3
Carey 1981:28-29, Canto III.18-19: 18. [….] / kaya durung kulak warta / tuku prungon yèn ingsun pilih tandhing. // 19. ingsun bénggol kokok Kedhu / durjana ing Parakan / nora pasah ing braja sisaning palu / kabèh mengko sira padha / mongsa kelara nadhahi.
The Right Man in the Wrong Place
The Tragic End of Raden Tumenggung Sumodilogo – Bupati of Menoreh (Kedu), circa 1790-1825
Tulisan Yang disajikan untuk Festschrift Ibu Toeti Heraty Noerhadi-Roosenno
One aspect of the bitterly fought Java War (1825-1830) seldom commented on by historians is the fact that the Javanese leader, Prince Diponegoro of Yogyakarta (1785-1855), had close ties with the criminal underworld or wong durjana in Javanese. This is evident from both the Javanese and Dutch sources. It was also mentioned to me when I first arrived in Yogyakarta in December 1971 to begin my researches of Diponegoro and the Java War by figures as diverse as Pangeran Adinegoro, Sultan Hamengu Buwono IX's (reigned 1940-1988), younger brother, and the celebrated playwright and poet, W.S. Rendra (1935-2009). Both compared Diponegoro unfavourably with the founder of Yogyakarta, Sultan Mangkubumi (reigned 1749-1792), who had steadfastly eschewed, in their view, the use of bandits during the Giyanti War (1746-1755) (Carey 1981:244 note 36).
Just why Diponegoro was so close to these criminal elements is a matter for conjecture. Clearly his upbringing from the age of six in a village environment at his great-grandmother's estate at Tegalrejo some two kilometres northwest of the Yogya court may have counted for something here. So too did his constant peregrinations through the Javanese countryside on visits to his estates to the south of Yogya and on pilgrimage to caves and holy sites. Besides, in the years leading up to the outbreak of the Java War on 20 July 1825, the south-central Javanese countryside had become a tinderbox. Riven by violence associated with the ethnically charged use of Chinese tollgate keepers (bandar) by the Dutch colonial government, the local Javanese peasantry - especially in recently annexed areas like Kedu - were heavily indebted to Chinese moneylenders. This was a result of the British Lieutenant-Governor, Thomas Stamford Raffles' (in office, 1811-1816), introduction of the land tax in 1812-1813 and his insistence that these taxes should be paid in good silver coin not copper or kind (Carey 2008: 464-504). The so-called wong durjana (evil folk) were seemingly the only resource for aggrieved peasant farmers caught in this vicious circle of violence. These relationships led to what the Dutch termed perang desa (village wars). These involved local peasant producers seeking revenge against the agents of fiscal oppression and they targetted the Chinese tollgate keepers and Dutch land-tax inspectors. And they were not alone: even those without land, the wong numpang or landless labourers, also drifted into semi-criminal activities after they had left their villages. Other joined the bands of highwaymen who roved the country roads.
Some of these bands were led by men of local influence and charisma. Known as jago ('fighting cocks'), they had a popular reputation for magical invulnerability (kebal) and innate spiritual power (Onghokham 1975:63-9; Anderson 1972:9). In the years before the Java War, such village jago provided local leadership in the numerous village wars, or helped to expand village boundaries and defend its interests. During the war itself many were appointed as army commanders in their local areas by Diponegoro (Carey 1981a:243 note 36). A few of these men were what Eric Hobsbawm has called 'social bandits': rural leaders 'who remained within peasant society, and were considered by their people as heroes, champions, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation' (Hobsbawm 1969:13-5). Oppressive landlords and government agents, especially Chinese tollgate keepers or bandar, were their natural enemies and it would have been unthinkable for them to snatch the peasants' harvest in their own territory. Others were more clearly freebooters, rural criminals who were prepared to commit any crime on the orders of a superior or for personal gain. They thus lacked the special relationship with the local population which made banditry social.
A good description of a jago figure, probably based on a real character
who became one of Diponegoro's henchmen in Kedu (Louw and De Klerck 1894-1909, III:90-91), can be found in the Surakarta version of the Babad Dipanagara. During the confrontation with the prince's supporters over the construction of the road across his estate at Tegalrejo in July 1825, the immediate casus belli for the Java War, this man is depicted in the chronicle boasting of himself in bravado fashion (Carey 1981:28-9):
III. 18. "Come on men of the Dipanagaran
fall back immediately!"
19. "It is as if you have not heard the news yet
that I am a picked champion,
a [robber] chieftain [and] leader in Kedhu
of the bandits of Parakan.
No forged weapon is strong enough for me!"
The elements of bombast and magical invulnerability which lay at the heart of the jago's charisma are here nicely depicted.
Some local jago held important positions in the provincial administration and the Dutch Resident of Yogya, Matthijs Waterloo (in office, 1803-1808), complained in 1807 that a number of district chiefs were placing themselves at the head of robber bands (Carey 2008:49). The martial and energetic spirit of the Yogyakarta inhabitants when compared to their more easy-going compatriots in Surakarta was noted by a later Dutch official who remarked that most of the successful bandit leaders in south-central Java were from the sultan's dominions (Van der Kemp 1897:14 note 1). One such was the tax-collector of the rich village of Samen to the south of Yogya, Demang Joyomenggolo. An enterprising sub-district official who doubled as a social bandit, Joyomenggolo was renowned as an expert in gunpowder manufacture and later became leader of all Diponegoro's bandit supporters to the south of the sultan's capital (Carey 1981a:243 note 36, 275 note 166).
Some villages strategically situated on roads, river crossings and border areas, where opportunities for smuggling and plunder were great, were used as the headquarters of brigands and highwaymen. One of these villages in the foothills of Mount Merbabu, which belonged to Yogya, had a sizeable population and was apparently so totally controlled by robber leaders that all the inhabitants, even down to the village 'priest' (kiai), were involved in sorties into adjacent Dutch-controlled territory (Carey 2008:49). The village of Tempel in the Sleman area athwart the main Yogya-Magelang post-road was another such bandit centre: its inhabitants apparently preyed on the busy highway traffic (the stone walls on each side of the post-road providing convenient hiding places) and later terrorised European-leased estates and villages on the flanks of Mount Merapi in the years preceding the Java War. It was the same with the settlements along the Progo River, which commanded certain key crossing points, such as Mangiran and Kamijoro whose local bandits were supposedly summoned by Diponegoro to his Tegalrejo estate in mid-July 1825 to coordinate resistance before the outbreak of the Java War (Carey 1981a:243 note 36). Jelegong and another settlement further to the north, which had inhabitants who were feared and respected because of their skills as tiger hunters, were also reported to have rendered assistance to the prince (Carey 1981a:262 note 112, 282 note 197). Known as 'elders of the hunt' (tuwa buru), they made their living by trapping tigers for the tiger-and-buffalo fights or tiger spearing (rampog macan) contests at the courts. Theirs was a difficult and dangerous occupation which involved the use of secret charms and great personal bravery (D'Almeida 1864, II:35-7; Kartomi 1976, V:9-15, VI:7-13).
The numerous links between the local jago or bandit leaders in the Yogya area and Diponegoro underline an important aspect of rural criminality in Java in the early part of the nineteenth century, namely the close association between certain robber chiefs and court notables. Certain members of the sultan's family earned themselves notorious reputations as paymasters of bandits in the early nineteenth century (Carey 2008:50). One young nobleman, Pangeran Mangkudiningrat II, a nephew of Diponegoro, who would later report the support given his uncle by the criminal elements in Javanese rural society, even had some of his lands confiscated during the reign of the fourth sultan (1814-1822) because of his brazen use of jago in raids on Chinese-run tollgates (Carey 2008:50, 462).
Although most of the connections established between priyayi (royal officials, royal kinsmen) and bandits were for financial gain, some had a political purpose. They were implicated, for example, in the revolt of Diponegoro's crippled uncle, Pangeran Diposono (born circa 1778), in Kedu in February 1822 (Carey 2008:496-99). They were also present in eastern Bagelen in 1808 and 1817: on the first occasion, the Dutch reports speak of a remarkable local jago figure who evoked much popular awe: a rebel leader or kraman (one who had set himself up against established authority) from Cirebon who had taken refuge in Bagelen. He was described as being small in height with long sideburns and dressed in a flowing tabard of checked linen cloth (kabaya ginggang). He evoked respect because of his presumed magical power and the royal authorities found it difficult to get locals to touch him still less cooperate in his arrest (Carey 2008:49).
On the second occasion in January 1817, local Javanese officials were attacked. Fuelled by the brutal fiscal policies of the colonial state and the presence of substantial Chinese textile weaving communities at Jono and Wedi in eastern Bagelen, the uprising was led by a local Yogyanese inhabitant of Bagelen who pretended to be an Arab. He assumed the name of Umar Mahdi and boasted that he would proclaim himself a Ratu Adil or Just King and would 'bring all the Javanese and Chinese communities in Bagelen to obedience' (Carey 2008:482).
One of the districts in eastern Bagelen which was most vulnerable to bandit activity at this time was Menoreh. A mountainous region between eastern Bagelen and southern Kedu. it was administered in the years before the Java War by a certain Raden Tumenggung Sumodilogo, a direct ancestor of Ibu Toety Herati. A senior Yogya mancanagara (outlying district) official, Sumodilogo appears to have been a conscientious royal servant who had already warned the Dutch Indies Government, in the person of the Resident of Kedu, F.E. Hardy (1781-1828; in office, 1819-1821), and his successor, Pieter le Clercq (1787-1839; in office, 1821-1825), that the local police force or mounted marechaussée (Jayeng Sekar) in Parakan needed to be improved in order to afford protection to the local inhabitants (Carey 1981:253 note 74). These warnings were given in the early part of 1821. In his report to the Dutch authorities, Sumodilogo underscored the need to protect the road from Temanggung to Kreteg, where locally woven cotton cloth from the Chinese-run village textile producers in eastern Bagelen and tobacco from northern Kedu was carried on packhorses and porters (batur) to Semarang and other key markets on Java's north coast. This trade was easy prey, Sumodilogo argued, for wong durjana who used the surrounding hills as his bandit hideouts (Afdeling Statistiek 1871:96; Van der Kemp 1896:584; Carey 1981:253 note 74). One such was the bandit chief of Parakan whose braggadocio (empty boastfulness) was immortalised in the Surakarta version of the Babad Dipanagara cited above.
Unfortunately, Sumodilogo's warnings appear to have fallen on deaf ears. The Dutch were too fixated on squeezing the greatest profit possible out of the tollgates in the years before the outbreak of the Java War, and they had little time or inclination to spend money on an improved local police force. In October 1824, a Commission of Enquiry into the working of the tollgates, empanelled by Governor General G.A.G.Ph. van der Capellen (in office, 1816-1826), unequivocally recommended their abolition and suggested that the European government should indemnify itself for the lost revenue – estimated at about a million Indies guilders (worth US$120.000.000 in purchasing power parity in present-day money) – by annexing the western outlying provinces of Bagelen and Banyumas. They also urged that all Chinese resident in villages and hamlets should be ordered to move to the royal capitals, that every unmarried Chinese who had been in the Principalities for less than two years should be expelled forthwith, along with those who were unemployed or guilty of extortion, and that no new Chinese immigration should be allowed (Carey 2008:474). As one of the commissioners, Hendrik Mauritz MacGillivray (1797-1835; Assistant-Resident of Surakarta, 1822-25; Resident, 1825-1827) of Surakarta), later put it:
"The Chinese are our work tools and although each year we rejoice over the increased [tax revenues] which are ascribed to [increased] prosperity and welfare, we bind the iron yoke more firmly on the shoulders [of the Javanese] […]. For a million guilders a year worth of taxes we compromise the welfare and happiness of almost two million inhabitants who are not immediately under our protection […] but whose interests are so clearly linked to ours […]."
Only the 'good nature and peacefulness' of the Javanese, in MacGillavray's opinion, had enabled the oppression of the tollgate system to continue for so long. And he ended with a fearful prophecy:
"We hope they [the Javanese] will not be awoken out of their slumbering state, for
we reckon it as a certainty that if the tollgates are permitted to continue, the time
is not far distant when the Javanese will be aroused in a terrible fashion."
This materialized in July 1825 when the inhabitants of the southern Kedu district of Probolinggo, which had a population of around 35,000 before the Java War, rose en masse after a major failure of the tobacco harvest and news of Diponegoro's own rebellion in the sultanate (Carey 1981:266 note 123). Coffee estates in central and northern Kedu were destroyed, but the main targets for popular vengeance in the southern part of this productive province showed the intense hatred of the local population for alien economic domination and fiscal oppression: thus attacks were made on land tax posts, tollgates, the houses of European land tax inspectors and estate overseers, and on the resident Chinese community, most of whom fled for their lives to the provincial capital of Magelang or the north coast (Carey 1981:260 note 106).
Sumodilogo and his brother bupati in Magelang, Raden Tumenggung Danuningrat (in office, 1813-1825), alias Sayyid Alwi, a man of Hadhrami Arab descent (Carey 1992:439-40 note 203), were caught in the ensuing maelstrom. Already before the Java War, Sumodilogo had fallen under suspicion of being anti-Dutch and had gone out of his way to try to prove his pro-Dutch credentials by naming his first-born son Raden Mas Holan [Holland] Sumodilogo (pc. Dr Toety Herati, Jakarta, June 2015). But the outbreak of hostilities on 20 July 1825, which followed the botched Dutch expedition against Diponegoro in Tegalrejo, left him fatally exposed. Both the Menoreh bupati and his Magelang counterpart were killed in the opening months of the war: Danuningrat dying in an engagement with Diponegoro's forces in southern Kedu on 30 September 1825 (Carey 1992:440 note 203), and Sumodilogo perishing at the hands of the bandit chief of Parakan, Setrodipo, who assumed the dead bupati's name but with a typical Javanese twist: instead of styling himself plain 'Sumodilogo', he now took the title Tumenggung Kertoseluman Sumodilogo (the fortunate 'ghost' Sumodilogo), as if to advertise that he was a wide boy impostor (Louw and De Klerck 1894-1909, III:90-91; Jayadiningrat 1855-57:70).
At the same time both men were decapitated: Danuningrat's head was brought all the way back to Magelang by Diponegoro's victorious supporters and flung over the walls of the closely besieged Dutch military post, the grisly trophy rolling at the feet of the terrified Dutch defenders. Sumodilogo's, meanwhile, was only found many years later and reunited with his body through the medium of a clairvoyant. His decapitated trunk, however, was discovered shortly after his death when his faithful dog came back with the slain bupati's belt in his mouth so that his followers knew that their master had perished (pc Dr Toety Herati, Jakarta, June 2015).
Sumodilogo's tragic end reminds us that there are no winners in war, especially not a war as complex and intense as that fought by Diponegoro (1825-30). There are only losers. By the time peace was eventually restored in south-central Java in late March 1830, 200,000 Javanese lay dead, two million more (nearly half the population of Java at this time) were displaced by the fighting, and the Dutch Indies state faced bankruptcy with 15,000 of its troops (8,000 Europeans; and 7,000 native levies) lying in graveyards and mass burial sites throughout central and east Java. Sumodilogo's death, which came amidst the widespread peasant uprisings (jacquerie) of the early stages of the conflict and at the hands of the ubiquitous criminal underworld - the 'dunia gelap' or 'dark net' - was a double tragedy: he had given his Dutch superiors due warning of the pressing security problems in the south-central Javanese countryside – particularly southern Kedu – in the years preceding the Java War, but he had been ignored. Even if he had been taken seriously, the greed and myopia of the Dutch Indies state meant that there were few panaceas available to avert conflict, especially when rural banditry had become so endemic. But perhaps Sumodilogo's demise was not in vain after all. Maybe it should be a wake-up call for us historians to train a new generation of historians, the Sartono Kartodirdjos and Onghokhams of the 21st century, to illuminate this twilight world of Hobsbawmian social bandits and chancers like Setrodipo – the jago of Parakan – at whose hand the bupati of Menoreh met his miserable end.
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Peter Carey is Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College, Oxford, and YAD Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Indonesia (FIB-UI) in Jakarta. He specialises on the history of Prince Diponegoro and the Java War (1825-30). He can be contacted on:
[email protected].
[5,200 words]
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