PROJECT OF INDIES NATIONHOOD
[Colonialists] are not as oblivious to the facts of Muslim history as are our naive and good-hearted intelligentsia, nor are they as dumb as our brilliant rulers. They base their colonialism on comprehensive and detailed studies of the resources and foundations [of] the people they colonize. Their major goal, however, is to annihilate the seeds of resistance . . . Orientalism emerged on this basis as well. It emerged in order to assist imperialism from a scientific point of view and in order to lay down its roots in the mental landscape. But we, alas, worship the orientalists stupidly, and we naively think that they are monks of learning and knowledge and that they [have] distanced
themselves from their crusading origins.
(Sayyid Qut.b in his Marakat al-isla¯m wa al-rasma¯l¯ıya [The Battle Between Islam and Capitalism, 1951: 98]
as cited by Abu-Rabi [1996: 124])
In this chapter I wish to explore how the Dutch began, under the umbrella of the Ethical Policy, to plant deeper civilizational roots in the Jawi mental landscape. Yet this project, with its implicit creation of a
definably Indies society, had particularly national implications among those Jawa who collaborated with Dutch rule, and especially those who read the Malay newspapers that were beginning to proliferate in the archipelago.
Advisers and collaborators
The creation of the colony of the Netherlands Indies was an ongoing process throughout the nineteenth century. By the 1890s the shape of that entity was becoming clearer with the archipelago bound to more direct rule from Batavia; one currency, the guilder; and a single anxiety about Islam as a force with the potential to undo the entire edifice.
Alongside the clear advantage that Dutch power enjoyed in terms of military technology and speed of communications – whether by road, rail, telegraph or steamship – the
Figure 7 The administrators of Cianjur (Bintang Hindia vol. 2 no. 19, p. 203)
inter-communal divisions between the Jawa and the collaboration of their elites remained crucial to the continuance of that power with its much vaunted ‘peace and order’ (rust en orde). Moreover as the Dutch maintained an extremely small physical presence in their colonies, the need to make use of local knowledge was always pressing.1 Thus the Dutch attempted to ‘know’ the lands of the Jawa by the extensive use of indigenous aristocracies and informants.
In Java in particular the Dutch had long appropriated existing priyayi networks to which they attached a body of European ‘advisers’. (This structure is well-illustrated in fig. 7.) A Dutch Resident would thus
‘advise’his ‘younger brother’the Regent (Bupati), who was also assisted by his own Chief Minister (Patih). From the 1880s this advice took the form of command. Meanwhile the priyayi were deprived of their hereditary rights to levy labour and maintain large bodies of retainers and were henceforth reduced to being the lower cogs of a bureaucracy that spanned the whole colony (Steinberg 1987: 195).
Although now effectively in authority, the Dutch still relied heavily on the advice of the Bupati whose knowledge of local custom was assumed to exceed by far that of his political masters. Below the Resident and Bupati were a number of districts overseen directly by a few Assistant- Residents who coordinated the local Heads (Wedono) and their Dutch counterparts, the Controleurs and Aspirant-Controleurs. The Wedonos in turn supervised a number of indigenous sub-officials (Mantri) and clerks (Magang), to maintain networks of police, informers, spies, and runners.
In short they were the day-to-day interface between rule by decree and local knowledge. However their effectiveness in controlling crime often rested on symbiotic agreements between village heads (kepala desa) and local strong-men (jago/preman) (Sartono 1966: 134–39). Schulte Nordholt and van Till (1999: 65–66) furthermore point out that there was often ‘no clear distinction’ between police spies and these jago until the Indies police force was modernized (and Europeanized) from 1905. And what knowledge did filter back up to the Dutch and their local protégés was usually targeted to serve very personal aims in the form of
promotions, emoluments, or vendettas. As Sartono Kartodirdjo (1966:
90) observed, the duality of this system – Dutch and native – ‘brought about an ambivalent system of administration’.
At the top of the native hierarchy, the Bupati was, as we have seen, responsible for stamping all passes of intending pilgrims to Mecca and again on their return. In the 1870s the Bupati of Cilacap ensured that practically no-one in his district was able to secure such a pass
(Steenbrink 1993: 80). Below the Bupati, the many Wedono and Magang
maintained a watchful eye for acts of subversion – particularly in the guise of Islam as represented by the ubiquitous hadjis and priesters who were excluded from their company. In 1873, Holle had made a
recommendation to the Governor General urging that no hadji be appointed in the government service. Without Holle ever knowing it, the Governor General of the day had accordingly determined to apply the principle without making it an official government order (Steenbrink 1993: 79 n. 8). This is not to say that Indies officials could not make the H. ajj, but to do so brought frowns from the Dutch ‘elder brothers’
concerned by any manifestation of ‘religious fervour’ (godsdienstijver) (see Sartono 1966: 89–90). Hence many native officials attempting to connect with their own ‘Arab’ faith were at pains to distance themselves from the overt influence of the ulama¯. Some made the H. ajj in their retirement, and even remained occasionally embarrassed apologists for Dutch rule in Mecca (see Snouck Hurgronje 1931: 246). In so doing they removed themselves further, and thus also the colonial authorities, from the local knowledge their masters required.
Further, as the custodians of Islamic knowledge and ritual practice, the ulama¯ remained financially independent, as the economic basis of their institutions, founded in the support of the local populace, drew no revenue from the Government. Thus the ulama¯ remained effectively outside the colonial system of knowledge. At the lowest end of the official spectrum it even seems that some clerks more often kept local ulama¯ informed of colonial plans rather than reporting their
teachers’activities to their superiors (Sartono 1966: 96).
Although the Dutch had tried to incorporate Islam through the official post of the Penghulu, whose salary was funded by the Office for Native and Arab Affairs, and the formation, in 1882, of the so-called ‘Priests’
courts’ (Priesterraden), there remained a gap in colonial knowledge of the power of the ulama¯ – and more especially the S. uf¯ı orders. The shortcomings of this¯ system were exposed by the Banten Jihad of 1888, which both Dutch officials and their local allies failed to anticipate. In an outpouring of various grievances, the parochial chapters of the
Qa¯dir¯ıya wa Naqshband¯ıya order were able to act as a channel for the massacre of the officials of Ciligon – both Dutch and native (see Sartono 1966; Djajadiningrat 1936: 38–50, 215–17, 232–35; van Bruinessen 1992: 92). They had also been able to coordinate the collection of weapons, amulets from Mecca, and white clothing for the Jihad;
activities that seemed to belie the official policy of maintaining ‘a watchful eye’ on Muslims. Indeed one observer was stunned that all this activity had gone unnoticed by system with its countless ‘village-leaders,
passers-by, record-keepers, vaccinators, clerks, assistant-wedonos, wedonos etc.’ (‘S’ 1890: 52–53). Following a harsh government crackdown, the fear of the hadjis and priesters galvanized the Dutch public of Java and once again calls were made for restriction of the H. ajj (Sartono 1966: 269–94). It was thus in this renewed state of colonial fear that Snouck Hurgronje was again called upon to study Islam in a local context and devise a solution to the ‘Islam question’.
Snouck Hurgronje arrived in the Indies, ten months after the Banten Jihad, on 11 May 1889, having spent two weeks in the Straits Settlements where he offered to travel to Aceh and resume his dual- existence as Abd al-Ghaffa¯r. After staying in Batavia with his friend, the Advisor for Indies Languages, J.L.A. Brandes (1857–1905), Snouck Hurgronje travelled throughout West and Central Java in order to familiarize himself with his new field of operations. This was with the ultimate aim of producing a monograph study of Islam on Java (van Ronkel 1942; Drewes 1957: 12). In this way Orientalist scholarship was engaged in the Indies, as it had been in the Hijaz, to gain a window on local knowledge of Islam as experienced by the Jawa.
K.F. Holle (1829–1896)
Snouck Hurgronje was not the first Dutchman called upon to provide an in-depth knowledge of local Islam in the service of colonial power. In this he was preceded by the largely self-taught Karel Frederik Holle and the acknowledged expert on ‘Native Languages and Mohammedan Law’
L.W.C. van den Berg. However, during his tenure in the Indies (1869–
87) van den Berg concentrated his attentions primarily on the immigrant Hadrami population. Van den Berg and Snouck Hurgronje also had a poisonous relationship, which was manifested in their respective articles and which nearly took them to the courts. It is of little surprise to see then that Snouck gravitated to Holle, whose advice to the Colonial Government van den Berg had often belittled (Laffan 2002).
Yet this was not simply a case of a shared enemy. A reading of Tom van den Berge’s recent biography of Holle shows that he and Snouck Hurgronje had similar ideas on how the Islamic question should be handled in the Indies, and indeed on how the natives of the archipelago were to be annexed ‘spiritually’ by The Netherlands (see van den Berge 1998). Indeed Holle might well have served as a model for Snouck Hurgronje who also formed extensive connections – including two (consecutive) marriages – with the Sundanese elite of the Priangan.
Certainly Snouck Hurgronje, who commenced correspondence with
Holle in 1885, was full of praise for his ‘missionary zeal’ (van Koningsveld 1985a: 48–49).
Holle had arrived in Java as a boy in 1844 where his father established a tea plantation near Buitenzorg (in the Priangan) and acted as the
administrator of Bolang. At the age of seventeen Holle joined the Government service and in his activities as a public official is said to have developed a sympathy for his ‘brown brothers’ (Bintang Hindia, vol. 2, no. 5, 1904). Holle later inherited his father’s holdings in the Priangan, married locally (like many Dutchmen of that time), and devoted much of his time to the study of Sundanese, even campaigning for the development and use of a Sundanese alphabet, based on
Javanese. This latter project was his attempt to unseat the place of the widely used Arabic script which he feared enabled Sundanese to be drawn to a foreign, and dangerous, religious radicalism emanating from the Middle East.
Despite his paranoia, like Snouck Hurgronje, Holle was a Muslim in that he manifested the outward signs of this faith for a native audience. His adopted name was Said Mohamad Ben Holle, and a photo taken in 1870 shows him wearing a fez (Nieuwenhuys 1982b: 51–55). This conversion was a result of his long and close relationship with his brother-in-law, Raden Hadji Moehamad Moesa (1822–86). The latter served as the Penghulu and Bupati of Garut, and later as the Chief Penghulu of Limbangan. According to a belated eulogy in Bintang Hindia (vol. 2, no.
5, 1904):
This highly placed native [Moesa] had spent his youth in Mecca and was a very able priest and man of extraordinary influence.
Both Holle and the Chief Penghulu learned a great deal from each other. Through Holle’s influence the priest began to understand that the duty of justice to the poor had to be fulfilled and he propagated this modern understanding in turn among the elites; whilst Holle gained a heightened conception [of Islam]
through the medium of Mohammadan doctrine.
In 1871 Holle was appointed as an Honorary Adviser on Native Affairs to the Colonial Government where he continued to be an advocate for the Sundanese. Behind the scenes he continued to draw the elites of the Priangan away from a foreign Islam that he saw as hostile to both indigenous culture and Dutch rule (Steenbrink 1993: 78–85; van den Berge 1998). In 1873, he and Moesa travelled to Singapore to gauge the reaction there to pan-Islam and the recently commenced war in Aceh.
There he formed the opinion that it was the returned pilgrims who were importing a new current of religious bigotry in Java.
Holle’s hostility to political Islam was manifested in his official recommendations. As I have noted above, it was Holle’s advice to the Governor General as a result of his trip to Singapore that ensured that higher public office was out of reach to any Jawi seeking to connect with the Islam of the Hijaz. And when news of the alleged Meccan plot of 1881 became known to him, he bypassed official channels by communicating directly with Kruijt in Jeddah and Read in Singapore (see Mrs. 1881, nos. 259, 518, and 519). Then in June of that year he provided a detailed assessment of the dangers of the Islamic press abroad and the H. ajj (Mr. 1881, no. 978). His advice to the Colonial
Government became increasingly strident, and L.W.C. van den Berg – in a long report – countered his ‘well-intentioned colleague’ stating that ‘in every Arab he sees an enemy, in every hadjie a scoundrel, and in every Arabic or Arabic-script book a seditious tract’ (Mr. 1881, no. 978; cf.
Steenbrink 1984: 54). To a degree this was true, but what Holle truly feared was fanaticism of any kind. Indeed he was quite familiar with a large number of hajis, including his own brother-in-law Moesa.
Ironically though another of his early protégés who had already made the H. ajj as a boy, and who even became a distinguished alim¯ , would be elevated in the colonial service by Holle’s successor Snouck Hurgronje.
This was Hasan Moestapa of Garut (H. asan Mus.t.afa¯ Q¯aru¯t., 1852–
1940).
Hasan Moestapa
As I have noted above, it was not possible for colonial scholarship to function without drawing on the local knowledge of key informants. In the Hijaz that role was played by Raden Aboe Bakar Djajadiningrat. In the case of Snouck Hurgronje that earlier Hijazi relationship facilitated in part a connection with Hasan Moestapa, whose local knowledge of the Priangan and the bila¯d al-ja¯wa would add to Dutch colonial
knowledge of both his Sundanese homeland and Aceh, where he was later stationed (see fig. 8).
Snouck Hurgronje had first met Hasan Moestapa in Mecca and Aboe Bakar describes him in his Tara¯jim. Around 1886, Hasan Moestapa returned
Figure 8 Hasan Moestapa and an Acehnese (Or. 12.288 CSH I.17)
to West Java when his father stopped financing his stay in the Holy Land (van Ronkel 1942: 315). He then arrived in Garut to take up a salaried position of penghulu at a pesantren close by the principal mosque of the
town. It is more than likely that this appointment had been recommended by Holle.
According to Ajip Rosidi (Solomon 1986: 13), Hasan Moestapa had caught Holle’s eye in the 1870s and he had attempted to persuade the latter’s father to send him to the local school. It is also likely that he had hoped the young Sundanese would not travel to Mecca as he had claimed in his official dispatches that Bantenese society was rapidly changing and taking on West Asian dress and custom. Hasan Moestapa
nonetheless made the pilgrimage a second time, but his elite heritage still kept him bound closely to Dutch power – much as Holle had hoped.
Following Snouck Hurgronje’s arrival in Garut on 18 July 1889, Hasan Moestapa accompanied him on his tour of West Java (van Ronkel 1942:
315–16). On this journey he also provided Snouck Hurgronje with a list of the ulama¯ of West Java, apparently noting their ‘specialties,
teachers, heirs apparent, places of origin, [and] relatives’ (van Ronkel 1942: 316). Essentially this was the Sundanese adjunct to Aboe Bakar’s Tara¯jim, showing where the roots struck in Mecca penetrated in the Priangan; an image reinforced through the other accounts given to Snouck Hurgronje by the native officials and ulama¯ he interviewed on his journey. Moreover, Hasan Moestapa helped provide Snouck
Hurgronje with an understanding of Java itself. This is apparent in the letters Snouck Hurgronje wrote to the Dutch-Indies press (‘Letters from a pensioned Wedono’) and in his work on Aceh.
Hasan Moestapa was later appointed to the unenviable post of Chief Penghulu of Kota Raja in 1893, assumedly because of his previous contact with the Acehnese ulama¯ in Mecca. In this capacity, which only lasted until 1895, Hasan Moestapa enjoyed a measure of trust from prominent Acehnese, including Teuku Uma, a lukewarm ally of the Dutch until his ‘defection’ the following year (Snouck Hurgronje 1906:
I, xiii). Thereafter Hasan Moestapa took up the same post in Bandung following the resignation of his colleague Raden Hadji Moehamad Nasir.
There he served until 1918 becoming a well known, if somewhat eccentric, alim¯ and writer in his native Sundanese (Kern 1946: viii;
Kartini 1985: 21).
Informants and local knowledge: orientalists as interpreters
The examples of Aboe Bakar, Hasan Moestapa, and Raden Moehamad Moesa show clearly the dual life that some elite ulama¯ led – being connected both to the colonial and to the spiritual metropoles. Yet one
should also be cautious in assuming that such informants
unquestioningly surrendered all information at their disposal to their patrons or, more especially, to those officials who enforced governance at the ground level. As Bayly (1996: 6), speaking of India, explains:
[I]nformants were inevitably drawn from the very communities which the Western powers sought to dominate. Even if they served their alien masters loyally they moved in realms of life and thought which they wished to keep hidden from the rulers.
The basic fear of the colonial official or settler was,
consequently, his lack of indigenous knowledge and ignorance of the ‘wiles of the natives’
Yet Snouck Hurgronje, like Holle, was an exception who claimed to know his subjects ‘inside-out’ and far better than the local officials and their so-called ‘native friends’ (Kommers 1996: 111). Not only did he devote his time to the exhaustive study of the Indies, its peoples and religious traditions, he lived a double life within their ‘realms of life and thought’ as his alter-ego Abd al-Ghaffa¯r. Apart from van Koningsveld’s investigations, little attention has been given to Snouck Hurgronje’s marital relationships, but his highly born partners most certainly provided influential connections within the Priangan. In this regard Snouck Hurgronje and Holle’s situation also mirrors the influence of elite women on some of the most successful British Orientalists in India (Bayly 1996: 91–94) once again illustrating the vital role played by local knowledge in informing colonial scholarship. Nonetheless, for the Dutch, local knowledge of Islam did not reside solely with the Jawa.
Another source of information on the practice of Islam in the bila¯d al- j¯awa was the many Hadramis who had long lived among them.
Said Oesman and the Hadramis
Snouck Hurgronje claimed in his correspondence with Nöldeke that there was seldom a day that had passed since his arrival on which he did not speak Arabic with the local Hadramis (van Koningsveld 1985a: 61).
Snouck Hurgronje’s fluency was confirmed by Achmad Djajadiningrat (1936: 78), who once observed him in conversation with the eminent Said Oesman (see fig. 9).
Good relations with the Arabs of the Indies were important and Said Oesman was a powerful ally. Born in the Arab quarter of Batavia in 1822, Said Oesman went to Mecca to pursue his studies with Abd al- Gha¯n¯ı B¯ıma¯ and a young Ah.mad bin Zayn¯ı Dah.la¯n. After