and the missionaries abandoned them as 'unreachable people', moving north to convert the Toba. At the turn of the 20th century, nearly all Mandailing and Angkola were Muslims. Despite this, the Dutch administration marked them as part of the Bataklanden, and therefore heathen or Christian. This perception was an inaccurate one, and many Mandailing strongly rejected the 'Batak' label. Abdullah Lubis, writing in the 1920s, claimed that while the Mandailing followed Batak marga practice, they had never followed the Batak religion, and that the Mandailing people pre-dated the Toba, having acquired marga directly from 'Hindu' visitors. In the Dutch census, the Mandailing objected strongly to being listed in the census as 'Batak Mandailing'. Mandailing in Malaysia (who migrated in the years following the Padri war), had no such objection to their being deemed 'Malays', and indeed Malaysian Mandailing retain little of their distinct identity, partly due to a British colonial policy of rice-land ownership restrictions for all but Malay-speaking Muslims, and the disapproval of 'Batak' Muslim practices by the existing Malay Muslim population. Traditional Religions (Parmalim/Pemena) Parmalim or Malim is the modern form of the Batak Toba religion. Practitioners of Malim are called Parmalim. At the end of the 19th and in the beginning of the 20th century the Parmalim movement, which originated in Toba lands spread to other areas of the Batak lands. Especially in the lower Karo lands, the 'dusun' the Malim religion, became very influential as an expression of anti-colonial sentiments at the turn of the 20th century. Today the majority of Parmalim are Toba Batak. The largest of the several existing Parmalim groups has its centre in Huta Tinggi in the vicinity of Laguboti on the south shore of Lake Toba. Non-Malim Batak peoples (those following Christian or Muslim faith) often continue to believe certain aspects of traditional Batak spiritual belief. Another traditional religion of Batak is Pemena, is a tribal religion of Karo people of Indonesia. Pemena means the first or the beginning. Pemena is regarded as the first religion of Karo people. One of the doctrines of Pemena is the concept of Dibata. The 'Perodak-odak' movement among the Karo people in the 1960s was a reassertion of the traditional Karo religion, but has largely faded; a subsequent Karo movement to identify as Hindu was noted starting from the late 1970s in order to adopt, if only in name, one of the recognised religions of