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The Toba Batak originated in the mountainous interior of the island of Sumatra in the Republic of Indonesia. Around 1800 they were not yet a distinct ethnic group but belonged to a wider cultural universe, which also encompassed the territories inhabited by what are known now as

artistic tradition, dances, costumes, and music, such cultural expressions were sometimes ‘developed’ to conform to the image of regional culture promoted by the state on the basis of the culture of Java and Bali.

11 Blackburn (2008) demonstrates how prominent issues related to marriage were for the Indonesian women’s movement since its birth in 1928 when the first women’s congress was held.

12 Anthropological studies (Ph.D. theses) on marriage of Indonesian groups with limited reference to historical change, but not connected to discourse in the past are: Bolyard 1989 (Buginese); Bovill 1986 (Toba Batak); Idris 2003 (Buginese).

These studies demonstrate, however, how creative the groups researched adapted their customs to a changing environment. See for this also Russell and Cunningham 1996.

13 Conclusion based on consulting library catalogues on the subject of the 1974 Marriage Law. This exploration also reveals that much of the recent literature on the Marriage Law deals with its relationship to Islamic law, without specifying it for a particular region.

14 Remark based on my observation during participation in numerous seminars and workshops in Indonesia.

15 This is probably fostered by, among other factors, the prohibition on inter-religious marriages in Indonesia stipulated in the Indonesian marriage law (Jones, Leng and Mohamad 2009; Aritonang 2004:423-9).

the Mandailing, Angkola, Dairi en Pakpak, Simalungun, and Karo Batak.16 The Toba shared an ancestral belief combined existed in dialect, dress code, law, the architecture of their houses, and so forth; but for an outsider the common traits were more striking than the differences. In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth century the identities of the Batak gradually ramified and hardened as the result of the intrusions of outside forces.

The Toba Batak are the largest of the different Batak groups, now numbering approximately one million in their region of origin.17 The main sources of livelihood are subsistence agriculture, irrigated wet rice cultivation, animal husbandry, and, in the Samosir district, tourism. Since the early twentieth century, Toba Batak peasants have been moving out of their homeland in search of fertile land elsewhere, while the better educated sought jobs in the residency East Coast of Sumatra, where the rubber plantation economy was booming. By 1930 the Toba Batak were the ethnic group in Sumatra with the highest percentage living outside their native region.18 Today, Toba Batak can be found not only in North and East Sumatra but also—in large numbers unknown—in Jakarta and other cities of the archipelago.19

The Toba Batak share a similar history with two other large upland ethnicities in Indonesia, the Toraja in Central Sulawesi, and the Dayak in the interior of Kalimantan.20 These three ethnic groups were often classified as ‘stateless’ or ‘acephalous’ in the nineteenth century, which is correct in that they lacked a royal dynasty integrating political authority and military power. The colonial literature depicted their societies as riven by internal warfare between rival chiefs, and

16 For an extensive and critical discussion about the similarities and differences between the different Batak subgroups, see Viner 1979:85-94.

17 In 2000 the combined population of the four districts of the province North Sumatra covering the Batak homeland (Tapanuli Utara, Humbang Hasundutan, Toba and Samosir) counted 991,442 people (http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Sumatera_Utara) The 2010 census reports a population increase for the entire province of North Sumatra by 13%, implying that the population of these four districts has risen to around 1.12 million in 2010 (http://en.wikipedia.org/

wiki/North_Sumatra, no figures per district given).

18 The Toba Batak with the other Batak groups formed the second largest ethnic group (15 %) in Sumatra after the Minangkabau (25,6%). Both ethnic groups were known for the high number of people who lived and worked outside their native region, with the difference that the Minangkabau more often migrated outside the district of which their native region was a part than the Toba Batak. The main destination for migrants of both ethnic groups was the Residency East Coast of Sumatra, where the Toba Batak outnumbered the Minangkabau (Volkstelling IV, 1935:19, 37, 167, 180-4).

19 The Indonesian censuses do not provide demographic data per ethnicity. The number of academic studies on Toba Batak in the urban settings (Cunningham 1958, Bruner 1959 and 1961; Bovill 1986; Irianto 2003) demonstrate that outmigration continued after Independence.

20 A smaller Batak sub-group, the Karo, were missionized much later than the Toba Batak and after their region had been occupied by planters. The number of Karo converts by the end of colonial rule was small.

Collection images of the Royal Museum of the Tropics, Amsterdam (henceforward TM), no. 10017152.

2. The village of Huta Raja, Toba Plateau (ca. 1910). A sarcophagus for ancestral remains is placed in the centre of the village square.

as primitive because of practices situation changed, however, after Dutch and German missionary societies arrived in the second half of the 1800s: this tension induced some clan chiefs to opt for Christianity. The pace of conversion accelerated soon after these upland societies were incorporated into the colonial state around the end of the nineteenth century. Ultimately the Batak Mission—established by the Lutheran Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft or RMG—proved more successful than any other missionary society working in the colony. In 1930 the number of Toba Batak Christians in North Tapanuli started to equal that of the largest Christian community in Indonesia at the time, the Minahasans (on the northern tip of Sulawesi), surpassing it in the next decade.23 Today, the Toba

21 Stereotypes about people living in the hilly and mountainous interiors of Indonesia’s large islands of Indonesia as primitive, ignorant, backward, and more conservative or traditional than those living in the lowlands and urban centers are very tenacious (Kahn, J.S. 2002:125-6). Interestingly, the Toba Batak may be seen as conservative in the sense of being content with their customs, but also have gained the reputation of being ambitious, a ‘modern’ epithet.

22 About central Sulawesi Toraja: Aragon 2000:90-99; Waterson 2009:11 -30. About the Dayak: King 1993:237-40 (head hunting); 227-31 (relation coastal state/Dayak).

23 In 1930, Christian Batak in the district Bataklanden, the homeland of the Toba Batak, numbered 238,401 Protestants and five Catholics, together making up 46% of the total Batak population of this district (50% was still pagan and another 4% Muslim). The number of Christian Manadonese in the Minahasa was only slightly higher: 241,504 (227,436 Protestants and 14,068 Catholics), making up 98.3% of the Minahasan population in the Minahasa (figures compiled Winkler 2006: 409 (Scan)

Map 1. The regions populated by Toba Batak and other Batak ethnic groups (North Sumatra, Indonesia)

Batak are still the largest Christian minority in Indonesia.

In terms of social organization, however, the Toba Batak differ from the Toraja in Central Sulawesi and Dayak: like most other ethnic groups in Indonesia these last two ethnic groups have bilateral kinship systems and were shifting cultivators, whereas the Toba Batak have a patrilineal system and were settled peasants tied to the territory of their clan: its irrigated rice fields, gardens, and parts of the forest surrounding the villages. As far as their patrilineal kinship system goes, the Toba Batak have more in common with smaller ethnic groups in East Indonesia.24

A last prominent characteristic of Toba Batak society was its elaborate customary law. This was both an offshoot of the patrilineal kinship system and a reflection of the need to peacefully regulate conflicts in their stateless society. After colonial rule was established, the legal system in the Toba Batak residency of North Tapanuli did not follow the pattern established in parts

from Volkstelling 1935:84 and 1936:92). The room for further expansion of Christianity in the Minahasa was thus virtually nil, whereas in the Batak lands it was still very substantial. In the following decade many more Toba Batak converted: in 1938 the Christians belonging to the Batak Church alone counted 416,206 people (including those outside the Bataklanden (Aritonang 1994:301).

24 For the similar kinship systems of these societies, see Van Wouden 1968 [1935].

Collection images Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde (State Museum for Ethnography), Leiden (henceforward RMV), no. A 40-1-15 3. The grand centre of the Batak Mission in Pearaja, Silindung (1910). In the centre foreground is the

hospital. The school is on the left; church with double steeple in the centre background. Behind is the river Batangtoru and rice fields.

of the archipelago which had been colonized earlier.25 A crucial difference was that the colonial state did not introduce a modified version of the Dutch civil code, as it had in directly governed Java (1847) and several other directly and indirectly governed regions.26 Instead it opted in 1886 for the organization of the traditional legal system, followed by a reorganization of the judiciary in 1915. Throughout the period the government maintained Toba Batak customary law, which was revised on a few points only, mainly due to the influence of Christianity.27 This allowed ample scope for the Toba Batak taste for litigation, which gained legendary status in colonial times. Today the Toba Batak are still associated with the judiciary in Indonesia, where they are numerically overrepresented.