Santri in the Poorest Decile
Two stories about santri have emerged almost at the same time in recent weeks, and they are revealing when read side by side. On Monday (19 October), during a coordination meeting with the Minister of Religious Affairs, Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment Abdul Muhaimin Iskandar said most students at Islamic boarding schools come from deciles one to four, the lowest strata on the household-welfare scale.
A week earlier, public debate was stirred by a claim from a former lecturer on a podcast that the University of Indonesia prioritises pesantren graduates for admission without an entrance test. The university quickly rejected the claim, saying its admissions process is governed by the principles of objectivity, transparency, accountability and fairness, and that the allegation was unsupported by evidence.
Read together, the two stories reveal something rarely discussed amid the celebrations of Santri Day: most santri are children from poor families. When a child from a poor family succeeds in gaining entry to the country’s most prestigious university, the first reaction is suspicion: perhaps they got in through the back door.
Santri Day should instead be an opportunity to sustain pesantren as one of the oldest and most affordable routes to social mobility for children from the poorest families. That route is now under pressure from three directions: it is being reduced to job-readiness training; santri are viewed with suspicion when they rise too far; and pesantren are undermined from within when they fail to provide a safe environment.
A Dream of a Pair of Shoes
Pesantren have long welcomed children from all backgrounds, often without asking whether they could afford to pay. Those unable to pay would contribute through khidmah: helping in the kiai’s household, working the fields or drawing water for worshippers’ ablutions. This simple path has produced Qur’an teachers, village kiai and even state officials.
The autobiography of KH Saifuddin Zuhri, Guruku Orang-Orang dari Pesantren (1974), opens with a moving portrait of his childhood. In those days, only ndoro Guru owned a wall clock, and a pair of shoes was beyond the imagination of children his age. A pair of shoes—an ordinary item for many people today—was then too luxurious even to dream of. The book’s second chapter is titled “My School Was Only a Prayer Hall”. From the prayer hall and boarding school, the child who did not dare dream of owning shoes would go on to become Indonesia’s Minister of Religious Affairs. That is the kind of dream pesantren continue to nurture for children from the lowest deciles: not merely a pair of shoes, but dignity raised through learning.
The scale of this role is considerable. At the same meeting, Religious Affairs Minister Nasaruddin Umar said there are around 42,000 Islamic boarding schools under the Ministry of Religious Affairs. If most of their students come from lower deciles, pesantren constitute one of the largest education safety nets built by society itself, long before the state paid attention.
Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of different forms of capital helps explain how this works. Children from poor families arrive at pesantren with almost no economic capital. During their studies, they accumulate cultural capital—in the form of knowledge, fluency in reading classical Islamic texts, manners and scholarly lineages—as well as social capital through networks of kiai and alumni.
In time, these forms of capital can be converted into status and a livelihood. This is a quiet mechanism for moving up the social ladder.
The Qur’an provides an older foundation for this mechanism. Surah al-Mujadilah, verse 11, states: “Allah will raise those of you who believe and those who have been given knowledge by degrees.” In al-Jami’ li Ahkam al-Qur’an, al-Qurtubi interprets these degrees as “reward in the afterlife and honour in this world”.
Faith raises people first, and knowledge follows. Knowledge, in other words, is what raises a person’s status without asking where they come from.
Safeguarding Santri’s Social Mobility
That dream is now squeezed from three directions. The first pressure comes from a narrative that sounds entirely positive. On the same day, Cak Imin urged that pesantren graduates should be ready for work. The call is understandable, and even necessary, for children whose families are waiting for additional income.
But economist Amartya Sen, in Development as Freedom (1999), reminds us that development is “a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy”.
Job-readiness turns santri into workers who can be absorbed into the labour market. The capability approach enables them to choose what they want to become: religious scholars, researchers, doctors or entrepreneurs. The danger is subtle but real. Poor children are channelled towards “work”, while more affluent children are directed towards “knowledge”, and pesantren gradually lose the tafaqquh fid-din—the deep understanding of religion—that lies at their heart.
The special mortgage scheme for clerics and pesantren teachers being prepared by the Ministry of Religious Affairs deserves recognition, because the quality of pesantren education depends on the welfare of its teachers. But santri from the lowest deciles need more than that: joined-up, rights-based policies grounded in data, rather than simply corporate social responsibility handouts and annual ceremonies.
The second pressure is prejudice. The claim that “UI prioritises santri” spread quickly because it touched on an assumption quietly held by many: that children from pesantren could not reach elite universities without special treatment. Meritocracy that immediately suspects children from disadvantaged backgrounds is itself unequal.
This prejudice is an old affliction, and scripture has addressed it. Surah ’Abasa, verses 1–10, was revealed when the Prophet turned away from Ibn Umm Maktum, a poor and blind companion, while hoping that Quraysh’s leaders would accept Islam. Al-Qurtubi calls the verses “’itab min Allah li nabiyyih”—a rebuke from God to His Prophet. The rebuke was revealed so that the hearts of the ahl al-suffah, impoverished companions who lived in the mosque’s portico, would not be broken, and to affirm that “a poor believer is better than a rich one”.
Afterwards, the Prophet would always welcome Ibn Umm Maktum with the words, “Welcome to the one on whose account my Lord rebuked me”, and appointed him twice as his deputy in Medina. For universities, the best way to dispel prejudice is not merely to deny it, but to publish admissions-route data transparently, allowing santri’s achievements to speak for themselves.
The third pressure comes from within and is the most painful. Last Monday, the Ministry of Religious Affairs suspended Pesantren Dar Et Tauhid in Bekasi after a teacher was named a suspect in the alleged sexual abuse of ten female students.
The conditions for reopening are clear: anti-violence standard operating procedures, a complaints channel that guarantees confidentiality for those reporting abuse, and improved dormitory arrangements. For santri from the lowest deciles, boarding at a pesantren is often the only option, not one among many.
Changing schools is no simple matter for families with very limited means. Protection is therefore an even greater obligation. Gus Dur once described pesantren as a subculture whose vitality comes from its autonomy. That autonomy loses its meaning if it becomes a form of secrecy that protects perpetrators.
Some may consider all this too idealistic, since poor children need work as soon as possible. That is true, and there is nothing wrong with vocational skills. But a path to advancement cut off at the first step leads nowhere.
The 22 October 1945 Resolution of Jihad was initiated by kiai and carried out by thousands of santri, most of them sarong-clad village children without shoes. This country owes those children a debt. Santri Day is the right moment to begin repaying it by protecting the path that has lifted so many of the nation’s children: it must not be cut short, treated with suspicion or undermined from within.