Telling Lives. Telling History. Autobiography and Historical Imagination in Modern Indonesia.
Robinson, Kathryn
The core of this book consists of two autobiographies dealing with
Indonesian childhood in the early part of this century Aku dan Toba, by
P. Pospos and Semasa Kecil di Kampung, by Muhammad Radjab. Both were
published shortly after Indonesian independence, under the auspices of
Balai Pustaka, a publishing house which specialised in publishing
Indonesian language popular literature.
The two memoirs, one dealing with growing up in a Batak village, the
other set in Minangkabau (both in the island of Sumatra) deal with a
significant period in the genesis of modern Indonesian national
identity. Both writers deal with their childhoods as a passage from the
constraints of simple village life through new opportunities opened up
by secular education, ending with the students leaving for higher
educational opportunities further afield. In these journeys, we also see
the passage from 'tradition' to 'modernity', and the
genesis of a modern, secular national consciousness in these
quintessential twentieth century Indonesians. Radjab rails against the
irrationality and (in his view) stupidity of the Arab gramar taught by
local religious teachers, comparing it unfavourably with his later
experience. of secular learning. Pospos remembers the innocent romances
between school pupils and this is in stark contrast to the embarrassment
he describes feeling in the presence of the young girl destined by kin
connection to be his future wife. I found both narratives to be gripping
reading, providing the kind of insight into personal life, the
individual experience of localised custonis and social practice and the
reflections on changing times, which it is difficult for the
anthropologist as outsider to access. The young men's thoughts
about their parents, and their response to what often seemed very
distant relations between parents and children, as well as the abundant
references to romantic love (the subject of many other Balai Pustaka
publications) provide us with rare windows into the inner life of these
modernising young men.
Rogers is successful in her goal of achieving a translation which is
immensely readable in English, but carries some of the flavour of the
original Malay texts. The translations are prefaced by an introduction
which locates the texts and their authors in time and place. She also
places the genre of autobiographical writing in the context of other
forms of writing in the Malay archipelago, including a very useful
review of commentaries on Malay historical traditions.
Reading these tales, there was a sense of witnessing the genesis of
modern, national consciousness, mediated through writing (and printing)
practices which concerned Anderson in Imagined Communities. The
narrators have different stories to tell from the tragic account of
Minke, Pramoedya Ananta Toer's protagonist in his epic quartet of
life in the Dutch East Indies. Their lives have less dramatic peaks and
troughs, and their stories give a more positive response to the changes
in social life which accompanied the secularising and modernising
imperatives of colonialism. Nonetheless, in a manner similar to
Pramoedya's fictionalised accounts, these stories provide a rich
insight into a world long since disappeared.
Kathryn Robinson Australian National University
