The Ulama–Uleëbalang social revolution in Atjeh was the violent upheaval, beginning in December 1945 and effectively concluded by February 1946, in which the Ulama class — organised in the Poesa and led in the background by Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh — destroyed the political and economic power of the traditional oelèëbalang nobility of Atjeh. Henri J. H. Alers’s Om een rode of groene Merdeka treats it as the Atjèhnese counterpart to the social revolutions that convulsed Sumatra’s East Coast, Central Java, and Bantam in 1946, and as the decisive turning point that placed Atjeh, for years afterward, under what he calls an “Ulama-dictatorship.”
Background: Ulama against Uleëbalang
Alers frames the conflict as the Atjèhnese instance of a antagonism found, in muted form, throughout Indonesia and, he suggests, much of the world: the opposition between secular and religious authority — the Uleëbalang (literally “army-leaders,” bearers of the adat title Teuku) against the Ulama (bearers of the title Teungku), custodians of Islamic religious law, or hukum. As in most of Indonesia, the Dutch had built their colonial authority on the adat representatives — the Uleëbalang — who had, in consequence, accumulated substantial landholdings and control of trade. The Ulama, who alone possessed authority in matters of religious law, resented above all the Uleëbalang’s exclusive right to administer adat justice, a right that, in their eyes, denied the state its properly Islamic character. This sharp antagonism, sharper in Atjeh than almost anywhere else in Indonesia, had already produced the fiercest resistance to the Dutch during the Atjèh War and the Bakóngan uprising of the 1920s, and gave the Dutch, in the years before the war, an opening to practise a policy of divide et impera between the two classes.
Course of the revolution
Alers records that after the Japanese capitulation the standing of the well-organised Poesa grew rapidly, its wartime position under Japanese rule having strengthened it considerably relative to the Uleëbalang class. In December 1945 the antagonism “degenerated into a fierce struggle.” The Uleëbalang, true to a pattern Alers says was already visible during the Atjèh War, “defended themselves only when directly attacked” and never acted in concert — and, as a result, “lost the contest.” By February 1946 “the matter had already been decided”: a great many Uleëbalang were deposed, imprisoned, or killed, and their possessions and privileges divided among the victorious Ulama. Alers stresses that this confiscation of Uleëbalang property was not carried out, as on Java, “in the name of and by the people” but directly by and for the triumphant Ulama themselves. “The feudal adat class was destroyed; a priestly class took its place” — and, he adds pointedly, questions of freedom and similar abstractions played no role whatsoever in the process.
Central government’s non-intervention
Alers observes that the central republican government at Bukittinggi and later Djokja accepted the shift of power to the Ulama class “without much comment,” sending Mr. Mohamed Amin as government commissioner to Kuta Radja merely to ratify the reorganisation that had already taken place, so that all important administrative posts passed officially into Poesa hands; only where outside experts were indispensable were non-Atjèhnese officials still engaged. The link between the Poesa and the central republican government, Alers notes, remained deliberately loose — loose enough that it “could not possibly hinder” — since Atjeh was, by 1946, self-governing in fact if not yet formally in law, and since a united front against the Dutch made non-interference the only realistic policy for Djokja to pursue.
Aftermath: internal dissent and the Madjelis Penimbang
Dissatisfaction did not end with the Uleëbalang’s defeat. Many Ulama and even Poesa members objected that others within their own ranks had simply appropriated Uleëbalang property for themselves rather than surrendering it for equitable redistribution — acts denounced as unlawful, “haram,” by an opposition led by Teungku Hadji Hasan of Krueng Kalé and Teungku Hasbullah Indrapura. On their advice the Madjelis Penimbang (“House of Consideration”) was created to receive and redistribute disputed property, but in practice only Poesa members were ever seated on it, so the reform came to little. Continuing discontent fed into an underground movement led by Sajid Ali, which attempted, and failed, to seize control of the Poesa from Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh; the coup’s failure allowed Daoed Beureuh to have himself proclaimed military governor of Atjeh, an “Ulama-dictatorship” Alers says would “remain durable for years.”
Comparative significance
Alers situates the Atjèhnese social revolution within a wider comparative table of Java and Atjeh: he pairs the end of the Atjèh War (1903) with the end of the Java War (1830); the founding of the Poesa (1939) with the schism producing the P.K.I. and S.I. (1921); and the “green” social revolution beginning December 1945 with the “red” social revolution beginning 17 August 1945 — concluding that, phase for phase, Atjeh’s political development, though narrower in scope than Java’s, unfolded faster.
See Also
- Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh
- Teukoe Nja’ Arif
- Poesa
- Uleebalang
- Sajid Ali
- Madjelis Penimbang
- Mr. Mohamed Amin
- Aceh War
- Bakóngan uprising (1925–1927)
- 1945
- 1946
Source
Om een rode of groene Merdeka: Tien jaren binnenlandse politiek Indonesië, 1943–1953, by Henri J. H. Alers (Eindhoven: Uitgeverij Vulkaan, 1956), Chapter II §9 “Atjeh,” pp. 85–92.