Cross Boundaries

Mandailing
By Fazli Ibrahim
Nuance magazine, Sunday Times, 18 April 2004

THE story of author, environmentalist Abdur-Razzaq Lubis' quest to trace his roots is one in which FAZLI IBRAHIM has a personal stake.

Pictures by ARBAIN RAMBEY and KHOO SALMA NASUTION.

IN his suitcase, amidst folded clothes and books, Abdur-Razzaq Lubis packs an abit Godang. He unfurls the two-metre long cotton shawl to reveal a rainbow of tiny beads painstakingly threaded into arabesque designs to the dark-coloured fabric.

To Abdur-Razzaq, it is more than just a piece of souvenir acquired from his travels.

Worn during weddings, at births and the installation of local chiefs, and only sometimes to ward off the bitter cold in the mountains, the abit Godang is Abdur-Razzaq's badge of identity.

He is a Mandailing.

For a decade or so now, Abdur-Razzaq's quest to trace his roots has seen him becoming one of the foremost authorities on the Mandailing community this side of the Straits.

Two years ago he did this writer the favour of locating his grandmother's birthplace - a village called Tobang in the Mandailing heartland on the slopes of Mt Sorik Merapi.

At the age of nine back in the 1920s, the writer's grandmother was taken by her aunt to what was then Malaya following a family feud. Months before she passed away, at the age of 83 some years ago, this woman with 40-odd grandchildren was still reminiscing about "home" - the big house where she spent her childhood and the surrounding hills and padi fields in north Sumatra.

The seed of Abdur-Razzaq's interest was sown during his childhood. He had spent much of his school holidays at his grandparents' home in Chemor, Perak, where he soaked up Mandailing lore from Nek Teh Puasa.

"The stories were generally about the Mandailing migration to Peninsular Malaysia and in particular about Raja Asal, Raja Bilah and Raja Ya'qub, the great leaders of the Mandailing people.

"My grandmother was the granddaughter of Raja Bilah.

"The stories were of the hardship they faced migrating here, the first settlements in this country, their leaders, the homeland and clans... and the wars they fought both in Sumatra and in the peninsula - allies and enemies, victories and defeats, and achievements and tragedies.

"It was pure adventure. I imagine I sat there for hours on end listening to her tales, and each time a tale is repeated, it would be slightly different, an added twist," says Abdur-Razzaq, 43, who now lives in Penang.

While his grandmother regaled him with her recollections of the past, it was grandpa Muhammad Dahlan Harun who impressed upon him to take pride in his roots.

"He asked me to use my clan name. You will not find it in my IC. He even corrected the spelling of my Arabic name. So my name - Abdur-Razzaq Lubis - became my new identity, my Mandailing Muslim identity, if you like.

"He also presented me with a rare book on the origins of the Lubis clan. It was written in the Mandailing language and he signed on the inside page of the book, Muhammad Dahlan Loebis. I had never seen him use that name before. I was pleasantly surprised.

"What is also significant about him giving me that book is that I didn't know a word of Mandailing at the time. Maybe it was his way of telling me to learn the language, find out more about my heritage." When he inherited the book, Abdur-Razzaq was already a young man in his 20s. Both
grandparents lived to a ripe old age - Muhammad Dahlan passed away at the age of 90 in
1999, and Teh Puasa at 92, just last year.

With these childhood memories serving as the impetus, Abdur-Razzaq written a book, Raja Bilah and the Mandailings in Perak 1875-1911, which was published early this year by the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.

In the book, co-authored by his wife, Khoo Salma Nasution, Abdur-Razzaq follows the career of his great-great-grandfather, Raja Bilah, who, after his retreat to Perak, became the penghulu of Papan, a prosperous mining;town in the Kinta valley at one time. Illustrated with transcribed jawi
letters, maps and old photographs from the family's archives, the book has earned the praise of historian Professor Emeritus Datuk Dr Khoo Kay Kim.

It was while preparing the 278-page tome that Abdur-Razzaq first got to visit the Mandailing homeland in Indonesia.

"With my wife's help, I applied for a grant from the Toyota Foundation to research and write the history of the Mandailing migration, especially that of Raja Bilah and his contemporaries. I was awarded a two-year grant in 1997, and off I went to Sumatra. Since then I have been back there at
least five times. So you see, two women played a critical role in my search for my roots - my grandmother and my wife," he says, beaming.

For Abdur-Razzaq, that visit - which began with a flight to Medan, followed by a bumpy 12-hour drive - was nothing short of a journey of discovery.

And for that, he has much to thank Pak Pangaduan Lubis, an anthropologist, Mandailing patriot and mentor, who served as his guide. "My first reaction upon arrival was, `wow!'. The scenery was breathtaking. If you are a Mandailing, a nature lover and an environmentalist, and you are seeing for the first time the place that you have been pining for, I suppose you would fall in love with it.

"I was taken to see the real Mandailing... of old, if you like. The Mandailing that is off the beaten track. But even from the main road, the scene - the rugged terrain, rivers and padi fields and orchards - was awesome."

According to Abdur-Razzaq, the Mandailing heartland comprises mountainous Mandailing Julu or Upper Mandailing on the one hand, and Mandailing Jae or Lower Mandailing - also known as Greater Mandailing -which is in the plains, on the other. "My impressions are that Upper Mandailing has remained relatively unspoiled while Lower Mandailing seems to be undergoing
haphazard development. Coming from a very urbanised environment, I naturally found Upper Mandailing far more exciting."

The journey also reunited Abdur-Razzaq with relatives long sundered by the Straits of Malacca. On his 1997 trip, he journeyed to his ancestral village of Maga to meet up with uncle Raja Syahbudin, a local leader who had visited his Malaysian relatives several times before.

"My uncle cried when he saw me and I cried too. We embraced for what seemed like a long time. A few days after my arrival my uncle threw a feast accompanied by the beating of the Gordang Sambilan, the nine great traditional drums.

"That was the first time I saw the drums in a performance. It was quite a moving scene for me. The feast was held to welcome a long lost nephew," he says.

"In many settlements in Mandailing, the Gordang Sambilan takes centre stage - they are exhibited in the `village square'."

The people were polite, warm and friendly, he remembers.

"One of the first things that Pak Pangaduan did was to take me to the market, and say, `Look at your people, tell me what you see?'

"I saw people who looked aboriginal, who looked Indian, who
looked Chinese, who had red hair, and combinations of all that.

"He explained that the Mandailings are made up of diverse peoples, and that one is Mandailing by blood as well as by custom, which is to say, Mandailing is an open society," Abdur-Razzaq recalls

(This is equally the case with regards to the Malay society.)

Life, like in most agricultural communities, revolves around the padi planting cycle, while extra income is earned from the sale of rubber and gula aren - similar to gula Melaka - to dealers in Medan.

What about the famous Mandailing coffee?

"I hate to disappoint you, but nowadays the Sumatra Mandheling coffee is grown mainly in the Karo region (the Karo is another ethnic group). It's Arabica. Many coffee brands, including the `Kapal Api' which just got into the Malaysian market, claim that their beans are Mandheling Arabica. The dealers are just cashing in on an established name, a world famous label."

From his visits, Abdur-Razzaq became better acquainted with the local customs. But Mandailing food, he says, is rather basic and simple. The staple dish, or lauk, is a species of red carp, which villagers rear in big ponds called tobat. "It's cooked in coconut milk curry or or simply grilled."

Occasionally, buffalo meat enters the menu. This would be during festivities such as weddings, the installation of a raja, or when an outsider marrying a Mandailing is adopted by one of the clans - which was what Abdur-Razzaq himself experienced when wife Salma, a Penang Peranakan, was welcomed into the Nasution clan.

The buildings in the region bear Minangkabau influence, with pitched buffalo horn shaped - roofs covered with ijok palm thatch.

"Buildings have even or uneven steps representing the abode of nobility or slaves, at a time when they had slaves. The Raja's house is called Bagas Godang and the council hall, where the Mandailing nobles and elders hold their meetings is called Sopo Godang. The Sopo has no walls so that the people can follow the proceedings.

"In this sense, the Mandailing society is very transparent."

On a personal level, the visits have also somewhat recast Abdur-Razzaq's ideas on ethnicity and culture. One of the unresolved issues among Mandailings is ethnic identity, he believes; whether the people belong to the Batak stock.

"I wrote to Pak Pangaduan and he argued, quite persuasively, that the Mandailings are not Batak, but a distinct group.

"He said it was a colonial agenda, and a Toba agenda, to group the Mandailings with the Batak. The Toba, more than any other ethnic groups in the northern part of Sumatra subsumed under the Batak category, identify with the label.

"I spoke to many people about this and I could see that the Mandailings themselves are divided over the issue. For example, another authority on the Mandailings, Basyral Hamidy Harahap, is of the opinion that the Mandailings are Batak.

"By and large, the Mandailings in Malaysia reject the Batak label. My family history also denies connection with the Batak.

"There you have it, the Mandailing identity crisis. Are they Batak or Malay?

They cannot be both as the two are distinct. On top of that you have national identities and national policies. I bring this up because the identity issue is critical in the reading of the history of the
Mandailings as well as their future," he says.

Still, why is determining and preserving the identity important? "It gives you a life perspective... well, at least for me. The very existence of the Mandailings should be seen positively as contributing to human diversity which is universally recognised by Islam.

"Clearly the Mandailings have contributed significantly towards enriching Malaysia's cultural diversity."

In his travels, Abdur-Razzaq sought out places mentioned by his grandparents as well as several important cultural and historic sites.

"I visited Sayurmaincat, where my grandfather is from, and also Singengu to see the famous Bagas Godang, the council hall with columns made of whole tree trunks."

And then there was the Lubuk Larangan, an indigenous river protection programme by the Batang Gadis River, one of the main rivers in Mandailing and of cultural significance.

When village elders and leaders declare part of a river Lubuk Larangan, no one is allowed to fish in the stretch for a duration of between six months and a year, giving time for the depleted fish stock to recover. Once the period is up - usually coinciding with Hari Raya or a major festival - whole villages can be seen wading in the water, harvesting buckets of freshwater fish with nets.

Abdur-Razzaq's account might paint a peaceful rural idyll, but he stresses that the Mandailing has undergone waves of change - sometimes not for the better.

His fear is that the "homeland" he has recovered might be lost yet again, this time to economic mismanagement and environmental destruction.

"I was told by Pak Pangaduan and others that there was illegal logging taking place. At the time, I didn't realise the magnitude of the problem,
not until later.

"I felt I had to do something. So, when the opportunity presented itself, I prepared a preliminary paper on Managing the Mandailing Environment, for presentation at an international conference on Indonesian studies," Abdur-Razzaq says.

Of late, following Reformasi in Indonesia, the local media, such as the Kompas daily, seems to have also started highlighting the serious threat logging poses to the region's environment.

"And some months back, there were demonstrations in Panyabungan, the capital of the regency of Mandailing-Natal, urging the authorities to take action against the perpetrators of illegal logging."

As if that's not challenging enough, another threat looms large."Gold mining... I heard that an Australian company is already doing prospecting work for large-scale mining there."

"The Mandailings in Malaysia are oblivious to these developments. The Mandailings should emulate their immediate neighbours, the Minangs. There are many positive things they can learn. For example, the Minangs - whether they are in Medan, Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur - continue to invest in their homeland.

"They preserve their way of life, they take better care of their environment and to this day they remain an intellectual and economic force.

"For a start, the Mandailings in Malaysia should resume using their clan names, and maintain a tarombo, a genealogy, which will lead to greater appreciation of their heritage," Abdur-Razzaq says.

Out of the homeland The Mandailing's story in Malaysia began more than a century ago in the 1830s. Around the period, their original homeland in northwest Sumatra was invaded by troops of the Padri movement from Minangkabau in the south, prompting the Dutch to intervene. The Padri were a Wahabi-inspired sect who waged war against the Minangkabau's traditional rulers and what they considered un-Islamic practices. The homeland was in turmoil - some Mandailings sided with the Padri while others fought against them. Many Mandailings clans led by their Rajas fled en masse to the peninsula to escape the turmoil. To the Mandailing newcomers, the peninsula was a land of opportunity where they can start anew as farmers, traders and tin miners. These migrants first settled in the Klang river basin, opening villages in Hulu Langat, Gombak and Ampang. They prospered. A Mandailing leader, Sutan Puasa - a friend and contemporary of Yap Ah Loy - was reputedly one of the richest man in Kuala Lumpur during the 1860s. But before long, the Mandailings were again priming their muskets - dragged into a series of local civil wars in Pahang and Selangor. Finally, when their ally, Raja Mahadi, lost the Selangor civil war in 1870s, many Mandailings under the leadership of Raja Asal withdrew to Perak, where their descendants such as Abdur-Razzaq remained today. Like other migrant groups from the archipelago - the Minangs, the Bugis and the Javanese - the latter day Mandailings are fully assimilated into the dominant Malay society. Most are aware of their ancestry, but Abdur-Razzaq, a representative of the Mandailing All Clans Assembly (HIKMA) belongs to the few who still forge bonds with the distant homeland. Abdur-Razzaq explains that the Mandailings have a clan-based society, governed by customary laws know as Dalihan na Tolu. Each clan has distinct names such as Lubis, Nasution and Rangkuti, usually adopted as surnames by clan members. "Even the leaders of the Mandailings, the Namora-Natoras (that is the nobles and the elders) are subject to these laws. The relationships between Mandailings are based on the principle of olong dohot domu, or love and companionship. The Mandailings practice of Islam where custom co-exists with religion," he explains. In Indonesia, many Mandailings became respected national figures. Among them were General A. Haris Nasution, the only army leader to survive the abortive September 30 Partai Komunis Indonesia coup in 1965, which hastened the downfall of President Sukarno. Others include Indonesian Foreign Minister Tun Adam Malik, who was pivotal in ending the Konfrontasi with Malaysia, and prominent author and journalist Mochtar Lubis. In Malaysia, prominent personalities of Mandailing descent include educationist Aminuddin Baki, former Selangor Menteri Besar Datuk Harun Idris and former judge Tan Sri Azmi Kamaruddin. Abdur-Razzaq estimates that Malaysians of Mandailing heritage number around 45,000.

>>> back to 'cross boundaries'