‘If [Indo-Europeans] are willing to become Indonesische staatsburgers,
then we are obliged to take their claims into serious consideration.’
Tabrani, Revue Politik, 23 August 1930Colonial citizenship is a contradictio in terminis, some scholars have argued, because subjects who comprised the bulk of colonial societies had very limited civic rights. As a result, studies on citizenship in the Netherlands East Indies have focused their attention on its cultural aspects. An emerging literature on citizenship that privileges substantive practices over formal legal aspects, however, has paved a way to re-examine ‘acts of citizenship’ beyond the boundaries of the cultural realm into the realm of rights.
In the 1930s a social organisation for Eurasians, the Indo-European Association (Indo-Europeesche Verbond, IEV), launched a campaign to gain rights to own land for Europeans of mixed blood. This article examines the contentious campaign and the vehement rejection by Indonesians from diverse ethnic, geographic, and religious backgrounds. Categorised as Europeans and citizens of the Netherlands, the increasingly impoverished Indo-European population, who made up 85 per cent of the Europeans in the Indies, had no rights to own land. Such rights were apportioned exclusively for the autochthonousFootnote 1 population. Their demand for a form of land ownership led to protracted debates with Indonesians in various civic outlets. Drawing on newspaper articles, organisational bulletin reports, records of Volksraad (People's Council) debates, official reports of government commissions, and other material in the colonial archives, I trace the process by which citizens and subjects alike came to imagine themselves as legal persons in relation to one another and to the colonial state. I argue that by challenging state categories of entitlement, race, and belonging, the debates on rights to own land defined more sharply notions of citizenship among the Indies population. In so doing, I offer an insight into the genealogy of exclusion, which has haunted the idea of citizenship in postcolonial Indonesia.
I begin my article with recounting the new literature on citizenship, specifically acts of citizenship, in conversation with existing research on colonial citizenship in the Indies. Afterwards, I present key moments in the trajectory of the debates on land rights that confronted IEV and Indonesian leaders — and, to a limited extent, the Chinese communities — with what it meant to be citizens and subjects under colonialism. I conclude by reflecting on how land rights and citizenship remain an unresolved debate in postcolonial Indonesia.
From cultural citizenship to acts of citizenship
A cursory glance at colonial citizenship gives one an impression of an ambiguous, if not oxymoronic, concept. This ambiguity hinges on the diverse thickness of colonial subjects' rights and entitlements across varied colonial experiences: from a virtual void on the one end to a certain degree of presence on the other. Two cases in the French Caribbean and East Asia illustrate how colonial citizenship — when it was possible at all — was always partial, continually deferred, and a façade for camouflaging the civilising project.Footnote 2 In another case, that of nineteenth-century Sierra Leone and twentieth-century South Africa, the creoles who were eligible for citizenship received ‘paradigmatic citizenship’, i.e. legalised citizenship that legitimised and reproduced inequality.Footnote 3 In the Indies, in contrast, members of the native population were never citizens; by law they were only subjects (onderdanen) of the Netherlands.Footnote 4
Colonial citizenship in the Indies, thus, tends to be seen as an oxymoron, resolved only by focusing analysis on citizenship's cultural aspect.Footnote 5 Indonesian women's aspiration to suffrage rightsFootnote 6 and the desire to emulate a certain lifestyleFootnote 7 are examples of cultural citizenship, which refers to an explicit invitation to educated, upper-middle class Indonesians, ‘through educational programmes and commercial advertisements … to abandon traditional habits and to become the new cultural citizens of the colony’.Footnote 8 In a slightly different vein, but within the strand of cultural citizenship, Robert Elson attributes the emerging notion of citizenship in the Indies to the imagination of Indo-European and Indonesian thinkers from the early 1910s. E.F.E. Douwes Dekker, Dr Cipto Mangunkusumo, and Suwardi Suryaningrat founded the idea of Indies citizenship on what they imagined as ‘a shared experience of colonised subjection and the specific solidarity that flowed from it’.Footnote 9 Here, they attached belonging not to the colonial state, but to an alternative polity, ‘the Indies’ (Hindia), which would take all racial groups as its rightful members. Despite the enthusiastic response to it from various Indies student organisations in the Netherlands,Footnote 10 the pioneers' vision had a limited audience in the Indies; Elson concludes that the thinking about citizenship among Indonesians themselves ‘was less advanced and less sharp’.Footnote 11 The observation is perhaps correct for that period, but certainly misses the zeitgeist of the succeeding decade.
These substantial studies leave unexplored, however, the aspiration to citizenship by Indies residents — Indo-Europeans, Chinese, and Indonesians alike — in terms of the demand for rights and entitlements. The focus on citizenship's cultural aspects inadvertently overlooks the oft-forgotten role of colonial ‘civic’ infrastructure such as the Volksraad, a proto-parliament established in 1917, in awakening a different sense of belonging, particularly one informed by the right to own land.
Contemporary citizenship studies now offer a means to address the seeming contradictions in ‘colonial citizenship’, where the colonial state granted citizenship and claims to the state unevenly across population groups. The borderless postmodern world that attracts immigrants into metropolitan centres has encouraged scholars to re-examine the mainstream concept of citizenship. Scholars have shifted their investigation from normative to substantive citizenship, understood here as practices aimed at inclusion and belonging in order to create stronger claims to rights which are traditionally guaranteed only if one is a member of a polity.Footnote 12 The shift validates as citizenship practices those projects that non-citizens, alien residents, or subjects create to lay claim to the state and to situate themselves as legal persons vis-à-vis the state.Footnote 13
One specific term that emerges from this strand of scholarship is Engin Isin's ‘acts of citizenship’.Footnote 14 Isin characterises ‘acts’ as the opposite of ‘habitus’ and as resulting in rupture that ‘enables the actor … to create a scene rather than follow a script’ in order to claim rights and entitlement to the state.Footnote 15 Acts of citizenship need not be founded on or carried out according to the law; they can be committed by non-citizens; and they produce actors whose ultimate accountability is to justice. Acts of citizenship enable citizens, non-citizens, outsiders, aliens, subjects, and the like — motley denizens that reflect the Indies population — to defy state-granted identity and to reinvent themselves in relation to others. Foregrounding acts in thinking about citizenship means, Isin underlines, ‘to implicitly accept that to be a citizen is to make claims to justice: to break habitus and act in a way that disrupts already defined orders, practices and statuses’.Footnote 16 Although devised to analyse contemporary phenomena, acts of citizenship offer an effective vocabulary to understand claims to belonging and entitlement in a colonial setting.
Citizen, subject, and land rights in the Indies
The Dutch East Indies' citizenship policy traces its genealogy to two population classifications introduced in the colony's Constitutional Regulation of 1854: on the one hand, Europeans and those ‘deemed to be alike’ (gelijkgesteld) European in status, and on the other hand, natives and those categorised as gelijkgesteld natives, which included Chinese, Arabs and other foreign Orientals.Footnote 17 The ruling aimed at helping the state designate specific laws for specific population groups.Footnote 18 The Netherlands' comprehensive Nationality Act of 1892 (De wet van 1892) clarified further the legal status of the Indies population.Footnote 19 At the draft stage, the Act allowed everyone who possessed the status of Dutch nationality (Nederlander) at the time the Act came into force to become a Dutch citizen. Based on the Dutch Civil Code, it would include ‘all persons born in the Kingdom or its colonies, of parents who were themselves there domiciled’.Footnote 20 Consequently, everyone in the colony could have become a Nederlander. The Lower House (Tweede Kamer) of the parliament quickly amended the draft, such that the final provision of the Nationality Act prevented Indies natives from being qualified to become Dutch citizens.Footnote 21
If the Dutch refused to grant citizenship to the autochthonous population, they were lenient towards Eurasians. Legitimate Eurasians born from a Dutch father automatically became Nederlanders. A Eurasian born out of wedlock could acquire European legal status if the European father recognised her; a European mother had no such right. Unrecognised Eurasians tended to disappear into their maternal community, losing the privileges that came with European citizenship such as guaranteed access to European schools and welfare assistance. Precariousness characterised the social status of Indo-Europeans, defined here specifically as Eurasians who had acquired legal recognition as Europeans. Racial purity marked the social hierarchy of the Indies' European society. On the top rung were trekkers, pure-blooded, educated Dutch individuals who came to the colony to work in the government or private sector. They planned to return to the motherland when they retired. On the lower rung were European blijvers, Dutch individuals who resided permanently in the Indies. Pure-bloods were situated higher in the blijvers social rank, followed by Indo-Europeans, who made up the bulk of blijvers in the Indies.
Indo-Europeans traditionally relied on government jobs for their livelihood,Footnote 22 but the newly educated natives increasingly competed with them for these jobs.Footnote 23 To assist the socioeconomic development of Eurasians, the community founded IEV.Footnote 24 Trying to be inclusive, IEV counted as members not only Indies-born Eurasians, but also Indies-born, pure-blooded Europeans and their descendants, and any full-blooded Europeans with children born in the Indies, or who were married to Indo-Europeans.Footnote 25 The all-encompassing membership later caused uneasiness among Indonesian leaders because it was pliable and vulnerable to manipulation to serve IEV's interests.
While Indo-Europeans enjoyed entitlements as citizens in the form of guaranteed education and welfare assistance, the Indonesian masses remained subjects of the Dutch, who ruled them indirectly through the native regents. Rights remained elusive, but obligations abounded in the form of compulsory labour services (heerendiensten).Footnote 26 Property rights were regulated by customary (adat) laws with uneven effectiveness. As subjects, Indonesians had few rights in relation to the colonial state. One of the few was the right not to be alienated from their ancestral land, a ruling enacted in Staatsblad 1875 No. 179. Popularly known as the Alienation Prohibition (Vervreemdingsverbod), the ruling prohibited permanent transfer of land from natives to non-natives, that is the Chinese, Arab, Indo-European, and European population.Footnote 27 Tightly controlled mechanisms for exceptions indeed existed with legal consequences if trespassed.
Despite the Alienation Prohibition, colonial law allowed Europeans six avenues to control land, two of which were highly coveted due to their near-absolute status of disposal and guaranteed state protection in the case of conflicts. They were eigendom (full ownership) and erfpacht (heritable leasehold right). The European Civil Code (Burgerlijk Wetboek) defined eigendom as the right to free enjoyment of an object and the right to dispose of it in an absolute manner pursuant to legal regulations. The government strictly controlled this right.Footnote 28 Leasehold rights (erfpacht), in contrast, had more flexibility. It was to be recognised almost as an eigendom following an annual rent payment, either in cash, products, or yields from the land. The government differentiated erfpacht rights into three groups: leasehold rights for large-scale plantations, leasehold rights for country estates, and leasehold rights for small-scale agriculture (erfpacht voor kleine landbouw).Footnote 29 The leasehold rights for small-scale agriculture were dedicated as a safety net for the citizens. Impoverished (minvermogend) Europeans and charity organisations were eligible for up to 25 and 50 bouws (17.74 and 35.48 hectares) along with various subsidies and assistance.Footnote 30 With the ‘generosity’ came strict requirements. Leaseholders lost their lease if they: transferred the leasehold rights without due permit from the authority, which included turning the leasehold into sharecropping with the autochthonous populations; divided or subdivided the land due to death or other reasons; failed to pay back the government farming loan.Footnote 31 These conditions were difficult for impoverished Indo-Europeans to fulfil given their lack of the farming and managerial skills required to run a leasehold of such size, as well as secondary financial resources for emergencies.
Unable to benefit from this ‘safety net’, the Indo-European community continued its downward spiral. Joblessness worsened when the Great Depression hit the Indies in 1930, drying up employment in agricultural estates and manufacturing. Economic hardship exacerbated the fear of ‘becoming native’,Footnote 32 while persistent job scarcity prompted the community to search for a means of livelihood that could sustain the lifestyle ‘appropriate’ to their status. For a while, IEV leaders had deemed small to medium agricultural enterprises a viable option. When IEV acquired the largest representation in the Volksraad in 1930, the time was ripe for action, but the path to acquire land was a difficult one. IEV's six Volksraad seats, the most of any party, wielded them little influence. Its political objective to create a united front for all Europeans received only a lukewarm response from full-blooded Europeans who suspected that IEV aspired to ascend the ladder of colonial society on their backs.Footnote 33
Acts of citizenship
Citizen's entitlement: Claim to the state
Increasingly desperate to provide jobs for its members, IEV campaigned for rights to own land. The campaign was the first step in the plan to establish Indo-European-run small to medium-sized agricultural estates. An IEV representative, N. Beets, launched the campaign in the Volksraad 1930/1931 session by narrating an epic story of an Indo-European man who attempted to cultivate a small leasehold (kleine erfpacht) in Sindangwangi village, Tjibatoe, West Java. He planted the land with kapok saplings, vanilla orchids, feed grass, cassava, and paddy, financing it from the 2,000 guilders line of credit eligible for the leasehold. An illness followed by a job laying rail tracks in Aceh to pay for his rising debts forced the man to entrust the leasehold to his native in-laws. In 1927, the government threatened to confiscate his leasehold because he ‘put the land under a sharecropping arrangement with a native’, a cause for lease termination. When in 1930 he finally managed to return and recover the land from his in-laws, he found the land had already been auctioned off and the new native owner, the local village head, had arranged it into a sharecropping with ten native workers.Footnote 34
The small leasehold, according to Beets, was prohibitively expensive, its regulation too limiting for impoverished Indo-Europeans to manage profitably. Had the Indo-European owned the land with no restrictions like native landholders, he could have arranged a sharecropping while earning elsewhere to help pay back his loan. He could have thrived. Beets concluded his speech thus: ‘And if I would argue for a greater equality with regards to rights to land, I do so after all for a population who by virtue of its birthright, justly and fairly, … can assert certain rights.’Footnote 35
To overcome the limitation to prosper, IEV demanded three revisions to the existing land rights regulations: first, a provision for Indo-Europeans to own land for housing and livelihoods in a form similar to that of native landholders; second, relaxing of leasehold conditions for small-scale erfpacht to include all Indo-Europeans regardless of their economic status; and third, abolition of the Alienation Prohibition. IEV also pleaded for temporary sharecropping dispensation until their members acquired the skills to run the farms. In return IEV promised to respect native customary rules on land and to continue carrying out customary obligations attached to autochthonous land ownership regimes.Footnote 36 IEV's willingness to accept rights to own land under native title illustrates their desperation.
IEV found support for its campaign from the conservative, right wing Vaderlandsche Club (Fatherland Club, VC).Footnote 37 Through its representative in the Volksraad, R.A.A Fruin, VC expressed its full sympathy with IEV's endeavours.Footnote 38 However, the director of Binnenlands Bestuur (Department of the Interior), F.H. Muhlenfeld, was sceptical of IEV's sharecropping dispensation proposal. He suspected that the IEV intended it to skirt the sharecropping prohibition for small leaseholders. To Muhlenfeld, the proposal was too optimistic, ‘because sharecropping is, in many cases, the most advantageous method of exploitation for a landowner, often to the detriment of the sharecropper and the public interest’.Footnote 39
Although IEV had long struggled to gain a form of land ownership rights, this campaign was the first time it had put the demand forward officially and it outraged many Indonesians. Within a couple of days Tabrani, a prominent Indonesian journalist, protested in the North Sumatra-based, Malay-language newspaper, Revue Politik. He wrote:
Their request for land rights is logical, but more logical is our duty to reject the request, as long as the Indos consider themselves strangers, and so for us [they are]. If they are willing to become Indonesische staatsburgers (Indonesian citizens), then we are obliged to put their claims into serious consideration. These land rights are key to our existence and our prosperity. Watch that those rights are not transferred to foreign hands!Footnote 40
IEV's demands and Tabrani's reaction offer us a glimpse into acts of citizenship in a colonial setting. The IEV manoeuvre in the Volksraad was a case of a citizen's association claiming an entitlement to the state while simultaneously defying state-granted identity. Here, IEV claimed the citizens' right to be protected from poverty by attempting to gain access to land ownership, which was prohibited to them precisely because of their citizenship. Being of mixed heritage, they demanded an acknowledgement that they, too, belonged to the land. In this act, IEV members reinvented themselves into an image other than the one granted by the state: Europeans, yet with an unquestionable bond to the land, which entitled them the birthright to own a piece of it. The promise to respect adat obligations that came with owning land arguably demonstrated their willingness to associate themselves with their Indonesian cousins.
Tabrani's essay signalled not only his empathy with the Indo-Europeans' plight, but also an experiment with a new concept: citizenship. He claimed he did not object to the demands, but he was outraged that despite their demand Indo-Europeans decidedly insisted on remaining ‘strangers’ to Indonesians. To earn rights to own land, Tabrani called for Indo-Europeans to become Indonesische Staatsburger, Indonesian citizens. In doing so, Tabrani reimagined new relations between Indonesians and Indo-Europeans: he presented the native population not as ‘the Other’ to Indo-Europeans, but as belonging to a new category of which Indo-Europeans could become members. In fact, they were invited to become members.
Further, Tabrani's deliberate use of the term Indonesische Staatsburger implies an emerging concept of an alternate politico-legal entity, one which would implement a different set of property relations from those established by the colonial authorities. The vision Tabrani presented here was not unlike the one the Indische Partij leaders had promoted in the 1910s, that is new relations between Indonesians and Indo-Europeans that were based on equality within a new polity, the autonomous Indies. Although their anchor for loyalties differed, both IEV's move and Tabrani's reaction expressed acts of citizenship in the way they ‘disrupt(ed) already defined orders, practices and statuses’.Footnote 41
Despite dissenting Indonesian opinions, on 15 June 1931, the government set up the Commission for the Land Rights of Indo-Europeans (De Commissie voor het grondbezit van Indo-Europeanen), tasked with inquiring after IEV's request. Popularly known as Commissie Spit after its chairman, H.J. Spit, the Commission was to decide if it was possible and desirable to create provisions regarding land rights for the Indo-Europeans, considering their social position and the Indies agricultural policy, and to recommend ways to do so.Footnote 42 The appointment made Indonesians acutely aware of particular relations between the state and its citizens: the state actually listened, and responded, but only to its citizens.
Subjects' entitlement: Land rights
The government's move to establish the Spit Commission upset many Indonesians. Boedi Oetomo, the Javanese nationalist organisation known to have amicable relations with the government, argued against such concessions, citing the risk of the Chinese and Arabs demanding the same right should the Indo-Europeans' request be approved. The demand would threaten the native population's already precarious economic condition. ‘Therefore we will,’ wrote the author, ‘not let our land be divided in this way by foreigners (vreemdelingen).’Footnote 43
A charismatic representative from Batavia and a key figure in the Indonesian Nationalist Faction in the Volksraad, Mohammad Thamrin, was sceptical about the practicality of IEV's demand. In a speech in the Volksraad 1931/1932 session he underlined that the right of allocation (beschikkingsrecht) attributed to the native population was a moral and natural right inherent in the very nature of the natives' indigeneity; it was not a privilege granted by the state. He argued eloquently,
However, over centuries this right of disposal was repeatedly and heavily questioned, the fiercest by the so-called the government's domain declaration, which, according to Professor van Vollenhoven, is the biggest injustice imposed upon the native population in the present time …. Due to the domain declaration, it has become possible to satisfy other populations' hunger for land, fulfilled by the establishing and granting other [forms of] rights to non-native groups, such as property rights (eigendomsrechten), leasehold rights (erfpachtsrechten), agrarian rights (agrarische rechten), and rights to the small agricultural leasehold (kleinen landbouw erfpachtsrechten). Through these other [forms of] rights the special position of the natives as legitimate and genuine owners, as autochthonous people, hence the exclusive owners of land, over time has been put to an end, so that of the many forms of rights that used to belong to the autochthonous population, what remains is only the native heritable individual property right (erfelijk individueele bezitsrecht), essentially no more than a right to occupy, and which when compared with the previous forms of rights, imposed very onerous stipulations. I hereby once again underline that the moral and natural right to land for a population group is a consequence of being indigenous (autochtoon).Footnote 44
Thamrin was concerned that IEV's inclusive membership, which included Indo-Europeans as well as full-blooded Europeans with the flimsiest connection to the East Indies, was vulnerable to abuse and would deprive many Indonesians of their land.Footnote 45 Thamrin further argued,
Certainly there is a part of the IEV group who feels like the child of the land (landskinderen)Footnote 46 and a certain theoretical entitlement to the nation's land (nationalen bodem), but as long as the group identifies itself, or is identified with other groups [full-blooded Dutch], which theoretically cannot assert this right, [such identification] means a surrender of this right. For the genuine children of the land, it is inexcusable … A defensive attitude on our part in this matter should not be attributed to a non-sympathetic attitude toward the IEV, but should rather be seen as self-defence.Footnote 47
Thamrin's speech marked an important point in the trajectory of Indonesian rethinking of the relations between indigeneity, land rights, and claims to the state. Thamrin explicitly summoned concepts of entitlement, race, and belonging when he argued that rights to own land were ‘moral and natural rights’ attributable only to the native population. He would acknowledge Indo-Europeans' birthright claim to own land only if they would forgo identifying themselves as Europeans. The threat of having to share what little remaining rights that had been exclusively assigned to the native population compelled Thamrin to seek legitimacy beyond the existing institutions.
Notably absent in Thamrin's speech was the Alienation Prohibition, despite the ruling's undeniable role in his argument. By this omission, Thamrin implicitly challenged the colonial government's authority as a politico-legal entity authorised to grant rights and to regulate property relations. To Thamrin, a loyalty to Dutch citizenship meant an explicit forgoing of rights to own land, which by now had become a marker of genuine landskinderen. Perhaps Thamrin was aware of the irony that the emerging notion of what it meant to be an Indonesian owed its argument to a colonial law. After all, it was the Alienation Prohibition which introduced the legal notion that only the native population had the right to own land.
All through the debate, the colonial government carefully nurtured its image as an impartial arbiter. The director of the Binnenlands Bestuur maintained that the government had had to establish the commission because ‘the executive body cannot revoke the rights of the native population’. It trusted the neutrality of the Spit Commission, presumably because being full-blooded Dutch, its members had no direct stake in the Commission's final decision.Footnote 48
Acts of citizenship
The Spit Commission unexpectedly carried out its inquiry in a participatory manner, to Indonesians' eager responses. It held meetings with governors, residents, and native regents; carried out listening sessions with agricultural and forestry officials from Java and Madura;Footnote 49 sent surveys to Binnenlands Bestuur officials, regional heads of the Outer Islands and small farm leaseholders;Footnote 50 and advertised in numerous vernacular newspapers for opinions from local organisations and civic associations regarding IEV's demands.Footnote 51 The first response from Indonesians arrived from Sumatra's West Coast where several women's associations held public meetings in Padang and Padang Pandjang. The meetings passed motions from voting members to reject IEV's demand.Footnote 52 Java reacted slower than Sumatra because many nationalist and civic organisations there followed a boycott by the Union of Political Associations of the Indonesian People (Permufakatan Perhimpunan Politik Kebangsaan Indonesia, PPPKI), which had objected to the Spit Commission appointment.Footnote 53 Chapters of the Catholic Youth Organisation, a part of the Javanese Catholic Party (Pakempalan Politik Katolik Djawi, PPKD), in Blitar and Magelang rejected the idea of granting land rights to Indo-Europeans, arguing that it would disrupt the economic, social, and political stability of the native population.Footnote 54 Responses continued to flood in during the next four years until the Spit Commission announced its summary of findings in 1935. Indonesians grabbed the opportunity given by the Spit Commission to voice their opinions, even though they were unconvinced that their rejection would be taken seriously.Footnote 55 Nevertheless, the exercise gave Indonesians a taste of participating in the making of an important public policy.
IEV's campaign to obtain rights to own land spurred Indonesians to scrutinise the benefits Indo-Europeans received from the state. Swara Katholiek, an official publication of the Indonesian Catholics, published an article that described in detail the generous assistance enjoyed by ‘impoverished Indo-Europeans’. Indo-Europeans were entitled to small leaseholds for agriculture (kleine landbouw erfpacht) of up to 25 bouw (17.75 hectares) at an extremely low rent of 10 cents per bouw per year, affordable for even landless Indonesians; they were exempted from tax; their children received free European education, a privilege highly coveted in the Indies; and if living in a native village, they enjoyed full services provided by the village while being exempted from customary village obligations. Many of these small leaseholds were managed under sharecropping arrangements with local natives despite the prohibition against doing so.Footnote 56 These generous benefits captured Indonesians' attention: IEV's demand for land rights and the state's response by creating the Spit Commission demonstrated to them what citizens could claim vis-à-vis the state. The benefits also underlined the state's obligations to its citizens, such as the provision of free quality education and protection from pauperisation. Understandably, the widespread resentment toward IEV's demand for land rights sprang from the belief that Indo-Europeans already enjoyed generous benefits from the state.
While many rejected the IEV's demands, quite a number of Indonesians expressed a more nuanced albeit still rhetorical stance. An essay published in a North Sumatra newspaper, Lentera, empathised with the Indo-Europeans' plight. It claimed it could understand Indo-Europeans' need for the right to own land, but vehemently identifying with the Dutch while doing so was offensive. The author invited Indo-Europeans to identify themselves as one of many Indies ethnic groups and to become an official part of ‘Indonesia’ if they wanted legitimacy.Footnote 57 Another Indonesian writing in Swara Katholiek insisted he had no objection if Indo-Europeans gained some form of land rights if they equated themselves with Indonesians in their legal status and if they cooperated with the nationalist front for Indonesian independence.Footnote 58 Yet another in the same newspaper emphasised the importance of the land question in the context of race relations. Because Indo-Europeans identified themselves with the ‘masters’ (overheerschers), they must bear the consequences of their decision.Footnote 59 An article in Pewarta Deli, a newspaper published in North Sumatra, echoed this position. The author would approve Indo-Europeans' demands if they shared the same obligations imposed on Indonesians. The author urged the ‘genuine landskinderen’ to defend their rights, which the law had already acknowledged.Footnote 60
These records of public discourse illustrate what Indonesians of varied ethnic and geographic backgrounds learned from the debates: that the consequence of Dutch citizenship was a prohibition on owning land, while the consequence of being Indonesian was having the right to own land. The right to own land by now had become a marker of identity. Indonesians thus continued to call — genuinely and rhetorically — on Indo-Europeans who wanted land to become ‘one of us’, or in Tabrani's words, ‘to become Indonesian citizens’. IEV's leaders, however, insisted on keeping the group a part of the European population. In the 1934 Congress, the chairman De Hoog restated IEV's commitment to the Netherlands: ‘Indo's Nederlanders zijn en willen blijven’ — Indo-Europeans are Dutch citizens and will remain so. Such defiance attracted mockery. An essay by an Indonesian accepted IEV's position because no better alternative existed, but nevertheless reminded them that ‘the question for Indo-Europeans was whether the full-blooded, purebred Dutch-trekkers recognised them as 100 per cent Dutch, because the name “Indo” itself signified a difference with “European”’.Footnote 61 The author also alleged that poor Indo-Europeans rejected De Hoog's position; he urged the latter to note what De Hoog had declared.
The Spit Commission announced its summary of findings in 1934 after a three-year delay while the full final report came out only in mid-1936. The members acknowledged the real economic urgency for Indo-Europeans to have rights to land, which the state needed to accommodate for social and political reasons. At the same time, they carefully underlined the importance of protecting the native population's rights. Thus, in response to IEV's three demands, the Commission recommended the government to consider granting Indo-Europeans some forms of rights to own land for housing, livelihood, and agricultural purposes. To prevent massive land transfer from the natives, the Commission rejected the IEV proposal to abolish the Alienation Prohibition, a ruling the Commission deemed as an essential part of the colonial agrarian regime. Any solution to land ownership for Indo-Europeans had to be established under the native adat law regime instead of within the European legal system.Footnote 62
The suggestion to retain under adat law land to be allocated for Indo-Europeans and European blijvers resonated with the IEV's initial promise to honour adat obligations if given the rights to own. However, this suggestion had other profound consequences. Keeping the land under adat law meant that the new non-native holders were bound to pay taxes and undertake social obligations attached to the land according to adat law regulations, which differed radically from Europeans'. It implied that non-native owners would have to deal with native officials for their day-to-day operations. Further, keeping the land under adat law was a pragmatic recommendation because the land could easily revert back to the native landholders without complicated legal entanglements that would ensue had the land been put under Dutch eigendom. Finally, disputes would be resolved at the Landraad, the native Court of the first instance, a jurisdiction considered inferior to a European court.
Within two months after the Spit Commission published its recommendations, the IEV held a congress. The recommendation to grant land but to retain it under the native legal regime caught IEV by surprise, despite their initial willingness to accept it as expressed in the Volksraad. This led to a fierce internal debate. A representative from the Malang chapter, Schijfsma, argued that IEV would create lasting change only if it could effect a revision of the Alienation Prohibition. The revision should try to unify the racially divided agrarian law, which would prevent predatory land transactions between natives and non-natives and curb dispossession by the rich natives of the poor. In this way, transforming the autochthonous land rights regime would offer both the Indo-Europeans and natives ‘principled and lasting solutions’ for ‘the salvation of the native society’, a principle ‘completely in line with our [position for] unified colonial politics’.Footnote 63
A more pragmatic member, Barre, disagreed with Schijfsma. He contended that the government would never abandon the core principle of its agrarian regime as laid out in the Alienation Prohibition, not so much for fear of native dispossession by the Indo-Europeans as for fear of the threat by the Chinese and Arab populations, who as moneylenders had amassed large amounts of land from their native debtors. Barre criticised Schijfsma's unification idea as unspecific, lacking clear direction, and vulnerable to multiple interpretations to the disadvantage of the Indo-Europeans. Managing land under the native regime, according to Barre, would force Indo-Europeans to carry out numerous obligatory services, such as services for the village and village head; services to maintain public facilities, roads, and gutters; and other menial tasks unworthy of their status. Barre said,
These are all obligations inherent in the native property rights, because of unification of this property right, the European [will be put] directly under the native village officials, not under the highest [European] government official as it should be … There is no defence against that possibility. He will be exposed to incessant harassment from the village officials.Footnote 64
Instead of unification, Barre recommended that IEV focus its energy on exploring the heritability of small leasehold rights, which the Spit Commission had recommended be extended to 75 years. It was a simpler solution that the Spit Commission appeared to want to pursue. Further, Barre recommended lobbying the government to regulate the heritability of this small leasehold in the Civil Code (Burgerlijk Wetboek), thus securing it for management under European law.Footnote 65 It is clear that IEV's leaders strongly preferred to maintain a clear boundary and separation from ‘the million masses’ of the native population.
The internal debate within IEV illustrates how their confrontation with the various possibilities for owning land under an autochthonous legal regime defined more sharply their understanding of citizenship. Had they, as Europeans, been granted land rights under the autochthonous regime, they would have had no guaranteed access to European officials, no guaranteed security under a European civil code, and no guaranteed protection from random harassment — real or perceived — from native officials. To IEV, this option was an inferior form of land ownership. In contrast to Beets' speech in the Volksraad session of 1930/1931, when IEV claimed it was open to customary forms of ownership, IEV's leaders now realised the stark reality of it, a reality that extinguished any interest in expressing solidarity with the Indonesian population. It made IEV more resolute to pursue land rights protected by a European civil code, and to hold fast to their Dutch citizenship, which gave them secure protection by the state.
Like IEV, the Volksraad promptly started the debate about the Spit Commission's summary recommendations as soon as the 1935/1936 sessions began. The Indonesian Nationalist Faction members were cautious about the recommendations. They underlined the privileged status of Indo-Europeans in terms of law, legal jurisdiction, employment, and salary levels, as well as in terms of the state's guarantee of personal rights and education. I.J. Kasimo, a Volksraad member representing Indonesian Catholics, contended that allowing Indo-Europeans to have land rights made even more unfair the already unjust tax structure.Footnote 66 In special circumstances their ground rent could even be pardoned.Footnote 67 Where Indonesian farmers had to resort to moneylenders for cash relief, Indo-European small farmers enjoyed generous assistance from the government through farming credits.
Indonesians did not stop at the Volksraad; they used various civic outlets to express their rejection of IEV's demands and of the Spit Commission's recommendations, and to urge the government to resist giving in to IEV pressures. The possibility of land rights becoming accessible to non-natives raised alarm among Indonesian leaders. An article in the vernacular newspaper Radio reminded readers that members of IEV were going all out to secure the constitutional and legal position of Indo-Europeans once and for all. The author underlined the hypocritical position of the Indo-Europeans. They felt humiliated if they were categorised as a part of the autochthonous group, yet they wanted to share the rights of the natives based on their being landskinderen, the country's children.Footnote 68 One article pointed out that even without provisions, non-natives already controlled vast swathes of land in West Java.Footnote 69 The fear of a massive land takeover was further underscored by another article in Sinar Sumatra,Footnote 70 which warned of a Pandora's box effect if the government granted Indo-Europeans their land rights demands.
As concern escalated, Indonesians began taking some concrete actions. In March 1936, Volksraad member Mohammad Thamrin from the Nationalist Front established the Native Commission for the Study of Land Rights. Consisting of three native lawyers educated at the Rechtshogeschool in Batavia, the Native Commission was independent of the colonial government.Footnote 71 It planned to produce a legal report on the state of agrarian matters and a report on agrarian politics in the colony available for the public.Footnote 72 One initiative that emerged in Semarang, Central Java, deserves a careful note. A committee was established in reaction to the Chinese Association Chung Hwa Hui's initiative to gain rights to own land following in the Indo-Europeans' footsteps. As many Indonesians and Indo-Europeans feared, the Chinese had begun to inquire about the possibility of owning land. They had sent their representative in the Volksraad, H.H. Kan, to make enquiries of the Minister of Colonies in the Netherlands. The news reached a wide audience, and native leaders reacted to it.Footnote 73 The Semarang Committee vowed to fight the granting of land rights to non-natives and would continue to oppose such initiatives in the name of the landless farmers in Java. The Committee called on all Indonesians to get involved in containing the actions of the Indo-Europeans and the Chung Hwa Hui.Footnote 74 By this time, Indonesians felt they were besieged by not only Indo-Europeans but also the Chinese population. In all their responses, Indonesians were practising acts of citizenship, where ‘subjects that are not citizens act as citizens: they constitute themselves as those with the “right to claim right”’.Footnote 75
The promise of citizenship
Resentment and rejection notwithstanding, a voice of reason — rhetorical and otherwise — also emerged from among Indonesian thinkers and leaders after the publication of the Spit Commission's summary findings. A North Sumatran author reminded his readers that all population groups in the Indies belonged in the same boat.Footnote 76 Economic hardship befell not only the Indo-European population, but also the Chinese and the Arabs, who considered the Indies their homeland, and who experienced more dire circumstances than the Indo-Europeans. Consequently, the Spit Commission should recommend the same rights for these groups as the rights they recommended for the Indo-Europeans. This was a rhetorical call; the author knew the government would hesitate to do so for fear of massive land transfers to non-natives as Barre had hinted at during the recent IEV Congress. The author called for Indonesians to unite in defending their land rights because the native farmers had had to compete for land against large-scale agricultural estates as well as the government's setting up of forest reserves.Footnote 77 In a similar rhetorical call, another writer called for the governor-general to remain neutral and to protect each population group beyond Indo-Europeans.Footnote 78
Along these lines, Agus Salim, a well-known nationalist leader, offered a deeper, more genuine insight into the protracted debate. Instead of stoking the resentment, he pointed out how the government's politics of divide-and-rule had caused the two groups to butt heads, despite their shared interests in creating the Indies as a prosperous homeland. The reason for the animosity between the two groups was more theoretical than practical. Indonesians had no genuine reason to fear competition from the Indo-European farmers because only a few of them would actually seek a livelihood through farming. Further, IEV's request for the right to own land was not based on practical need, since IEV could not force any of its members to farm if they did not wish to do so. Finally, the recognition of IEV's demands had yet to take place.Footnote 79
In a separate article, responding to the heated debate in the Volksraad, Agus Salim again called for calm.Footnote 80 He advised Indonesians to become acquainted with and to pay attention to the Indo-Europeans' struggle, because Indonesians would most likely never live apart from them. To the Indo-Europeans, Agus Salim counselled shedding their racial illusions and image of superiority. Salim alleged that many Indo-Europeans' wish to be identified more as autochthonous persons was prevented by their peers and by the Dutch intention to protect ‘the prestige of Europeans’. The Indies, Salim concluded, needed to jettison racially tinted views, regulations, and provisions. Europeans could take part in this project by abandoning their racist delusions. He wrote,
The welfare of the Eurasians and the Dutch can only be served if instead of racial sentiment, considerations of humanity are taken as a basis. And Eurasians shall see their ideals realised, such as acquisition of full rights to property in this land, which has indeed become their country, if they let go of their relationship with the Netherlands. The welfare and prestige of the Indos cannot be served if they do not focus all their attention and interest in this country, and do not concentrate all their work towards the advancement of Indonesians.Footnote 81
In Salim's statement one observes a calm, rational re-examination of race, belonging and entitlement to land rights. To some extent, it echoes the sentiment of the Indische Partij that dreamt of an Indies citizenship that embraced all races, nations, and ethnicities. However, instead of grounding this notion on the abstract idea of shared subjection under the colonial authority, Salim called upon a concrete, material aspect of citizenship: the entitlement to own land. Salim's call defied and punctured state-granted identities, which separated Indo-Europeans from their Indonesian cousins. To Salim, entitlement was the promise of a citizenship not defined by race, but by humanity, where entitlement was granted to all who belonged.
In the midst of enthusiastic debates among various population groups in the Indies, the colonial government remained in the background. It portrayed itself as an impartial mediator. The government was noncommittal to the Spit Commission's findings and the ensuing debates; it would decide independently of the Commission's recommendation whether changes in the agrarian regulations would be made after gaining approval from the Netherlands.Footnote 82 However, as history reveals, nothing came of this indecisiveness.
Conclusion
IEV's demand for rights to own land and the ensuing debates with Indonesian leaders propelled citizens and subjects alike to imagine themselves as legal persons in relation to the colonial state. Manoeuvring through acts of citizenship by challenging state categories of race, entitlement, and belonging, and by renegotiating their association with one another, each Indies population group staked their claims to land ownership rights. The struggle steered them to a new understanding of citizenship: To be citizens meant to have a relationship with the state in the form of claims and entitlements. In contrast, and despite contributing taxes and corvée labour, colonial subjects' limited rights to land remained vulnerable to citizens' claims for economic welfare. Cornered after the colonial state set up a commission to inquire after Indo-Europeans' demands, Indonesians proposed Indonesian citizenship, a new construct that would radically alter their relations with their Eurasian cousins.
Throughout this struggle, Indonesians came to grasp the promise of Indonesian citizenship: a citizenship that reached beyond racial boundaries and guaranteed the rights to own land. Land ownership became a key privilege of Indonesian citizenship. Two key factors brought about this notion; first, the Alienation Prohibition ruling that IEV wanted annulled, and second, the argument Thamrin presented at the Volksraad, that land rights was an inherent right of the native population, not a right ‘given’ by the colonial state.
Land rights and citizenship continue to shape the contemporary Indonesian political landscape. Decades after independence, Indonesia's indigenous peoples have asserted that they remain de facto subjects because the state is yet to fulfil the promise which goes with their Indonesian citizenship — the promise to recognize and protect their rights to their ancestral lands. United under Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago, AMAN), Indonesia's indigenous peoples made explicit their sentiments toward the state in AMAN's first congress in 1999: ‘If the state does not recognise us, we don't recognise the state’. Their relentless struggle to gain much deserved ‘full citizenship’ forces one to reflect on Agus Salim's wise counsel: only when humanity becomes the unifying base for citizenship would Indonesia emerge a prosperous nation.
