State stateless peoples

Aceh follows as the ethnie nationalism most threatening to the Indonesian state. Chapter 5 demonstrates that the strength of this ethnie nationalism, by contrast with the stateless examples that follow, is precisely its memory of state. Acehnese may be less distinctive as a minority than Indonesia s Bataks or Malaysia s Kadazan, but they inherit an unusually strong sense of state resistance to outside control. The Batak and Kadazan cases, in chapters 6 and 7, reveal the different paths of political identity formation and assertion of previously stateless peoples that were possible in Indonesia and Malaysia respectively. The different outcomes are largely set by the gulf between the two state nationalisms with which they contended post-revolutionary, centralising civic nationalism in Indonesia evolutionary, federal and ethno-nationalist Malaysia. 

There has been little research, to date, into the treatment of stateless people around the globe. For instance, a comprehensive assessment of the implementation of the 1954 convention by state parties remains outstanding, although biennial updates on statelessness are produced by UNHCR. Where studies have been conducted, a causal link has nonetheless been traced between the inadequate provision for the SSD and some serious protection concerns. For instance, mapping projects completed by UNHCR in 2011 conclude that the absence of dedicated SSD procedures has left many stateless people trapped in a hopeless cycle of detention and destitution. ... 

The relationship between state and ethnie was profoundly different in Indonesia. The colonial cities of Netherlands India, as of Malaya, represented a sort of melting-pot where people from diverse origins came to see a common adherence to Islam as the most important thing that separated them from Europeans, Chinese and stateless unbelievers like the Balinese, Bataks and so on. Unless quickly assimilated into the Chinese or European communities through marriage (an option only available to women), the people brought to Batavia, Makassar,... 

As explained in chapter 2, states had relatively litde direct control over the inhabitants of the tropical rain-forests of Southeast Asia when compared with the great river systems of the temperate zone. For many peoples of the Southeast Asian uplands in particular, statelessness was not simply a negative absence or slowness to develop states, but a deliberate rejection of the manner in which trade-based coastal states had been experienced as a threat to their way of life. The highland populations of northern Sumatra, collectively known for several centuries as Bataks, will be our prime example of this category. 

The highlands of Sumatra, despite being more densely settled and culturally sophisticated than the lowlands before the twentieth century, remain a striking case of Eric Wolf s (1982) People without History . Ashis Nandy points out that it is the statelessness, rather than the inaccessibility, of such peoples that has denied them a history. In his view, modern secular history as practised in the academies is inextricably linked as a mode of analysis with the modern nation-state and its rise. History traces the lineage and legitimacy of modem states, and distorts our understanding of the past by doing so (Nandy 1995). 

Nation remains problematic. It has a difficult relationship with peoples. Similarly, nations and states cannot necessarily be equated. The notion of a nation-state is confusing as it refers to one nation becoming a state. To believe that every state is a nation is likewise confusing. China is a state made up of 56 different nations. The Bretons and the Sorbs are examples of stateless nations. The term nation is used in many contexts but without a clear understanding. 

Joseph Schull, for example, states that social practices embody the self-definition of a people and are also made meaningful by them. See Russian Political Culture and the Stateless Intelligentsia (Montreal McGill, 1986), p. 18. 

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