From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka

Figures of the literacy rate in the 1940s are not available, but the 1930 census estimated literacy in the roman script on Java to be at 6.5 percent. Considerable advances were made after that date, particularly the mass basic education campaigns during the Japanese occupation. Nevertheless, it is incontestable that the audience for a book such as this represented a small segment of the population consisting of people who had received a formal education, generally including some Dutch language instruction, or those who had come to literacy and political consciousness through the nationalist movement, which used Dutch terminology for abstract and modern concepts not catered to in the traditional Malay language from which Indonesian was developing. Some of these Dutch terms were later assimilated into Indonesian (e.g., nasionalisme, partai, fakultas). Others were replaced by new Indonesian terms (e.g., djoernalis by wartawan, bibliotheek by perpustakaan) (see Alisjahbana, Language, esp. pp. 67-81).

       Introduction

      1. Aslia was Tan Malaka’s term, coined to express the future political entity combining Southeast Asia and northern Australia. For details of this concept see below, pp. xcvi-xcix.

      2. Soetomo, Kenang-kenangan, p. 6, cited in Benedict Anderson, “A Time of Darkness and a Time of Light: Transposition in Early Indonesian Nationalist Thought,” in Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, ed. Reid and Marr, p. 224.

      3. While we have no direct evidence that Tan Malaka read Pellico’s work, the combination of his voracious appetite for reading and the popularity of the book as a political romance and as an inspiration for those resisting authority make it likely that he did, possibly during his frequent browsings in the bookshop near where he lived in Haarlem in 1915-1916. Since its first publication in 1832 it has averaged six Italian editions a year. It was translated into a number of European languages, including Dutch in 1841 (Sylvio Pellico, My Prisons).

      Pellico was arrested in 1920 and charged with being a member of the Carbonari, one of the secret societies aiming to drive the Austrian authorities out of Italy. The group organized a number of uprisings between 1815 and 1848. Pellico’s involvement with the Carbonari was short-lived and marginal. Activists in the group criticized his book for its meek Christian resignation to suffering.

      4. See Benedict Anderson, “The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture,” and Taufik Abdullah, “Modernization in the Minangkabau World: West Sumatra in the Early Decades of the Twentieth Century,” both in Claire Holt, Culture and Politics in Indonesia; for a discussion of the concept as it relates to Tan Malaka and the Minangkabau culture, see Rudolf Mrázek, “Tan Malaka: A Political Personality’s Structure of Experience.”

      5. Shelly Errington, “Some Comments on Style in the Meanings of the Past,” in Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, ed. Reid and Marr, pp. 31, 36. It might be noted here that there is another explanation for the repetition in the text of From Jail to Jail. As mentioned above (Preface, pp. xi-xii), it seems likely that Tan Malaka wrote the text in sections and, under prison conditions, probably did not have the chance to look back over his previous work, already sent out of the jail for safekeeping.

      6. Errington, “Some Comments,” in Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, ed. Reid and Marr, pp. 30, 39.

      7. A. H. Hill, trans., The Hikayat Abdullah [by] Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munshi, preface, p. vii.

      8. For Tan Malaka this was a highly unusual use of the metaphor of illumination, commonly used in other representations of the process of political awakening in early twentieth-century Indonesian accounts. See Anderson, “A Time,” p. 219.

      9. Ruth McVey has referred to the early PKI writers’ aim of opening the boundaries of thought, for which “the relationship of new ideas to old modes of perception was necessary” (“Perception and Action in an Indonesian Communist Image of the Past,” in Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, ed. Reid and Marr, p. 346).”

      10. Benedict Anderson, “The Languages of Indonesian Politics,” p. 103.

      11. Matu Mona, Spionnage-dienst (Patjar Merah Indonesia) (Medan: Centrale Courant en Boekhandel, [1938]), pp. 112-18. Presumably it is this novel that Tan Malaka found on arrival in Medan in 1942 (Volume II, p. 116).

      12. Reid, Indonesian National Revolution 1945-1950, p. 176.

      13. Pemuda literally means “youth.” Since the “Youth Oath” of 1928 the meaning of the term was extended to mean activists and radicals, the “young in spirit” of whatever chronological age.

      14. Details of such charges and countercharges are given in my note no. 21 to chapter 7 (Volume III, p. 227).

      15. Sukarno, Autobiography, p. 238.

      16. Quoted in Reid, “The Nationalist Quest for an Indonesian Past,” in Perceptions of the Past, ed. Reid and Marr, p. 281.

      17. As Tan Malaka himself reports (Volume II, pp. 180-81) these themes also formed the repertoire for official theater companies during the war.

      18. Mohammad Ali, “Historiographical Problems,” in An Introduction to Indonesian Historiography, ed. Soedjatmoko and Mohammad Ali, G. J. Resink, and G. McT. Kahin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1956), pp. 21-22. It should be noted that the Pandangan hidup referred to is a republication of Volume III, chapter 1 of From Jail to Jail.

      19. For a summary of the differing views on this subject, see Ali, “Historiographical Problems,” pp. 1-23; and his Pengantar ilmu sedjarah Indonesia. Ali presented an unusually favorable image of Tan Malaka, whom he described as “a consistent (konsekwen) communist” and whose views on Indonesian history he quotes extensively in this textbook for tertiary study of Indonesian history. See also Reid, “The Nationalist Quest for an Indonesian Past,” in Perceptions of the Past, ed. Reid and Marr, pp. 281-98; and Himpunan lengkap kertas-kerja.

      20. Dirlik, Revolution and History.

      21. Dirlik, Revolution, p. 29. One may note also the parallels in form of presentation. Dirlik remarks, “Their formulaic phraseology . . . imposed a mechanical and even diagrammatic quality on those ideas.”

      22. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945, p. 316.

      23. McVey, The Rise of Indonesian Communism.

      24. Georges Gusdorf, “Conditions and Limitations of Autobiography,” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, ed. James Olney, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 28-29.

      25. Roff, Autobiography and Biography in Malay Historical Studies, p. 1.

      26. Anthony H. Johns, “From Caricature and Vignette to Ambivalence and Angst: Changing Perspectives of Character in the Malay World,” in Self and Biography: Essays on the Individual and Society in Asia, ed. Wang Gungwu (Sydney: Sydney University Press for the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1975), pp. 40-41.

      27. Wang Gungwu, Self and Biography, introduction, p. 4.

      28. Hill, Hikayat Abdullah, introduction, pp. 26-27.

      29. Over this forty-year period, the following titles are the only autobiographies by prominent Indonesian political actors that come to mind: Hamka, Kenang-kenangan hidup; Sukarno, Sukarno: An Autobiography as Told to Cindy Adams; Djojohadikusumo, Herrineringen uit drie tijdperken; Abu Hanifah, Tales of a Revolution; Ganis Harsono, Reflections of an Indonesian Diplomat in the Sukarno Era; Ahmad Subardjo Djojoadisuryo, Kesadaran nasional; Adam Malik, Mengabdi Republik; Mohammad Hatta, Memoir; and Sastroamijojo, Milestones on My Journey.

      30. Tan Malaka as anti-Dutch was a constant theme of official and nonofficial Dutch publications alike during the revolution, perhaps best exemplified by William F. de Bruyn, The Rising Soviet Star over Indonesia (The Hague: National Committee for “Unity of the Kingdom,” 1947), pp. 8-9. A more recent expression appears in Mrázek, “Tan Malaka,” p. 26.

      31.