The haq padjoh asoé (Atjehnese, “the right to eat the contents”; Malay haq memakan isi) was the temporary conditional right granted in Atjeh to a cultivator who had lost a suit over land, entitling him to work the ground and enjoy its produce for three further years.
In the law of clearance disputes in Groot-Atjeh
Where a plaintiff in Groot-Atjeh succeeded in proving, by visible traces of earlier working, that he had previously held a possessory right over ground which he had allowed to lie roh (fallow) and which another had cleared, the defeated party (succombant) was awarded the haq padjoh asoé for three years — the right to continue working the land and to enjoy its yield. Against this he was obliged, by way of recognition of the other’s possessory right, to deliver each year at harvest one naleh of padi, the so-called padé kandoeri. After the three years allowed him he had to place the land at the disposal of the successful plaintiff without further ado.
In the self-governing territories
In the zelfbesturende landschappen a related use of the term appears. Where an application concerned a piece of sawah ground that had not yet become rimba (jungle) and that, lying between worked sawah’s or directly adjoining them, evidently belonged to someone but had plainly been abandoned only temporarily and very recently, the applicant was given — even after the three-month warning term had elapsed unused — only a bruikleen (loan for use), padjoh asoè, for three years; and this only if no heirs of the owner could be found willing to undertake the working of the land. If such heirs existed but did not intend to exploit the ground, they might not disturb the applicant in the right of use granted him by the radja. After the three years of loan, however, if the original owner had still not returned, his ahli waris had the right to demand a share-cropping contract from the new cultivator, who could thereafter continue working the occupied ground only on that condition.
In pepper cultivation
The term recurs in the pepper economy of the Sawangsche toenong — the uplands of Sawang on the North Coast of Atjeh — where, besides the pangkaj, a rice field was made over to the pepper planter in padjoh asoé for his subsistence, so that he need not buy rice.
See Also
Source
Het recht op den grond in Atjeh, by D. W. N. de Boer, dated Scheveningen, November 1931, pp. 59-80. Offprint DLP-141, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, ‘s-Gravenhage; Bibliotheek KITLV accession 0060 4460 60 081470 428.