In the months immediately after the disarming of the Japanese, Pare lay somewhere between peace and war. This situation was felt by Parenese in the countryside, whether they were plantation workers, peasants or from other occupational groups. Only later did people become fully aware of the significance of the fact that their political freedom had been proclaimed by their leaders and now had to be defended.
Indonesian employees on plantations, mainly sugar plantations, assumed the managerial positions being vacated by the Japanese. Following the example of the Japanese, who had placed more emphasis on the sugar estates, the Indonesians also gave more attention to sugar than to coffee. In 1946, the Executive Body of the Government Sugar Company replaced the Taiwan Sugar Mill Company in Kencong and Tegowangi. The Indonesian authorities then established a State Plantation Centre (Perusahaan Perkebunan Negara) which would manage the non-sugar plantations. These organizations, which chose Surakarta as their headquarters, had branches in the regencies and on plantations (Gubernur Jawa Timur 1953:328-9). The sugar plantations were better organized than the rest, and they were able to continue their operations after the Japanese abandoned the mills. On the other hand, some highland plantations were taken over by Indonesian managers, some continued to be converted into farmlands by peasants, and some were later occupied by the newly formed armed forces.
The numbers of peasants and others who occupied plantations continued to increase. This meant an increase in small-holders' farmland but a serious decrease in the area of the plantations.
Because there was a lack of political stability in the regions around Pare and a lack of qualified managers on the plantations, the situation grew quite uncertain. During this 'freedom period' (zaman merdeka) , people felt that they were free to occupy plantation land and to change it to small-holders farmland.
Though a revolutionary atmosphere was spreading through the villages, farmers were able to work without the oppression they had experienced during the Japanese occupation. They worked as usual on their farmland, cultivating and producing crops mainly for their own consumption. Their surplus crops began to be sold, either to traders who came to the villages or directly at the local market. Farmers no longer feared that their crops would be taken by authorities, and the freedom to work and to trade was enjoyed everywhere. Social relations returned to normal, women and men worked on their farms, their children went to schools and helped their parents at work, and some village youths entered socio-religious organizations and higher schools like their colleagues in town. The most popular youth organization in the villages was Hizbullah. Some young people took part in defence training, and when the war between the Republic and the Dutch broke out far to the north-east, they went off to the front.
During this time of confusion, rumours about the power of invulnerability spread in Pare, mainly in rural areas. This "white" magic could be obtained from two K y a i , one in Tebuireng, to the north of Pare, and one in Parakan in Central Java (9). Pemuda from Pare
(9). In Pare, a Kyai is a traditional religious teacher, scholar or leader of Islam. A Kyai is usually male and is associated with a langgar or pondok.
brought thousands of bamboo spears (bambu runcing) and slingshots (plinthengan) to these K y a i , for it was said that the Kyai could cast a charm over weapons, which would then change into arms with supernatural powers. There was also reputed to be fresh water which, imbued with magic by a special formula, could bring about invulnerability; people who drank it believed that they could not be hurt by guns or knives. Boys who had not yet been circumcized were prohibited by older people from drinking the magic water or stepping over the bamboo spears because it was thought that they could not thereafter be circumcized, even with the sharpest knife. The strength of this belief in invulnerability may have been behind many instances of blind courage in the armed struggle. Belief in the power of invulnerability decreased when some members of Hizbullah who were armed with bamboo spears and who had drunk the magical water realized the superiority of Dutch arms.
Rural youths maintained relatively close communication with their colleagues in urban Pare during the early revolutionary period. They were aware that the Republican regions were gradually shrinking as the Dutch pressed forward. When news about the presence of Dutch forces in the eastern region of Pare district became known, Republican authorities ordered adults to cut large trees at both sides of the main roads for use as barricades. Moreover, members of the newly formed Republican army launched a scorched earth policy as they retreated to the countryside. A few bridges between Pare and Kediri and between Pare and Jombang were blown up with dynamite or destroyed violently by hand with the help of the villagers.
The sugar mills at Tegowangi and Kencong were burnt and smashed, and a large part of the machinery and of the stocks of sugar were destroyed. Villagers who lived near these mills came to take the unburnt sugar, or the sacks in which it was stored, leaving sugar scattered everywhere. Sugar mill officials were asked to leave the mill complexes, and all the houses were burnt, leaving only ruins behind. Because the trains of the sugar plantations were no longer functioning, villagers took the wooden cross-ties and the iron rails of the railways and used them for furniture, fire wood and other purposes. Though the destruction of these sugar mills represented a great loss to the economy of Pare, it was thought by some at the time that this was a sacrifice that had to be made in order to obtain freedom, which was seen as more important than the mills themselves.
As the Dutch moved in during the fourth week of December 1948,
communications between the town and the surrounding regions were partly cut, and Pare became unofficially divided into an occupied region, mainly the town and its vicinity, and the 'pocket' or Republican region, consisting of most of the rural area around Pare. The townsmen who fled temporarily to the villages stayed with relatives or acquaintances there, sometimes moving constantly from house to house or from village to village. Those townsmen who fled simply left their houses and property unguarded in the town, carrying only their portable valuables with them and most of them consequently had to live rather modestly in rural villlages. Through their attitudes and actions, however, the priyayi refugees could easily be differentiated from the rural villagers.
In the "pocket" regions, especially in those villages relatively far from asphalt roads, peasants continued to work their lands during the day. At night, however, people were reluctant to go out of their homes, and even during daylight most peasants went to their farmlands with a feeling of anxiety. Their harvests, once they were in, were kept at home. Town refugees who still had their valuable possessions would trade them for food, but many lived simply by relying on their relatives among the villagers.
Socio-religious activities among santris at langgar or pondok decreased. Most villagers avoided gathering with neighbours. The slametan tradition was also abandoned. Moreover religious teaching activities also decreased, and people performed their religious duties individually at home.
The centre of trade for the rural areas moved from Pare to Badas, a village about seven kilometres to the north. Traders from Jombang and other northern towns came to Badas to sell such goods as salt, clothes, cloves, cigarettes, batiks, and salt fish. Traders from the south of Pare bought these goods while selling sugar and coffee in Badas. These southerners then sold the products from the northern regions to the rural people , who tended to stay in their villages. Some local traders walked as far as Wonokasian near Gurah, about 20 kilometres from Badas, risking their lives since Dutch army patrols and Indonesian guerillas both suspected traders of being enemy couriers. In most villages, transactions usually took place in house gardens or inside houses.
Local battles would flare up whenever Republican guerillas ambushed Dutch convoys travelling between Pare and Papar, the only finished route still open out of Pare. Occasionally, these battles would spread to villages in the immediate area. The revolution not only strained the relations between countryside and town, but also those between and within villages. Most people became suspicious of strangers, for their neighbourhoods might at any time become sites of conflict between Republican guerillas and Dutch patrols or convoys. There was no tranquility or predictability in life on farms and in homes, and this tension went on for about a year until formal relations between independent Indonesia and the Dutch were initiated at the end of 1949.
3. Town
When the Japanese surrendered to the Allies, most Japanese in Pare, like the Dutch earlier, fled the town for plantations in Mangli and Satak to the southeast. In Pare, the role of the pemuda was dominant during the early period of independence, with two main pemuda organizations being particularly prominent. The Pemuda Republik Indonesia, or Republic of Indonesia Youth (abbreviated as PRI and known as PRINDO in Pare) was originally founded in Surabaya, and one of its leaders was the famous Bung Tomo or Soetomo, the spirited leader of Surabaya's resistance against the Allies (10). Seinendan members in particular were likely to become members of PRINDO, and for a short time the leader of the Pare Seinendan, Pak Wirjohoediono Pranoto Baris,
(10). See Reid 1974:57. After the transfer of sovereignty, Bung Tomo was appointed as a member of Cabinet. Under the New Order, he was accused of involvement in the student movement and was arrested for several weeks in 1978.
was the prime mover among pemuda in Pare. Wirjohoediono, a Protestant, was an educated man and a Technical School teacher in Pare (11). The second youth organization was a branch of the Hizbullah set up in Pare during the Japanese occupation. This Islamic youth corps, a sub-organization of MASYUMI, was under the leadership of Amir Patah, a santri from one of the pondok in a village not far from the town of Pare and a man later to become one of the important figures in the Darul Islam (12). There was another small youth organization, the Barisan Banteng (Buffalo Corps), but it was less important among the youth of Pare in the early revolution. Barisan Banteng was more solidly nationalistic, but PRINDO, based on the spirit of revolutionary youth rather than anything intellectual, was more attractive to young people wanting to take part in the action of their time.
These youth organizations and their mass meetings, held on the Pare town square, drew people from all social groups. Spearheaded by Wirjohoediono, and directed toward the specific target of seizing power from the Japanese, these movements overcame the socio-ideological differences among their members. Led by pemuda, crowds surrounded the
(11) . Thie section is mainlv basp>d on +-v“a rocol 1 pcti ons
Wir-ioho^iouo, who lived in Pare (1978) as a pensioned my Capf^in, pna oak T«man Hidayat, who was a member of the Pare Seinenaan under Wirjohoediono and later an army Lieutenant and who was living in Surabaya in 1978. There were close relationships between members of various pemuda organizations; the bravery of some members of Hizbullah, especially the late Mahfud from the santri hamlet of Tegalsari, was recognized by all.
(12) . Amir Patah was the Darul Islam commander who surrendered with 100 followers to the Natsir Masyumi Cabinet in 1951. Later he was sent by authorities to continue his study in Karachi, Pakistan (Kedaulatan Rakyat, 26 July 1957; for the Natsir Cabinet incident,
1974:173 ).
Kamar Bola, in which some Japanese still resided, expecting to disarm the Japanese without resistance. This they were able to do. Pemuda then obtained a car from the Tegowangi sugar plantation and trucks from Pak Samadikun, the Deputy of the Kediri Resident, and, using these vehicles, travelled to the Mangli and Satak plantations. There the pemuda, armed with bamboo spears, sabres and a few guns, were able to persuade the Japanese to surrender all their weapons. They escorted the Japanese to Pare and later handed them over to the authorities in Kediri.
Most of the Pare pemuda who had access to weapons and motor vehicles joined the Kediri People's Security Board, or Badan Keamanan Rakyat, (BKR - for a description of this body see Tirtoprodjo 1963:30). A local BKR headquarters was set up in front of the Pare pawnshop. When the BKR was reformed as the Tentara Keamanan Rakyat, TKR, or People's Security Army, on 5 October 1945 (see Tirtoprodjo 1963:34), this Pare section officially became the sub-division of the TKR at the regency level. When the TKR later became the Tentara Nasional Indonesia, TNI, some of the same members transferred to that newly formed organization.
A new youth organization called PESINDO (Pemuda Sosialis Indonesia) was formed in Pare after being established at the national level in November 1946. It was mostly members of PRINDO and other previously unaffiliated abangan pemuda who joined PESINDO in Pare (13). One of the best buildings in Pare, previously the KSM headquarters, was given over to be used as PESINDO's centre of activities. The presence
(13). In the first all-Indonesian Pemuda Congress, assembled in Jogyakarta, seven out of the twenty three Pemuda organizations merged
of PESINDO in Pare had a divisive effect, spurring antagonism between Hisbullah, with its Islamic bent, and those less religious youths who joined the newly formed PESINDO.
In the months immediately after the disarming of the Japanese, Pare hovered uncertainty between peace and war. The traders in the markets and the shop-keepers, however, conducted their business activities with a feeling of relief, since, although goods were relatively scarce, they no longer had to fear accusations that they were hoarders who under the Japanese faced draconian penalties. Life was still difficult and uncertain for Pare townsmen, but the thought existed that a better life might soon be achieved.
Pare youths, bureaucrats and students quickly began to abandon the Japanese culture which had been effectively imposed on them for more than three years. They easily discarded use of the Japanese language and of elements of Japanese etiquette, and most of the Japanese-inspired organizations, such as Seinendan and Kaibodan, disappeared. The Tonari Gumi, or Rukun Tetangga (RT), the Neighbourhood Associations, however, were retained. These RT found acceptance among members of town and village communities in Pare, as they did elsewhere, probably because they filled the organizational gap between the household, the smallest established social form, and larger
structures such as hamlets (pedukuhan) or villages (desa).
During that brief but heady period between the Proclamation and the Dutch onslaught, the spirit of newly-found freedom penetrated deeply into society and reformed social habits. People meeting each other on the streets now shouted "Merdeka", "Free", as their normal salutation. Youths took to wearing merah-putih (red and white)
insignias on their chests and on their hats, and most households kept a national flag which was hung out on national holidays as the symbol of freedom.
After the battle of Surabaya on November 10, 1945 (14), the capital of the province of East Java was moved to Kediri, and the administrative centre of Surabaya Residency was moved to Mojokerto. When the British finally vacated Surabaya, the Dutch resumed authority there, and one by one the smaller towns around that port city were seized by Dutch troops. Pare, situated between those East Java battle fields and the Republican provincial capital in Kediri, was busy with its local affairs during this period, and everyday life was heavily influenced by the threat of war.
Many pemuda were mobilized, and those organized into fighting units were sent to the front. The Dutch offensive westward toward Kediri raised different attitudes among different groups in Pare. A few believed that the Dutch could never occupy Pare because Pare was under the protection of the spirit of mBah Budha. Others thought that the occupation of Pare would be just a matter of time because of the superiority of Dutch arms and strategy. Still others, mainly members of Hizbullah, raised the idea of perang sabil (Islamic holy war); they believed that people who died in such a war would immediately enter heaven, and this spiritual belief stimulated a fanatical attitude among the religious pemuda taking part in the war. Armed with equipment taken from the Japanese and with daggers, bamboo spears, and other
(14). This battle, between British Empire troops and Indonesians, claimed a great number of casualties on both sides. It has become a public holiday, Hari Pahlawan or Heroes Day, in Indonesia.
traditional weapons, the pemuda prepared to follow orders from their leaders.
The socio-political situation of Pare was heavily influenced by conditions in higher political organizations and centres of authority. The East Java provincial capital was moved in February 1947 from Kediri to Malang, where a Central Indonesian National Committee (KNIP) meeting was held from 25 February to 6 March 1947 (Gubernur Jawa Timur 1953:13). On 17 March 1947, the Dutch, in order to repair a dam on the Brantas river, occupied Mojokerto (Gubernur Jawa Timur 1953:13), a move which forced the Republic administration to move its Residency capital from Mojokerto to Jombang, only 28 kilometres north of Pare. In an offensive beginning on 21 July 1947, the Dutch took most of East Java: Besuki, Madura, Surabaya and Malang fell into Dutch hands, and the Republican provincial capital of East Java was moved from Malang to Blitar (Gubernur Jawa Timur 1953:14). In the face of greater Dutch military strength, the East Java Republican territory had become much smaller, and the administrative centre had had to be moved from one town to another.
Dutch control of the main towns and harbours in the coastal regions of Java meant an economic blockade for the internal regions. In Pare imported goods were very scarce in the market, but with farmers free from the Japanese oppression and with less government control over commercial activities, traders and entrepreneurs conducted their activities with a feeling of relief. Life was still difficult in Pare, but there were those who looked to the future, pinning their hopes on living in a free society. Unlike economic and educational activities, the religious life of the majority of Parenese was but little
interrupted by the war. A year after the proclamation of independence,