The Panglima Polim divorce case was the matrimonial suit decided, about 1913, by luitenant-generaal H. N. A. Swart, Gouverneur van Atjeh, against the strict letter of the adat in the matter of the sister of Panglima Polim, the well-known oelèëbalang of Groot-Atjeh. The case was adduced by Moens in the Reisindrukken van Atjeh as one of the instances of the confidence of the population in the government: een bewijs (a proof) of the trust that brought even the most intimate affairs of the great Acehnese families before the Dutch authorities.
The case
A sister of Panglima Polim had, without the consent of her brother, the head of the family, married a man beneath her station. Swart had the case investigated with the assistance of a council of the oldest oelama’s (doctors of the sacred law) of Groot-Atjeh, and pronounced that the marriage was against the adat and therefore invalid; he ordered the separation, and the divorce was shortly afterwards an accomplished fact — Moens recording expressly that the sister submitted to the decision because she trusted in the Governor’s justice: zij gehoorzaamde het bevel van den Gouverneur, want zij had op zijn rechtvaardigheid vertrouwd — she obeyed the command of the Governor, because she had confided in his righteousness.
Significance
The case is significant in the record of the pacificatie as an illustration of the moral authority which, in Moens’s presentation, the Dutch government had acquired in Atjeh after the war: the most mighty of the independent chiefs of the interior saw the honour of his house decided, not by arms or by the council of his peers, but by the Gouverneur sitting with the oldest oelama’s of the land. It ranks, in Moens’s enumeration, beside the schooling, the busy markets and the safe roads, as one of the proofs that the population of Atjeh accepted the new order as definitive.
See Also
- Panglima Polim
- H. N. A. Swart
- Adat
- Oelama
- Oelèëbalang
- Moens’ journey through Atjeh (November 1913)
- 1913
Source
Reisindrukken van Atjeh, door W. Moens, oud-luitenant ter zee (Amsterdam: Jacob van Campen, 1914), p. 36. OCR-filename: 20260716_140310_DLP-99-Reisindrukken_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.