Diaspora Batak

Sumatran Bataks from statelessness to Indonesian diaspora... 

By the 1990s both communities were essentially urban diasporas scattered throughout Indonesia. If the diaspora already exceeded the homeland in population, it was totally dominant in wealth, education and dynamic. The political identity of each ethnie was overwhelmingly determined by this diaspora. One small example was a Karo Cultural Congress held in 1995 in the homeland city of Brastagi. Of the 300 Karo eminences invited, 85 per cent were from the cities of the diaspora (Prinst 1996). This phenomenon is not unique to the Bataks, but they are Indonesia s most important examples of how community is maintained in diaspora. 

The many schisms from the original Toba Batak church, the inroads of Catholics, Pentecostalists and Muslims, the much more complicated situation in the urban diaspora and the secular tendency of some educated leaders, have also made the ethnie churches less central in defining these identities. It is no longer certain that the leading officials (bupati) of the Toba and Karo homelands will be members of the dominant churches in each place, and official events require that Muslim, Catholic and Protestant figures all be represented when prayers are required. 

Conferences are frequently held in the diaspora to discuss how adat can be preserved or modified in modern conditions. Handy guides are published in Indonesian to enable urban Bataks to fulfil the minimum requirements of their Batakness, and to prescribe in simplified form the correct adat procedures for weddings and funerals. 

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