no point in trying to guess the reason for this rejection, since I was bound by my debt to this new fund to comply with his decisions.
Tuan Been, a publisher of children’s magazines, acted as a go-between to convey my wishes to Tuan Fabius.51 I did not try to conceal what I wanted to do: “I want to go home. I will work anywhere to repay my remaining debts. Afterwards I will return to Europe to study at my own expense what fits in with my own desires.”
Tuan Fabius’ answer gave my request short shrift. “You can’t. Because of the war there are no places on board ship.”
[33] I was forced to wait until the end of the war, whenever that would be. But I no longer had the will to continue my studies to become a head teacher in the Netherlands.52 If in Dutch eyes I had Europeanized myself enough, I could have attained the same level as the Dutch head teachers. (Although I would naturally remain a European inlander.) Then I would have had the right to teach Dutch children. Further, as a European inlander, I could have Europeanized all the inlanders’ children. But I was not prepared to do this.
Of course, I continued to see the work of educating the children of Indonesia as a noble and important task, as I still do today. As to the direction of this education—the principles to be used and the means to be employed—I was clear enough in my mind about this even then. The only difficulty was that in terms of directions, principles, and method my ideas were in direct conflict with those followed by the colonial Dutch. For me, it was clear that Dutch should not be the medium of instruction and that Dutch culture should not be the direction of our education.
My conflict with this new circle of people in Bussum was really too involved for me to go into here in any detail. I didn’t feel much sympathy with the landlady, Nyonya K, who in my eyes was using the mask of religion solely to gain status in the church and parish. Nyonya K was a fanatical Mennonite. If her fanaticism had been limited to carrying out the tenets of her faith it would not have interfered much with other people’s feelings, but Nyonya K was also convinced that other Christian sects, let alone Islam, were beyond the pale. On her return from church each Sunday, and even during lunch, Nyonya K would discuss the sermon she had heard, in spite of the fact that her listeners were not Mennonites. Even this would not have been too much if it had been discussed in a matter-of-fact way, but Nyonya K saw red when she came home from church. What really upset her were discussions concerning the parish in general and specifically the elections for the parish leadership. Nyonya K had been defeated by another member of the parish in the elections that year. According to Nyonya K, the election was run dishonestly, because she herself really should have won. The conflicts within the Mennonite community in Bussum were very funny. They probably did not have any more than thirty members and “honesty” was Nyonya K’s own slogan.
[34] Fortunately, the landlord agreed with whatever his wife said, and was usually silent and patient. But there was one thing that could arouse Tuan K from his placidity, and that was the topic of socialism in general and the question of authority in schools specifically. Tuan K was a socialist and a schoolteacher. He was fiercely anti-leadership and opposed to having head teachers. For Tuan K and his like-minded friends, head teachers were dispensable creatures. He felt that the teachers could organize the school together in the manner of gotong-royong without being watched over by a pedantic head teacher who did not take any classes and just wandered around twiddling his thumbs.53 What I really did not understand was that whenever he began to sound off about the system of head teachers, there was always some pretext for his wife to go to the kitchen or upstairs. It was as if there was an agreement between the two: if she complained about the parish leadership he would just say yes, while if he ranted about head teachers, she would leave the room.
But they did not use this tactic with me. The clash occurred when the Sarekat Islam and Budi Utomo came to the Netherlands in connection with the question of the Indië Weerbaar.54 This matter penetrated as far as Bussum and the circles of the household. In a conversation after I had come back from an Indië Weerbaar meeting in Den Haag, the landlady brought up the subject, taking the position of a real Dutch colonialist. The conflict exploded.
I moved out and stayed with Tuan D, an exporter who owned a small villa.55 He was a German trader, and he was most hospitable, while his wife was a young, patient, and gentle Dutch woman. These people had already taken into their house two Indo students, one Chinese, and another Indonesian, who had run away from the place where I had been previously.56 The Indo students were two rather wild brothers who had been moved from Den Haag to Bussum to be in a better, more civilized atmosphere under the supervision of Tuan Fabius. They had not gone very far in school. Even though they were eighteen and nineteen years old and came from a family with a fair amount of money, they had been able to get only their primary school certificate. In Bussum they took night courses in bookkeeping. They progressed with great difficulty, for their intelligence was low and their disobedience rose to great heights. They were moved from Den Haag because they had thrown their landlady down from the attic.
When things were hopping—if there was a young man, or, even more so, a young woman about—the older brother (O. S.) became even more mischievous than usual. On the second night I was there, O. S. suddenly grabbed me by the neck from behind. “This is the crab silat, Iep,” he said.57 He was not just playing, either. I felt my neck pulled back and it was difficult for me to breathe. Luckily I knew a little about this crab attack, and it was not I who got caught in it! Fortunately there was a glass of water on the table nearby for me to give first aid to the unfortunate fellow, and O. S. came to quickly. After that he was very nice to me. People like him seem to respect only brute strength. Despite his respect for me, his cruelty to others, especially those he considered weak, became even worse.
[35] I also tangled with his brother (H. S.), not because he was aggressive, cruel, or gave me an ultimatum, but because he insulted the landlady. While I was reading I could hear him imposing his ideas on her and insulting her. “You are stupid. You are an idiot.” I warned him twice, and the third time the words he used were different, but even less appropriate in front of a woman who had never used coarse or arrogant language. I am not sure how it happened, but I sprang up and he fell with a thud against the wall. After that, behind my back he called me “the tiger.”
The Chinese student was diligent, quiet, and clever. In the beginning we were quite close, then later on fell out. However, because he had a nervous sickness and for a long time could not sleep or study, I felt very sorry for him, and we became good friends again. The Indonesian was always in the hospital, which of course made us very sad, until finally his illness forced him to return to Indonesia.
That was the situation in my immediate environment. The Russian revolution had been going on for nearly a year. My convictions became even more certain. But I had to wait until the end of the war to return to Indonesia. Desires thwarted in one direction will break out in another: a burgeoning awareness, particularly in the breast of a youth, cannot easily be kept behind a fence of teeth. It soon shows, even in day-to-day conversations. When Nyonya R, the wife of a friend of mine, met me in Den Haag, she greeted me with the words, “Hello, Mr. Bolshevik.” It was then that I became conscious of the change that had taken place within me.
One day, Suwardi Surjaningrat, whom we now know as Ki Hadjar Dewantara, suggested out of the blue that I represent his party [the Indische Partij] in the Netherlands because he was going to leave for Indonesia. It was already clear enough to me where the different parties—nationalist, socialist, and Bolshevik—stood, but to act in and represent a party that had once been very revolutionary was a different matter. The Indische Vereeniging, with its R. M. Noto Soeroto, had not prepared me theoretically, let alone provided real experience.58 I looked into the face of Dewantara, without knowing how I should answer. He smiled. Then I looked into the face of the late Doctor Gunawan Mangunkusumo. He also smiled and said, “It’s fitting, just accept it.” Not long afterwards, I represented the Indische Vereeniging at the congress of Indonesian youth and students of Indology at Deventer. I was chosen to give the report on the nationalist movement in Indonesia.59
[36] It was as though a stone had been thrown into a chicken coop. “We can’t allow this now, can we?” When I came back to Bussum several Dutch colonialists, and particularly Tuan