Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

204 CULTURAL TENSIONS IN RURAL INDONESIA
Several spiritual teachers and Islamic leaders also visit Ciremay regularly, but no
one would ever believe that they sacrifice human beings. But because the new rich
do not conform to village ideals, they are subject to these accusations.
One of those who is slandered is Pak Guru (lit. Father Teacher), a local headmaster.
He has worked his way up through the hierarchy of rank and wealth, and
is now the proud owner of one of the few two-storey houses in Sariendah. Several
of his children have passed university, and now work in surrounding villages as
bureaucrats and teachers. But something is amiss. People seldom go to his house
for advice and never pay him a social visit. They defer to him as they should,
according to etiquette, but behind his back they call him names. Neighbours say
that the family of Pak Guru does not possess the correct inner (batin) qualities.
The Gurus feel superior and distance themselves from their neighbours. They
make no attempt to conceal their wealth or rank. On the contrary, Pak Guru takes
every opportunity to brag about his work at the school and to display his fancy
house, his colour television set and video, and the family’s three motorbikes. The
family keeps to itself and the neighbours reciprocate by avoiding contact with the
Gurus. The only time I met Pak Guru at a hamlet council was when a boy in the
neighbourhood was accused of slandering the Guru family. The boy had said that
one of Pak Guru’s sons had stolen a cassette recorder, and Pak Guru vehemently
rejected the accusation. Pak Guru dared the boy to file a police report. Knowing
that a son of Pak Guru’s brother-in-law worked at the Majalaya police station, the
boy perhaps did the sensible thing by dropping the case. The Gurus eventually won
the case in a community council, but this did not mean that people stopped talking
behind their backs. When I asked Pak Guru why he did not participate in hamlet
activities, he said that he was too busy with his work. And when I asked why he
had not been a candidate in the last Sariendah headman election, he was sincerely
surprised and could not really understand the question: why should he, an
upwardly mobile headmaster, bother to become a village headman? His
aspirations were to become a board member of the private Bandung-based
foundation that administered his school.
When Pak Guru’s firstborn daughter married, his neighbours boycotted the
ceremony. According to community tradition in Java, the size and style of a
marriage ceremony should reflect the host’s wealth. A richer household should
thus hold lavish ceremonies and redistribute some of its wealth to the local
community. Neighbours and relatives should be invited without distinction, and the
whole community should be involved in the preparation, providing some relaxation
as well as extra food. But the Gurus held a typical New Order OKB ceremony:
inviting only the people they wished to attend, hiring cooks from Majalaya, and
having experts prepare the house. Pak Guru told me that he could not understand
why he should have to use people who did not know their jobs if he could afford to
hire professionals.
Only 50 out of 150 households in the neighbourhood were invited, out of a total
of 1,250 invitations. Pak Guru demonstrated in this way that his nice colleagues
and rich friends, from Bandung and elsewhere, were more important than the