The desire for education built up like a great wave ready to break. Where did the momentum come from? The Ethical Policy. Then the Jepara girl’s book was published—De Zonnige Toekomst, The Bright Tomorrow. The editor was van Aberon, a supporter of the Ethical Policy. The Ethical style came into fashion. A number of the educated, upper-class Native women eagerly sought out the book and became its great devotees. This phenomenon became even more pronounced when parts of it were translated and published overseas, in England and France. The Ethical crowd claimed that here was an example of the best the Ethical Policy could produce. Their opponents accused van Aberon of simply being interested in getting into the palace, in becoming the next governor-general.
This debate was the main subject of conversation at all gatherings, formal and informal, among the Europeans. So what do you expect from these writings anyway? asked some. All you do is laud her writings to the sky, because you yourselves can’t write as beautifully. Others held the view that perhaps it wasn’t the girl herself that wrote them. Perhaps it was van Aberon! There was no committee to check this. How many of her correspondents did van Aberon approach to get copies of her letters? Five or seven? Is it true that she only ever wrote to five or seven people in her whole life?
That the van Aberons’ collection comprised letters to so few of her friends did give the critics some basis for their skepticism.
But they were also jealous of van Aberon. The letters to the van Aberons, husband and wife, were full of praise for them and exhibited the girl’s dependence on them. And on Europe. And on Holland. With the publication of De Zonnige Toekomst, said the opponents, all the van Aberons were interested in was having themselves praised, in showing how they were loved by the educated Natives.
I read the book, all of it. I think that van Aberon did indeed act unilaterally in publishing it. There were other letters. In my wardrobe there were eight letters from the girl to Mei. And they weren’t all so self-deprecatory as the ones he had published. She was a bit like that when writing about herself. But when she was writing about other things, she wasn’t despondent at all, indeed she was often very fired up. I think there must have been at least two letters to Nyi Raden Dewi Sartika. When Princess and I had interviewed her, she mentioned that she had received correspondence from Jepara, but that she had never replied. And from what I had heard, the person the girl wrote to most was her brother, who was in fact her teacher. And van Aberon had not published even one of those letters. Wardi was also able to tell me that his friends in the Netherlands, including those in the Indies Students Association, had written to him to say that many of her letters that had been read out at their meetings were not in that book.
I think I could understand a little of the feelings of those who did not approve of what van Aberon had done. There was not one letter that he had published that had a firm or strong tone to it. She was a restless soul, but she did have firm and strong ideas on many things. There was very little biographical information in the book either, something that would have been very interesting as well. There were too many tears and too much despondency and too many sighs in the collection that he published; it didn’t truly represent her. And perhaps all those tears and those sighs were indeed of van Aberon’s making?
But neither among those for or those against was there any desire to see a proper commission established to investigate all this.
A movement under the banner of the girl from Jepara sprang up among the European and Indo supporters of the Ethical Policy. It was centered in Semarang. They planned to carry out what the girl had always dreamed of—to offer education to young Javanese women. Jepara Committees were formed in nearly all the big towns. Within two months they had collected enough money to establish a new school. And they chose for its location—Rembang.
A commission was formed and sent to Rembang to find a good site. The inspector of schools for Central Java, Raden Kamil, the highest Native education official, opened it. There was also a monument to the Ethical movement, but there was no inscription. No “Long live the Jepara girl! Long live the governor-general!” That was the real message of all this—look how fine things are today in the Indies! The dark ages of Multatuli are past. Come on, plantation capital, much empty land awaits you! Send your unemployed here too. Look, everyone, even the educated Natives have found their proper place in the embrace of the government. All is well. Please come out, you’re very welcome! And hip, hip, hurrah for Idenburg!
Meanwhile, without people realizing it, the Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan had been quietly working away setting up many new schools throughout Java. During the past eleven years, the organization had produced many young people whose education was oriented not to the Indies but to China and to the international scene in general. There were even a few THHK graduates who had made their own contributions to the movement in China.
The Jamiatul Khair hadn’t progressed at all. Its key leader had twice come to me to complain that contributions from the Arab community were drying up. Soon, he said, his only source of funds would be the SDI. He was very ashamed of this situation.
By 1911 the Chinese had won a more or less total victory over the Arabs and the Natives, both in commerce and in general advancement. The Indos, who preferred to be soldiers or other eaters of salaries, had been left behind half a century ago.
There began to be talk within the governing circles as to how the balance between the races might become upset with the emergence of the newfound strength of the Chinese. Within the SDI we monitored things closely to make sure that the organization wasn’t used unfairly against any of the other groups competing to advance. In several places there were already some unhealthy developments. Some of the self-defense groups that had been sponsored by the SDI were being incited to go into action against the Chinese. The Knijpers weren’t around at all. Those doing the inciting were businessmen members of the SDI. They thought the destruction of the Chinese businesses would mean that more profits would fall into their laps.
Trouble was being incited in more and more places. From Priangan it spread to Central and then East Java. My call for the Natives to live in harmony together with the other governed peoples fell on deaf ears. I was unable to conquer the dangerous economic illusions people had. SDI branches all over the place began to set up youth groups, with all sorts of names, who studied the martial arts for attack as well as defense.
The atmosphere of enmity that was spreading everywhere soon brought into the open the secret associations of the Chinese that had been lying dormant all this time. Everywhere, but especially along the coast, they rose up. The strongest was the one that called itself the Kong Sing.
The competition between the races left the Indos far behind. The umpire behind the scenes remained the same—the Netherlands Indies authorities, through Idenburg, the mighty governor-general. The Arabs seemed to withdraw from public life, and thereby ended up indirectly drawing closer to SDI. I was kept busy writing letters to the branches warning them not to let the SDI be used to hit out against people’s personal enemies, either groups or individuals.
A new development took place. A truly major event, huge, earth-shattering, its impact spreading everywhere, something that had a great influence on developments in the Indies.
On October 10, 1911, rebellion broke out in China, in the town of Wu Chang, Hu Pei province, led by the Young Generation. Dr. Sun Wen, alias Sun Yat-sen, who had been involved, it was said, in the Filipino revolt against the Spanish, was overseas when the revolt in Wu Chang started. He was in Tokyo but was soon expelled at the request of the Chinese emperor. After going to the United States, where he taught at the University of Denver in Colorado, and then to England, he returned to China to lead the Wu Chang Revolution. The Revolution spread throughout almost all of China. The Manchu (Ching) dynasty was overthrown and a republic was established.
In Betawi a new paper was started, the Sin Po. Its task was to help unite and give leadership to the Chinese nationalists in the Indies. Within three month
s it had almost caught up to Medan. Medan’s own circulation dropped about 5 percent. The Chinese leaped ahead further and further. Their overtaking of the Natives in commerce was becoming a part of the reality of social life. There was no way of stopping them. This reflected their superiority in organization, commercial knowledge, loyalty, skill, and their unconditional confidence in their organizations.
One of the features of these new developments was the clear role the newspaper played in leading the community that was its readership. The organization itself wasn’t really visible to the public. Rather it was the paper that they saw, and if that ever disappeared from the face of the earth, then so would the leadership capacity of the organization.
Medan must live and stay alive. There was no other paper capable of leading the Natives.
The editorial staff suggested that we use a smaller typeface so that we could put more in the paper. I continued to reject the idea. The Chinese readership of Sin Po could afford to buy glasses; the Native readership could not. We had to find some other way. There was nothing we could do to improve the paper technically because we were using the best technology available. There were plenty of signs that Sin Po—which published articles in both Chinese and Malay—would continue to press us. Our Chinese subscribers one by one withdrew their subscriptions. Sometimes a whole town would go. Medan was in trouble.
Frischboten didn’t feel he had the right to interfere in editorial affairs, but he was able to point out how Sin Po had taken over some of Medan’s techniques. We used a legal adviser from Europe. They employed a pensioned European police commissioner, who really knew how the law operated and how the Indies laws worked too. A similar thing happened in relation to distribution and reporting. And there was one thing that we could not fight. They were able to get news reports from outside. They could afford to pay for them. If Sin Po could keep going for another five years, perhaps all of the Indies Chinese would be nationalists, except the older generation who were incapable of change.
All this time, the colonial press never tired of publishing their reports of the activities of the Jepara Committees or of praising the glories of the Ethical Policy. Medan and Sin Po did not join in. It was my own view by then that this whole campaign was indeed an attempt by the supporters of the Ethical Policy to have van Aberon made governor-general in 1914, or at least to build support for the Liberal party. Those opposed to the campaign argued that the governor-generalship was not a social position but a political one. The Ethical Policy supporters had the illusion that with a governor-general who genuinely believed in the Ethical Policy, the welfare of the people would be improved.
Princess and I, accompanied by some of Sandiman’s men, went to Blora to visit family.
The Bupati of Blora, my grandfather, was so proud that I had a princess for a wife.
Princess and I met with the two old people, husband and wife, in their back parlor. The conversation was opened without any unnecessary formalities.
“Gus, tuan assistant resident sent us a message a little while ago, just a few hours after you arrived. Perhaps you can guess what it was, so don’t be surprised—the Sarekat is banned from any activity in this district.”
“I’m not surprised, and I understand completely, Nenenda.”
“Very good. If you wanted to start something you would have to stay in a losmen, and their are no good losmens here. If you stay with any other official, he will receive the same warning.”
“I understand, Nenenda.”
“In other words, while you stay here you must not contact the local Sarekat branch.”
The old woman, Raden Ayu, listened silently, hardly blinking an eyelid. Princess was straining to hear what was going on.
There was no one else allowed to attend this discussion.
“Even so, I myself want to know as much as possible about the Sarekat.”
“But that would be Sarekat propaganda.” I turned him down. “It’s better that I don’t speak about it.”
“No. It would be just a grandson talking to his grandfather.”
“But it would be a Sarekat activity, because I would, of course, be highly recommending and praising it.”
“Yes, yes, it would be Sarekat activity,” the bupati repeated. “In that case, tell me about something else, whereby the Sarekat is mentioned in passing, is not praised, and also is not the main topic of discussion.”
He burst out laughing, really enjoying his suggested ploy. I was carried away with laughter as well. And that was the first time I had laughed before a bupati. It was a complete surprise to me to see him giggling uncontrollably. Then the old woman joined in as well. It was only Princess who sat there openmouthed, not knowing what was going on. So, as I had done before for Mei, I now did for Princess—I became an interpreter.
Now Raden Ayu couldn’t restrain her giggling as she watched me interpret, unable to restrain her amusement at my having a wife who understood no Javanese. Not knowing Javanese was the same as being totally uncivilized.
Seeing everyone else laugh, Princess joined in, though feeling that she was the only one not knowing what was going on.
The old bupati suddenly stopped laughing when he saw a granddaughter-in-law dare to laugh in front of him, without covering her mouth, without bowing her head, and without lowering her voice. A stern frown was soon on his forehead as he looked at Princess.
It was like some comic farce that was not funny enough to make anyone laugh.
Princess stopped laughing while I explained everything to her. After hearing my translation and knowing how things stood, she burst into even more raucous laughter, not caring who else was there. So did I. Finally so did the bupati.
The laughter died down when some refreshments were brought in. The bupati took the opportunity to take charge of the proceedings: “You may begin,” he said.
So I told him about all that had happened since the founding of the Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan, about the competition between peoples of the Indies, and how all but the Europeans had been left behind by the Chinese.
“And what will the Sarekat do about all this?”
“Oh, a thousand pardons, but in this district, your humble servant here will not speak about such things,” I said firmly to show respect to his position and to the instructions he had been put under.
He then asked what were the reasons for all the fuss over the Jepara Committees, even here in Blora. And I explained to him about the campaign to try to put van Aberon in the governor-generalship.
“But who is this girl from Jepara? Wasn’t she the late wife of the bupati in the neighboring district, Rembang?”
“You are not mistaken, Nenenda.”
“Why isn’t it her own husband that is setting up the school for his late wife, who indeed died in his arms?”
“Most Natives, even her own husband, do not understand what it was that she dreamed after, Nenenda. It is mostly the Europeans and other foreigners who understand. The Natives are still groping about.”
“And how is it that a woman can be more respected by the Europeans than a man?”
And now he listened to my words, concentrating like an obedient child before his teacher, forgetting his curiosity concerning the Sarekat. As a bupati he had about fifty thousand people under him. The Sarekat now had about seventy thousand people, including the families, under it. And among the fifty thousand residents of Blora, not all of them would listen or obey him. The Samin people obviously would ignore everything that came from the government.
I explained to him about the dreams of the girl from Jepara. The old woman also listened attentively. And my story ended with her instructions to her sisters that they educate their sons to respect womankind, and not be like most of the wealthy and powerful men of Java, who considered their wives to be no more than an ornamentation. While he needed such ornamentation his wife would be looked after and loved. If he no longer needed her, he could kick her out, not caring where she would end up.
“She must have been a godd
ess, Child,” said the bupati, intervening, “and she sent these thoughts all the way to Holland?”
“Not just to Holland, Nenenda, but after she died her writings were translated into French and English as well.”
“And where is England and France, Child?”
“England is to the west of Holland, and it has the biggest empire in the world, controlling one eighth of the world. France is to the southwest of Holland, and is itself much bigger than Holland.”
“Yes, I have heard about that school to honor the late wife of the Bupati of Rembang. Why didn’t he do something like that himself earlier?”
“If other people had not moved to honor her, perhaps the bupati himself would have forgotten that he had even taken her as a wife. That is why today he is the object of many insults. From the Europeans, and from the educated Natives also.”
“A bupati insulted! Such things never happened except in a time of war,” the bupati commented.
“How would you feel if you were the object of such insults?” I asked.
“What is the point of a being a bupati if you just become the object of insults? It would be better to resign and go into meditation in the mountains.”
“Nenenda.”
“What?”
“Why don’t you, as way of showing honor to women, also establish a school for girls? Without any help from the Europeans, but by yourself? That would be something, Nenenda.”
“You’ve got all sorts of strange ideas,” he answered.
“Not all sorts, just one, and not so strange. If Nenenda carries out this idea, you will surely be more honored and respected than the Bupati of Rembang.”
“I have never treated your grandmother in the way the Bupati of Rembang treated his late wife.”
“Then, if not to honor womankind, Nenenda, do it at my request.”