|
Indonesia Batak
The term Batak designates any one of several groups
inhabiting
the interior of Sumatera Utara Province south of Aceh:
Angkola,
Karo, Mandailing, Pakpak, Simelungen, Toba, and others.
The Batak
number around 3 million. Culturally, they lack the complex
etiquette and social hierarchy of the Hinduized peoples of
Indonesia. Indeed, they seem to bear closer resemblance to
the
highland swidden cultivators of Southeast Asia, even
though some
also practice padi farming. Unlike the Balinese, who have
several
different traditional group affiliations at once, or
Javanese
peasants affiliated with their village or neighborhood,
the Batak
orient themselves traditionally to the marga, a
patrilineal
descent group. This group owns land and does not permit
marriage
within it. Traditionally, each marga is a
wife-giving and
wife-taking unit. Whereas a young man takes a wife from
his
mother's clan, a young woman marries into a clan where her
paternal
aunts live.
When Sumatra was still a vast, underpopulated island
with
seemingly unlimited supplies of forest, this convergence
of land
ownership and lineage authority functioned well. New
descent groups
simply split off from the old groups when they wished to
farm new
land, claiming the virgin territory for the lineage. If
the lineage
prospered in its new territory, other families would be
invited to
settle there and form marriage alliances with the pioneer
settlers,
who retained ultimate jurisdiction over the territory.
Genealogies
going back dozens of generations were carefully maintained
in oral
histories recited at funerals. Stewardship over the land
entailed
spiritual obligations to the lineage ancestors and
required that
other in-migrating groups respect this.
The marga has proved to be a flexible social
unit in
contemporary Indonesian society. Batak who resettle in
urban areas,
such as Medan and Jakarta, draw on marga
affiliations for
financial support and political alliances. While many of
the
corporate aspects of the marga have undergone major
changes,
Batak migrants to other areas of Indonesia retain pride in
their
ethnic identity. Batak have shown themselves to be
creative in
drawing on modern media to codify and express their
"traditional"
adat. Anthropologist Susan Rodgers has shown how
taped
cassette dramas similar to soap operas circulate widely in
the
Batak region to dramatize the moral and cultural dilemmas
of one's
kinship obligations in a rapidly changing world. In
addition, Batak
have been prodigious producers of written handbooks
designed to
show young, urbanized, and secular lineage members how to
navigate
the complexities of their marriage and funeral customs.
Data as of November 1992
|
