From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
class” (Volume III, p. 88).
The fact of the proclamation, about which he had dreamed for twenty years, failed to give him the courage to come forward under his own name. For ten days he wandered around Jakarta, making desultory attempts to contact Sukarni and the others, who were by now also in hiding. Finally, he revealed his identity not to the pemuda in whom he placed political confidence, but to Foreign Minister Achmad Subardjo Djojoadisurjo, whom he had known in Holland over twenty years previously. Still his return was not to be made public and, until after he left Jakarta on 1 October 1945, he did not even know of the existence of the Komite van Aksi (Action Committee), many of whose members looked to Tan Malaka’s earlier works for their inspiration (Volume III, p. 98).
The poignancy of Tan Malaka’s mistrust and fear of being unmasked, and the political consequences of this preoccupation, was brought home to me sharply by Djajarukmantara, the commander of the local battalion of PETA (Defenders of the Homeland) whom he knew in Bayah. In the last year of the Japanese occupation, Djajarukmantara had frequent discussions with “Iljas Hussein” (Tan Malaka) on Indonesia’s present situation and political future, finding that they shared a great many political views. After the proclamation, Djajarukmantara returned to his home town of Rangkas Bitung, where he was appointed chairman of the local KNI (Komite Nasional Indonesia—Indonesian National Committee). One evening in September or October he heard a knock at the door, and on his doorstep was Iljas Hussein. His visitor did not dare come in or reveal that he was anyone other than Iljas Hussein. He said simply, “I know you. Continue your work. I shall send word.”
A week later a letter arrived signed “T. M. (Hussein),” summoning him to Jakarta. On arriving at the address given, Djajarukmantara was told that Tan Malaka had left town. No one knew when he would return, so Djajarukmantara was told to return home and await instructions. He was never contacted again by Tan Malaka or by any of his followers.47
Djajarukmantara went on to become the Rangkas regiment commander and led the attack on the Dewan Rakyat (People’s Council), which had spearheaded the social revolution in Banten. This movement was led by Tje’ Mamat, one of Tan Malaka’s followers, and it was welcomed by Tan Malaka as an example of what should be taking place throughout the country. In this case it is clear that undue caution lost Tan Malaka a potential supporter of considerable influence.
Nor was this hesitation evident only in the very early days of independence. Even after meeting members of the cabinet and some of the pemuda who supported his views (such as Adam Malik and Sukarni), Tan Malaka still made no public appearance, deciding instead to travel incognito through Java on a fact-finding tour. He himself reports that it was only the sharp political crisis of leadership expressed in the Battle of Surabaya in November 1945 that made him abandon his wish to remain “behind the scenes” (Volume III, pp. 109-10).
When he did come forward to establish the Persatuan Perjuangan, Tan Malaka refrained from taking an active leadership position as chairman or secretary-general, preferring to be known as the group’s “promoter.” Even in February 1946, when the Persatuan Perjuangan had gained massive popular support and was within reach of governmental power, Tan Malaka held back, trying to force the government to take up the Persatuan Perjuangan program, rather than stepping forward himself to take the leadership.
Tan Malaka’s reticence was apparent on an individual as well as a political level. Abdurrachman recalls that he was convinced that
the Dutch were behind everyone who opposed him, and he was particularly haunted by the specter of Sjahrir being used by the Dutch. He was fearful of meeting new people, and always suspicious of their motives.
He was pessimistic, fatalistic—drawing himself away, not able to join in any more. . . . He could no longer live normally in a regulated life. It was very tragic. He jumped to suspicion of anybody new. It was hard for his young followers. They couldn’t go here, they couldn’t go there. It was a fear complex. He regarded quite ordinary events as betrayal.48
The autobiography, while containing many details of personal lives, does so only when such details can be used to illustrate a political point, for instance the conflict in his boarding house in Holland or the romantic entanglements of the “modern” students in China in the 1920s, which contradicted traditional notions of behavior. Tan Malaka actually gives us very little information about his own personal life.
His reminiscences of childhood, even childhood games, refer only to punishment, incurred at the hands of his father or his teacher. His younger brother, Kamaruddin, is mentioned only in passing, in an admission that he (Tan Malaka) had brought misery and grief to his mother. He specifically asked his mother not to come on board the ship carrying him to exile in Europe when it called at Padang, since it would be too dangerous and distressing for her. Evidently he thought it safer for the family if he severed all relations, and according to his mother’s second husband she never received letters from him. However, she followed every story of his whereabouts and believed she had been led to a certain cinema to sit beside him on one occasion.49 She died in 1934 without ever seeing her son again, a fact which weighed heavily on Tan Malaka’s mind. He felt he should make up for his neglect of his family by at least visiting his parents’ graves when he returned to Sumatra in 1942, but even this duty was not to be fulfilled, since fear of apprehension by the Japanese kept him away (Volume II, p. 132).
He makes no mention at all of those he was close to politically after the war or of reunions with his PARI comrades on their return from exile. This may be explained by the particular nature of Volume III. In fact, nowhere in the autobiography does Tan Malaka discuss having a close emotional or sexual relationship. S. K. Trimurti is frequently quoted as saying of Tan Malaka that he was “pure” in this regard and never viewed women sexually.50
The autobiography as a whole presents little information on any lasting personal relationships, although he mentions a number of people with considerable affection. Even his Chinese friend Buna is mentioned only in passing, although he was clearly very close to Tan Malaka over a long period. Concerning this friendship Tan Malaka wrote, “I have touched on my friendship with Buna only slightly up to now. For the previous ten years [from 1927] I hardly had been separated from him. . . . He accompanied me everywhere to protect me, and we went through all kinds of difficulties and hardships together” (Volume II, p. 110). Paramita Abdurrachman comments as follows:
About love, he was very closed, though he did talk about a proposed marriage in Sumatra. In Europe, too. It was not a constant factor, but he was an ordinary man. He was consumed with his idee fixe, wanting only to live for the people. He didn’t see woman as a companion, but wanted to put her on a pedestal, with Rosa Luxemburg as the example. . . . He always wanted his followers to be 100 percent faithful, regarding other ties as not serious.51
In summary, then, Tan Malaka was above all an intensely political individual. From the day he left his teaching post in Deli, North Sumatra, until the day of his death, it was the Indonesian revolution that consumed his energies. He had taken up the vocation of the revolutionary, and from that time on all else was subordinated to that goal.52
The Politics of Tan Malaka
The foregoing sections of this introduction, particularly the personality sketch, have pointed to the difficulties of developing a political characterization of Tan Malaka. The very nature of his life and the resultant confusion and ignorance regarding his actions and beliefs during fairly long periods have combined with the personal and political biases of political commentators to provide a fantastic array of interpretations. Tan Malaka has been described variously as communist, nationalist, national communist, Trotskyist, Japanese agent, idealist, Muslim leader, and Minangkabau chauvinist. It is my view that as a first step, Tan Malaka should be placed within the framework of Marxism. He must then be located more precisely in the spectrum of those people who carried forward the ideas of Karl Marx into the twentieth century and into the continent of Asia. Before discussing these questions and drawing my own analysis, it is useful to review the principal images of Tan Malaka that have appeared in the literature.
Tan Malaka in the Literature. The six-volume official Indonesian national history, Sejarah Nasional Indonesia, edited by three of Indonesia’s leading historians—Sartono