Weapons of the Weak- Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance

by James C Scott

  The perceived changes in the attitude of wealthy villagers and the manner in which they are condemned are not entirely new phenomena on the Muda Plain. In his study of credit in the nearby state of Perlis just before the initiation of irrigated double-cropping, Mokhzani reported:

  Whenever village conversation was steered to the subject of mutual help and the offer of cash loans as part of such help to fellow villagers, it rarely failed to raise statements bemoaning the decreasing cooperation between villagers and the increasing difficulty of raising friendly loans. Such statements were always accompanied with reference to the fact that people in the village are becoming increasingly calulating (berkira) in their approach to money matters. Villagers would then unfailingly hark back to what was termed as the “old days” when people were always ready to offer aid.6

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  In Sedaka itself, Kenzo Horii’s 1967 study alluded more generally to “the weakening of the principle of mutual aid” and to the fact that “the land tenure system is approaching the stage where the class aspect of landowner-tenant relations is becoming manifest.”7 We may reasonably infer that the accusations of stinginess that we hear today are not uniquely the product of the green revolution but represent a more durable ethical tradition in response to the pressures of commercialization. What has occurred, surely, is that the impact of mechanization has greatly sharpened these complaints and swelled the backstage chorus of accusations to a new level.

  All of the accusations of stinginess contain, as we saw in the case of Haji Broom, a clear view—an ideology of sorts—of the relations that should obtain between the rich and the poor. In their dealings with the poor, most especially those who are kin and fellow villagers, the rich should be considerate (timbangrasa), helpful (tolong), and unselfish (senang kira—the opposite of berkira or susah kira). Such behavior, as the poor see it, would involve providing employment, tenancies, loans, charity, and suitable feasts. The well-to-do who lived up to this standard of conduct would provide the standard of nonexploitive, proper conduct.

  That these standards are embedded to a considerable degree in the very language of accusation receives odd confirmation from the sentences used to illustrate some of the key terms in standard Malay dictionaries.8

  Word Malay Illustrative Sentence (Translation)

  Kedekut (stingy) It is not easy to request alms from him, because he is a stingy (kedekut) person.

  Bakhil (stingy) That stingy (bakhil) rich person doesn’t give alms to poor people.

  Timbang rasa (sympathy, considerateness) Assistance that shows sympathy (timbang) toward people who suffer hardship.

  Miskin (poor) He always contributes money to people who are poor (miskin).

  Segan (unwilling, reluctant, shy, lazy) He is reluctant to give assistance, even though he is a rich man.

  In each case, “stinginess” is associated with the refusal of the rich, specifically, to help the poor; sympathy is associated with charity, and the poor are defined as fitting objects of that charity. [Page 190] There is much evidence that the normative outlook identified here is not confined to the farmers of the Muda Plain but is rather a common characteristic of Malay peasant society in general.9 That evidence comes from reports of fieldwork conducted over four decades in various parts of the Malay peninsula. Raymond Firth’s classic study, Malay Fishermen: Their Peasant Economy, was based on fieldwork in the east coast state of Kelantan before the Japanese occupation. His discussion of wealth and charity would be very familiar to the villagers of Sedaka:

  On the whole, in this area men of wealth have accumulated their property by industry and saving. These two features, combined with the practice of charity enjoined on the rich, probably account to a considerable extent for the absence of any marked feeling of resentment towards the wealthy on the part of the poorer elements of the community… Where resentment and criticism do enter is when the rich man does not show himself generous, when “his liver is thin,” when he does not practice charity to the poor, build wayside shelters or prayer houses, or entertain liberally.10

  Much the same ethos was reported by M. G. Swift-this time in Jelebu, Negri Sembilan, during research in the mid-1950s.

  The relations of the rich with villagers not poor enough to be dependents are also not good. The strength of bitterness and jealousy are striking… The rich are the obvious source of material help, but since there are only a few of them in each village, they are continually subject to demands, while they do not have occasion to seek help themselves. The recipients accept the help they give not with gratitude, but as a right, for the rich are their kin, or their neighbors, and they are wealthy; a small gift is nothing to them. This one-sided relationship creates resentment, for the rich resent having to give all the time while their good nature is not sufficiently recognized. The recipient of help resents having to ask for it, and not receiving more.11

  In the mid-1960s, S. Ali Husin conducted a comparative study of leadership in three villages, one of which was no more than twelve miles from Sedaka. His comments on wealth and status in all three communities reflect the findings of Firth and Swift.

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  Wealth, in itself, is not greatly respected, and is often skeptically regarded as the root of many evils that are detested by the villagers. A mean or squandering wealthy man is detested, but on the other hand, those who are generous with their money are often held in affection and respect.12

  Finally, in a recent sociological study of a village in the state of Melaka (Malacca), Narifumi Maeda examined the practice of charity and the sanctions surrounding it. He concluded:

  Unilateral gift-giving is supported by the ethos of Islam, and mutual help, which may be more strongly perceived as an insurance against future contingencies, by communal feeling. In the former case [zakat raja], recipients are anonymous under the category of poor and needy. In the latter, the helper and the helped have a specific relationship, for example, they are neighbors or relatives. Those who are in a position to help a particular individual are expected to do so in case of need.13

  From these diverse studies it appears that quite similar expectations circumscribe the relations between rich and poor in the Malay village. The point here is not whether these expectations are consistently observed in practice but rather that they do exist and that, when they are violated, their violation calls forth the resentment and condemnation we have observed. The legitimacy of these expectations is triply guaranteed. First and foremost, they correspond with the customary values of Malay village life. They are, in addition, powerfully reinforced by a popular Islam that enjoins charity and compassion from the rich. Nor, finally, should we overlook the way in which two decades of electoral politics by the ruling Malay party (UMNO) has contributed to sustaining this normative legacy. The party has fashioned an electoral machine based largely on patronage politics within the Malay community and has counted on its largesse to gain for it the deference and loyalty to win elections. Its implicit model for statepeasant relations is remarkably like the ethos we have been examining.

  The ethos described above is gradually losing its sanctioning power in Sedaka, but it is far from moribund even among wealthier villagers. It is invoked, in effect, whenever a large farmer describes the work, or zakat peribadi, he gives to a poorer villager as “help” (tolong). It is invoked in the shared ideology of Islam, which requires charity as a means of “cleansing” wealth and promoting social harmony. It is invoked, by implication, whenever a relative or neighbor is given [Page 192] a tenancy, whenever a loan is given before the feast of Ramadan, whenever rents are below their market value, whenever hand labor is used in preference to the combine, whenever a large marriage feast is given. Though under siege, all of these practices are still a part of the reality of contemporary village life. It is invoked as well whenever rich villagers criticize even wealthier outsiders for renting their land in huge parcels to big entrepreneurs rather than considering the needs of their own people.

  Some quite remark
able and unique empirical findings, reported recently, shed further light on this ethos and its operation. Akimi Fujimoto examined four paddy villages in Malaysia (two in Province Wellesley, two in Kelantan) to determine whether rent levels, land prices, the amount of land rented out, and the wages and volume of agricultural labor in these communities can be explained entirely by neoclassical assumptions of maximizing net return.14 He concluded in each case that actual practice did not coincide with these assumptions and that noneconomic income-sharing assumptions were necessary to explain suboptimizing outcomes. Thus a good many landowners did in fact take on more tenants, charge lower rents, hire more laborers at higher wages than were compatible with maximizing their net return. They did so, it is clear, less from a spirit of liberality than as a response to the palpable pressures their neighbors and kin brought to bear upon them. The small redistribution that results is hardly sufficient to affect materially the existing inequalities; it does, however, indicate that the ethos has some impact on existing practices.

  Both the ideology that enjoins a certain liberality by the well-to-do and its actual practice are realms of constant, if low-level, ideological conflict. This is to be expected, inasmuch as they have far-reaching implications for the distribution of land, work, and income as well as for the distribution of prestige, status, and subordination. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the use and interpretation given the verb tolong (to help, aid, assist), which is typically used to describe such liberality.

  “Help” extended by one villager to another, when it is described as tolong, carries the implication of a mutuality that takes place among conceptual equals. It covers such common occurrences as the short-term loan of water buffalo or kitchen utensils, the last-minute request for a cooking ingredient from a neighbor, and the (now disappearing) mutual exchange of field labor for transplanting or harvesting (derau).15 For my purposes, what is important about tolong is that it implies an equivalent (not identical) return favor by the recipient at some later time. To help, in this fashion, does not imply any subordination of the receiver to the giver. Even when the help is given by the manifestly well-to-do to a [Page 193] poorer neighbor or friend, the conceptual equality suggested by tolong is retained. A landless peasant who inquires about renting land from a large landowner is likely to ask if the landowner will “help” (tolong) him. Requests for temporary loans or advance wages take virtually the same linguistic form. In all these cases, a term implying reciprocity is appropriate in part because a return is built into the situation; the tenant will pay rents and cultivate, the borrower expects to repay, and the laborer will work for his or her advance wages. When it is a better-off villager who asks for services from a poorer person, tolong is also employed. The farmer who approaches his neighbor for help with transplanting, with repairing bunds, with cutting or threshing, will invariably ask if the neighbor can “help” him, even though the work will be paid.

  The effect of the use of tolong in such exchanges is to emphasize the conceptually equal status of the parties involved, although the “facts” of the matter may be otherwise. It is to the advantage of richer villagers to use this formula because, as we have seen, they have a stake in minimizing the actual differences of property and income that exist. For the poor, the use of tolong is, quite literally, a face-saving formula that spares them the humiliation of being seen openly as inferiors or dependents. The exchange of “help” is thus to be sharply distinguished from relations of charity, which do indeed imply subordination and inferiority. To ask for alms (minta sedekah), which implies no reciprocal favor, is to place oneself in a permanent position of debt-and hence, subordinationto one’s benefactor.16 Razak is the only person in the village who has been systematically willing to go to this demeaning length to seek assistance.

  Just who is helping whom and how much-who is the social creditor and who the debtor-in relations described as tolong is always a contested social fact. The matter is further complicated by the fact that shifts in land tenure and demography have upset the rules of the game. When harvest labor was scarce, before combines were available, it was at least plausible that the reapers and threshers were doing a favor by gathering in a farmer’s crop in good time. This interpretation was reflected in the widespread practice of farmers giving zakat peribadi bonuses in paddy to those who had worked on the harvest. One purpose of the bonus was certainly to create a sense of gratitude and thereby socially obligate the wage laborer to the same promptness and diligence in the coming season. For their part, however, laborers came to view the zakat bonus not as a gift but as a right-as a part of the normal, anticipated pay for the harvest work. Much the same might be said of the tenant’s relation to the landlord well before double-cropping. Then, villagers maintain, tenants were in short supply and land to farm was plentiful. Given his other opportunities, it was arguable that a good cultivator who accepted a tenancy was helping his landlord. Re [Page 194] missions of rent after a crop shortfall might from the landowner’s perspective have been seen as a favor or concession, while in the tenant’s view they were a customary right built into the implicit contract.

  Struggles of precisely this kind, I believe, are common whenever classes are in direct, personal contact. Members of the upper class wish to maximize the discretionary character of the benefits at their disposal, because it is precisely this aspect of their power that yields the greatest social control and, hence, conformity. For their part, members of the lower class strive to transform discretionary favors into rights to which they are automatically entitled to lay claim. Should they succeed, there is no longer a favor to be recognized with deference, no social subordination, no humiliation. The most likely outcome, of course, is a continuing struggle, expressed in language and gestures, over the meaning of such transactions in which no one view entirely prevails.17

  Now, of course, the opportunities for wage labor and tenancy are sharply reduced. It is no longer so ambiguous who is doing the greatest favor for whom; both the tenant and the wage laborer count themselves fortunate to have land and work and acknowledge, by their public deference, their indebtedness. Landlords and farmers hiring labor can, and do, plausibly, contend that they are “helping” a tenant or a laborer merely by engaging him, even though the rents may be higher and inflexible and the work more sporadic and onerous. The meaning of “help” and its social weight is thus dependent, to some degree, on the need of the recipient, and this need is in turn an artifact of the near monopoly that larger farmers now enjoy over income-earning opportunities. The poor of Sedaka, as we have seen, privately resent the loss of status inherent in the new situation, but a due regard for their livelihood obliges them to steer a course of public prudence.

  Despite the fact that the use of tolong preserves the facade of conceptual equality between villagers, it has always been clear that “help” is expected to flow predominantly in one direction-from the relatively well-off to the needy. This expectation is best seen in the astonished anger provoked when the norm is flagrantly violated. For five years Tok Ahmad and Shamsul had jointly rented nearly 10 relong of paddy land from Haji Din, a very wealthy outsider, at a high seasonal rent. When Haji Din announced that he expected his tenants to pay him, above and beyond the rent, a few sacks of paddy as zakat, they were indignant. As Tok Ahmad put it to me, “He came himself to ask. He wanted to eat zakat from us! How is that possible? It is as if we [are expected] to help [Page 195] (tolong) him!”18 The force of Tok Ahmad’s indignation depends on the listener’s knowledge that both zakat and tolong should logically go from the richer to the poorer and not the other way around, as Haji Din had hoped. That he could make such a request directly is a further sign that he is without shame. Here, as elsewhere, social values are reinforced by religion. Islam, in this respect and in others, is not a reason for resignation and meekness but a set of values from which a condemnation of the rich may be fashioned. It would be difficult to find any disagreement with Tok Kasim’s understanding that “The rich are enjoined to help (di-suruh
tolong)” and that those who violate this injunction “are not afraid of God.” It is certainly from the poorer villagers that one hears this norm most insistently evoked. But it is firmly embedded in the language of their better-off neighbors as well.

  When, as is increasingly the case, the well-off farmers of Sedaka fail to help their needy relations and neighbors with work, loans, zakat, and smaller favors, they open themselves to two charges. The first is the familiar one of stinginess and tightfistedness. As Tok Kasim notes, “The rich were generous (senang kira) before. We could ask for help (minta tolong). Now it’s hard to ask for their assistance. Now they ‘watch the pennies’ (pakai nipis).” Abu Hassan, speaking of Haji Kadir’s unwillingness to rent out any land to him, also links the refusal to help with the accusation of stinginess. “Some time ago, those who had more land wanted to help (tolong) those without land. They were generous but now they’re clever (cerdik), they really calculate (kira sungguh).”

  The second charge is broader and quite revealing. It is the charge of being arrogant, proud, conceited-of placing oneself above and hence outside the village community. If the charge of stinginess implies the denial of generosity, of help, the charge of arrogance implies the denial of the conceptual equality of villagers. Accusations to the effect that someone is conceited (sombong, bongak, bongkak) are perhaps the most common and most damaging popular form of character assassination in Sedaka. They are most often, but not exclusively, directed at the well-to-do. The opposite characteristic, that of acting modestly (merendahkan diri, malu) is highly valued, and the best-respected local figure, Lebai Sabrani, is typically praised in precisely these terms. His religious learning and healing skills give him great prestige, but he has never put on airs.