From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
in Anderson’s work is both more rounded and sympathetic. A brief biographical background is given (pp. 270-77), which discusses the isolation and illness which plagued or even dominated Tan Malaka’s life in the prewar period, and the difficulties he faced in returning to Indonesian politics after the proclamation as “both stranger and legend.” Anderson’s detailed account of the Testament Affair, “which was subsequently used with great skill by his enemies to blacken Tan Malaka’s reputation” (p. 283), the rise and decapitation of the Persatuan Perjuangan, and the 3 July Affair do much to counterbalance the “standard governmental” view outlined above.
In conclusion, Anderson identifies the removal of Tan Malaka from the political stage and the accompanying character assassination performed during 1946 as a turning point for the revolution, as the perjuangan option was put firmly off the agenda:
the silencing of Tan Malaka put an end to whatever prospects there might have been of Indonesia’s choosing the path of perjuangan rather than diplomasi. . . . the logic of diplomasi inescapably demanded the shoring up of traditional power groups and an adherence to conservative domestic policies, for the overriding necessity was to satisfy the expectations of first the Dutch and British, later the Americans. The ultimate result was to be that Indonesia attained her recognition as a sovereign state by the outside world, but not her 100 percent merdeka. . . .68
To date, only a handful of works concentrating exclusively on Tan Malaka have appeared. Principal among these are Muhammad Yamin’s Tan Malaka, Bapak Republik Indonesia; Rudolf Mrázek’s “Tan Malaka: A Political Personality’s Structure of Experience”; Suharsono Isnomo’s “Perdjoangan Politik Tan Malaka: suatu tindjauan cita2 Tan Malaka dalam usaha pembentukan satu partai persatuan”; Harry A. Poeze’s Tan Malaka, strijder voor Indonesië’s vrijheid: levensloop van 1897 tot 1945; and Alfian’s “Tan Malaka: pejuang revolusioner yang kesepian.”
Yamin’s work, originally published as a series of articles in the Yogyakarta newspaper Kedaulatan Rakyat in December 1945 and expanded into a book in early 1946, announced to the Indonesian public that Tan Malaka had returned to Indonesia. Until then, only those at the center of Jakarta politics, and the pemuda who met Tan Malaka on his journey to Surabaya, knew that the legendary revolutionary had returned to Indonesia. The title signifies the author’s attitude towards Tan Malaka as the father of the Republic of Indonesia. Yamin’s intention was to reestablish Tan Malaka’s credentials as a national figure, to bring to public attention the return of a political leader of an earlier era; and, by doing so, to bring into focus the possibility of a different political line being followed. Published in the month following Hatta’s “Political Manifesto,” these articles set the stage for the challenge that was to follow with the establishment of the Persatuan Perjuangan.
Yamin compares Tan Malaka to Lenin, Sun Yat-sen, and Quezon, all of whom he is alleged to “have known well,” and his contributions to defining the concept of the “Republic of Indonesia” are likened to those of Washington, Jefferson, and Mabini, all of whom are said to be regarded in their own countries as great heroes. His sufferings abroad are pointed out, as well as those experienced during the Japanese occupation, in contrast to “the leaders who possibly went astray,” a clear reference to Sukarno and Hatta’s collaboration with the Japanese. He is described as having “an outlook based on philosophy and dialectical materialism,” being “a sharp tactician, who is brave and cunning in seizing power for the oppressed.” In the light of Tan Malaka’s present place in history as interpreted officially in Indonesia, it is ironic to read Yamin’s prediction, made forty years ago:
if readers can think fifty years ahead, before them lying a world history book describing the formation of the Republic of Indonesia, then his name will be written up front . . . while his biography will be written in many volumes. . . .69
In the expanded version, Yamin adds a foreword written in Purwokerto on 7 January 1946 and a conclusion based on Tan Malaka’s speech to the founding conference of the Persatuan Perjuangan made several days earlier. He gives more details of Tan Malaka’s life, and particularly of his writings, detailing what was published twenty years previously, what he had written in recent months, and what he planned to do in the coming period. Yamin also outlines the principal ideas of what he termed “the Tan Malaka doctrine”—“a political and social program with revolutionary tactics towards a proletarian republic of Indonesia.”70
The book version contains several alterations, perhaps made at Tan Malaka’s instigation: his alleged friendship with M. N. Roy is removed, and the likening of his travels to those of Lenin and Stalin is changed to a reference to Lenin and Trotsky. Yamin asserts that “the revolution has most certainly got a new leader, ready with learning, tactics and effort,” and he appeals, “the people must choose between betrayal and true leadership.” This book was republished in 1981 to mark the fourth windu (eight-year cycle) since Tan Malaka’s death.71
Rudolf Mrázek takes a fundamentally different approach in his discussion of the persistence in Tan Malaka’s thought patterns and images from his Minangkabau upbringing. Published in 1972, his essay makes a valuable contribution in highlighting the danger for Western scholars in overlooking the underpinnings of political personalities emerging from traditional societies:
An understanding of the structure of experience is perhaps especially important for Western studies of Asian political elites. Many Asian leaders apparently conceptualize the Western or “modern” impact into an already established structure of experience, built during earlier parts of their lives under the strong influence of their traditional environments. Here a potential danger for the Western scholar lurks. What these political personalities retain of their traditional culture is very often remote from the “modern” mind of the scholar—frequently too remote even to be noted seriously by him. To complicate the problem further, the language used as a rule by these Asian leaders for expressing their views, including their traditional components, is so “modern,” so “Western,” that it can not be passed over. Indeed this is often precisely what is seized upon and analyzed at length by the Westerner.
But this approach will lead merely to superficial conclusions, if the personality’s views are analyzed and compared with established political-science models in mind. Only an understanding of a political personality’s thought and behaviour as being determined by his structure of experience, can lead to genuinely critical evaluation. Only then does the political personality emerge, not as a “marginal man” or as a “hybrid,” but as an identity born from the clash between a human intellect and a human environment. (p. 48)
With such a perspective, it is scarcely surprising that Mrázek gives a fundamentally different image of Tan Malaka than Yamin or any of the other writers on Tan Malaka. It is difficult to do justice to Mrázek’s analysis of Tan Malaka’s views and his life experience in a brief commentary on his essay, as the eloquent and idiosyncratic argument deserves to be read in its entirety. In assessing Tan Malaka as a “political personality,” Mrázek asserts as follows:
Tan Malaka conceptualized his self, his private life, his innermost human problems as existing only through politics, never outside or independent of it. At the same time he did not depersonalize his life—he considered the concept of it to be one of the most important (perhaps the most important) value of his structure of experience. (p. 3)
Mrázek presents Tan Malaka’s life as a series of rantau (Minangkabau journeys from the heartland, or alam) and returns, in a thesis-antithesis pattern which serves to develop the “fruit of rantau—Tan Malaka’s view of the world.”
Both Tan Malaka’s view of his life and his view of Indonesian history were parts of one conceptual system. They were built out of common conceptual values, and their periodization was adjusted to a common rhythm. Tan Malaka’s two returns were conceptualized as concurrent with two of the most important milestones of Indonesian history’s movement toward the perfection of society—the revolutionary upheavals of the early twenties and the Revolution of the mid-forties. The biological limits of his life accentuated the climactic concept of time still further: the aging and ill revolutionary necessarily saw his second return as the last. Consequently, he had to conceive it as the ultimate