EVALUATING THE PRRI REBELLION AS A WEST SUMATRAN PEASANT MOVEMENT Kevin W. Fogg Albukhary Foundation Fellow in the History of Islam in Southeast Asia at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.*) [email protected]. ABSTRACT This paper examines the following questions: Had the peasants understood the vision of the leadership, would they still have participated in the revolt? Was the swift reluctance towards active military participation the result of a better understanding of the rebellion’s aims as espoused by the core leadership? Are the Minangkabau peasantry prone to future profanations of great tradition narratives? By way of using various sources, the writer tries to trace the PRRI Rebellion in the light of grass-root perspective as it is reflected in the eye of interviewee given Om Fahmi’s description, that believed that the Minang will continue to protest against the imperialism of Jakarta until this state of affairs appeared. Keywords: PRRI rebellion, peasant movement, revolt ABSTRACT Artikel ini berupaya untuk menjawab pertanyaan berikut: apakah para petani paham dengan pandangan para pemimpin mereka?, apakah mereka masih akan tetap ikut terlibat dalam pemberontakan? Apakah sikap lekas curiga terhadap keterlibatan militer aktif merupakan bentuk pengertian yang lebih baik tentang tujuan pemberontakan seperti yang dipahami dan didukung oleh kepemimpinan inti mereka? Apakah petani Minangkabau cenderung menolak borok masa depan dalam narasi tradisi besar. Dengan menggunakan pelbagai sumber penulis coba melacak pemberontakan PRRI dari sudut pandang akar- rumput (petani) sebagaimana tercermin di mata orang yang diwawancarai seperti dikemukakan lewat deskripsi Om Fahmi yang percaya bahwa orang Minang akan tetap melakukan protes melawan imperialism Jakarta selama keadaan yang ditentang di masa pemberontakan itu masih tetap ada. Kata Kunci: Pemberontakan PRRI, pergerakan kaum petani, protes *) This paper was first prepared in 2006, and no attempt has been made to bring it fully up to date for this publication. The author’s thanks go to James C. Scott, Michael Dove, and Mestika Zed for their input. 160 TINGKAP Vol. XI No. 2 Th. 2015 A. Introduction In the twenty-first century, Bagindo PRRI rebellion of 1958 to gain a Fahmi lived a fairly quiet life in a popular following among the cement house behind the Taman Minangkabau such that it was able to Budaya (Cultural Park – the local sustain a guerilla war for several performing arts complex) in Padang, years? Furthermore, how was the West Sumatra, Indonesia. He popular inspiration and understanding watched his grandchildren enter high of this conflict different from other school, and welcomed the few people Minangkabau rebellions that who stopped by, either to chat or to preceded it? To answer these use the pay phone that his wife questions, this paper will first give a administered to keep up some income. brief analysis of three previous In February 1958, however, Om rebellions in the Minangkabau region: Fahmi was at the head of a line of the Padri Wars (1821-1838), the Tax students rallying to the cry of the Rebellion of 1908, and the Revolutionary Government of the Communist uprising of 1927. Republic of Indonesia (Pemerintah Bearing in mind the tradition of these Revolusioner Republik Indonesia, rebellions, it will be possible to PRRI). He presented a petition to the evaluate the nature of popular support PRRI leaders with over ten thousand for the PRRI. Finally, it will be student signatures, he alleged, calling possible to evaluate to what extent for the military and civilian leaders the PRRI rebellion deviated from gathered in Padang to revolt against previous revolts and whether or not it the central government. Not only did can be classified as a peasant Om Fahmi and his fellow students rebellion. support the rebellion, but the support of the vast majority of citizens in B. A Survey of West Sumatran Re- West Sumatra province allowed an bellions2 alternative government to maintain Whether or not Om Fahmi is correct itself for years in the jungle while in his assessment of his own people, low-level fighting waged with it is true that the Minangkabau have Javanese troops stationed in the cities. risen in rebellion several times since Perhaps all of this support came, as the beginning of the nineteenth Om Fahmi said, because the Minang- century. Often, scholars have seen kabau are the most likely people in these revolts as being religiously Indonesia, even all the world, to 1 protest. 2 One major armed conflict in the province Surely there must be, however, has not been included in this survey: the war specific forces and reasoning leading for independence against the Dutch, 1945- the Minang people of West Sumatra 49. Although West Sumatra had an import- to protest for specific causes. What ant role to play in that conflict, and despite popular understanding of that war as serving were these reasons that allowed the local interests, I have chosen not to include it because it was neither centered in the province, led by Minangkabau militarily, 1 Interview with Bagindo Fahmi by the nor fundamentally dependent on Minang author, Padang, 17 June, 2006. peasant participation. Evaluating The PRRI Rebellion As A West Sumatran Peasant Movement … 161 inspired, or nationalists have religious revival morphed into the absorbed the story of the rebellions full-scale invasion of lowland towns into the narrative of resistance to by Muslim leaders and peasant Dutch imperialism. While both followers from their home districts. religion and rejection of Dutch rule The towns and communities who certainly played a role in all the were averse to the puritanical reforms uprisings examined here, a closer and harsh penalties of the Padris lost examination will show how peasants most of their strongholds in the usually also worked for their own upland valleys, and they eventually best interest in these rebellions, called upon the Dutch stationed on sometimes using religious or the coast to come to their aid. The nationalist rhetoric to cover over Dutch began direct armed conflict more economic motives. with the Padri forces in 1821. They Among all the conflicts in West quickly conquered much of the Sumatra since European arrival, the Minangkabau hinterlands, but did not Padri War is arguably the most sustain their control over this territory. famous.3 Its foremost leader, Tuanku In ten years’ time the Dutch entered Imam Bonjol, has been enshrined as a the Minang highlands again, this time national hero (pahlawan negara) and holding onto all of their conquered is currently featured on the five territories. By 1837, all of the Padri thousand Rupiah note.4 Imam Bonjol leaders were captured or defeated, was one of several Minangkabau and Dutch forced the Minangkabau to religious leaders who returned from agree to humiliating terms in a treaty the hajj in the late eighteenth century that established Dutch “supervision” and felt compelled to change their over the area without giving them the native society to eliminate the vice responsibility of direct governance. and paganism that they believed ran Despite its relative fame, rampant. The movement began as scholars long misunderstood the reforms in home villages of these conflict as being narrowly religious, hajjis, called Padris because they had “a clash between the lineage heads of departed for the Holy Lands from the Minangkabau village society and port of Pedir. Around the second Islamic teachers penetrating the decade of the nineteenth century the Minangkabau world with new ideas from outside”5. Another interpretation, offered mostly by Indonesian scholars 3 In this account of the Padri Wars, I follow Christine Dobbin, Islamic Revivalism in a working toward the nationalist Changing Peasant Economy: Central project, sees the Padri War as early Sumatra, 1784-1847 (London: Curzon, resistance to the Dutch as foreigners 1983), and Rusli Amran, Sumatera Barat and non-Muslims. 6 Scholars agree hingga Plakat Panjang (Jakarta: Sinar that the two sides aligned as Harapan, 1981). traditional Minang leaders who did 4 For more on this figure, see Jeffrey Hadler, “A Historiography of Violence and the 5 Dobbin, viii. See also Hadler’s intervention Secular State in Indonesia: Tuanku Imam on this point. Bondjol and the Uses of History,” Journal of Asian Studies vol. 67, no. 3 (August 6 This, for example, is the dominant 2008): 971-1010. interpretation for Rusli Amran. 162 TINGKAP Vol. XI No. 2 Th. 2015 not follow Islamic precepts versus Just more than a century after Wahhabi-influenced Muslim leaders the Padri leaders returned from the who sought to impose strict religion hajj and began their revival and throughout the region. This division rebellion, a new storm began to brew between the two sides presents an in West Sumatra. 10 After eighty incomplete picture of motivations, years of demanding corvée labor however; Christine Dobbin has from the Minangkabau as one of their brought to light the additional spoils from winning the Padri War, economic and local incentives for the the Dutch found that tax in labor was supporters of the Padri Islamist cause. no longer economically most The Padris were supported most beneficial to them. So, in 1908, the strongly by non-subsistence farmers Dutch broke their own conditions in out of the valley, wet-rice heartlands. the 1837 treaty and implemented a These communities had to bring their money tax.11 This first faced passive goods to market in order to sustain resistance from village heads and the themselves, and therefore required communities they led, but the Dutch safe travel conditions and clear law then arrested most of the resistance for handling economic disputes, leaders, sending a clear message and conditions which were not present eliminating the option of continued before the Padri Islamic revivalist passive dissent. An armed uprising movement. It was natural, then, that then began in the valley of Agam, led upland farmers try to bolster Islam, by leaders of the Syattariyah Sufi which provided both strict moral tariqa.