Language and Indonesian Nationality

KOMPAS/JOHNNY TG

Fachry Ali

It might be a bit of an exaggeration if I said I was “shocked" when I bumped into historical facts about the position of "our language".

In Writing from the Colonial Margin: The Letters of Aboe Bakar Djajadiningrat to Christian Snouck Hurgronje (Journal of Indonesia and the Malay World, November 2003), Michael F. Laffan revealed a historical fact on the correspondence between Aboe Bakar Djajadiningrat (who lived in Hijaz, now Saudi Arabia) and intellectual-colonialist Snouck Hurgronje at the end of the 19th century.

Except for certain purposes, Aboe Bakar\'s letters (which contained information about politics and society of the Hijaz as well as the movement of the Dutch East Indies pilgrims) were more often written in Arabic than in Malay. In part, Laffan called it because the Malay language in Hijaz at that time was "was an inferior language for scholarship". As an educated person, Aboe Bakar had more pride in writing the reports to Hurgronje in Arabic. This learning ability was projected to his child in Banten. In one of his letters to Hurgronje in 1885, he expressed his intention to send his child to study Dutch in Batavia in 1887.

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The tendency on the part of Aboe Bakar to use Arabic and his plan to send his child to learn Dutch reflected the l\'histoire des mentalite (structure of consciousness) of the indigenous elite at that time. This was not only a dream to integrate into the bureaucracy of the Dutch colonial power, but also a reflection of the desire to gain prestige and high social status in front of the common people. In reality, the ability of the native Dutch-speaking elite led to funny "incidents". At the end of the 19th century, as told by Ajip Rosidi in Sjafruddin Prawiranegara Has Greater Fear to Allah (1986), the Dutch controller in Banten, PWJ Bischoff, asked a district head, Arsjad, in Sundanese.

Bischoff, while in Holland, had learned Sundanese and was very confident in communicating with his native "subordinates" in that language. A graduate of OSVIA (founded in 1879) in Bandung, Arsjad was naturally able to speak Dutch. Because Bischoff\'s Sundanese language was "messy", Arsjad answered his questions in Dutch. And, Ajip continued his story, "The controller\'s eyes glared at the camat (the district head). He could no longer hold himself back, until it was said that the camat had acted insolently and disrespectfully to him." As a result, Arsjad was removed from office and his rank was demoted to the lower rank as a mantri.

Power struggle

The above-mentioned Raden Arsjad was the father of national figure Sjafruddin Prawiranegara (1911-1989). However, this story is not what I want to continue. The "incident" shows two main points. First, this incident shows the formation of what is called mokolo by Hendri Alers in Om een rode of groene Merdeka (1956). Through Benedict R\'O G Anderson, who quoted Alers\' work in Languages of Indonesian Politics (1990), we know that the mokolo was an aristocratic group in South Sulawesi during the colonial era. They did not only live apart from society, they also saw themselves in the light of the Nietzschean consciousness of superiority (Nietzsche\'s higher racial consciousness).

Alers, as quoted by Anderson, said that the Dutch colonial bureaucracy experienced mocoloization by establishing the Dutch race as a substitute for the aristocratic esprit de corps. "The basic mentality of the Dutch colonial government bourgeoisie," Anderson added, "thus takes on the character of ‘outside’ the mokolo aristocracy against the brown-skinned population." The Arsjad-Bischoff incident was the effect of the mocoloization of the Dutch colonial bureaucracy. In this case, according to the character of Nietzschean consciousness superiority, Dutch was too "great" to be used by natives even if he was a scholar who had graduated from OSVIA.

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DOK PRIBADI MOH SALEH

Moh Saleh with Boedi Oetomo\'s comrades in the courtyard of the 1908 STOVIA Building. Sitting from the left, Goenawan Mangoenkoesoemo, Latoemeten, Moh Arsjad, and Prodjosoedirdjo Figures, Standing from the left, Moh Saleh, Soesilo, Soetomo and Goembrek.

Second, however, the "grand" position of the Dutch language at that time was a “new” symptom. Although the Dutch managed to hit the Portuguese in the final blow by, as CR Boxer put it in his book, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825 (1971 [1969]), attacking Makassar (which protected the Portuguese) in 1660 and 1667, Dutch was still considered the "second class" in the Asian region. Here Boxer said that although Sailon Raja Sinha II (1629-1687) allied himself with the Dutch against the Portuguese, he refused official letters in Dutch. He was more receptive to official documents in Portuguese even though, Boxer said, in the creole form (Portuguese mixed with Indian [West]).

In the context of the archipelago, Boxer said that not only were the rulers of Makassar fluent in Spanish, "one of them had even read all the original works of the Portuguese writer, Fray Luis de Granada". Ironically, the carrier of Portuguese in the creole form to Batavia, the center of Dutch power, was precisely the slaves and other lower classes. As a result, wrote Boxer, "it was spoken by the Dutch and half-caste women born and bred at Batavia. Even more ironic, Boxer continued, the Portuguese used by the Dutch was sometimes "to the exclusion of their mother tongue".

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Therefore, the "greatness" of the Dutch language demonstrated in the arrogant attitude of Bischoff, the controller, at the end of the 19th century was the result of the "power struggle" of the two global powers of the 16th to 18th centuries in the archipelago with the defeat of the Portuguese. In my speculation, although the relations between the native elite and the Dutch (represented by the VOC) had been tighter since the 18th century, through their political investments in quelling the Trunojoyo rebellion against Mataram (1674-1680) and in the 1740-1770s, the entire coastal areas of Central and East Java fell to the Dutch, including West Java, the "glorification" of the Dutch language did not find material foothold and power until 1830.

We know, during this period the forced cultivation system was launched. The success of this giant program without precedents led to the birth of the modern colonial state. A modern bureaucratic system that stood almost entirely on the exploitation of export agricultural wealth. The material benefits, obtained and followed by the "open door" policy by inviting large European capital to invest in the archipelago after the forced cultivation system was revoked in 1870, structurally encouraged the expansion of the presence of the state. The combination of accumulated material capital and the modern state bureaucratic networks that supported it made Dutch power in the eyes of the natives meaningless.

This was a structural situation which, as stated by Aboe Bakar to Hurgronje above, gave rise to the fantasy of the "grandeur" of the Dutch language among the indigenous elite. A language that came with the support of political power, wealth, science, technology.

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KOMPAS/RADITYA HELABUMI

Video mapping titled "Hi Indonesian Youth" is projected on the front of the Jakarta Cathedral in the commemoration of Youth Pledge Day on Saturday (26/10/2019). The activity involving young people was to take place until Monday (28/10/2019) with the theme "In the Spirit of the Youth Pledge and the Practice of Pancasila We Knit Unity in Indonesian Diversity".

The transmission of intellectual awareness

Therefore, the Malay language, the embryo of our national language, in the structure of the arrogance of colonial power, was "tarnished". In one his other writings, Sembah-Sumpah: The Politics of Language and Javanese Culture (1990), Benedict Anderson quoted the Dutch insult as brabbel-Maleisch (pidgin Malay). This was unacceptable because even the Javanese children\'s story, Serat Kancil Amongsastra, written by Kyai Rangga Amongsastra and published in 1878, as stated by Liaw Yock Fang in the History of Classical Malay Literature (2011), had been linked to Egyptian literature.

Here, the language elements in the archipelago already had a global network. So, as we will see its expression below, this "defamation" became, to quote Clifford Geertz in The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States (1993 [1973]), "humiliating sense of exclusion from the important center of power in world society ”(feeling humiliated for being excluded from power centers in the world of society). This was the mental-structural basis that uniquely led to the birth of the Indonesian.

The Malay language, the embryo of our national language, in the structure of the arrogance of colonial power, was "tarnished"

However, the material basis for the existence of the 19th century Malay language was indeed the remnants of the strength of the Southeast Asian regional trade actors, in what historian Anthony Reid called The Age of Commerce (1988), which took place in 1450-1680. Experiencing a great material decline due to the onslaught of European actors in the same field, the Malay language lost the material basis of self-development. Tucked behind the "stage", there was no chance to get in touch with the dynamics of the new age which increasingly relied on modern ideas and in daily grappling with science and technology. This language underwent a ruralization process, only living in the coastal petit bourgeoisie (small traders in coastal areas) where their collective experience was structurally absent from the clash of dynamics of Western modernization and industrialization.

Therefore, history shows the "beneficial irony" of the meeting of the early Indonesian intelligentsia with the Dutch language through the Ethical Policy, proclaimed by Queen Wilhelmina in 1901. In The Languages of Indonesian Politics, Benedict Anderson stated that the lumpen position (low and lackluster) in Malay had found new blood with the emergence of indigenous intellectuals in bilingual mastery: Dutch and Malay. Through the mastery of the Dutch language, the intellectuals who had no place in the colonial structure encountered a modern system of ideas that were not found in Malay and other local languages.

Thus, HOS Tjokroaminoto, Mohammad Hatta, Soekarno, Tan Malaka, Sjahrir, Ali Sastroamidjojo or Iwa Sumantri, Mohammad Yamin, and others, early Western educated natives, clashed with the system of ideas of socialism, Marxism, nationalism, as well as social justice and democracy through the Dutch reading materials. All the materials in Dutch read by the early intellectuals were a system of ideas that critically questioned the validity of colonialism anywhere, including Indonesia.

This historical process gave birth to what is called by Benedict Anderson revolutionary Malay. This is because the intelligentsia\'s mastery of the revolutionary Dutch reading materials was poured into the Malay language. Therefore, from the status of lumpen language, Malay had become a language that was not only passionate, but also found a new foundation: the revolutionary spirit of the country\'s children to liberate themselves. In this situation, the 1928 Youth Pledge affirmed Indonesian as the language of the nation\'s "unity".

The fulcrum and national blood

In 1948, my biological mother, Asiah Ilyas, wrote a romantic song of struggle in Susoh, South Aceh (now Southwest Aceh), encouraging Acehnese youth to defend Indonesia\'s independence in Medan Area, East Sumatra, in beautiful Indonesian:

Dunia keliling sepi, kutinggalkan nyanyi (The world around is lonely, I leave the singing) gembala/di bawah langit jaya, berjabat (of the shepherd / under glorious sky, shaking) tangan kita/berpisah untuk Nusa (our hands / parting for Nusa) Kau antarkan ku berjuang, berpisahannya (You lead me to fight, bidding farewell) di mata/bersatu dalam hati, bertemu (in the eyes / united in the heart, we will meet) kita nanti/di syurga yang abadi (later / in eternal heaven)

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My mother\'s work was probably two or three years later than Cornel Simadjuntak’s song, Maju Tak Gentar or Halo-hello Bandung by Ismail Marzuki (?). Although these last two songs were born in Java, like other struggle songs, all of them did not only meet in one spirit, but, to borrow Benedict Anderson, expressed emotive words (words containing overflowing feelings).

This is the main characteristic of revolutionary Malay or later "revolutionary Indonesian". A language that was born (again) to accompany a society that was still struggling and struggling. However, on top of that, we see that the expression of feeling in Susoh, which is remote at the tip of Sumatra, was united with what was expressed in Java. Through these songs, we mark the birth of what Edward Shils called in Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties (1957), civil politics in our society with the relative date of primordialism\'s narrow allegiance towards great loyalty. The birth of the Indonesian language, thus, was the creation of a "meeting point" of various ethnicities to form a unity of a nation desiring to be independent.

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Kompas

Wild Literature Exhibition in the Colonial Era at the Jakarta International Literary Festival, at Taman Ismail Marzuki, Jakarta, Tuesday (20/8/2019). Featuring a number of literary works from 1981 to 1926 which were banned by the colonial authorities.

And, even though it sounds "cliché", this is a great gift for the Indonesian people. Geertz, in Integrative Revolution, also mentioned the disappointment of the Indian leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, who expressed in 1948: "How thin was the ice upon which we were skating". This was related to his duties, along with Patel and Sitaramayya, in the Linguistic Committee of the Indian Congress Party. "But," wrote Geertz, "terrible or not, Nehru, Patel, and Sitaramayya were eventually forced to give in to demands for Andhara to be the language of Telugu State." As a result, the thin ice was broken.

For a decade, because of its diversity, India was troubled by political reorganization based on language lines. And as a result, this situation became problematic because, Geertz saw it as a "pandemic" against new countries. And semantic chaos ensued. The newly independent societies "slided" in an indefinite direction: a "dual" or "plural" or "diverse" society and lead to an inconclusive one: ... "state that is not a nation or a nation that are not a state”, wrote Geertz.

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In the context of nationality, through the Malay language which later became the national language, Indonesia was not faced with this unspeakable dilemma. About 20 years before the proclamation of independence in 1945, through Malay, Yamin had introduced basic concept in his poetry about nationality. As stated by Maman S Mahayana in Muhammad Yamin: Indonesia in the Imagination (Jamal D Rahman, ed, 33 Most Influential Indonesian Literary Figures [2014]), Yamin promoted the concept of "Homeland" and "independence" which are now embedded in our collective memories. Two days before the Youth Pledge II on 28 October 1928, Yamin wrote a poem titled "Indonesia Tumpah Darahku". In it he expressed an emotive phrase (phrases that sparked emotions): Because we are the same countrymen/have homeland in Indonesia.

Both the title and content of Yamin\'s poetry were not only contained in the historical Youth Pledge, or avoided us from the upsetting experience of the Indian people, but rather created the "blood of life" into the body of the Indonesian nation. In the hands of an early generation of intellectuals, Malay or Indonesian is no longer just a pidgin", but something revolutionary, which has kept the nation to be united until now.

Fachry Ali, One of the Founders of the Institute for the Study and Advancement of Business Ethics (LSPEU) Indonesia.