Sedulur Sikep

Samin Surosentiko began teaching at Randublatung, Blora, in the 1890s. His teaching, which his followers call Agama Adam, prescribes no particular worship but conduct: speak truly, take nothing that is not yours, do not trade by profiting from another's need, and regard land and water as things no one can own and therefore cannot tax.

The refusal was carried on without armed resistance and without flight. Its forms were answering an official's questions so literally that the question lost its force, paying in goods that were not money, and declining to sign. The colonial government exiled Samin to Sawahlunto in 1907, where he died in 1914, and the movement continued without him.

The rule of truthful speech is carried out in a way that turns it into an instrument. Because Javanese requires a level that states relative standing, and because the bearers of this teaching refuse to state themselves below a government officer, they speak ngoko to everyone, officials included. Questions are answered exactly as worded: asked where he lives, a man answers that he lives in his body; asked whether he owns land, that land is not owned.

Such answers were recorded in colonial reports as stupidity or madness, and that was partly the point: it refuses without giving a reason that can be punished. The reading that takes it for simple rustic naivety keeps reappearing in popular writing and is supported by no source that has examined it.

Between 2014 and 2017 the bearers of this teaching were the principal party opposing cement works and limestone quarrying in the Kendeng hills, on the ground that limestone karst is where groundwater forms and that breaking it breaks the rice fields below. The opposition took the same forms as a century earlier: staying put, not signing, and being present. In 2016 a number of women farmers set their feet in cement outside the presidential palace in Jakarta.

The Supreme Court annulled the environmental permit for the Rembang plant in October 2016. The dispute did not end with that ruling and continued through permits reissued afterwards. The episode is recorded because it shows that this teaching is not a survival being preserved but a way of acting still in use.