INTRODUCTION

Ten years since the new Constitution was adopted in 2008, Myanmar's political landscape has significantly changed. Elections and elected governments now define politics, although huge obstacles remain to be overcome where the Constitution is concerned. General elections take place every five years in accordance with the Constitution and a series of election laws; the next general elections are to be held in 2020. The National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory in the 2015 elections, both in Bamar-dominated areas and ethnic minority areas except Rakhine and Shan States. Voters heavily voted for the NLD in the hope of prosperity and sustainable peace in accordance with the NLD's election campaign slogan, “It's time for change, Vote to NLD.”

Voters had unrealistically high hopes for the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD government, thinking that they would solve or ease the protracted crisis in Rakhine State with the support of international community since Aung San Suu Kyi had close relationship with foreign countries especially with the West. These voters also thought that the NLD government could tackle ethnic armed conflicts since she was strongly supported by ethnic voters. Instead, the situation in Rakhine State and the ethnic conflicts worsened, and commodity prices gradually rose day by day because of the political uncertainty. Frustration has been growing in the two and a half years since the NLD came into power. In by-elections held in April 2017, the NLD only secured nine seats out of eighteen, a warning sign for the NLD in the 2020 general elections.

The crisis in Rakhine State energized nationalism especially among the majority Buddhist population, and the stalled peace process and the erection of statues of General Aung San in ethnic areas escalated existing anti-Bamar sentiment among ethnic minority populations. In addition, observers view that sensitive civil–military relations between the NLD government and the military or Tatmadaw has become more tense since the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) call for Myanmar generals to be prosecuted for genocide and for the setting up of an independent inquiry commission on Rakhine State.

Five-year-old Ananda is the youngest member of the Valley family still living in Koto. When she is not in kindergarten, she spends most of her time with her grandmother, Maryati, the oldest member of the family in the village, her single mother, and a number of other members of the family who live on their ancestral land and are her mother's cousins. Ananda, her mother and grandmother have just moved into a new house built for them by her three aunts who live in the rantau. They have all achieved some measure of success in their professions and recently bought a piece of land across the road from the family's traditional holdings that was put up for sale by another extended family in the village (see Hasanah's story in Chapter 10). In addition to providing a place for their mother and sister to live, these women wanted to maintain a stake in the village that they owned themselves. While they could, in theory, have built a house on the family's communal property across the road from where their new house is located, this would have meant negotiating with other family members and also that they would not own the property outright. The current situation means that they own the house as well as the land on which it is located and can do whatever they like with it in the future.

Other changes have taken place in Koto that mark a break with tradition. About 90 metres down the road from Ananda's house, a woman from a nearby village has opened a small, roadside stand selling coffee and light meals. The owner, her adult daughter and several grandchildren are all living on the premises which they built on a plot of land leased to them by the village family that owns the adjacent fields. While it is unclear whether such a venture can be successful in Koto, it is concerning to a number of the members of the Valley family, who are increasingly worried about people from outside the village gaining control of land and assets that rightfully belong to the extended families that originate in Koto (see the story of Marni and Marjan in Chapter 10). Nonetheless, the family has been slow to document their own land and obtain deeds to their hereditary assets as it is now possible to do within the Indonesian legal system.

THE LINGUISTIC CONTEXT IN INDONESIA

The linguistic context in Indonesia is extremely complex. Since achieving independence in 1945, Indonesia has used bahasa Indonesia (literally, “the language of Indonesia”) as its national language, a situation that was anticipated by the nationalist movement as early as the 1920s. In fact, the origin of the national language is usually dated to the Youth Pledge (Soempah Pemoeda) made by nationalist leaders in 1928 that called for a future nation of Indonesia whose language would be Indonesian (Foulcher 2000). However, despite the fact that this formalization of the language came less than 100 years ago, there had been a de facto Indonesian language in use for centuries before this time.

Modern Indonesian is a standardized form of Malay, a member of the Austronesian family of languages, that had been in use as a lingua franca in the region that now makes up the modern nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei Darussalam. In its earliest period of usage, Malay was likely a trading language used to facilitate interaction among people who spoke different languages that were also indigenous to the islands that would become Indonesia. Over time, it spread and developed and eventually came to be associated with Islam and the religious and cultural practices that were related to the religion (Adelaar and Himmelmann 2005).

Indonesia eventually became the Netherlands East Indies, first under the control of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) and later the Dutch government when the VOC collapsed in 1800, after nearly 200 years of operation. Portuguese traders and missionaries were also active in the eastern part of the region before the VOC consolidated its holdings. The British, who had colonized the Malay peninsula, held the region of Bengkulu on the island of Sumatra from 1685 to 1824. There was great interest in the area by European explorers because of the availability of a wide range of spices that had been known in Europe for centuries but that had been controlled by middlemen in the Arab world and India (Ellen 1977; Ricklefs 2008). Despite intense interaction with European powers over a period of centuries, the languages of the colonizers remained a source of loan words but never became widespread media of communication in Indonesia.

RELIGION IN THE MINANGKABAU COMMUNITY

All Minangkabau are Muslim, and identification with this religion is part of the ethnic identity of the group. For this reason, it is not possible for members of the ethnic group to profess another religion; if they do convert, for example, they effectively remove themselves from the rest of the community. There have been one or two cases of a family member of a prominent Minangkabau figure converting to Christianity which, when known to the public, immediately became a major topic of discussion among the public, and this is increasingly a topic of discussion in Minang language social media. One such case involved the half-brother of Hamka, a prominent writer and religious leader. A recent biography documents this and other aspects of the life of this half-brother, which some readers consider despicable and have linked with the recurrent issue of a missionary presence in West Sumatra. It is unclear to what extent Christian missionaries have actually approached members of the Minangkabau community in the past, but there have been several conspiracy-type accusations that circulated among the public in recent years (see, for example, Minang Lamo 2013). Anecdotal evidence suggests that conversions from Islam rarely occur. However, religion is a central element of identity perception among the Minangkabau and one whose practices frame its experience. In this, the experience of the community parallels that of several other groups in the Malay world, most notably the Malay themselves, for whom adherence to Islam is a fundamental characteristic that determines ethnic identification (Lian 2001).

For the Minangkabau, as is the case for many of Indonesia's ethnic groups, Islam represents a comparatively new influence in their history. Islam is viewed as having reached Indonesia in the eleventh century (Ricklefs 2008), likely introduced by traders and travellers from India and the Middle East. The religion gradually spread, replacing the older Hindu and Buddhist practices that were already in existence (Clarke et al. 2004). These older practices, which had long since entered the region from India, had mixed with indigenous religious beliefs that are thought to have had a strong supernatural dimension (Brakel 2004). The original religious practices of Indonesia never completely disappeared however, and it is not uncommon to see traces of them in modern society.

OLDER MINANGKABAU IN INSTITUTIONALIZED CARE

For more than thirty years, the Ministry of Social Affairs has run old age homes around Indonesia that provide room and board for older people who have no family or the means to support themselves independently. Care at one of these institutions is completely free to the residents, and provision is made for the complex health care needs many older people will develop late in life. Generally, however, an individual must be able to care for him or herself at the time of admission. These public institutions are generally referred to as Panti Sosial Tresna Werdha (PSTW). The term tresna werdha is Javanese and means “love of old people”. Panti sosial is Indonesian and refers to any type of social facility, such as a nursing home, orphanage, or other similar residential institution. In addition to these public facilities, privately run nursing homes for older people have been established by a number of hospitals and organizations. These facilities require payment, although some do accept residents who cannot pay.

In West Sumatra, the two largest old age facilities are Panti Sosial Tresna Werdha Sabai nan Aluih which is located in the town of Sicincin, not far from Padang, and Panti Sosial Tresna Werdha Kasih Sayang Ibu, in the town of Batusangkar in the highland interior of the province. The names chosen for the two facilities are interesting in that they have specific connotations that are meaningful in the context of their function. The PSTW located in Sicincin is in the traditional rantau. The name Sabai nan Aluih is a reference to a character in a well-known Minangkabau folk tale, who is portrayed as the epitome of a dutiful and loyal daughter who loves and respects her parents. The character represents the exemplary child. By contrast, the facility in Batusangkar, which is in the Minangkabau heartland, uses an Indonesian name that means “mother's love”. Both names are intended to convey the idea of affection between family members and refer to an idealized relationship between parents and children. These two facilities can accommodate 110 and 70 people respectively and account for 75 per cent of the accommodation for elderly people in need in the province. Both facilities are currently full to capacity and are approached by individuals with no place to live or families seeking accommodation for an older relative on a weekly basis.

CULTURAL CONSONANCE

Cultural consonance relates to expectations an individual has for his or her own experience. Specifically, the concept refers to the degree to which a person's situation conforms to what he or she anticipated. This anticipation is often unconscious and relates to cultural norms and practices that were absorbed and learned from infancy. This understanding of cultural practices is closely associated with language (a means by which culture is transmitted) and allows a person to fit into and participate in his or her native society. Often people are not aware of their cultural expectations or how the fact of these expectations not being met might affect them, but they are very much aware of the impact of the lack of consonance, especially when it begins to affect physical or mental health.

The concept of cultural consonance was introduced by Dressler and colleagues (Dressler et al. 2005a; Dressler et al. 2005b) which they define as the extent to which the beliefs, perceptions and behaviour of individuals accord with prototypes that exist within their culture. The underlying assumption is that individuals wish to act in ways established by their culture of origin but may be unable to do so because of the context in which they live. This creates a source of stress that may manifest in physical disease or psychological distress. Dressler (2005), for example, found that higher levels of cultural consonance were associated with lower blood pressure and greater well-being in a number of studies. Similar results were obtained when cultural consonance was considered for various populations in several different locations (see, for example, Dressler and Bindon 2000).

The meaning of culture applied in the study of cultural consonance is of a body of knowledge that is learned and shared by individuals but that also has a location in a specific group of interest. In this, culture is assumed to be “distributed” (Sperber 1985) and to represent the body of shared learning that is required to function effectively within the social group (Goodenough 1996). Dressler et al. (2007) note that the distribution of cultural knowledge within a given group may vary, with culture potentially being shared by most members or by only a few, concentrated in one or several sub-groups, or widely distributed across society such that there exists a high level of both sharing and agreement.

ADAT IN MINANGKABAU

The term adat in Indonesian means “traditional law and customs”. The cognate term in Minang is adaik, which has the same meaning. Adat is used throughout this book because it is most frequently used in writings about Indonesia in English and has no exact equivalent. Adat is an aspect of culture that is well known throughout Indonesia, where each ethnic/linguistic group has its own customs and traditions that relate to its specific social and historical context. Adat existed long before the modern state of Indonesia, and most regions have traditional interpretations of locally relevant, culturally enforced law that relate to issues like land ownership, property rights, and inheritance; marriage, divorce, and other aspects of family law; life course events of local significance (birth, death, circumcision, and so forth); and many other elements of culture that reflect the traditional interpretation of shared experiences in a given location or among members of a specific group. Modern law, which was first instituted by the Dutch colonial government and which has been revised and updated in the context of the independent nation of Indonesia, addresses some of the issues to which adat also applies, although these two types of law have generally been seen as separate. Adat relates more to individuals’ relationship to their own ethnic culture, while modern law defines a similar relationship to the state (see Lindsey (2008) for a discussion of the nature of the law in Indonesia).

In recent years, the concept of “local wisdom” (kearifan lokal) has become part of the national intellectual paradigm and is often applied in situations where it is felt that local ways may have value in addressing some issue or solving some problem that is of current concern. This is in contrast to a historical tendency in Indonesia to adopt approaches and solutions that come from the Western intellectual environment without much consideration of whether they apply in the local context. Much of the content of local wisdom derives from adat, which is seen as providing a socially acceptable approach or suggesting potential solutions that draw on the shared experience of the community where they are to be implemented.

Since the establishment of regional autonomy, local culture has become more significant at the regional level.

THE VALLEY FAMILY

On a hot night in Jakarta, a dozen members of a large extended family met at a restaurant in one of the many residential neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city. They thought of themselves as the Valley family because their traditional, multifamily home had been located in a hollow in their native village of Koto in West Sumatra. Some of the diners were siblings; others were first cousins. A few of their children, who had been born in Jakarta and were married themselves, also attended. Some of their spouses came from other parts of Indonesia and sat a short distance away from the older family members. Except for these younger relations by marriage, everyone present was a descendant of a single Minangkabau woman, the grandmother of the older diners named Aminah, who represented the founding generation of this matrilineal family. As it happened, she had had no living sisters so the family had contracted at her generation but had expanded again as her four daughters and two sons married and had children. This generation was the parents of the older people present, and those who remained alive on this date were around ninety years of age. Most of the diners were over sixty, the age at which Indonesia labels a person “elderly” (lansia), but a few were in their fifties and were approaching the time of life when they would have to make decisions about their future. Many of those present were already retired; all were middle class; and most had had a college education. As they ate, conversation turned towards a usual topic that invariably came up any time any of them met — their life in the village before they moved away. For most of them, that moment had occurred when they were in their early twenties, had finished their education, and decided to move to Jakarta to seek better opportunities than were available locally in West Sumatra, their province of origin. One of them had left the village much longer ago and, through a combination of circumstances, had grown up in the city of Makassar, in South Sulawesi, a province on another island in the eastern part of Indonesia. Eventually, everyone present married and had children.

THE VILLAGE OF KOTO

The village of Koto is very different today than even twenty years ago, and the comparison with the more distant past is stark. Physically, the village is much more developed than in the past. Many of the houses have been renovated or replaced by better quality, modern homes made of brick. It is not uncommon for residents to have cars or motorcycles which are visible on the road and parked near their homes. Public transportation of various kinds passes the village and can be used by residents to travel to the town of Batusangkar as well as to other villages in the general area. Virtually every house has a satellite dish, and television is the main form of entertainment for village residents. There is an elementary school, a mosque, several surau (prayer houses) and other public buildings, and also a few small stores some of the residents run from their homes. Electricity has been available in this area for more than forty years, and many people's standard of living has improved dramatically in the ensuing decades.

However, compared to the past, the village seems very empty. There are many fewer people visible on the roads, and there are not as many children as there used to be. One reason for this is that more people of working age, many of whom are better educated than ever before, have professional jobs, either in Batusangkar and the surrounding region or have moved to other towns to work. The lifestyle of those who have remained in the village has taken on a more modern pattern where they are away from home all day and return in the evening after work. Those engaged in traditional occupations in the agricultural sector are often working in the fields and gardens for much of the day. Even the older people seem to spend more time indoors, as there is less activity in the village during the day than there used to be in the past. In addition, there is evidence that the rate of migration is increasing. Marantau remains an attractive option for young people. In 2010, for example, the province of West Sumatra experienced a net loss of more than 800,000 people. In 1990, the comparable figure was 425,000. Most of this movement is from rural parts of the province to urban areas (BPS Sumatera Barat 2016e).