“And what is it that can unify us?”
“Religion. Islam.”
His answer astounded me. He didn’t include anything to do with education. I asked a few more questions but he wasn’t really interested. He didn’t want to be disappointed a second time. So I took my leave, carrying with me his ideas—religion and Islam.
Back in Buitenzorg I became absorbed in thinking about these ideas. The Prophet had united his people. The vast majority of the people of the Indies were Moslem. And yet a feature of the modern era was that the non-Christian peoples of the world had been defeated by Europe. Was it only because they had not yet modernized? What was the use of unity without modernization, ‘without education? You might share some superficial feature, but what else would there be? The kind of strength you can gather that way—assuming you can actually build a strong organization—would just turn into a heavy boulder, unable to be lifted, unable also to move forward, until one day someone comes along and destroys it with dynamite.
Being educated, having a progressive outlook, these also must be among the principles that guide the organization. Islam and being educated! Only modern learning and understanding can show the way!
Boedi Oetomo succeeded in its first year. It succeeded in isolating itself from the other colonized peoples of the Indies. It ignored the reality that the Indies comprised many peoples. If an organization was formed that was based on religion…but there are many religions among the colonized peoples of the Indies. There are those who have no religion, following the old beliefs of their ancestors. What was it that could really unify our peoples?
Once again, for the umpteenth time, I was groping in the dark.
A big event took place—in Surabaya. Who would ever have imagined that such a little incident could evolve into such a major affair, just because of a principle!
A Chinese merchant had gone to a big European firm to buy some goods. There was a misunderstanding. The Chinese merchant was humiliated and thrown out. People had forgotten that since the formation of the Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan in 1900 the Chinese had emerged as a powerful force. They had advanced dramatically in commerce, leaving behind the Natives, Arabs, and other Orientals in all fields. This new unity and solidarity had not only strengthened them but also isolated them more from the other colonized peoples.
Within just a few weeks something wondrous happened. All the Chinese merchants in Surabaya—followed later by those in other towns—refused to patronize the European merchant houses. The big European trading house where the initial incident had taken place went bankrupt. Soon afterward several others also had to close up. These bankruptcies were followed by chaos among the banks. The business world was thrown into turmoil and confusion. The impact was felt right down to the lanes and alleys of the villages.
“It’s a boycott,” said Frischboten. He explained the Irish actions against Captain Boycott proving that it’s not just the strong who have power, but also the weak, providing they organize. “And only through organizing can the weak show their true strength. The boycott is the concrete form of the power of the weak.”
His words burned through me. I was set aflame. Everything could be won merely by organizing the weak. So simple! I could do that, I thought, tomorrow, the next day, even now.
“There is only one thing that is necessary—unity of mind,” added Frischboten. And he did not come forward with any other conditions. He didn’t talk about religion, being educated, let alone having official positions. Just the united outlook, the unity of purpose of the weak. And the weak have much in common, precisely because of their weakness, that can unite them.
I wrote an editorial on the boycott and sent it straight off to the printers.
I had to study further this boycott movement of the Chinese. I needed to make connections.
I needed to gather enough material so that I could prepare a handbook about boycotts as a weapon.
And I began to think that the boycott, this new weapon of the weak, could be used not only against the big Dutch firms but also against the government itself. The Samin movement, a movement of peasants, had already tried this. The government was never able to get one cent out of them. This fanatical group of rebels had been able to defy completely the will of the government. If all the people of the Indies united, if there was a total boycott of the government, maybe the Dutch would then also have to close up shop, and move out!
Three days after the editorial was published, suitably modified, there was more news—the Mangkunegaran Legion had been transported out of Solo by train. Destination—Bali and Lombok. But they refused to board the ship in Surabaya that would take them to Bali. The Dutch failed in their attempt to pit Javanese against Balinese. And there was more boycott news—the Samins were rebelling again.
I received two letters about the mutiny on the same day and at the same time. One of them read:
We know, respected Tuan Editor, that in Bali there are more women than men. The men of Bali are spoiled. They are kept ready to go forth as heroes into the battlefield, perhaps never to return to their wives and children, or their lovers. Just like the fighting cocks of Java. And it is not uncommon either for the women to be ready and willing to die riddled by bullets. Because when the army’s cannons start roaring, respected Tuan Editor, even the spirits flee. Satan himself could not compare with the army for its brutality. Its cannon send shivers into everyone’s hearts, including Hanuman’s, the king of the monkeys in the Ramayama story.
I myself, Tuan Editor, have three daughters. If we go to fight our brothers in Bali, let alone to fight the women of Bali, then that would be the same as waging war against our own daughters because do not these girls have the same dreams about life whether they live in Bali or Java? The girls of Bali will fight us with the same resolve and bravery as the men, their husbands or lovers or fathers. And if I did fight them and was able to return home to my family, what could I tell them? Even to explain the beginnings of the story would be too difficult. So we refused to be put aboard the ship, let alone to be landed in Bali and Lombok as fighting cocks for the Dutch.
We are ready to receive our punishment. We will not go. We remain in Surabaya, or go home to Solo.
We respectfully request that this letter be published without name.
The second letter said:
Your Excellency Tuan Editor, allow us to express to you the inner feelings of our hearts, the units of the Mangkunegaran Legion. We have deliberately and consciously refused to be sent to war. We refuse to be made to fight against our brothers in Bali. If we do not do this now, Your Excellency, then there will be no end to the Javanese being sent all over the Indies to fight their brothers. Already too many of our people have died in Aceh, in Sumatra among the Minangkabau, in Sumatra among the Batak, in the land of the Bugis, then in Bali, and now they want to send us to Lombok…. If we talk about clearing the jungle, building the rice terraces, the fields, digging the mines, building roads, starting plantations, yes, Javanese hands have done all these throughout the Indies. There is not a single steel bridge outside Java which was not built by Javanese hands. But making war…
These letters were not really meant for me, but for all the governed people of the Indies.
The Chinese merchants’ boycott, the revolt of the Mangkunegaran Legion, the social revolt of the Samin peasants—none of these would have been possible without organization. Even the peasants must have an organization, an organization of their own kind. Peasants! The so-called lowest class in society! They had organized, and rebelled! And we who have received an education, we are still learning how to organize and have not, or at least have not yet for certain, mastered how to do it. I myself had tried and failed. So what was it that unified them?
It’s four years since the retired doctor made his call for us to organize. It’s a pity he didn’t talk about the question of the basis for unity, didn’t discuss the question of there being many peoples in the Indies. Boedi Oetomo chose to organize only one of the peoples, the
Javanese. It was only I who was left groping, feeling my way forward in the darkness.
A messenger from Boedi Oetomo came to our office in Bandung with an invitation for me to attend its second congress, to be held in Jogjakarta.
“You’re having two congresses in one year?” I asked.
“We have no other choice, sir. BO has been growing as if it had been whistled up out of the earth. And it hasn’t been one year yet. This will be our second congress in seven months!” he answered, glowing with pride. “The congress won’t be complete if you are not there. And anyway, sir, BO’s success is also partly due to all the much valued assistance you have given it.”
“You have come here as an emissary of the BO, but why are you speaking Dutch to me?”
“Just a matter of being practical, sir.”
“So Javanese is not a practical language, according to BO?”
“It seems you want to repeat your questions from last time.”
“And they still haven’t been answered either.”
“We’re not here to argue, are we?”
“Of course not. It’s just that this organization of yours is a Javanese organization. And Java is called Java because of its culture, not just because of the island it’s found on. Tell me, I would be very interested to know, which has the higher status—the editor of a newspaper or a doctor or a candidate doctor? If my status is higher, you must speak kromo to me. Isn’t that the rule in Javanese? I’m not looking for an argument with you. I’m just interested in knowing, because the Javanese are so sensitive on matters of social caste.”
“I promised last time that these matters that you have raised would be taken to a plenary of the Council of Leaders. Forgive us that we haven’t done that yet,” he went on, still in Dutch.
“Good. And at the congress, will Javanese be the official language?”
“We will discuss all these matters, sir.”
“Good. I accept your invitation.”
“Thank you very much, sir. All your transport, accommodation, and daily needs will be taken care of by the BO.”
“No need, sir. Add the money to your funds for building schools in Jogjakarta. There’s still no BO school there, is there?”
He went home to Betawi. A few days later I left for Jogjakarta. This was December 1908.
Seated in the train, which was by now fourteen years old, I could not help but be amazed at how the BO had been able to gather the money to hold two congresses within seven months. The nobles and merchants of Solo and Jogja, both known for their miserliness and their usurious activities, must have been convinced to make generous donations.
And I was even more amazed at Sandiman. It was he who had blazed the trail into the hearts of the Legion soldiers, and the princes and the merchants too. It was a pity, though, that between him and me there stood the Javanese devil—of social hierarchy—separating each Javanese from all Javanese, and all Javanese from each other, and everyone from each other. He should be my friend, not my subordinate.
At Kroja everyone alighted from the tired-out train to change to another. We continued on to Jogjakarta. At Kroja a new passenger boarded and sat next to me. He wore Javanese dress: a clean, white, buttoned-up top, his own destar, and a kain with big broad pleats. He wore black leather slippers and carried a black wooden cane with a carved ridge coiling round it.
As soon as the train started off he took out a copy of Medan from his bag. He browsed from page to page, unable to concentrate properly.
“Tuan is going to Jogja?” I asked in Malay.
He looked at my European clothes, giving a friendly nod. From the way he looked, and the fact that he was in first class, I could tell he was a VIP.
Suddenly his smile disappeared. His eyes blinked open wide, and he asked hesitatingly: “Excuse me. Perhaps I’m mistaken,” he spoke in Dutch. “You studied at the medical school?”
“That’s right, sir,” I answered in Dutch also.
“Ah, I was right. And you’ve forgotten me?”
“So it’s you?” I cried. “How could I ever forget you?” while I groped around trying to remember who he was. “So you’re the doctor in Kroja?” I asked, making a guess.
“For two years now.”
He’d been a doctor two years. How was it possible for a doctor to travel first class?
“On the way to the BO Congress?”
“You too?”
It turned out he had been two years ahead of me. He owned large areas of paddy fields at Karanganyar and would inspect them after the congress was over. When I asked for his address, I found out that his name was Mas Sadikoen, a member of the Kroja BO leadership, and a doctor at the government hospital. He spoke enthusiastically about his organization and explained that, providing no unexpected obstacles arose, they would be starting a Dutch language primary school in the next year.
“Our main problem is finding a qualified teacher,” he said. “If you can help us find one, we will pay him one and a half times the government salary.”
“Advertise.”
“Yes, I think we will have to do that. I’m glad we’ve met like this. I can thank you for everything you’ve done.”
“What have I done to deserve such thanks?”
“Your paper. It’s helped a lot of people in Kroja too. And I should also beg your forgiveness that I was unable to do anything to help your wife. I was assigned to the hospital to do my practical while your wife was ill. You didn’t have much time to wait upon her.” But then he looked at me carefully and said: “You were a medical student. How could you let your wife develop such extreme complications? You were studying medicine. You should have recognized all the symptoms.”
“Both of us were too busy.”
“Who isn’t busy?”
“Let’s not talk about the past?” I suggested.
A little piece of my sad past had returned to visit me. Seated beside me now was someone who—for I don’t know how many hours—had looked after Mei. And his words sounded like accusations. He had sat me in the accused’s chair as a husband who had not been good to his wife. And worse still, as an educated man who had not been correct, not paying enough attention to the person who was closest to him.
“Yes. It’s better not to talk about unpleasant things of the past. But there was something your wife said to me that I have never been able to forget: ‘Why are you humoring me, Tuan? I am not going to get well again. I have seen what I have wanted to see of the world. I have done what I have wanted to do.’ She spoke in quite good Malay. She had no regrets about her situation; she was ready to face her death. She spoke as if to herself, as if she was coming to terms with the course of her life.”
The longer he spoke the more I was drawn back to think about the past. And I didn’t like it. My relationship with Mei had ended when God had intervened in our lives. And death was not my responsibility.
“Did you know that your wife was color-blind?”
Color-blind? Good God, and I had never known that. So she had never seen the beauty of the world’s colors! How little this life had given her. The world had not given her health, nor a long life, and neither had she ever seen its colors. Yet she had given everything she had to the world. I bowed my head in remembrance of her soul, the soul of a wife I had never known well enough.
My traveling companion kept on talking. “Do you know what the people say to the rich and powerful in Kroja when they need to frighten them? We will tell His Excellency Honored Lord Editor of Medan. And so they are freed from the oppression they were suffering.”
“Yes, let’s be grateful the Indies now has a Native paper,” I answered. “At the very least we can say that things will not be worse because of it.”
“I was amazed, though, to read your article on the boycott. You gave people information that turned upside down everything that educated people, especially the priyayi, believed. Do you think it’s proper that this kind of information be given to the public? You’re teaching people to use it, even though y
ou don’t make clear against whom.”
“Boedi Oetomo esteems democracy, doesn’t it?”
“We have never discussed it.”
“But you agree with it, don’t you?” I pressed him. “Modern organizations are born out of democratic choice and consent, aren’t they?”
“Of course, and we know that democracy does not need boycotts.”
“Democracy means that everyone may know everything we know. Are you worried that other people may know what you know?”
“That’s not the issue. You are giving a weapon to people who don’t need it.”
“If they don’t need it, then they will store it away. If they need it, they will use it.”
“For what? To fight the government?” he chipped in. “Anyway, aren’t you the golden boy of the Governor-General van Heutsz?” He turned to look out the window.
Once again I heard the clitter-clatter of the train and felt its rattling. And my body was conscious once more of swaying from side to side on the seat. As soon as he pulled his head back inside, I asked: “Do you still remember Tanca?” He nodded without looking at me. “The science of medicine can also fall into the wrong hands, into the hands of people not worthy of it. He used it not to save life but to kill.”
He was startled out of his priyayi world. His eyes were open wide and he was gazing down at me as if I were his subordinate. He felt that a priyayi was much superior to a free worker, and such a comment implying that a priyayi could be unworthy seemed to offend him.
“Do you think it is appropriate to say such a thing to a government doctor?”
“Of course it is, Koen. Wasn’t Tanca after all first mentioned to us in the midst of medical students and witnessed by our teachers, themselves doctors? Do you consider our teachers to be of lesser status than a government Java Doctor who has not yet graduated? I’m just talking in general now. You’re angry?”
“You forget that I am an employee of the government. You, being such a special friend of the governor-general, should know better how to speak to an official of the government.”