From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
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or were taught only minimally. But the first and foremost subject for a Dutch teacher was the Dutch language, and, however clever one might be in studying foreign languages, Dutch youths of fourteen to twenty years of age naturally understood their mother tongue better than an Indonesian who had only studied Dutch several hours a day in school for six years. But that did not mean that I could not beat the students in even the highest class in grammar.
I do not know what strategy the teachers at the Rijkskweekschool had decided to use on me, but over those two years I had no class of my own and was shifted around among the four classes. For geography, for instance, in the morning I might be in class one and in the afternoon in class four. In itself, without any other problems, this would have been enough to break the heart of anyone who was studying subjects from the very beginning. Certainly I had to force myself to study all my subjects. Those like pedagogy and botany required self-discipline, and I had to be forced to study the exact sciences such as algebra and trigonometry.
Aside from arithmetic, one didn’t really need to study the exact sciences, either to be an ordinary teacher or for the examination to qualify as head teacher. But after the mathematics teacher shifted me around between classes one, two, and three in a single day, he pulled me aside during the break, saying he wanted to finish the mathematics lesson with me. He added in a whisper that he wanted to continue to teach me, though previously he had considered Indonesians incapable of learning mathematics. “It was really hard for me to teach Sutan,” he said, “but now, after seeing you, my outlook is changing.”
[26] I know that Sutan Casajangan, to whom he was referring, was certainly not stupid, even though he had failed five times in the examination for the head teacher’s certificate.27 My respect for the mathematical ability of the Bataks at the Kweekschool in Bukit Tinggi was very high, and Sutan Casajangan, a former pupil at that school who had been accepted through examinations from among the many candidates from Tapanuli, certainly was no exception.28 But probably a weakness in his knowledge of the Dutch language made it difficult for him to understand the mathematics he was taught. And as for his having failed the head teacher’s exam five times, it was quite possible that the Dutch imperialist school policy had something to do with it.
Mathematics had never been a problem for me, even when I was constantly moved around from one lesson to another. Several years before I arrived in the Netherlands I had already worked out a strategy for understanding mathematics, and I was able to apply it successfully without working very hard. But as for studying plants—the number of leaves and stamens and seeds—or the number of teeth of a Dutch frog or the way to teach the alphabet to children, there was no alternative to rote learning, and I was not cut out for that. I really hated to learn by rote, except when I had a real interest in something.
My hatred for memorization was even greater than my hatred of facing bread and cheese and bread and cheese without variation, day after day in the hostel. My hatred of these foods was aroused simply by the sight of them, but my hatred of forced learning by rote was unceasing, as was my hatred of the unjust differences between Indonesian and Dutch societies.
It was under such conditions that I had the opportunity of meeting the late Professor Snouck Hurgronje, who said to me, “I wouldn’t even think of becoming a teacher of German children though I have lived a long time in Germany and really know the German language well.” I was surprised to hear this. Then he asked at what age I had started to learn Dutch. I answered that I had studied it since I was about thirteen. He then said, “So before you were thirteen you didn’t have any contact with Dutch children. Do you think, then, that you can understand the spirit of Dutch children under the age of thirteen in the primary school, and use the words they use?”
[27] It was with my thoughts in tumult that I left the professor, who was known as an ethisch,29 an admirer of the inlanders [natives]30 and an expert on Islam. His question still thundered in my ears, and it was from that time that I began to doubt the direction of my education. I was ashamed of wanting to attain the right to become a teacher of Dutch children with whom I shared neither language nor nation, and whose spirits I would be unable to reach in their mother tongue.
At first, I thought of changing my field of study but here I collided with the advice that my teacher, Horensma, had given me before we parted. Several times he said to me that he could only advise me to become a teacher. I knew it was because he was a teacher himself and because he wanted to see an Indonesian receive the education of a Dutch teacher. Only after I had returned to Bukit Tinggi six years later, and he himself had become disillusioned with the bureaucracy in Batavia, did he express his regret over that advice. “I really should have advised you to become an engineer.”31 If from the start my education had been directed toward chemical or agricultural engineering, and if my health had been guarded, my desire to study would not have been disturbed and might even have been encouraged. But, anyway, as the proverb goes, the rice had already turned to porridge, and in those six years I underwent many changes.32
When one’s body suffers through want and one’s spirit is shackled, when all roads to change and improvement are blocked, then one’s heart is open, torn between the emotions of the common fate of humanity and the realization of social contradiction, between negative and positive forces. The turbulence of thesis and antithesis within me was a reflection of the external struggle taking place about me: in the typical poor household in which I lived and as an echo of the broader struggle throughout Europe, which together with the whole world was caught in the crucible of the First World War. It was almost a year before the war began when I arrived in the Netherlands and nearly a year after it ended when I left.
[28] I lived in a small, dark attic room in the rented house of a working class family, a small house on a small street which, by coincidence, was named Jacobin Street. In the room next to mine lived a Belgian refugee, Herman, a youth who worked in a jam factory in Haarlem.33 This young man had left Belgium after it was attacked by the Germans. The landlady was a working woman—honest, simple, and in everything filled with a humanitarian spirit at a time when the world showed no humanity toward her. Her husband had been sick with a lung disease for a long time and was being nursed in a hospital. He was really only waiting to meet his death. Formerly, Van der Mey (the name of this poor sick man) had been an ironworker in a workshop in Haarlem. Since falling sick, he had received no pay, pension, or any other kind of assistance. Like a sick mule he was just abandoned. Nyonya van der Mey lived by renting rooms to us and by the little bit of help she received from her grown child, who worked as a lowly clerk in an office in Amsterdam. What she got from Herman and me didn’t really amount to much at all because the food she provided for us used up almost all of our rent. From this small income and the help she got from her child Nyonya van der Mey had to pay her husband’s hospital expenses every month. I need not describe her poverty any further. I should only add that the patience of this simple working woman was far from insignificant.34
The young Van der Mey was sympathetic to the Allies (England, France, and Belgium) and was a faithful reader of De Telegraaf, a fiercely anti-German newspaper that spoke of the Germans as “dirty Krauts.”35 At that time I could see no difference between German, English, or Dutch imperialism, and because of this we often had disagreements. During one of these debates, which had gone on for some time and was rather spirited, Herman suddenly chimed in, saying, “You’re right, Ipie (that was my nickname).36 I agree. As far as I’m concerned they’re all a bunch of filthy, thieving swine.” Hot-blooded as all Belgians, Herman already had a knife in his hand. I tried to calm him. Fortunately, Van der Mey was sensible and gave in.
It seems that Herman, a reader of Het Volk, the newspaper of the Social Democratic Workers Party in the Netherlands, had waited a long time to get Van der Mey, reader of De Telegraaf.37 When Herman came home from work with a shining face and put his hand into his pocket, I knew what he would pull out. It would be a magazine, brochure, or essay, burning with anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist sentiments. Herman enjoyed reading fiery things, and when necessary could act strongly.
Step by step, pushed by circumstances within and around me—influenced and illuminated by the books I was reading, in accordance with the laws of quantity being transformed into quality—suddenly in spirit and in