness on a veranda near the south coast, I showed them to Lexi, the young man I was chatting with. Lexi was taken as much with the iPad as with the photos, swiping between images just for the fun of it. He swiped up a photo of a small boy in a primary school uniform and a warrior’s head-dress, holding on to his pony and staring straight at the camera. The child exuded defiance. ‘So small but so fierce,’ I said. Lexi agreed. ‘He’s got that “don’t mess with me” look, like our
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