Madjelis Penimbang — literally the “House of Consideration” — was a body established on the advice of the central republican government in the aftermath of the Ulama–Uleëbalang social revolution, intended to receive and adjudicate the properties confiscated from the defeated oelèëbalang class during the revolution and to see them either returned to surviving oelèëbalangs or redistributed as compensation to the population for losses suffered during the upheaval. Henri J. H. Alers’s Om een rode of groene Merdeka treats its practical failure as symptomatic of how completely the Poesa had come to dominate Atjeh’s institutions by 1946.
Origins
The idea for the Madjelis Penimbang arose from internal Poesa opposition — led by the Ulama Teungku Hadji Hasan of Krueng Kalé and Teungku Hasbullah Indrapura — to the fact that many Ulama had simply appropriated the property of murdered or dispossessed oelèëbalangs for their own benefit, entrenching themselves in trade and the local economy in the process. Such seizures, the opposition argued, were unlawful acts of plunder, “haram” under Islamic law. All irregularly acquired property was to be surrendered to the Madjelis Penimbang; property whose oelèëbalang owners and heirs had been entirely wiped out during the revolution was to be used instead to compensate the population for losses suffered in the upheaval, while surviving oelèëbalangs — who, Alers notes, “themselves made only very modest demands,” asking merely for enough land to support themselves — were to have their holdings restored.
Practical failure
“All this,” Alers writes, “looked very fine on patient paper,” but in practice only Poesa members were ever seated on the Madjelis Penimbang, so that almost nothing came of the scheme. The continuing dissatisfaction this produced — among both unreconciled oelèëbalangs and Poesa members who felt the redistribution had been captured by insiders — fed directly into the underground movement led by Sajid Ali, which attempted, unsuccessfully, to wrest control of the Poesa away from Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh.
See Also
- Teungku Hadji Hasan of Krueng Kalé
- Teungku Hasbullah Indrapura
- Poesa
- Sajid Ali
- Ulama–Uleëbalang social revolution in Atjeh (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,” p. 92.
Madjelis Penimbang — literally the “House of Consideration” — was a body established on the advice of the central republican government in the aftermath of the Ulama–Uleëbalang social revolution, intended to receive and adjudicate the properties confiscated from the defeated oelèëbalang class during the revolution and to see them either returned to surviving oelèëbalangs or redistributed as compensation to the population for losses suffered during the upheaval. Henri J. H. Alers’s Om een rode of groene Merdeka treats its practical failure as symptomatic of how completely the Poesa had come to dominate Atjeh’s institutions by 1946.
Origins
The idea for the Madjelis Penimbang arose from internal Poesa opposition — led by the Ulama Teungku Hadji Hasan of Krueng Kalé and Teungku Hasbullah Indrapura — to the fact that many Ulama had simply appropriated the property of murdered or dispossessed oelèëbalangs for their own benefit, entrenching themselves in trade and the local economy in the process. Such seizures, the opposition argued, were unlawful acts of plunder, “haram” under Islamic law. All irregularly acquired property was to be surrendered to the Madjelis Penimbang; property whose oelèëbalang owners and heirs had been entirely wiped out during the revolution was to be used instead to compensate the population for losses suffered in the upheaval, while surviving oelèëbalangs — who, Alers notes, “themselves made only very modest demands,” asking merely for enough land to support themselves — were to have their holdings restored.
Practical failure
“All this,” Alers writes, “looked very fine on patient paper,” but in practice only Poesa members were ever seated on the Madjelis Penimbang, so that almost nothing came of the scheme. The continuing dissatisfaction this produced — among both unreconciled oelèëbalangs and Poesa members who felt the redistribution had been captured by insiders — fed directly into the underground movement led by Sajid Ali, which attempted, unsuccessfully, to wrest control of the Poesa away from Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh.
See Also
- Teungku Hadji Hasan of Krueng Kalé
- Teungku Hasbullah Indrapura
- Poesa
- Sajid Ali
- Ulama–Uleëbalang social revolution in Atjeh (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,” p. 92.