Weapons of the Weak- Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance

by James C Scott

  The following afternoon a small meeting was held in the room beneath the surau that doubles as a village hall (dewan) and classroom. Attending were about fifteen villagers, all from UMNO families, and two outsiders: Akil, a clerk at the government rice mill (LPN) and an official of both the Farmers’ Association and the District UMNO executive, and Gaafar, the retired subdistrict official (penghulu) from Dulang. The meeting was conducted by Akil, not Bashir, in what appeared to be an attempt to portray the decisions shortly to be announced as those of higher officials. Lest the official character of the occasion be misunderstood, Akil flashed a typed report for all to note.43 He began by referring to the events of the day before without mentioning names and then gave Fadzil a chance to speak. Knowing what was required, Fadzil made a roundabout apology for his hasty action but also pointed out that many villagers were angry because those who hauled paddy and thus benefited from the gate had, “in return [for the favor], gouged us (makan kita balek)”-so much so, he added, that he was almost driven to hire the other group of haulers (cari puak lain).

  Akil then proceeded to read his report, which consisted entirely of the reasons for maintaining the gate. First, the road would be badly damaged, especially during the wet season, if paddy trucks were admitted. Second, the men in the village “who depend on hauling wages would lose them” and third, the farmers [Page 218] will instead “turn to different races” who own the trucks.44 He added that many villagers were angry at the JKK for squabbling among themselves and that the current subdistrict chief, Abdul Majid, would be discontented (tidak puas hati) if Sedaka took down its gate and then came running to him next year for government money to fix up the road. The meeting concluded with a brief talk by Gaafar, a locally respected elder statesman, about Islam, solving things peacefully, helping others, and not acting selfishly. No vote was taken; the matter was closed and two days later a new gate was in place. Fadzil was conspicuously absent from the small work party that erected it.45

  As word got around about the decision, it became clear that members of the opposition (PAS) faction had not been called (panggil) to the meeting. They were livid, objecting not so much to the outcome as to the manner in which the ruling faction had conducted this affair. Everyone should have been called to the meeting, they said, and everyone should be treated equally (sama-rata). Here they took full advantage of the conceptual equality of all villagers to make their point. Instead, the meeting was confidential (sulit) and the matter was decided by a small group that “chooses itself” (depa angkat sindiri) and that, in any case, is composed mostly of relatives. All this talk, which took place out of earshot of UMNO members, was phrased very much in “we-they” (kita-depa) terms.46 Bashir in particular came in for ridicule for his lack of education, his arrogance (sombong), and his inability to prevent such quarrels within his own faction. Sukur, a strong PAS man, pointed out that the high-handed manner in which Bashir and his friends ran things was the reason why only a few UMNO members showed up to repair and grade the road when the government delivered new fill. In the old days, when PAS and UMNO members were both in the JKK, he said, everyone would help. Even the truck fees, he and the others agreed, now disappeared (“who knows where”) and no receipt was ever given.

  The preservation of the village gate was certainly a modest victory for the closed economy—for the principle that the village’s first obligation is to protect its own sources of wages and income. The winners were the villagers who hauled paddy to the main road and the losers were both the large farmers who could save substantially by loading directly onto the trucks and the truck owners [Page 219] (typically the Chinese paddy dealers and millers).47 The gate continues to represent a small but significant impediment to fully “rationalized” capitalist relations of production. The smallness of the impediment, however, merits emphasis. Changes in tenancy and the mechanization of the harvest have already swept away far more opportunities for work and income than this quaint, isolated vestige of older values could ever hope to replace. Even this small victory was a qualified one. The palpable threat posed by the opening of the gate once, and the possibility that it might later be opened for good, had their intended, chilling effect. Piece-rates for paddy hauling within the village the following season were no higher and in many cases lower than they had been earlier. Gaafar’s homely lecture about the evils of selfishness was directed as much at the men who hauled papddy as at Fadzil. If they did not heed his warning, they ran the risk of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.

  It would be a grave misreading of this minor victory for local rights to interpret it as in any sense a victory for Sedaka’s poor. The fact is that even this petty aspect of rice farming has been thoroughly mechanized over the past decade. With few exceptions, all the paddy now hauled along the village path is taken by motorcycles, not bicycles. And the ownership of motorcycles (mostly Honda 70s) is, as one might expect, highly correlated with income. The pertinent statistics are that nineteen of the richest twenty-five households own a motorcycle, while only two of the poorest twenty-five households own one. Even the figure of two motorcycles for the poorest families is something of an exaggeration. They are so frequently repossessed for failure to pay the installment loan or not operating because the owner cannot afford spare sparts that their existence is an episodic affair. Nearly half the middle peasants own a motorcycle. Thus, the beneficiaries of the gate are to be found exclusively among the middle and, especially, the rich households. This helps to explain why the gate was reestablished. Its constituency has shifted over the past few years from the poor and middle peasants, who all had bicycles, to the privileged, whose profits have allowed them to make a down payment on a motorcycle. Although there is no way of knowing, it is unlikely that the gate would exist today if paddy were still hauled by bicycle. Ironically, the gate that once protected the earnings of the poor has been successfully defended precisely because it now largely benefits those who have gained most from the green revolution. The poor, in fact, hardly [Page 220] figure in this issue at all; they neither haul paddy for others nor sell enough themselves to care one way or the other.48

  IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICT: THE VILLAGE IMPROVEMENT SCHEME

  The most divisive and acrimonious issue to convulse Sedaka during my stay there was the highly partisan distribution of building materials under the government’s Village Improvement Scheme (Ranchangan Pemulihan Kampung, RPK). It was a topic of daily conversation for months; it greatly exacerbated the political divisions in the village; it came near to provoking violence on several occasions; and its social repercussions are still being felt. Unlike the gate episode, which it preceded by five months, the RPK was manifestly a partisan political issue. But, like the question of the gate, it erupted into an ideological struggle in which many of the same principles were at stake. As it developed, the actual allocation of assistance violated both of the principles which, we have shown, animate much of the moral discourse in Sedaka: the conceptual equality of all villagers and the obligation of the well-to-do toward their poorer neighbors. The ruling elite in the village achieved its immediate purpose but found itself hard put to justify its actions to its own faction, let alone the rest of the village. Inasmuch as the village poor are heavily overrepresented in PAS, the issue of partisanship took on distinctly class overtones.

  Examining this episode in some detail, it will become apparent that there is an interesting parallel here with changes in the relations of production. In that domain, the large farmers and landlords have been able more or less to have their own way. Justifying what they have imposed, however, has required them to distort the facts, to plead necessity, to engage in bad-faith performances of little credibility. In parceling out the benefits of the Village Improvement Scheme, as well, the leading village families have been able to do as they pleased. Here again, however, they have been driven to a series of distortions, feigned necessities, and rather lame face-saving gestures. The problem, of course, is that the shared values of the local society provide no just
ification either for the singleminded pursuit of profit at the expense of one’s neighbors or for the crude denial of benefits to an entire category of villagers. Not that profit making and political favoritism are new experiences in Sedaka. It is rather that the new opportunities for each are unprecedented and that these opportunities have vastly outstripped the available means for defending and legitimating their pursuit.

  The Village Improvement Scheme (hereafter RPK) was the brainchild, credible rumor has it, of Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, the current prime minister, when he [Page 221] was still deputy prime minister. It was conceived as an instrument of political patronage in which a number of villages would be selected on the basis of need and political loyalty to receive a lump sum that would then be devoted to vaguely specified “development” purposes.49 By October 1979, the scheme was under way throughout Kedah. A dozen lucky villages were designated in and around the Yan area after what must have been protracted negotiations between UMNO officials and the District Office.50 They were all allegedly “backward villages” (kampung mundur). But “backwardness” was not enough; a village had also to be an UMNO stronghold.

  Sedaka, having fulfilled both criteria, received M$35,000. The JKK as a whole was never assembled to discuss how the allocation was to be distributed. Instead, Haji Salim, a district UMNO official and large landowner living just outside the village, together with Bashir, Fadzil, Amin, and Daud bin Haji Jaafar met with the subdistrict chief, Abdul Majid, to make plans. As in other villages, the lump sum was allocated to different uses: M$ 15,000 for truckloads of fill to improve the road and for outdoor toilet materials; M$20,000 for materials to improve dwellings, including lumber, zinc roofing, paint, and concrete pilings. The households slated to receive assistance would, as the administrative regulations provided, be selected on the basis of a house-by-house survey which, in this case, would be conducted by Taha, a clerk at the District Office and the son of a local UMNO stalwart, Lebai Hussein. Amidst a general air of anticipation (and foreboding as well), the survey was in fact conducted. The questions, as noted in the previous chapter, were exclusively related to need: income, landownership, farming acreage, present housing materials, sanitary facilities, number of children, farm animals, and small livestock. Taha explained that assistance would be given not in cash but in the form of slips of authorization that would entitle villagers to materials, up to a certain sum, at any one of three nearby suppliers of building materials. A corner of the village hall (dewan) was partitioned off to create a small office with table and chairs and a sign reading: “Operations Room for Village Improvement Assistance, Kampung Sedaka.”

  It was quickly apparent that the worst suspicions of PAS members in the village had been fully realized. The survey had been a deception. This was not a program to “improve” the lot of poor villagers but rather a program to improve the lot exclusively of UMNO villagers. Even poverty, it turned out, was not [Page 222] required, since virtually every UMNO member, no matter how rich, participated in the division of loaves and fishes. Forty-four households participated, getting at least a grant of M$200 for an outdoor toilet and, in three cases, as much as M$1,000 for housing materials and a toilet. There was a modest degree of equity among UMNO households. UMNO households that were poor according to the official tally got an average grant of M$672; UMNO households with middle incomes received an average of M$486; and the richest UMNO households’ average was M$388. The averages hide a great deal of variation within each category, which seems to be related to how closely and actively the household in question was tied to the UMNO leadership. Since so many (sixteen of twentyfive) of the poorest villagers are from opposition families, this partisan allocation of the loot could hardly be redistributive. Thus, 71 percent of rich and middle peasant families were in the charmed circle, while only 36 percent of the poorest households got anything at all. In the midst of these inequities, the members of the JKK did not forget themselves. Although three-quarters of the JKK members are from the wealthiest twenty-five families, they nevertheless managed, officially, to award themselves an average of M$579. Unofficially, as we shall see, they may have done even better.

  Even the apparent anomalies in the pattern of assistance reveal a finely tuned partisanship. Only two opposition households got any assistance, and they were, not by coincidence, Hamzah (M$1,000) and Rokiah (M$200), the only two PAS households who had hedged their bets by also paying dues to UMNO. Rokiah had the further advantage of being a good friend of Taha, who had done the survey. Hamzah had the further advantage of being the caretaker of the dewan and prayer house and of working often for UMNO landowners. Two of the three village fence-sitters, Kamil and Dzulkifli bin Haji Wahab, received help,51 while the latter’s much poorer brother, Bakri bin Haji Wahab, who had remained in PAS, got nothing.

  Within a matter of days, the air was thick with charges and countercharges, which were by no means confined to those who had been excluded altogether. Nearly all of them were directed at the JKK and Bashir in particular. They were accused of misappropriation, bribe taking, corruption, kickbacks, diversion of funds, favoritism, and dishonesty-all activities for which the Malay language has amply provided.52 The charges alone might fill a book, but a few examples will convey the flavor. Bashir and the JKK were widely accused of having made a deal with the Chinese lumber yards to receive kickbacks in return for allowing [Page 223] the dealer to overcharge and supply low-grade materials. That’s why, said Mat “halus,” much of the lumber came in short lengths, split, and had the consistency of cork (gabus). Members of the JKK were believed to have gotten more than their “official” allotment. Thus Bashir, who claimed to have gotten only a toilet, was said to have gotten a large supply of lumber which, for appearance’s sake, he had stored under Fadzil’s house. Shamsul, who officially got only M$200, was rumored to have gotten at least M$800 in materials and paint. Many poor UMNO members made invidious comparisons between what they had received and what wealthier UMNO leaders had received. Karim says he was entitled to M$600-worth of materials and got only M$400, while Fadzil, far richer, got M$750. Rokiah, ignoring the fact that she is a fair-weather UMNO member, complained about her small allocation, which was no more than that of her wealthier neighbor, Ghazali. Mansur protested to Bashir that he, a poor man with no land, had gotten less than others who owned as much as 8 relong. In each case, the complaints were based on relative need, in keeping with the logic of local charity.

  Not even the three hundred truckloads of fill brought in to raise and widen the village road were free of acrimony. Some of the fill was sold cheaply to individuals to spread around their house lots. Bashir claims that this was done as a means of rewarding those who had come to help spread and grade it. No, claim others; those who worked on the road, all UMNO members, had gotten two or three hundred dollars as wages. The new fill, it turned out, never quite reached the far end of the village. Some eighty yards short of that, just before Tok Radzi’s house, a few loads of fill were simply dumped and left. Bashir explained that there was simply not enough in the budget to complete the work and that those who lived at the far end would have to spread what was left themselves. The PAS faction has a simpler explanation. It just so happens that five of the mere seven families who live beyond the dumped fill are strong PAS members-the strongest geographical concentration of opposition families in the village. Since the fill had been spread largely by bulldozer for the rest of the village, and since it was not nearly enough for the job, these families refused to come spread it themselves. To do so would have been humiliating (malu), they said. In a few days much of it was gone-spread in Lebai Hussein’s compound, which now looks, they say, “like the garden of a Sultan.”

  The ideological contours of the struggle over the Village Improvement Scheme are best appreciated if we begin with the realization that the party split between PAS and UMNO has never been entirely legitimate. It is not that the notion of aligning with PAS or UMNO violates any sense of village decorum. In fact, as is abundantly clear, virtually every h
ousehold in Sedaka has long since chosen sides politically. What does exist, however, is a widely shared feeling that politics should be kept in its place, that partisan strife should not be allowed to disrupt the ritual unity and neighborly relations that villages believe should prevail in the community. While such pious hopes have surely not prevented partisan [Page 224] feelings from intruding upon local social relations, they have almost certainly exercised a restraining influence on the more blatant forms of party conflict.

  Before the RPK created a new and deeper fissure, nearly everyone thought that the partisanship stirred up by earlier elections had diminished somewhat (sudah lega sedikit). The late 1960s and early 1970s were seen as the worst period of factionalism, when neighbors occasionally refused to speak with one another and close relatives found themselves on opposite sides of the fence. For my purposes, what is instructive is that these days were always spoken of with a tone of embarrassment and shame. Villagers blamed themselves for having been taken in by the candidates and their entourages, who were in turn blamed for having promoted a fiercely partisan spirit. The entire period and the incidents that marred it were seen as something of a disgrace and compared to the state of affairs in village households where parents and children or spouses are constantly bickering, shouting, and fighting. The relative improvement that villagers typically note was no doubt due in some measure to the entry of PAS into the government coalition in 1974. The local partisan alignment of households was little changed, for it had roots in familial alliances that existed well before independence, but its public manifestation was definitely muted. When PAS later bolted the government coalition, shortly before my arrival in the village in 1978, local party strife did not immediately resume its former vigor.53