Weapons of the Weak- Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance

by James C Scott

  There is in the village as a whole, but especially among the poor, a strong sense that the natural order of village economic relations has been turned topsyturvy by combine-harvesting. The direction of wages has been reversed; they traditionally moved, as one might expect, from the rich to the poor. Now, lo and behold, they move in the opposite direction, for cultivators pay wages to tractor and combine owners who are far richer than themselves. Amin’s comments capture the paradox:

  In the old days you had to seek the poor and pay them wages. Nowadays, you have to seek the rich and pay them wages. Before the Chinese [who owned or rented land] hired us; now we hire the Chinese. Even Pak Yah has to pay wages to rich people. Poor people go back home and sit quietly.

  Agan and again the phrases, “Now the rich earn wages,” or “Now the poor hire the rich” are repeated in wonderment, reflecting the irony of a situation that seems fundamentally out of joint. For the rich of the village, it is a noteworthy curiosity; for the poor, however, it is a bitter irony-work and income to which they were traditionally entitled now go to wealthy businessmen. Wage earners in Sedaka are pointing not to one but two ironies which, taken together, amount to an argument of sorts. The first is that it is now a “machine that takes all the money.” The second is that the “money now leaves the village” and, in fact, the country (they mention Hong Kong, Japan, Australia) and is lost forever from the village sphere of circulation. The implication is that the hiring of fellow villagers should take priority over the hiring of outsiders-let alone machinesbecause the money remains a part of the local ritual cycle of religious feasts that benefit all.

  A brief episode in local agricultural history perhaps best captures the relationship between the poor and combine-harvesting. During the off-season harvest [Page 163] of 1979, which was both late and quite wet, word reached the village that a combine had become stuck in the paddy-field clay near Sungai Kering, some four miles to the south. Immediately, since the afternoon work was over, eight or ten villagers on bicycles and motorcycles went off to have a look. They returned an hour or so later to report that it was indeed stuck and that its operator’s efforts to drive it out had only mired it more firmly. Beginning the following day-and for the next week and a half-the crowd of onlookers from Sedaka and surrounding villages grew. Within a few days the combine in Sungai Kering had become something of a pilgrimage site. All efforts to extract it had failed and each day a new strategy was tried-winches, tow trucks, cables attached to dump trucks fully loaded for extra traction, bulldozers-to no avail. Two owners from the syndicate were in daily attendance, visibly worried and angry, shouting and gesticulating to their workers as each new scheme was implemented and failed. Their spirits were not buoyed by the growing crowds, who were openly rooting against the combine and its owners and in favor of the gradually encroaching Kedah mud. In fact, after a week, the line of sight from a hundred yards across the paddy fields offered only a view of the cab; time was definitely on the side of the Kedah mud. Meanwhile, local laborers were cutting and threshing around the stricken combine, now covered with mud and looking for all the world like the site of an archeological excavation.

  1. The Muda Plain viewed from Gunung Jerai (Kedah Peak). Dark lines indicate linear villages. To left are Straits of Malacca.

  2. Village path. Houses to left and right are obscured by foliage.

  3. Paddy fields awaiting transplanting north of village. Gunung Jerai in background. Courtesy of Ray Friedman.

  4. Transplanting group (Kumpulan Share) on break. Note newly transplanted plot rear left. Courtesy of Ray Friedman.

  5. Hand threshing on small plot following irrigated season.

  6. The combine-harvester. Workers are sewing shut the gunny sacks filled with harvested paddy.

  7. Communal work group repairing village hall—at rear. The entire crew is composed of members of the ruling party, UMNO.

  8. Brand-new outhouse constructed with grant from Village Improvement Scheme.

  9. “Operations room” for Village Improvement Scheme in village hall.

  10. House of well-to-do local farmer. Note clapboards, shutters, zinc roof, and veranda.

  11. House of poor farmer. Courtesy of Ray Friedman.

  12. Kitchen of poor household. Cooking is done on fire built on table, which is covered with sand for insulation. Courtesy of Ray Friedman.

  13. Men of village beside surau/village hall after prayers marking the end of the fasting month.

  14. House-moving crew to be thanked later with a meal prepared by owners.

  15. Hauling paddy by Honda 70 to the main road. Courtesy of Ray Friedman.

  16. A local Haji dressed for a visit to town. Courtesy of Ray Friedman.

  17. Villager with his water buffalo preparing to haul sacks of threshed paddy on the andur (sled) at rear. Courtesy of Ray Friedman.

  Never in the course of my fieldwork had I seen a happier, more self-satisfied crowd.54 The mood was definitely more and more festive as it appeared likely that the combine might actually be swallowed up. Talk centered on speculation about the fabulous sums that were daily being lost by the owners as the harvest proceeded and on the possibility that year-round flooding of the fields since 1972 and repeated machine use might make such events commonplace. At last the owners, despairing of other solutions, hired a gang of coolies who literally dug around the combine, creating a gentle ramp ahead of it, permitting it to be towed out.55 The impromptu pilgrimage and festival abruptly ended, but it had provided a brief interlude of poetic justice.

  What should also not be overlooked here is the way in which combineharvesting has brought large cultivators and wage laborers into a more directly [Page 164] antagonistic relationship. Any setback to the process of mechanization is a setback to big farmers and, at the same time, a boon to those who seek fieldwork.

  This is particularly noticeable during the irrigated season harvest period. In the past, a good crop for larger farmers was also a gain for fieldworkers; it meant more work and more pay. Now, however, a bad season for large farmers is a direct gain for wage laborers. The more paddy that has been lodged (rebah) by wind and rain, the deeper the water level in the fields, the less scope there is for combine-harvesting, leaving that much more employment for the poor. Due entirely to the combines, the poor thus find themselves for the first time actually looking forward to the kind of crop damage and flooding that serves their interests. Even the weather has become something of a class issue.

  LOSING GROUND: ACCESS TO PADDY LAND

  The proposition that it is becoming harder and harder to find paddy land to rent in is universally accepted in Sedaka and just as universally deplored. Old villagers can still recall when the father of Ghani Lebai Mat and a few others bought land in 20- and 30-relong lots from Tengku Jiwa for a nominal sum. Middle-aged peasants can recall a time, not long ago, when no one in the village was without land to farm, whether as a tenant or an owner. “Then,” Abdul Rahman adds, “rents were figured with compassion,56 the land was cheap, and there was a lot of it; a rich man couldn’t farm more than 20 relong at most by himself.” This phenomenon of “the good old days” is, of course, socially created for the explicit purpose of comparison with the current situation. “Now,” says Abdul Rahman, completing the contrast, “one man can farm 50 or even 100 relong himself; he keeps all the money and he keeps all the rice.” Tok Mahmud’s comparison is different but complementary: “Now there are more people, rents are high, and landlords are using leasehold tenancy” (pajak). The two causes most often often cited for today’s state of affairs (omitting population and sewa tunai) are, in ascending order of importance, the resumption of cultivation by large landowners and the growth of long-lease pajak rentals.

  These are not issues on which there is much dispute within Sedaka.57 After all, there is no landlord class worthy of the name in Sedaka. Most of the land rented out by villagers is to children or grandchildren on concessionary terms and in small parcels. The remainder is either inherited land that is too fa
r away to farm conveniently or land that is leased out due only to the temporary financial embarrassment of the owner. Thus the widespread resentment over the shortage [Page 165] of paddy land available on reasonable terms is directed almost exclusively at the class of large landlords who live outside Sedaka. There is, however, a marked difference in the passion and intensity with which this issue is raised by villagers-a difference that depends very much on class. For the dozen or so wellto-do farmers who own and/or farm more than, say, 8 relong, the issue is not momentous. If they could rent in more land, some of them would welcome the opportunity, but it is not a matter of pressing concern. For the rest of the villagers, and particularly for the landless or nearly landless, by contrast, the issue is highly charged, inasmuch as it bears on whether or not they have a future at all in Sedaka.

  A common way in which land is lost to poorer cultivators is when a landlord decides to resume cultivation in his own right, dismissing his tenants. Spurred by the profits of double-cropping and the ease of hiring the combine, many of Kedah’s biggest landlords have taken back land once farmed by small tenants.58 Haji Ani, the son of Haji Broom, has done precisely this with more than 100 relong in nearby Mengkuang. Another big landowner in Mengkuang, from a princely family living in Penang, has resumed cultivation of over 50 relong by employing a Chinese manager. Shamsul and Tok Ahmad in Sedaka were threatened with dispossession by their landlord, Haji Din, who claimed he wanted to farm the land himself or have his son farm it. By complaining at the district office they were able, luckily, to negotiate a compromise by which Haji Din resumed cultivating only half the land for the time being.59 Landlords who take back large blocks of land in this fashion are generally hated for their avarice. Thus Tok Ahmad condemns Haji Din: “He doesn’t care whether we eat or not; he wants to eat us up.”60 No such opprobrium attaches to petty landlords who [Page 166] resume cultivation, for it is understood that they too may be needy and will have to provide for their children’s livelihood. The logic is rather that those who have more than enough for their own needs ought to rent the surplus to those who are poorer. If they refuse, they are called hard-hearted (keras hati) or greedy (tamak, haloba).

  High rents and the resumption of cultivation by large landowners, while they excite much concern, are completely overshadowed by what appears to be a menacing trend to leasehold tenancy (pajak). Unlike traditional pajak arrangements under which smallholders in need of cash rented their small plots over several seasons for rents that worked out to be quite modest, the newer leaseholds involve larger plots and premium rents. Villagers keep their ears close to the ground and each reported leasehold rent in the area is typically the basis of morbid speculation. Thus a recent report that Mat Buyong’s son in Sungai Tongkang had rented 3.5 relong for three seasons for a sum of M$2,000 was deplorable news, for the rent comes to more than M$ 190 per relong, per season. Most villagers thought that Mat Buyong’s son was “daring to take on”61 a lease at this price-that it would be a losing proposition.

  It is not simply a question of the calculated rent that stirs such consternation, but the lump-sum capital that pajak requires. Nizam’s landlord, Haji Zahir, who as we have seen extracted premium rents on a seasonal basis, announced in early 1979 that he wanted to switch to pajak for two seasons. Although the rent was no higher, it required Nizam to raise over M$ 1,000 immediately, which he managed to do only by scrambling to raise loans from his father and the pawnshop. Had he failed to raise the capital, the land would have passed to someone else. As Nizam says, “He wants to exploit us; he wants to take it all.”62 Others have not been this fortunate. Samad and Fadzil have each lost tenanted land when they were unable to come up with the capital for a longer lease on which the landowner insisted. In each case a wealthy villager, Ghani Lebai Mat, took the tenancy. Their anger is not so much directed at Ghani Lebai Mat as at the two outside landlords who would not compromise on the length or price of the lease. For young farmers seeking land, the pajak system is a formidable barrier. Mat Nasir, Rokiah’s recently married son, for example, has been actively looking for a tenancy the past three years. Recently he heard of a possible leasehold on 4 relong for four seasons. The total cost was M$2,400 which, although it worked out to a modest rent of M$150 per relong, per season, was far beyond what Mat Nasir could raise. Despite the fact that the landlord was his wife’s relation and might be expected to prefer him as a tenant, it was futile to pursue it without capital. As he bitterly observed, “Now they think only of their stomach first. Relatives are pushed aside.”63

  If the poorer villagers have most to lose in the move to pajak tenancy, the [Page 167] well-to-do are no less concerned. Their worries are reflected in their reaction to the most widely discussed leasehold contract struck during my stay in Sedaka. This contract was made between a very wealthy Malay landowner from Mengkuang, Haji Hassan (a grandson of Haji Broom), and his new tenant, the wealthiest Chinese shopkeeper in Kepala Batas, nicknamed Cina Cerut.64 Fifty relong, an enormous expanse, was rented for eight seasons in return for a lump sum of M$88,000. The per relong, per season rent was itself unprecedented (M$220), but what was staggering was the fabulous sum involved-a sum well beyond the reach of even the wealthiest Malay landowners in the district. Together with stories of other large leasehold deals between very rich Malay landowners and Chinese tenants, most of whom were part-owners of combine syndicates, this episode created a sense of despair among rich villagers. While they might aspire to raising the capital for much smaller leaseholds, rents of anything like this magnitude (both in terms of the per relong cost and the capital required) would henceforth, they surmised, be monopolized by rich Chinese with their own machinery.65 With these “auction” (lelong) rents, as Haji Nayan calls them, “Only the very rich can take [the land]; they [landowners] don’t care about race, many [of the tenantsl are Chinese.” Rich and poor alike, then, have ample reason to worry about pajak, though their worries are not the same. For the rich, it means that an avenue of further accumulation is being choked off; for the poor-especially the tenants-it represents a threat to their precarious livelihood.66

  The practice of leasehold tenancy reproduces in another form the topsy-turvy [Page 168] social relations associated with the combine-harvester. Before, wealthy landlords rented to tenants who were poorer than themselves and that relationship was reflected in the traditional social ideology of tenancy. Now, however, landlords rent to a new breed of tenants who are as rich and, in many cases, richer than themselves. Few poor villagers fail to note with bitter irony that, today, harvesting and increasingly tenancy is becoming the preserve of the rich, not the poor. Sukur, a landless laborer speaks for most: “Before they rented land to the poor. Now you can’t rent land at all. The rich rent to the rich and the poor live off (tumpang) the poor.”

  Who should be blamed for leasehold tenancy? The answer is not obvious. One might hold the Chinese responsible, as they are commonly seen as the successful bidders. One might hold the Malay landlords responsible. Or perhaps one might even hold the state responsible for allowing pajak tenancy.67 In fact, the bitterest resentment is reserved for the Malay landlords, whose desire for the greatest profit has led them to ignore the needs of their relatives, their fellow villagers, and their race. When I occasionally asked directly who was to “blame” (salah) for a particular leasehold tenancy, the landlord or the (Chinese) tenant, I nearly always got the same answer. For example:

  The landowner is to blame; he won’t give [the land} to Malay people. (Rokiah)

  The landowner, he wants only the money and he auctions the land, saying, “Who will bid most?” (Lazim)

  They [landlords] won’t rent land to their own race. (Razak)

  Taib, one of the poorest men in the village, has discovered that his younger sister, who lives nearby and owns 1 relong, has leased it for ten seasons (M$500) to a Chinese shopkeeper. Mustapha, a young man looking to rent in land, is in the same boat; his mother has rented, pajak, her 2 relong for eight seasons to a Chinese tractor owner. While
neither of them have any affection for the Chinese who have taken land which they would like to rent themselves, they are most dismayed by the failure of their own immediate family to consider their interests. As Mustapha says with an air of helplessness, “I can’t even work my mother’s land.”

  We have encountered this “logic of accusation” before in the view of combineharvesters. It is not the strangers, the outsiders, who are most often singled out for censure. After all, they are beyond the moral reach of the community; they can only be expected to take advantage of opportunities that come their way. Relatives, fellow villagers, Malays, on the other hand, are seen as members of [Page 169] a community, who have obligations to one another beyond immediate material interests. Thus, it is possible to appeal to their sense of responsibility. Mat Nasir, for example, could say that he had appealed (rayu) to his relative to rent to him by the season rather than to lease land to a stranger. When that relative ignored his appeal, it was entirely appropriate that he should feel a sense of betrayal. Appeal and betrayal are concepts that are, quite simply, inapplicable beyond the frontiers of an imagined community. It makes no sense to appeal to a Chinese combine owner to forgo his profits to save Malay jobs or to feel betrayed when he pays no heed. For the large Malay landowner who hires the combine or leases out his land to a Chinese shopkeeper, however, matters are different. Something more can be expected from him; he is seen to have obligations to friends, neighbors, and relatives that can be betrayed. It is largely for this reason that many of the changes associated with the green revolution in Kedah have had a more profound impact on class relations among Malays than on relations between races.