Footsteps (57 page)

It was a simple story. And that is why van Heutsz exiled her father. It seems that her father, my father-in-law, once had plans.

That afternoon we left Buitenzorg and traveled down to Sukabumi to see her father. My respect for him was now greater than ever. And he seemed surprised at my attitude.

“Princess needs to rest, Bapak. She’s been working too hard,
she’s exhausted. While she’s at home, there is no way I can get her away from her work. We will stay here for a couple of weeks.”

But I couldn’t stay there for the full two weeks. The palace guards called me for an interrogation, even though no such thing was ever required of Robert Suurhof. They were investigating, they said, the discharge of a gun in the proximity of the palace. As the interrogation wore on and they concentrated on the reasons for my owning a gun, it became clear that they were looking for evidence that I was planning a rebellion or some other kind of attack against the governor-general.

“Impossible. The former Governor-General van Heutsz often called me, and desired my friendship.”

“Precisely because of that,” answered the interrogator, who had no right to make such accusations. “Now that His Excellency Governor-General Idenburg is here and has not called you, perhaps you feel slighted?”

“If that’s all you can accuse me or suspect me of, then I could do the same to you too. What’s the difference?”

“Everyone who lives within the proximity of the palace and owns a gun must report it to the palace security.”

“I have never read any such regulations. May I see them?”

“In any case you have fired a gun in the proximity of the palace. We will confiscate the gun.”

“Very well. I will be reporting this to the appropriate authorities. I have a license for my gun.” I showed him the papers and also the bullets that I had stored away. “And I have also reported to the police the fact that I have used two of the bullets that I am registered as owning.”

The interrogation came to an end. My revolver was later returned to me by the police.

It was becoming clearer and clearer—if we did not have the means to defend ourselves, all Natives, and not just myself, would become the playthings of the Robert Suurhofs. Well, that was just the way it was. Yet this incident brought those who were close to me, and perhaps many others that I did not know of, even closer. As we became a closer-knit group we also began to understand that the Knijpers had dissolved itself. There was now a new group—TAI. We didn’t know what the letters meant, except perhaps that the last two stood for “Anti-Inlander,” that is, “Anti-Native.” There was also a possibility they were trying to make fun of the fact that I often signed my articles with the initials TAS.

All the tension caused by our childlessness disappeared. Justice must stand firm, even in a colonized country like ours. Who else would ensure this, if not the Natives themselves? Because justice is something that is a purely human affair, it is only human beings who can defend it. The laws of the Netherlands Indies did protect life and property. But they protected only those who knew the laws and knew how to use their knowledge. Those who did not know were, in fact, the targets and victims of these laws.

Onward even farther, our Islamic Traders Union, our Sarekat. Onward too, you, Minke. Don’t be diverted by minor personal sentiments. You have begun; now you must show you can finish.

B
oedi Oetomo continued on undisturbed. It was backed by the supporters of the Ethical Policy. The BO schools were even offered subsidies, as long as they used the official curriculum. Idenburg himself made the offer. BO did not suffer any moves against it like those against the SDI.

The year 1911 seemed to promise more turbulent developments. Thamrin Mohammed Thabrie received orders that went one step further than previously—he was to drop his membership in the organization completely.

“As a Moslem I must, of course, remain faithful to the SDI,” he answered.

The government took action. He was dismissed from his post, with a pension. This incident was reported by almost all of the Dutch language papers in Betawi.

“What can be done?” he commented. “The government is fearful that I might use its authority to help the organization. It has the right and the power to take the action it has.”

He lost his job. And
Medan
, which did not have a “Transfers, Promotions, and Dismissals” column, did not report it. Thamrin was pensioned off with an extra little gift as well—he was still
forbidden to be active in the organization. They continued to make all kinds of threats against him.

The Boedi Oetomo had founded three schools. The SDI had not founded even one—at least not yet. It was sticking to its policy of helping to fund other nongovernment schools, including those of the BO.

The example of the BO schools excited a lot of interest in setting up nongovernment schools that used the government curriculum. The more independent-spirited teachers, those who had been involved in some kind of argument or dispute with their headmasters, always Europeans, started to get together to found their own schools, or joined up with the BO effort. Meanwhile schools that did not use the government curriculum lost any status they once had, especially if they didn’t teach Dutch. Even the Jamiatul Khair and Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan schools did not seem to be taken seriously anymore.

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 months 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.