Preserving the Hope of the Suliki Revolution

KOMPAS/RINI KUSTIASIH

Part of the Tan Malaka Museum in Nagari Suliki, Payakumbung, West Sumatera. The museum was formerly the Nagari Suliki customary hall, which bore silent witness to the childhood of Tan Malaka, whose was originally named Ibrahim. The museum is in poor condition. Several glass windows are broken and the wooden floor is dilapidated. This picture was taken on February 24.

These actions toward national independence will be prolonged, but in the end there will be victory. (Tan Malaka, Naar de Republiek Indonesia, 1925)

The rumah gadang (traditional West Sumatran Minangkabau house) stands alone in the stillness of Nagari Pandan Gadang in Suliki, Payakumbuh, West Sumatra. The childhood home of Tan Malaka is visibly time-worn. It is covered in a thick layer of dust, as if a metaphor of how the nation often forgets to preserve the fires of revolution that brought forth its independence and for which Tan fought almost a century ago.

Suliki, last February. The sun was shining and the wind was blowing gently. Set slightly back from the roadside, the “Tan Malaka House” museum, which was actually a traditional community hall back in its day, stood amid lines of tall coconut trees.

That day, there was no guard or visitors. When we arrived at the traditional building that was turned into a museum nine years ago, the floor creaked loudly. On a dusty table, there was a guest book that had fallen victim to graffiti.

This condition seemed to be in contrast to the commotion among Tan’s extended family amid the final preparations for the symbolic retrieval of Tan’s remains from his grave in Kediri, East Java, so they could be brought to his hometown in Suliki.

“Many people feel that Tan Malaka belongs to them. It’s not just us, his family,” said his great-grandson Indra Ibnur Ikatama, 46, who lives some 40 meters from the museum. If so many people say that they care for him, why is the house in disrepair? Indra just smiled.

Around a century ago, Tan Malaka House museum was a traditional community hall where the elders of the nagari (village) in Pandan Gadang gathered. The house bore silent witness of Tan’s formative years, when he was known as an active, smart and sociable – yet rascally – boy. Tan’s nephew, Zulfikar Kamaruddin, said that Tan’s original childhood home and the small mosque where he used to spend the nights, study silat martial art and join discussions had been razed a long time ago.

It was believed that in 1908 the local leaders in Tan’s village gathered in the house to collect the funds needed to send Tan to school, at first to Fort de Kock in Bukittinggi and then to Harleem in the Netherlands. A Dutch man by the name of Horensma, who was Tan’s teacher, also helped. In the Netherlands, Tan further developed his personality and ideas. He learned from foreign independence fighters and met with communist figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Leon Trotsky.

Abroad, Tan established several political parties and wrote down his ideas, which were later to greatly influence Indonesia’s independence movement. Bukittinggi and Harleem were where Tan’s political life began. He moved from country to country and was imprisoned numerous times. He changed his name, identity and looks in order to “sell” the idea of Indonesia’s independence.

Asset

President Soekarno once said that Tan was “a master revolutionary.” In the early 20th century, when the independence movement reached its height and yet the imagined construction of an Indonesian people was still a vague idea, Tan first established the idea of a republic that could stand on its own.

Tan published his writings, titled Naar de Republiek Indonesia (Toward a Republic of Indonesia) in China in 1925. The book, which KITLV researcher Harry A Poeze said had a boring front cover, was the first time the concept of a Republic of Indonesia had ever been put into writing. Three years later, in 1928, Mohammad Hatta wrote Indonesia Vrij (Indonesia Free). In 1930, Soekarno further processed the idea of independence through Indonesia Accuses and then Towards an Independent Indonesia in 1933.

Other Tan Malaka works, including Massa Actie (1926) and Madilog (1943), also became references for independence activists working toward the nation’s independence.

A revolution, in essence, is a movement toward reform. In Massa Actie, Tan said that revolution must be born out of unity from the bottom up as a result of various prevailing conditions. He also said that revolution must take place through our own strength without compromising with the enemy.

“Tan Malaka was a radical. The soul of religious education that grew within him fostered a sense of self-independence. He could not be influenced and refused to compromise,” Zulfikar Kamaruddin said.

Padang State University historian Mestika Zed said that Tan’s persistence in the struggle for independence through revolution was inseparable from the Minangkabau culture and philosophy. In Minangkabau society, revolution was just a more modern term for its treasured tradition. Through the culture of rantau (migrating to foreign lands), the Minangkabau people were used to applying rational thinking to foster change and development.

Tan’s struggle for independence was also the result of the Minangkabau culture of a refusal to feel inferior. Rusli Amran, in his book Sumatera Barat hingga  Plakat  Panjang (West Sumatra to Plakat Panjang), quoted a 1825 report by Nahuys van Burgst, a doctor of law and a major general, who was amazed at the attitude of the Minangkabau people who he said were “highly sovereign.”

Nahuys wrote that he was astonished by their attitude of walking around King Sutan Alam Bagagarsyah without bowing down in respect. “Sutan brought all of his things by himself, including his cigarettes, betel box and ear buds. Someone was holding an umbrella over him, but the umbrella looked no different to the ones the regular people were using.”

Priangan resident De Steurs shared a similar story. The military commander said he was amazed that the Minangkabau people casually greeted him on the streets, with people stopping him and asking him for a light. In his report, De Steurs said that the Minangkabau society appreciated personal independence so much that there was practically no difference between the leaders and commoners save for their names.

Such was life in Minangkabau society, where the king granted freedom to local villages and the village heads, in turn, granted freedom to their people. A famous Minangkabau adage states that leaders are only one step ahead and one branch higher. Such a culture is conducive for revolutionary ideas.

Proclamation

Ahead of the Proclamation of Independence on August 17, 1945, Tan disguised himself as Ilyas Hussein, a representative from Bayah, Banten, on his way to a meeting with youth leaders in Jakarta. On the last page of Dari Penjara ke Penjara Jilid II (From Prison to Prison, Volume II), he wrote, “I am heading to the Republic of Indonesia, no longer with my pen on paper abroad but on my own feet in my own Indonesian land.”

In his meeting with Sukarni and BM Diah, Hussein asked that they proclaim the nation’s independence immediately without any intervention from Japan. Not long after, youths kidnapped Soekarno and Hatta and took them to Rengasdengklok and urged them to proclaim Indonesia’s independence without waiting for Japan’s approval. The next day, Soekarno and Hatta proclaimed the nation’s independence.

Tan was not involved. As the initiator of the concept of the Republic of Indonesia, he did not even know that Indonesia’s independence was proclaimed at Jl. Pegangsaan Timur No. 56 in Jakarta on Aug. 17, 1945. In the third volume of From Prison to Prison, he wrote, “It seems that history does not wish to involve me physically in the August 17 Proclamation. Only my soul that was there. I regret this terribly. However, history does not care about the explanations of individuals or groups of people.”

The regret, however, did not make Tan back down. He realized that revolution was the only thing worth fighting for, even long after independence was proclaimed and won. As he wrote in Naar de Republiek Indonesia, “The action to achieve national independence will be prolonged, but in the end there will be victory.”

The national independence that he wrote about surely does not mean the proclamation. Rather, it means the full sovereignty of all Indonesians in all aspects of life – a process that is still ongoing even today. This is why the spirit of reform must always be fostered.