Idul Fitri a chance to return to one's roots

Idul Fitri a chance to return to one's roots

By Listiana Operananta and Ida Indawati Khouw

JAKARTA (JP): Celebrating Idul Fitri in their home villages is a chance for many city people to touch base with their family's culture and to go back to their roots, experts say.

The phenomena has baffled many people, including officials and even academics, because it has developed into a massive annual exodus of people from big cities to rural villages.

This Idul Fitri holiday the government estimates that as many as 25 million people have hit the roads, railway stations, ports and airports to return to their villages.

Every year, this means massive congestion at all exit points from the big cities, particularly in Jakarta. This year the traffic has been well managed and warnings by the national weather agency that massive floods would disrupt the traffic even further, have been unfounded.

But to call mudik, as the phenomena of going back to villages is known, irrational -- given the enormous struggle involved in leaving town -- is to oversimplify the matter, anthropologists, psychologists and religious experts say.

The desire to go back to one's home village is part of a basic human needs to maintain one's cultural identity, said anthropologist Anto Achidiyat of the University of Indonesia.

"No matter how far they have moved, the call to return to their rural homes will always be in their hearts," he said.

For many Moslems in Indonesia, Idul Fitri is the most appropriate opportunity to answer that call, he added.

Anto said a similar urge is found among people of other faiths or groups, but because they represent a minority in Indonesia, it is less noticeable.

"It's universal," he said, noting that the minority Christians in Indonesia do the same at Christmas, and many ethnic Chinese in Indonesia head for China for the Lunar New Year.

Iwan Tjitradjaya, another University of Indonesia anthropologist, said many Indonesians who have settled in big cities still find a sense of home and community in their family's villages.

Sarlito W. Sarwono, a psychology professor at the University of Indonesia, said going home is a basic need for most city people because "they need to find their roots."

Komaruddin Hidayat of Paramadina, an Islamic research and development institute, said that although the tradition is not spelled out by Islam, it is nevertheless implicitly encouraged.

"At Idul Fitri people are told to forgive one another and seek forgiveness from their elders," he said, adding: "That's why in spite of the great inconvenience, many people insist on going back home to be with their folks."

Mudik also allows for far greater social interaction than people can find in modern cities, he said.

Masdar F. Mas'udi, director of the Center for the Development of Islamic Boarding Schools and Community, said mudik is a demonstration of solidarity by city folks with their rural counterparts.

Many of these people take home money they have earned during the previous 12 months. And solidarity begets solidarity, because many employers gave workers Idul Fitri bonuses and allow them extended leave, he added.

Anto said mudik helps redistribute wealth from big cities to rural areas, and therefore lessens the urban-rural economic disparity.

Research conducted in 1991 found that in one village in Wonogiri, Central Java, the state-owned Bank Rakyat Indonesia and the local post office handled Rp 70 million ($30,000) in money transfers from cities, with the majority coming from Jakarta.

Anto said the massive congestion that came with the exodus could be prevented or eased with better overall development planning, particularly through greater decentralization.

Too much centralization of power and economic development has undoubtedly drawn people into the big cities, particularly Jakarta, he said.

The impact is felt when Idul Fitri comes and these people struggle to head back to their villages.

If nothing was done, some day the exodus could lead to complete gridlock because there would be too many people trying to leave at the same time, he said.

Government officials have admitted that many people would be accompanied by relatives or friends from their villages when they return to the big cities after the Idul Fitri celebration.