‘BETAWI, The True Minority of Indonesia’

Before discussing the main menu of minorities in Indonesia, let’s have a trivia quiz as appetizer. Take a good look at below pictures and then guess their nationality?    

If your answer is ‘ALL INDONESIAN’ then you definitely got it all wrong.

If your answer is ‘ALL except the lady in white blouse in the rightmost picture’ or 

‘ALL except the guy with baseball cap at the center’ then keep reading this post.

Diverse in ethnicity, skin color and religion, Indonesia can be defined as collection of cultures which then blend and mix under one nationality.  What makes it interesting is although diverse, imbalance proportion is easily spotted in Indonesian society. Look at religion, although diverse, more than 90% are Muslims, which means mixed of minorities make up for the balance. On ethnicity, Indonesian is dominantly falls under Malayan race (ras Melayu) which put Tionghoa (which refers to Indonesian with Chinese decent) as minority. With many specifications of minorities, who would have been the TRUE minority of Indonesia?

Lenggang Nyai Dance

For me, the answer to this is BETAWI, the native ethnicity of Jakarta. Similar with Javanese, Batakese, Sundanese and other Indonesian ethnicity, Betawi owns its own traditional language, clothing, dances, foods and other forms of culture. Due to urbanization and development of Jakarta as capital city, its presence is hugely evades, making Betawi ‘a minority in their own land’ and facing ‘cultural identity crisis’. Todate, ‘Bahasa Betawi’ which is the traditional language has been mistreated as ‘slang’ version of Bahasa Indonesia. ‘Kampung Betawi’ (Betawi village) is not well reserved. 
Large sum of population has moved towards suburban area of Bekasi and Depok which already belong to West Java province.

Cast of 'Si Doel Anak Sekolahan"

To restore Betawi tradition and culture, one notable effort was through television series ‘Si Doel Anak Sekolahan’ which illustrated daily life of a Betawi man named Doel. The annual event of Jakarta Fair (used to be known as 'Pekan Raya Jakarta) is also held in order to promote the city and Betawi. For those who would like to taste the original Betawi culture and tradition, my suggestion is to come and visit during Jakarta anniversary in June. Here you can try variety of Betawi delicacies such as ‘Orak Arik Telor’ or watch dance performance of  ‘Ronggeng Betawi’ and ‘Lenggang Nyai.

Mass service with Betawi acculturation at St.Servatius Church, Bekasi

It may be a good idea for the next elected governor of Jakarta to insert an agenda of preserving Betawi culture and tradition for its to survive and not extinct. Creating a folk village, like what have been executed by Seoul government might be a source of inspiration.

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PS: For those who remain curious until the end, the answer for our quiz at the beginning is ‘ALL except the guy with green shirt, posing at the center of the leftmost picture’. He is a Filipino and used to be my big boss at work ^^.