Abstract
Adat is originally an Arabic term meaning “custom” or “habit”, and was introduced by Islamic merchants in Maluku and throughout the Indonesian archipelago from the 1200s onward. The term was used as a way to refer to indigenous customs that could not be incorporated into Islamic law. Therefore, rather than referring to a particular system of customs or laws, adat denoted Islamic law’s indeterminate opposite: i.e. the wide variety of indigenous practices which, other than this generalizing label of “custom”, remained undefined. Throughout the chapter, I will trace the development of this term from its original usage to its current-day reinterpretation as a form of diasporic cultural heritage by the Moluccan postcolonial migrant community in the Netherlands. As will become clear, the contemporary Moluccan application can be understood as a strategic reappropriation of the term for the construction of their collective identity, which leaves intact the term’s original capacity of having no fixed definition. By placing the Moluccan application of adat within the historical context of their separatist ideology vis-à-vis Indonesia, and their migration to the Netherlands in the early 1950s, I will argue that their reappropriation of adat as a deliberately indefinable form of Moluccan cultural heritage can be understood as a way for them to protect their collective identity as a separatist people from becoming a matter of wider contestation.
Highlights
The Moluccan postcolonial migrant community originated in the Indonesian province of Maluku, and arrived in the Netherlands in the early 1950s
By placing the Moluccan application of adat within the historical context of their migration to the Netherlands in 1951, I will argue that their reappropriation of adat as a deliberately indefinable form of Moluccan cultural heritage can be understood as a way for them to protect their collective identity as a separatist people from becoming a matter of wider contestation
Political scientist Daniel Lev [14] argues that the term was used as a way to refer to indigenous customs that could not be incorporated into Islamic law: “Adat law in Indonesia, as in other Islamic countries, tends to be defined precisely in contrast to Islamic law [...]; it is originally an Arabic word that refers to local custom” ([14]: 27)
Summary
The Moluccan postcolonial migrant community originated in the Indonesian province of Maluku, and arrived in the Netherlands in the early 1950s. Whereas the Indonesian nationalist ideology of the mid-twentieth century considered adat to be a colonial invention, the term has been positively reappropriated, especially in the so-called Era Reformasi (“Reformation Era”) This era began in 1998, when President Suharto resigned after 31 years of uninterrupted rule (1967–1998). Nationalist and regionalist applications in, respectively, the early, mid, and late twentieth century, all have in common that they were attempts to reduce adat to a set of clear definitions aimed at instrumentalizing the term for particular purposes of state organization, Moluccan adat in the Netherlands is emphatically understood as something which cannot be defined with universally acceptable characteristics. By placing the Moluccan application of adat within the historical context of their migration to the Netherlands in 1951, I will argue that their reappropriation of adat as a deliberately indefinable form of Moluccan cultural heritage can be understood as a way for them to protect their collective identity as a separatist people from becoming a matter of wider contestation
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