From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
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maintained, that closed off a nonaligned option for Indonesian intellectuals. Any intellectual who chose to support independence would be forced to become revolutionary, since revolution is the only road that can win independence. Tan Malaka anticipated that the privileged, protected position of the few Indonesian intellectuals in the 1920s would be eroded as capitalism experienced economic crises. He saw intellectuals becoming an “educated proletariat,” thrown away like a “squeezed lemon” by the imperialists (Menudju ‘Republik Indonesia,’ p. 60).
Aslia. Sadly, his work explaining the concept in detail, written in 1946, was lost during the revolution, and we have only scattered comments from which to assess his understanding of it. Already in Massa actie (1926), he envisaged a federation of the Republic of Indonesia, encompassing peninsular Malaya, the Philippines, Madagascar, and Oceania, as well as the Indonesian archipelago:
Let us begin this very minute seriously and enthusiastically to work to establish as our final goal the construction of the “Federation of the Republic of Indonesia.” F.R.I. means the unity of 100,000,000 squeezed into the strategic and communications centre for the whole of Asia and Oceania. It also means the centralisation of all the natural products of the tropical countries, and at the same time the construction of a new culture, a new nation and a new power in the East. For this reason it will become the core of a new unquenchable spirit of 1,000,000,000 Asians, who thirst for independence, and whose losses cannot be repaired by white colonialism. (Massa actie, p. 68)
According to an article in the Philippines Free Press of 10 September, in 1927 Tan Malaka was advocating a pan-Malayan confederation with Davao in Mindanao as the capital. By the time he wrote Madilog (1942-1943), his concept had a new name, “Aslia,” which was described thus: “a part of Asia and Australia, would be a federation of all the countries on the bridge between Asia and Australia . . .” (Madilog, p. 11).
The introduction to the second edition of Manifesto PARI Djakarta mentions that some people doubted the authenticity of the first edition because the new term, “Aslia,” was not recognized from Tan Malaka’s earlier writings. The publishers reassured readers that it was indeed his term and would be explained fully in a forthcoming publication, “Gabungan Aslia.”
In Thesis (1946) Tan Malaka outlined the concept in more detail as follows:
Make a circle [from Singapore] with a radius of 1500 miles. Inside this circle lie Burma, Siam, Annam, the Philippines, the whole of the Republic of Indonesia, and Australia. This is what we call Aslia (Asia-Australia). According to Western experts, the peoples of Asia are all one race. A quick glance will tell us that this region is influenced by the same climate and weather (monsoon). So the economic character of the countries is similar, requiring economic cooperation. But what we wish to project mainly here is the importance of this region from the strategic standpoint. . . . It is clear that the British regard Aslia as a single unit in terms of strategy. And Japan was not left behind in this. . . . They called the whole of Aslia “the South.” And Srivijaya and Majapahit certainly understood the unity of Aslia in all things. The political, economic and strategic movements of these states were consciously directed towards unity of the Aslia area. The Chinese (Hokkien) also had a single name: Huana. The revolutionary people of Indonesia wish to have a practical plan, for the welfare and above all for the security of the Republic of Indonesia today and in the future. We must not be left behind by attitudes developed 500 years ago (Majapahit) or 1500 years ago (Srivijaya). It would endanger the political and economic situation of the Republic of Indonesia if we were not aware of the meaning of Raffles’ and Yamashita’s strategy. (Thesis, pp. 24-25)
In From Jail to Jail Tan Malaka discusses the foreshadowed relationship of Aslia to the rest of the world:
Aslia [is] a unit that from the economic angle more or less meets the requirements for an independent socialist state, existing alongside a socialist America, a socialist China, a socialist India, Soviet Russia, and so on. We will organize these giant socialist states into a world federation on the basis of equality among nations. It must be stressed here that this world government will not consist of those appointed by one or even several of the large states but will be elected by the people of each member state in a democratic fashion—chosen from below and not appointed from the center. Our concept of the future Comintern is similar. (Volume II, p. 122)
The idea of the future geographic boundaries of Indonesia extending beyond those of the Netherlands Indies was not held exclusively by Tan Malaka. Clearly, very close ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and religious ties were held with the inhabitants of the Malayan peninsula and to a lesser extent with the Philippines and further up into mainland Southeast Asia. The most elaborate argument for what became known as “Indonesia Raya” (Greater Indonesia) was developed by Muhammad Yamin, who drew on the Javanese history of 1365, the Nagarakrtagama by Prapança, to defend the concept. According to Prapança, the country was made up of eight areas: Sumatra, Peninsular Malaya, Kalimantan, Java, Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara (the Lesser Sundas), Maluku, and West Irian. Excluding Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, this area coincides with present-day Indonesia.85
Political union between the Malay people under British rule and those under Dutch rule was advanced among those of both groups studying together in Cairo’s Al-Azhar University in the early 1920s.86 On the Malayan Peninsula, the notion gained support among the early Malay nationalists at the Sultan Idris Training College in Perak. In 1925 a series of books prepared for the college “discussed and championed the concept of ‘Nusantara’ (Malay-Indonesian archipelago) unity,” and the Malay nationalists also sought inspiration from and identified with the ideas advocated by the PNI “one people, one language, one nation.” One of those who graduated from the training college in 1931 was Ibrahim Yaacob, who continued to advance these ideas in the pages of the newspapers Majlis (in Kuala Lumpur) and Utusan Melayu (in Singapore). In 1938 Ibrahim founded the Kesatuan Melayu Muda (KMM), which looked to the Malays as a whole, including Indonesians.87 It is outside the scope of this work to look in greater detail at the KMM and its leaders, their cooperation with the Japanese and resistance against the British, and the Malay Nationalist party which some of them later formed. Some tenuous links between Tan Malaka and this most forthright among Malay nationalist groups have been alluded to, but no direct contact has been established.88 The main parallel in terms of political focus is this concept of Indonesia (or Melayu) Raya. In 1945, as Japanese plans for Indonesia’s independence moved closer to reality, Ibrahim pressed for inclusion of Malaya in the future state and apparently sent representatives to discuss the question with Sukarno prior to the meeting in July of the Investigating Committee for Indonesian Independence.89 In the event, however, the swift surrender of Japan cut short such plans. Indonesia’s independence was declared without any specifications of its boundaries, and no Malay representatives were present at the hurried ceremonies.
Supporters of the union of the Malay peoples in Malaya, particularly the Malay Nationalist party, continued to hope and press for inclusion, but as the state was established its aspirations were limited to control of the former Netherlands Indies and, as described below (Volume III), even this progress was whittled away as negotiations continued with the colonial power. The decision to include only the former colonial state was part and parcel of the move toward juridical argumentation to support independence and represented a turn away from a movement that perhaps could have been built on the basis of solidarity of the Malay peoples.
The Revolutionary Party. Tan Malaka experienced a very swift rise within the PKI, becoming chairman in December 1921, less than year after he had come into direct contact with the party. During the period of his activity in and around the PKI through 1921 until his arrest in 1922, he concerned himself first and foremost with the party’s educational efforts and concentrated on the international situation and historical developments rather than on questions relating to the PKI’s strategy and day-to-day tactics, or its internal life.
His period in Moscow (1922-1923), however, evidently gave him a different orientation. By 1925 he had developed quite a critique of the PKI and was of the opinion that it was not yet a democratic-centralist party but simply an association of like-minded people, like the other political parties. In 1925 he criticized the PKI for not yet developing a program