The Radja Hoeta, or Radja (ni) Hoeta, was the village radja of the Toba-Batak lands of Sumatra, whose exercise of the beschikkingsrecht (right of avail) D. W. N. de Boer took as the comparative standard against which he measured the far weaker right of avail found in Atjeh.
Powers over land
According to De Boer’s account in Het recht op den grond in Atjeh, the Radja Hoeta exercised two distinct powers over the soil of his village. The first was an “angstvallig intensieve controle” — an anxiously intensive control — over the taking of land into use, directed above all to preventing the alienation of land out of the community. The second was the annexation of lands left by deceased dependants, or abandoned by emigrating ones, where no entitled heirs came forward to claim them; and such annexation might be either for the radja’s own benefit or for the purpose of issuing or re-issuing the land to new immigrants, who were thereby bound to him as parripe’s.
Political function
The right of avail was, for the Radja Hoeta, the foundation of his power and the instrument by which he built his harajaon (chieftaincy). De Boer explained that after the fragmentation of the marga, and especially in the case of a radja founding a new village, the right was the only means by which he could attach to himself the select ripe’s — preferably of his own marga — required to maintain and enlarge his following; and the only defence against the encroachment of other marga’s, which might otherwise reduce him to a minority even within the village he had himself founded, so that under marga law he could effectively be set aside.
Contrast with the Atjehnese oeleebalang
The oeleebalang of Atjeh, by contrast, was genealogically independent and territorially defined; his interest lay in attracting immigrants and increasing wathé revenues rather than in screening and binding individual settlers. De Boer accordingly held that the Atjehnese chief had no need to select and attach the individual cultivator “zooals de Radja Hoeta wel moest doen” — as the Radja Hoeta was obliged to do — provided only that the immigrant contributed to the prosperity of the landschap and to the income of its head.
See Also
- Toba-Bataklanden
- Parripe
- Beschikkingsrecht in Atjeh
- Oeleebalang
- Het recht op den grond in Atjeh (De Boer)
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.