From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
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the governmental view of Tan Malaka that has prevailed since independence, through all the varying political complexions of those in power. Apart from some discussion of the Sarekat Islam schools, references to Tan Malaka before 1945 are limited to a bare mention in the section on the PKI in the 1920s. He receives somewhat more attention in the revolutionary period. The Sjahrir government’s ex post facto rationalization of his arrest in March 1946 is repeated, as are assertions of his involvement in the 3 July 1946 Affair, and the government’s charge at the time that the establishment of the Persatuan Perjuangan and the Testament Affair were early manifestations of Tan Malaka’s devious efforts to seize power.
Pro-PKI writers, such as Alimin Prawirodirdjo, have also presented this version of Tan Malaka’s activities during the revolutionary period, adding their own assertions that Tan Malaka was the principal cause of the disastrous defeat suffered by the PKI during the 1926-1927 uprisings.53
Foreign scholars have, until recently, tended to echo this neglect and/or distortion of Tan Malaka’s role, relying for their information all too often on the “winners” in the struggle between perjuangan and diplomasi. The first and still the standard work on the Indonesian revolution, George McT. Kahin’s Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (1952), epitomizes this trend. Kahin himself recognized the bias in his 1970 preface:
the charge has been made, particularly by Indonesians, that I have shown a partiality for the viewpoints of certain Indonesian groups—especially Soetan Sjahrir’s Indonesian Socialist Party and Mohammad Natsir’s wing of the Masjumi—and a lack of objectivity in my treatment of their adversaries, particularly Tan Malaka and his followers. Undoubtedly some of my views were influenced both by the personal friendships I developed with leaders of the Indonesian Socialist and Masjumi parties and by my lack of access to some other leaders. During much of my stay in the revolutionary capital, Tan Malaka as well as noncommunist leaders of his political coalition were in jail and unavailable to me . . .54
Such an acknowledgement cannot, of course, undo the effect of Kahin’s original perception of events having stood as the principal source upon which a generation of students and scholars have relied for their basic interpretation of the revolution. Those who have not conducted research on Tan Malaka have continued to rely on Kahin as a standard source of information, and so perpetuate an extremely negative image of Tan Malaka as an obstacle to the struggle for independence rather than a legitimate political activist with a different view of how that independence best was to be achieved and maintained.
In order to show how this negative image dominates Kahin’s account of Tan Malaka’s role in the revolution, it is necessary to quote in some detail from his Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia regarding a number of issues:
Tan Malaka and Subardjo were ambitious to assume the top positions in the Republic and at first separately and later jointly worked skillfully to attain them. (p. 148)
[Tan Malaka] proposed to [Sjahrir] that the two of them join forces to overthrow Soekarno. Tan Malaka would become President, and Sjahrir would emerge as cabinet head. . . . Sjahrir bluntly refused to take any part in Tan Malaka’s plan. . . . (pp. 149-50)
[Tan Malaka] personally contacted Sjahrir and told him of the Political Testament of Soekarno and Hatta. The evidence is considerable that Tan Malaka then suggested that means be found for removing Soekarno and Hatta from their positions so that the Political Testament might “legally” take effect. Many people feel that Tan Malaka had in mind nothing less than assassination. In the new government envisaged by Tan Malaka, Sjahrir and he would be dominant. Sjahrir would be president and Tan Malaka asked only the key ministries of Interior and Labor, with one other ministry going to Subardjo. Sjahrir refused to have anything to do with Tan Malaka’s proposal. (p. 167)
Tan Malaka and his lieutenants undertook to build a mighty political organization which would compete with and ultimately supplant the existing government as the leader of the Indonesian revolution. In the form of a mass movement—the Persatuan Perdjuangan (the Fighting Front), supposedly oriented towards mobilization of the widest possible national support behind the government rather than opposed to it, they launched their bid for power. (pp. 172-73)
[Upon the failure of this bid] . . . they made plain the unacceptability of the new cabinet and its program and their intention to take matters into their own hands. The government met this challenge immediately; its troops in Madiun on March 17 arrested and jailed Tan Malaka and six other important leaders of the Persatuan Perdjuangan. (p. 177)
Though a number of the PP’s leaders and much of its backing were concerned largely with the overthrow of Sjahrir’s cabinet, the plans of those who seized the initiative and launched the coup [of 3 July 1946] went much further. The conspiratorial leaders-Tan Malaka [et al.]—sought the overthrow of the entire government, including Soekarno and Hatta. (p. 189)
So persistent is this image of Tan Malaka that as late as 1974 Sol Tas repeated without comment the government’s version of the 3 July Affair, neglecting to mention that Tan Malaka was never actually charged during his two-and-a-half-year detention.55 And M. A. Jaspan was able to write in 1966, “The Communists and their supporters were crushed at that time [Madiun] and several of their leaders, including Tan Malaka, were killed.”56 This quotation illustrates rampant imprecision: Tan Malaka, far from being a supporter, was in political opposition to the PKI in Madiun; further, he was killed in February 1949, not in the Madiun fighting five months earlier, in which he did not even take part!
Japanese agent. A further, and more extreme, variation on the negative image of Tan Malaka is the persistent allusion to his being a Japanese agent, or at least to having fascist sympathies and some unspecified “contacts” with Japanese officials before and during the war. In his Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, George Kahin makes a guarded statement:
Some Indonesians speculate as to the possibility of a tie-up between these Japanese officers and Tan Malaka. They point to Tan Malaka’s consistent attraction to the idea of anti-Western, pan-Asian solidarity, the fact that several years of his exile were spent in Japan, the further fact that two of his books dealing with communism were published there, and finally to the fact that somehow he managed to get back to Java early in 1944. . . . Most relatively objective Indonesians, even those bitterly opposed to Tan Malaka, are convinced that he would never have lent himself to a role where Indonesia’s national interests would have been subordinated to those of any other nation, including Japan or Russia. . . . (pp. 118-19)
It is important to make clear that the assumptions made here are simply without foundation, aside from that of “attraction to the idea of anti-Western, pan-Asian solidarity.” As far as we know Tan Malaka never visited Japan. Two of his books did, indeed, give Tokyo as their place of publication, but it seems clear that this was a device to mislead the Dutch secret police as to his whereabouts, and that they were actually published in Singapore and Amoy respectively, as was publicized in 1927.57 Tan Malaka actually returned to Indonesia not in early 1944, but in early 1942, when there was considerably less control over traffic from Malaya to Sumatra and Sumatra to Java.
Benedict Anderson refers to “circumstantial evidence” of Tan Malaka’s Japanese links at the end of the war.58 Citing a 1958 interview with former intelligence officer Nishijima, Anderson reports that he “was informed about Tan Malaka’s whereabouts through Subardjo, and that he himself had made a special trip to Bajah to seek him out.” However, in his autobiography, Nishijima refutes assertions that the Japanese had contacts with Tan Malaka before the proclamation of independence, and states that he met Tan Malaka for the first time in Subardjo’s house in late August 1945.59 Subardjo has stated clearly that he met Tan Malaka for the first time after twenty years in August 1945.60
While Kahin and Anderson make little of this possible connection, others have been less circumspect, notably Arnold Brackman, who asserts without providing any documentation as follows:
Tan Malaka saw in Tokyo a lever for ridding the Indies of Dutch rule. . . . Tan Malaka took the nationalist view that he served Indonesia by supporting Tokyo’s goal of Asia for the Asians. Although aware of the atrocities committed in China by the Japanese, Tan Malaka visited Tokyo and arrived