Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh

Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh was a forty-year-old oelama from the landschap Keumangan in the subdistrict Sigli, chairman of the central board of the Poesa — the All-Aceh Union of Ulemas founded in 1939 — and the principal religious-political figure of pre-war Atjèh, whose influence “extended far beyond the borders of his landschap” and whose organisation provided, for the first time in the history of Atjèh, a form in which “both the oelama’s and the more militant youth would find a place.” Piekaar’s Atjèh and the War with Japan treats him as the central figure of the religious movement that would, in early 1942, ally itself with the Japanese and would, after the war, become the principal vehicle of the Atjèhnese struggle against the Dutch and against the Indonesian Republic alike.

Personal profile

Piekaar describes Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed as “of medium height, slender build,” and notes that his relationship with the old self-governing ruler of Keumangan, Teukoe Oemar (whose removal in 1938 had been one of the scandals of pre-war Atjèh administration), “left something to be desired.” He held the chairmanship of the religious school association Djamiatoeddiniyah in Blang Pasèh. The combination of his religious authority, his organisational talent, and his ability to bridge the gap between the traditional oelama’s and the more militant religious youth gave him a unique position in Atjèhnese society.

The founding of Poesa

The Poesa — P(ersatoean) Oe(lama-oelama) S(eloeroeh) A(tjèh), the All-Aceh Union of Ulemas — was founded in 1939 in Bireuën under the high patronage of Teukoe Hadji Tjhi’ Moehamad Djohan Alam Sjah, self-governing authority of Peusangan. The founding was, Piekaar records, “intended as a counterweight to the modern currents of the Moehammadijah movement, which were foreign to the fanatically pious Atjèhse religious life.” With the Poesa, Piekaar writes, “for the first time in the history of Aceh, the religious life and striving of the Acehnese found its own form,” and the movement “managed to acquire a following of an extent unknown to Aceh throughout the entire residency.” Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh, as chairman of the central board, was the principal architect of this achievement.

The modern religious school

The religious school whose main teachers included, besides Teungkoe Isma’el Jacoeb and Teungkoe Hadji Aboe Bakar, also Teungkoe Moehamad Noer — son-in-law of Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh — was the principal institutional vehicle of the movement. Teungkoe Moehamad Noer, who had “also received his training in Egypt and years previously had been noted in the Idi region for anti-authority statements,” represented the younger generation that connected the oelama’s authority to the political militancy of the religious youth.

The 1942 alliance with Japan

When the Japanese invasion came in March 1942, the Poesa — and through it Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh — emerged as the principal Atjèhnese interlocutor of the Japanese. The religious movement’s anti-Dutch orientation, the network of religious schools it had built, and its capacity to mobilise the Atjèhnese population made it the natural ally of the Japanese F-organisatie and its successor, the Masubuchi-kikan. The F-propagandists Said Aboe Bakar and Said Doellah who entered Atjèh with the Japanese troops at Meulabóh were, Piekaar records, “of the same group of persons to whom the letters found on Said Doellah were addressed” — that is, the Poesa network.

The Ulama–Uleëbalang war and the collapse of the oelèëbalang class (1945–1946)

After the Japanese capitulation, the historian Henri J. H. Alers records, the standing of the Poesa — “well organised” and strengthened by its wartime role — grew rapidly at the expense of the oelèëbalang class, and in December 1945 the long-smouldering antagonism between Ulama and Uleëbalang “degenerated into a fierce struggle.” The oelèëbalangs, Alers writes, “defended themselves only when directly attacked” and, true to a pattern already visible in the Atjèh War, “did not act in concert” — with the result that they “lost the contest.” By February 1946 “the matter had already been decided”: a large number of oelèëbalangs were deposed, imprisoned, or killed, and their possessions and prerogatives were divided among the victorious Ulama, so that, in Alers’s phrase, the feudal adat class was destroyed and “a priestly class took its place.” Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh’s own position — though he himself is described by Alers as characteristically reticent, keeping “to the sidelines” (“op de vlakte”) during the worst of the fighting — was immeasurably strengthened, since the Poesa’s rank and file were drawn overwhelmingly from the militant Ulama class that had carried out the revolution.

Alers compares the episode directly to events in Java: he treats the Atjèhnese Ulama–Uleëbalang war of December 1945–February 1946 as the structural equivalent, “in relative historical terms,” of the 17 October affair of 1952 in Java, with the crucial difference that in Atjèh “the design succeeded” where the Javanese counterpart failed. He also notes that the coup within the Poesa itself — the abortive attempt of Sajid Ali to seize the movement’s leadership — should be placed, in the same comparative scheme, on the level of Tan Malaka’s failed coup on Java.

Military Governor of Atjeh and the struggle for provincial autonomy

Following the death in captivity of Teukoe Nja’ Arif — the oelèëbalang whom the Republic had placed at the head of Atjeh’s administration, and whom the Poesa itself arrested at the end of January 1946 as an “enemy of the Republic” — Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh had himself appointed head of the Service of Religious Affairs (Dienst van Godsdienstzaken), while a pliant oelèëbalang, Teukoe Tjhi’ Moehamad Daoed Sjah, was installed as nominal successor to Nja’ Arif. Alers describes Daoed Beureu-éh as the real power “behind the scenes.” When an underground movement of dissatisfied Ulama, led by Sajid Ali, tried and failed to wrest control of the Poesa away from him, the episode had far-reaching consequences: Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh had himself named military governor of Atjeh, and — in Alers’s words — “this Ulama-dictatorship would remain durable for years.”

Atjeh, Alers observes, was under his governorship “in fact if not in law” wholly self-governing: the central republican regime, first at Bukittinggi and then at Djokja, had neither the means nor, for the sake of a united anti-Dutch front, the desire to interfere. When Mr. Sjafrudin Prawiranegara, head of the Republic’s Emergency Government, visited Atjeh in August 1949, Daoed Beureu-éh — by then republican military governor — pressed demands amounting to near-total autonomy, citing Atjeh’s distinct political, economic, cultural, ethnological and religious character (as against the Christian Bataks and Tapanoelese). Prawiranegara conceded on every point, and Atjeh became, in August 1949, a de jure autonomous province of the Republic — a status Alers stresses it had, in practice, already held for years. The Central Government at Djokja, however, promptly cabled Prawiranegara that his decision had exceeded his mandate, provoking consternation in Poesa circles before the government partially retreated, allowing the province to continue “de facto.”

The reprieve was short-lived. In early 1951 the Djakarta government created the merged province of North Sumatra — combining Atjeh, Tapanoeli and the former federal state of East Sumatra — reducing Atjeh to a mere residency and addressing official correspondence to a “resident-coordinator” even before Daoed Beureu-éh’s dismissal as governor had been finalised. Daoed Beureu-éh, Alers records, simply returned such letters unopened. He was subsequently ordered transferred to Djakarta for a ministry post and, offered his resignation from government service instead, had it granted “with suspicious speed.” His nominee successor as resident-coordinator, the Javanese Danubroto, tried to install loyal, largely oelèëbalang-class and non-Atjèhnese officials in posts held by Poesa members, provoking the oelèëbalang class to found their own pressure group, the Badan Keinsjafan Rakjat (B.K.R.), under Teuku Mohammed Ali Samalanga.

The kafir campaign and accession to the Negara Islam Indonesia (1953)

Alers records that Daoed Beureuh had, as early as 1951, begun denouncing Javanese central-government officials in Atjeh as “kafirs” (unbelievers) — a charge Alers reads as more than mere invective, reflecting a genuine perception that the Republic’s own “social revolution” of 17 August 1945 and the Islamic revolution he had led in Atjeh shared the same social root, even as Djakarta refused to see it that way. Alers argues that Daoed Beureuh restrained himself so long as the national government remained in Masjumi hands — under Prime Ministers Sukiman Wirjosandjojo (from 26 April 1951) and Wilopo (from 23 March 1952) — since he could reasonably expect an Islamic government, however imperfectly, to honour Islamic obligations. The fall of Wilopo’s cabinet after the 17 October 1952 crisis and the formation, on 1 August 1953, of a cabinet under Ali Sastroamidjojo — from which Masjumi was excluded and in which figures such as Moh. Jamin held office — removed, in Alers’s account, Daoed Beureuh’s last reason for restraint.

By early September 1953 the Atjèh police coordinator, Njakumar, had already begun placing guards on public buildings in response to intelligence reports, and on 21 September 1953 Atjèh’s accession to the Negara Islam Indonesia (N.I.I.) was proclaimed. The Imam Kartosuwirjo appointed Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureuh his governor for Atjeh, and the prang sabil — holy war — against the “kafir government” began at once. Within six days, by 27 September 1953, nearly the whole of Atjeh was in rebel hands, with government forces clinging on only around Kota-Radja in the north and Langsa in the south. Groot Atjeh joined the N.I.I. as a body under the acting assistant-coordinator Teuku Sulaiman Daud; only the garrison at Kuta Tjané held out in Central Atjeh, and on the West Coast only Meulaboh and Tapatoean remained in government hands.

The reconquest, entrusted to Colonel Simbolon of the Bukit Barisan territorial command, proceeded through October and November 1953 — Seulimeum and Bajeunen on 3 October, Meureudu on 10 October, Blangkedjeren and Biruën on 20 October, and finally Takengon on 24 November 1953 — until, by the end of November, the rebellion had been reduced to the scale of “roving bands in the interior,” although the underlying insurgency, like its counterparts in West Java and South Celebes, would drag on unresolved. Alers notes the irony that the officer chosen to crush the rebellion, Simbolon, had himself declared for “green” — the Islamic side — in the 17 October 1952 controversy. He also observes that Sukarno himself, on 14 October 1953 at Bone in South Celebes, alleged that Kartosuwirjo had appealed to the United States for aid — an appeal Alers judges could only sensibly have been made on behalf of the strategically significant Atjeh, not the militarily marginal South Celebes.

Dutch observer characterization (1957)

H. C. Beynon’s Nederland staat terecht in Indonesië (1957) — written from a perspective outside the Indonesian political debates that shaped Alers’s account — describes Daud Beureueh with a formulation that emphasizes his dual status within the Republic’s own institutional structure: “bestuursambtenaar en parlementslid van de Masjumi-fractie” (“civil servant and member of parliament from the Masjumi faction”). This characterization grounds the rebellion not only in religious authority but in the collapse of Beureueh’s position within the formal constitutional order of the Republic. As a member of parliament from the Masjumi faction and a serving bestuursambtenaar, his proclamation of rebellion in September 1953 was simultaneously a withdrawal from the Republic’s political institutions — institutions in which, until the exclusion of Masjumi from the Ali Sastroamidjojo cabinet in August 1953, he retained a formal stake.

Alers’s “Red or Green Merdeka” comparison

Alers’s Om een rode of groene Merdeka treats Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureuh as the structural counterpart, within Atjeh, of Sukarno on Java: both men, he argues, “called forth — over the heads of the Japanese authorities — a fanatical psychosis directed against the established feudal state structure,” Sukarno’s on the scale of the whole of Java and inevitably “red,” Daoed Beureuh’s confined to Atjeh and, because the Japanese openly courted Islam, comparatively unimpeded and inevitably “green.” Alers sets the chronologies of Java and Atjeh side by side as mirrored sequences — the end of the Java War (1830) against the end of the Atjèh War (1903); the founding of Muhammadiyah (1908) against early moderate political awakening (1925); the schism that produced the P.K.I. and S.I. (1921) against the founding of the Poesa (1939); and the social revolution under “red directives” from 17 August 1945 against the “green” social revolution beginning December 1945 — concluding that, phase for phase, “the Atjèhnese development was, chronologically speaking, faster.”

Source

Atjèh and the War with Japan, by Dr. A. J. Piekaar, translated from the Dutch original Atjèh en de oorlog met Japan (1949) (‘s-Gravenhage/Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve; English edition), Chapter I, § 3 and Chapter V.

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. 84–92, and Chapter VII §35 “De Negara Islam Indonesia in Atjeh,” pp. 265–274.

De staatkundige ontwikkeling van Indonesië in de 20e eeuw, uitgave van het Bureau Cursussen en Vertalingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen (Amsterdam: Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, revised ed. 1955). Chronologisch overzicht: “Augustus 1953 — Onder leiding van Daoed Beurouch breekt een opstand uit in Atjeh.”

Nederland staat terecht in Indonesië: Achtergronden van de processen tegen Nederlanders in Djakarta, by H. C. Beynon (Utrecht: A.W. Bruna & Zoon, 1957), chronological appendix pp. 218–225. Koninklijke Bibliotheek, shelfmark 26526217. Delpher Digital Library, reference DLP-79.

tags	person, achehnese, religious, political, military, rebellion
aliases	Teungkoe Mohamad Daoed Beureu'éh, Teungkoe Muhammad Daud Beureueh, Daoed Beureu, Daud Beureueh, Tgk. M. Daud Beureueh, Teungku Muhammad Daud Beureuh, Daud Beureuh

Explorer