From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
published in English as Out of Exile (1949).
Even today, nearly forty years after Tan Malaka wrote From Jail to Jail, autobiography remains a relatively rare genre in Indonesia. Short articles and even slim volumes on an individual’s role in particular historical events are more frequently encountered (for instance, in the proliferation of works on the proclamation of independence), but to step back and view one’s life as a whole, imparting some political pattern and moment to disparate events, is still a relatively rare phenomenon.29 A further indication of the foreignness of autobiography to the Indonesian literary tradition is the high proportion of these works written in a foreign tongue, either English or Dutch, even as late as the 1970s.
In other parts of Asia autobiography is more frequently encountered. Wang Gungwu comments on the East Asian “tradition of eulogistic, didactic, and historical biography” (as distinct from modern biography in the European style) and on the relatively prevalent British-style memoirs in South Asia, particularly those written by administrators and officials in the colonial state apparatus. Directly “political” figures, however, have contributed rather less frequently to this genre. As to Asian communist leaders, I know of no other who has written a life story from a point in life even resembling Tan Malaka’s From Jail to Jail. To the contrary, others have left only fragments featuring themes of adolescence and political awakening (as with M. N. Roy, whose Memoirs stop in 1923), or prison (Roy, as well as Ho Chi Minh, whose remarkable series of poems was entitled Prison Diary).
One may ask why Tan Malaka should do something so uncharacteristic of his contemporaries. The particular circumstance that led to the writing of From Jail to Jail undoubtedly was the jailing of Tan Malaka and his removal from the action of the revolution. At the same time he continued to be involved with the course of the revolution as it faced crises that threatened the very survival of the state. Other activists were jailed together with him, however, and they evidently did not feel the need to write such a work.
Clearly, Tan Malaka was different: his life had several distinctive elements that made an autobiography possible. First was the European influence in his formative years. A strong legacy from that influence, one of the main features of his biculturalism discussed above (pp. xxxiv-xxxvi), was his voracious reading habit which developed into a desire to write. Steeped thus in a literary tradition, Tan Malaka stepped outside the norm of Indonesia’s oral culture. In addition, his life story was so rich in experience that others thought it could be “instructive for the present and future heroes of the struggle for independence.” Clearly that was indeed the case. This combination of political experience, literary tradition, and removal-from/continued-involvement-in the revolution was unique.
And yet, the autobiography he chose to write was more than a straight polemic designed to influence the course of the revolution. The need to situate his personal story in a wide, theoretical context forced him to take the peregrinations noted above in my discussion of the structure of the text. Part textbook, part reminiscence, part polemic, From Jail to Jail is a precious document, not only a commentary on the times, but also a rare glimpse into the mind of an Asian revolutionary—a part of the unfolding revolution itself.
The Author of the Text
Tan Malaka as a Personality
The picture of Tan Malaka that emerges from his autobiography is one of a very sensitive person, entranced by the details of the daily life of people around him. His landladies and fellow tenants in Holland, the Europeans he worked with in Deli, Chinese peasants, and even the Japanese occupying troops are all portrayed with empathy and emotional involvement. This concern for his fellow human beings gives the lie to the picture of Tan Malaka as being violently anti-Dutch, a view that had some currency during the revolution and which has been repeated in more recent times.30 Unquestionably he despised and polemicized unrestrainedly against the policies of the Dutch government, but he admired Dutch revolutionaries and expressed real compassion for members of the Dutch working class as he encountered them. Tan Malaka’s assessment of his benefactor, the Dutch capitalist Dr. Janssen, is a fine illustration of his ability to distinguish a person’s political role from personal traits and values:
Although possessing such noble ideals, he was sufficiently intelligent to sense the wide chasm between our political positions. It was not only on this occasion, nor only with white people either, that I was to experience the playing out of this tragedy of life: that you can go through good and bad with someone, eat and drink together, and yet be on opposite sides of the barricades. (Volume I, p. 59)
Breaking with a deep prejudice in Indonesia, Tan Malaka showed respect and sensitivity towards the Chinese and their culture.31 When imprisoned in Hong Kong in 1932, Tan Malaka was asked if he was of Chinese descent. His denial stressed that it was in no way based on racism. To be accepted by a race with the glorious culture and history of the Chinese would be an extraordinary honor for him. He wanted his Chinese readers to know this (Volume II, p. 39). The following autograph, which Tan Malaka (as Tan Ho Seng) gave on 7 April 1934 to an Indonesian Chinese student who lived in the same boarding house in Chip-Bi, near Amoy, illustrates this point on a personal level:
My dear Lie Tjwan Sioe
Among many other, perhaps two things are most difficult to do for a young man, at storm and stress period:
To concentrate on one and the same thing at one time and not be switched on to another rail.
To be self-conscious, without overestimating oneself and underestimating others or things to be done.
Sincerely yours
H. Seng32
Leaving aside the pedagogical sections of the book, From Jail to Jail contains a good deal of lightheartedness and humor. The apparent joy with which Tan Malaka takes up verbal sparring with the British police officers during his interrogation is but one example of his concern to bring out the humorous side of his experiences. Others include the blow-by-blow accounts of the various attempts to capture him, sometimes successful but on several occasions concluding in his dramatic escape. The “pen-and-ink” sketches of Sukarno, Hatta, Sjahrir, and Amir Sjarifuddin (Volume III, pp. 124-26), which form one of the highlights of the book, are extremely witty, laced with Tan Malaka’s sharp political criticism.
His autobiography reveals a man who drew heavily on information and attitudes gained through his exposure to Western thought; rationality, materialism, and dynamism are the values he propounds. Throughout the text, however, Tan Malaka’s interest in superstition appears and reappears:
I shall leave it to the experts in superstition to relate these visits [to Borobudur] to my exile in March 1922 and my arrest in Madiun in March 1946. It is true that such strange occurrences are common in Indonesia. But for those who rely on rational explanations, I shall present only the facts regarding the struggle in which I was involved on those two occasions. (Volume I, p. 70)
The chapter on his arrest in Hong Kong begins in the following manner:
At the beginning of October 1932 one Ong Soong Lee [Tan Malaka], who could use thirteen different names without contradicting the name on his passport, and who carried a new trunk which coincidentally cost $13, rented room No. 13 in the Station Hotel in Kowloon, the city across from the port of Hong Kong. It was precisely on the day of the Double Ten or 10 October, the anniversary of the Republic of China, that the three thirteens played their role, as can be interpreted by those who believe that thirteen is an unlucky number. Those who rely on materialism can view the misfortune that befell me that night as the workings of cause and effect in the real world. (Volume II, p. 33)
While he did not claim to hold these superstitions himself, the fact that Tan Malaka sees the coincidences in these sequences of events is in itself revealing. The degree to which he did adhere to superstitious or religious beliefs is never clearly answered. In From Jail to Jail he mentions only that he regards religion as “a private matter” (Volume III, p. 27). Conscious of the fact that his readers would be, almost without exception, believers of one religion or another (principally Islam), Tan Malaka devotes considerable space to the development of religion and its role in society.33 In the days of his chairmanship