Within two months after the Spit Commission published its recommendations,
the IEV held a congress. The recommendation to grant land but to retain it under
the native legal regime caught IEV by surprise, despite their initial willingness to
accept it as expressed in the Volksraad. This led to a fierce internal debate. A representative
from the Malang chapter, Schijfsma, argued that IEV would create lasting
change only if it could effect a revision of the Alienation Prohibition. The revision
should try to unify the racially divided agrarian law, which would prevent predatory
land transactions between natives and non-natives and curb dispossession by the rich
natives of the poor. In this way, transforming the autochthonous land rights regime
would offer both the Indo-Europeans and natives ‘principled and lasting solutions’ for
‘the salvation of the native society’, a principle ‘completely in line with our [position
for] unified colonial politics’