From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
he showed me one of the Dutch papers. It said something like: “Tan Malaka was accompanied by cooks and servants (koki-babu) and pupils of the Sekolah Rakyat, who fought with the police because of their disappointment at not being able to see him.”
We have heard enough of the calumny that Indonesians consist only of cooks and servants. This is what stimulated us to educate and change these people from being servants of foreigners to being servants of the Republic of Indonesia.
As to the report on the attitude of my pupils, I began to be concerned that the Sekolah Rakyat might not be able to resist provocation. I was afraid that the basis of their education might be shifted to propaganda and political agitation alone. According to my plan, instruction in skills that are useful for earning a living, such as technical, agricultural, and administrative skills, was not just an incidental objective. I hoped to awaken Indonesian youths of a new type, with a pure ideology and faith of steel, and to give them what they needed for their own and their families’ livelihood. The question of diplomas was not regarded as important, and later experience strengthened this belief of mine. Not a few times have I found that an official diploma is no guarantee of efficiency, but only an indication of potential.
[88] I once began a job as the person in charge of organizing tools for mining, construction, and vehicles of all kinds (drills, chisels, hammers, saws, and hundreds of auto parts), taking them in, registering them, sorting them, and carrying them myself like a forced laborer, romusha, in the warehouse.31 Then I was promoted to manager of the Usaha Prajurit Pekerja office, taking in hundreds of romusha every day and dividing them among the branches of the Bayah-Kozan coal mine, arranging the return of hundreds of romusha to their homes, organizing food, kerosene, and other daily needs for the thousands of romusha in the city of Bayah and the kampung dwellers in the vicinity, taking care of the sick or the dead, and attending to various other problems. I was in sole charge of the office and surrounded by Japanese. Finally, I became head of statistics in the main office. What diploma did I have? As Iljas Hussein, I was only a graduate of the first class in the MULO school in Medan.32 Another example, from abroad, of the value of potential is the fact that I began as a teacher with a salary of f. 8 per month and after two years was a teacher of high-school pupils: all under a different name and with no diploma.33
I was of the opinion that to work at propaganda alone in an illegal situation would quickly give rise to suspicion. The PID or the Kenpeitai would ask, how does that person live? But a diligent worker would not so easily become suspect. And if the worker were eificient [sic], then the director or employer would be bound by appreciation. Shielded in this way from inquisitive eyes, the worker also would easily win the trust, faith, and support of his or her fellow workers and be able to come close to them physically and spiritually. While working, he or she would be able to speak in a heart-to-heart fashion, to propagandize, and to plan things. As the proverb goes, they would be drinking while diving under water.34
Finally, and of no less importance, is it not only through our own labor that we can obtain good food and clothing? In short, although the education at the Sekolah Rakyat was not directed towards diplomas, I did not forget the importance of instruction in real mental ability and the skills required to earn a living. But the seeds of hatred evident in the school children at my departure from Semarang would apparently influence the education and instruction given in the Sekolah Rakyat in the future, making it lean in the direction of propaganda.
On board the ship in Jakarta harbor, as I was leaving for the Netherlands, I parted from my teacher Horensma, who had come hurriedly from Bandung. When I began to speak of my debts, he cut me off immediately. From Semarang I had sent the balance of my debt to the Engkufonds in Suliki, with a little bit extra. I still owed some money to Horensma, but this could be met, with interest, from my savings in the Java Bank and the Twentsche Bank in the Netherlands.35
[89] When we were finally about to part, I warned Horensma, who was now an inspector, that there were a couple of Dutch people observing our conversation and that these were the PID agents watching me while on board ship. But Horensma answered this warning only by saying, “Let them do what they like to me. I’m fed up with the whole thing.”
All readers will understand that no honest teacher will want to seem inferior to a pupil, even on the question of opposition to tyranny and even if what the pupil sees as tyrannical is the teacher’s own nation. In ancient China, India, and Indonesia the teacher had a place next to the parents in a pupil’s heart. In general the parents were seen as the source of things physical and to a certain extent of things spiritual. But it was the teacher, in the philosophy of the ancient East, who was the main source of things spiritual-knowledge, emotions, and, frequently, desires. Is this kind of Asian old-fashionedness a bad thing? Who is to say? But it was Gerardus Hendrikus Horensma who gave me a part of what I learned on the school bench as a child and as a youth and who later opened my eyes and gave me the opportunity to quench my thirst for knowledge in Europe. He was a white person and believed in the capitalist-imperialist system that I have fought against for over a quarter of a century and against which I am still fighting as I write this in a republican jail in Magelang in May 1947.
A pupil who truly wants to learn, who wants to know, will pay no attention to the skin color or facial structure of the teacher who provides what is desired, namely knowledge. And a real teacher will disregard the skin color of a sincere and capable pupil, placing the pupil on a level with the teacher’s own child. A real teacher wants to impart knowledge, and a real pupil has a thirst to receive such knowledge.
Education is one field that can really dispel prejudice based on skin color, language, or customs and can give rise to a genuine feeling of equality (duduk sama rendah, berdiri sama tinggi).36 I believe that international exchange between teachers and students and the establishment of schools for students of all nationalities are among the best ways to implant a lasting spirit of democratic internationalism.
[90] And now a little about my family. As the ship drew near to Padang, I became uneasy lest my parents come to bid me farewell. I had, though, sent my younger brother home from Semarang to the village before I left. I asked him not to let my mother and father come to Padang harbor.37 It is true that they were both deeply religious people with a strong faith with which to face adversity. But could my mother, in particular, stand to see the ship taking her child away into an unknown place of exile for an unknown length of time?
Minangkabau mothers usually feel struck by misfortune if they have no daughter. In Minangkabau culture, tradition passes on the house, wet-rice fields, dry fields, stock, and other forms of wealth to the daughter. A Minangkabau house is sad indeed if it has no girl to become future queen of the family estate.
My mother’s sadness, buried deep in her innermost heart, was that she had no daughter. We two boys did not meet the requirements of the “matriarchy,” centered as it was on women. My mother always felt sadder than the other Minangkabau women because she had no daughter to be a close female friend beside her when her sons went away, perhaps forever, a normal event for Minangkabau men, who are known as orang perantauan [wanderers].
In 1925 in Canton, prompted by an inner drive, I asked a messenger from my party how my parents were. Naturally I was not able to have direct contact with them. I was told that my father had recently died. And in Hong Kong, after my arrest, I found out by chance that my mother had died in February 1933.
[91] It was some consolation that after I had arrived in Deli from Europe in 1919, I had gone immediately to my kampung to see my parents.38 It was heartening to have heard that they both understood, accepted, and agreed with my activities and that they were even proud of being able to join in making sacrifices for the Indonesian state and people. For parents who were in no sense modern this was indeed progress. But the final obligation of Indonesian children to their parents, to visit their graves and to honor their spirits by carrying out their desires throughout a lifetime, I have been unable to carry out up to now (May 1947). I must confess that this long-postponed obligation frequently feels like a thorn in my flesh, particularly since I know and regret that my activities from the time I was small until they died caused them many difficulties.
But let us return to the harbor of Teluk Bayur, Padang. Fortunately