Mariage Indonesian-Style

not kiss. They were disinclined to cuddle up, even when cajoled by the photographer. This reflects the traditions that persist in many parts of Indonesia. Not only had Yanti, 22, a restaurant cook, and Tri, 24, a farmer, just met, they barely knew anything about each other. “Er, what does he like to do in his spare time?’ Yanti asked a cousin the day before the wedding.

Two months ago Tri announced he wanted to marry a girl from central Java. “I think they’re cooler and more fun,” he said. That he did not know any did not deter him. When an acquaintance, Fajar, said he had a cousin, Mursiyati, who might be appropriate, Tri accepted immediately. Pressured by her parents into accepting Tri’s offer – his possession of a 11/4-acre (0.5 hectare) farm being a tempting prospect for her labourer father – Mursiyati agreed to the match. A month later Mursiyati met someone she liked and married her new boyfriend instead. But Tri was still determined to marry a central Java woman and Fajar felt he had to provide one.

So early in June the family came up with Yanti, a cousin. Again land proved the crucial factor. “As soon as

¹                      heard her voice, saw her photo and learnt she was a cook, I knew that she was the woman for me,” Tri said, without conviction. Yanti said she was “happy and excited” at the prospect of marrying Tri, but her father, Saulusmin, was not. “I mean they haven’t even met – how can they get married?’ he said. But he did not dare to stand up to his wife, Gina. “She would have got so angry with me if I’d objected it would not have been pleasant,” Saulusmin said.

It is impossible to know how many Indonesians end up in such marriages. Saman, the cleric who married Yanti and Tri, said “extreme” stories such as theirs, where the couple had not met, comprised perhaps 1% of marriages. “But there are many where the children do what they’re told,” he said. Tini, a maid in Jakarta who ran away after her parents tried to force her, at the age of 15, to marry a 28-year-old, reckons about a third of all unions in her district are undertaken without full consent.

World Vision, an international aid agency, describes the practice as “still common” and experts say it is unlikely to die out soon. “It’s the tradition and it’s hard to go against traditions,” said Gadis Arivia, of the women’s group Jurnal Perempuan. “Parents don’t believe in modern practices, particularly when they see divorce rates going up. On the daughter’s part if you obey your parents you are supported. The disobedient ones have a much harder life.”

Indonesia’s string of recent natural disasters and communal conflicts have also perpetuated the tradition, said Samsidar, a commissioner of the National Commission for Violence Against Women. “It’s traditional in situations where women have died for their younger sisters to look after their children, and this usually means they have to marry the widower,” she said. There is also a strong economic side to it. “After something like the tsunami many people were in a very bad way financially,” Samsidar said. “So we saw a lot of people hurrying to marry off their children to make their own lives that much easier.”

Back in Bumi Agung, Yanti was continuing to put a brave face on it. “As long as I don’t have to go to work again – it’s his job to provide for me – and can have a couple of children, then I’ll be happy,” she said.