Betawi lessons needed to preserve local culture

The Jakarta Post ,  Depok   |  Wed, 06/24/2009 11:35 AM  |  City

Jakarta administration should consider introducing Betawi culture and history lessons at schools as a way to broaden students' perspectives of the city's indigenous people and culture, and encourage them to preserve it, a discussion concluded Monday.

While most Jakarta people are familiar with various aspects of Betawi art and culture, many regard these as artificial symbols and fail to understand their value, historian J. J. Rizal said.

He also worried about the existence of certain groups which manipulated Betawi sentiment for their own interests, leading to public misconceptions about Betawi people in general.

"Some hard-line Betawi organizations, for example, have created an image that Betawi people are aggressive and destructive.

"If there is no counter action, how can we convince our children to be proud of their culture?" he said.

Currently, there are more than five million Betawi people living in Greater Jakarta, including the cities of Jakarta, Bogor, Tangerang, Depok and Bekasi.

Observing the dispersion of the Betawi people, Ainin Dita Zulkarnaen, a researcher of Betawi culture from the University of Indonesia, also stressed the importance of giving Betawi students living outside Jakarta lessons about their native culture.

"The administrative border has made it impossible for many children to learn about their cultural roots. All students in Bekasi, for instance, whatever their ethnicity, have to learn Sundanese at school.

"If the government doesn't evaluate this situation, there will always be a lost generation in this country," Ainin said.

According to Australian researcher Lance Castle, Betawi people are the descendants of the people living around Batavia (the Dutch colonial name for Jakarta from around the 17th century). Betawis are descended from various Southeast Asian ethnic groups, as well as Arabs, Chinese and Indians who were brought to or attracted to Batavia to meet labor needs, together with people from various parts of Indonesia.

An observer of Betawi culture, S. M. Ardan, once said Betawi people had almost no original arts of their own because most of the arts had emerged through the intermingling of various arts from those ethnic groups. (hwa)

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