Where are the Betawi headed?

Jakarta, which celebrated its 468th anniversary last week, is a melting pot of various ethnic groups from almost all parts of the country. Can the Betawi, its indigenous people, compete with the migrants who keep flowing in? Is it true that the Betawi natives have fallen victim to the development drive? In an effort to answer these questions, The Jakarta Post talks to several native people of Jakarta and experts on the issue.

JAKARTA (JP): Many people might have lived in Jakarta for decades but very few are curious about the native people of this sprawling capital city, who are called the Betawi. For them a Betawi man or woman be a gado-gado (vegetable salad) seller or a fruit peddler who lives at the outskirts of the city. The general picture most people have of the Betawi is that of uneducated people untouched by modernization.

Those who look at the Betawi people this way are not entirely right, but they are surely not alone.

Betawi people are stereotyped as poorly educated, or socially and economically behind the members of other ethnic groups living in this sprawling capital city, said Yasmine Zaki Shahab, a demographic anthropologist from the University of Indonesia, Jakarta.

This stereotype is reflected in Si Doel Anak Sekolahan (Doel the Graduate), a popular television comedy about a Betawi family.

The central theme of the story is that unlike the other members of the family Doel studies at a university and graduates from it. The story also speaks about the problems of Doel and the people around him, and how they handle them.

"The spectators enjoy watching how lugu (simple and naive) the characters in the story are," Yasmine said.

However, in the world of reality, there are elite Betawi people who are affluent, well-educated, and active in the social and political fields. Former city vice governors Asmawi Manaf and Maj. Gen. (ret) Edy Marzuki Nalapraya, city councilor Amarullah Asbah and rector of the University of Indonesia M.K. Tadjuddin are among the well-educated Betawi.

Perhaps many people are simply unaware that out of the 75 city councilors, eight are native Jakartans. There are also more than 100 general practitioners of Betawi origin, Amarullah said.

"More and more Betawi people now go to colleges," Amarullah said. "The parents might be uneducated, or even illiterate, but the children now have enjoyed good educations."

According to Yasmine, the distance between what is Betawi and what is non-Betawi is "slippery". There are different parameters used to identify Betawi people. Those who have done research on the Betawi dialect believe that the native people are those who speak the dialect in their daily life. But others say that the natives are the ones who promote Betawi arts.

"Therefore, there are people who claim to be Betawi, but are not categorized as Betawi by some experts," said Yasmine, who got her doctorate degree from the University of London last year. Her thesis was on Betawi people.

In her researches, Yasmine used the subjectivity approach, accepting people as Betawi if they felt they were Betawi. She found out that many people regarded themselves as Betawi, even though only one of their parents had Betawi blood.

It seems impossible to find anyone who is 100 percent pure Betawi because many Betawi have married people from other ethnic groups.

"The highest rate of mixed marriage is found right here among the Betawi people, not among other groups," she said. Yasmine added that between 70 percent and 80 percent of the Betawi people have intermarried with other ethnic groups.

It is also impossible to know just how many Jakartans have Betawi blood, but Amarullah claimed that the number could reach 2.5 million from among Jakarta's population of nine million. Greater Jakarta, which includes Bogor, Tangerang and Bekasi, is the home of some 11 million people.

Amarullah, who is the secretary of the Betawi Discussion Forum,, saw no problem with mixed marriages, because "what is important is that you are committed to Betawi culture."

Ridwan Saidi, the writer of Orang Betawi dan Modernisasi Jakarta (The Betawi People and the Modernization of Jakarta), said that the Betawi were originally the people of the Taruma Nagara Kingdom. This Hindu kingdom covered the area from the Ciliwung river, the border for Krawang, Bekasi and Bogor in West Java, and Marunda, a coastal village in North Jakarta, between the fifth and the eighth centuries.

At the 12th century, the Pajajaran Kingdom ruled the area and built the Sunda Kelapa port, which played a significant role in the economic development of the region.

Pajajaran established an economic link with the Portuguese in 1522. The Portuguese had occupied Malaka in the Malay peninsula (now Western Malaysia). The relationship was marked with the construction of a Portuguese representative chamber of commerce Sunda Kelapa.

This upset Demak, an Islamic Kingdom located in Central Java. That kingdom immediately sent troops under the leadership of Fatahillah.

The day Fatahillah seized Sunda Kelapa in 1527 was later declared as the birth of Jayakarta, which later came to be known as Jakarta.

Jayakarta was seized by the Dutch in 1619, who changed its name to Batavia. But the local people called it Betawi.

Groups

Ridwan Saidi, whose book does not seem to be based on serious research, categorizes the Betawi community into two different groups: Betawi Tengah (urban Betawi) and Betawi Pinggir (rural Betawi).

Each group was distinguished by way of life, social and cultural activities. The urban Betawi people were defined as used to living in densely populated areas in the central part of city, such as Kemayoran, Tanah Abang, Senen, Gambir and Petojo.

The rural Betawi were defined as those living at the outskirts of Jakarta, such as Palmerah, Ciledug, Kebayoran Lama, Meruya, Pasar Minggu, Condet, Kelapa Gading and Pulo Gadung.

Ridwan was quoted by Femina weekly as saying that the urban Betawi people were much more open to cultural influences from other communities such as the Arab, Chinese, Dutch, and other local ethnic groups. This tendency played important role in shaping the culture of the Betawi culture, including their traditions, their fashions and their professions.

Most urban Betawi people worked as traders, drivers, and in other ventures. Due to the influences of many cultural groups, the urban Betawi were more open and flexible.

Their traditional costumes were quite fashionable. They had a soft dialect mixed with Arabic words. Islamic influence was very strong among them. This was indicated by the choice of names and cultural forms.

Most of them gave -- and they still do -- Islamic names, such as Fatimah, Zaenab, Abdullah and Ismail, to their children. Their art had also strong Islamic touch as can be seen in the Rebana (Arabic tambourine) and Qasidah music groups, which sing religious songs.

The rural Betawi were more isolated. Most of them worked as farmers. Unlike the urban Betawi, who enjoyed wider communication with other ethnic groups, the rural Betawi only had contact with people of Chinese origins.

They spoke their dialect with strong local intonation and they wore simple garb. Most of their cultural activities, such as Lenong, Ondel-Ondel and Tandjidor, were once rejected by the urban Betawi, who regarded them too vulgar, Ridwan said.

As time passed, however, the difference between the two Betawi groups became less and less distinct. As Jakarta developed tremendously and the flow of people from other provinces increased, the Betawi were forced to mix with newcomers.

Many of the urban Betawi have now been pushed to the city's periphery, while the rural culture has been widely accepted, not only by the urban Betawi, but also by other ethnic groups.

Despite the fact that the Betawi now live in the larger heterogeneous society of Jakarta, their culture remains vivid. For example, the Betawi wedding style is popular among both the low-class and affluent Betawi.

These theories have not clarified why Betawi people call themselves Melayu Betawi (Betawi Malay) and speak a variety of Malay dialect spoken along the eastern coast of Sumatra, Malaysia and in Western Kalimantan, while their hometown is surrounded by the Sundanese of West Java.

There also must be some historical background behind the name of Malaka district in the Jakarta downtown and Kampung Melayu in the eastern part of the city, which needs explanation.

Jakarta citizens call fruit or gado-gado vendors, or fish mongers abang (Malay for elder brother) because they believe that these members of the underprivileged group of society making ends meet in this fast-growing capital must be native Betawi.

Perhaps more research is required into the precise origin of the Betawi people.(raw/sim/jsk/tis)