From Jail to Jail

FROM JAIL TO JAIL

Take away the sign (man) from the sign for prison,

Add to it (probability), that makes the word (nation).

Take the head-particle from the sign for misfortune:

That gives the word (fidelity).

Add the sign for man (standing) to the sign for worry

That gives the word (quality).

Take away the bamboo top from the sign for prison,

That gives you (dragon).

People who come out of prison can build up the country.

Misfortune is a test of people’s fidelity.

Those who protest at injustice are people of true merit.

When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out.

Ho Chi Minh, Word Play, in Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings 1920-66, edited and introduced by Bernard B. Fall (New York: Signet, 1968), p. 137.

© Copyright 1991 by the Center for International Studies Ohio University

All rights reserved

The books in the Center for International Studies Monograph Series are printed on acid-free paper ∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Malaka, Tan.

[Dari pendjara ke pendjara. English].

From jail to jail / by Tan Malaka ; translated, edited, and introduced by Helen Jarvis

p. cm. — Monographs in international studies. Southeast Asia series ; no. 83

Translation of : Dari pendjara ke pendjara

Includes bibliographical references

ISBN : 0-89680-150-0

1. Malaka, Tan.   2. Revolutionaries—Indonesia—Biography.   3. Communists—Indonesia—Biography   4. Indonesia—Politics and government—20th century.   I. Title   II Title: Dari pendjara ke pendjara   III. Series.

DS643.22.M3A3   1990

324.2598’ 075’ 092-dc20

[B]

90-47586

CIP

FROM JAIL TO JAIL

by

Tan Malaka

translated, edited, and introduced by Helen Jarvis

In three volumes

VOLUME ONE

Ohio University Center for International Studies

Monographs in International Studies

Southeast Asia Series Number 83

Athens, Ohio 1991

CONTENTS

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

POSTSCRIPT

NOTES

VOLUME ONE

Volume One

INTRODUCTION

1. THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN TWO FORCES

2. HUMAN RIGHTS

3. THE RIGHT TO SELF-PRESERVATION

4. THE RULE OF LAW

5. RETURN TO INDONESIA

6. DELI

7. SEMARANG—THE RED CITY

8. ARREST AND EXILE

9. WHERETO?

10. EN ROUTE TO THE PHILIPPINES AND CANTON

11. PRINTING PROBLEMS

12. THE PHILIPPINES

13. ARREST AND DEPORTATION

14. WHERETO NOW?

NOTES TO VOLUME ONE

GLOSSARY

INDEX TO VOLUME ONE

VOLUME TWO

Volume Two

1. SHANGHAI AND THE CHAP KAU LOO KUN

2. IN HONG KONG

3. WHERETO?

4. DESTINATION UNKNOWN

5. THE CROSSING

6. TOWARD THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA

NOTES TO VOLUME TWO

GLOSSARY

INDEX TO VOLUME TWO

VOLUME THREE

Volume Three

INTRODUCTION AND AFTERWORD

1. WELTANSCHAUUNG

2. THE STATE

3. THE RISE AND FALL OF THE STATES

4. THESIS, ANTITHESIS, AND SYNTHESIS

5. THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA’S PROCLAMATION OF INDEPENDENCE

6. THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA

7. FROM ENGINEER SUKARNO TO PRESIDENT SUKARNO

8. EVENTS SURROUNDING THE PROCLAMATION

9. TOWARD THE PERSATUAN PERJUANGAN

10. THE PERSATUAN PERJUANGAN

11. RESOLUTIONS OF THE FOUNDING CONGRESS OF THE PERSATUAN PERJUANGAN

12. MINIMUM PROGRAM OF THE PERSATUAN PERJUANGAN (UNITED ACTION)

13. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DIPLOMACY AND MASS ACTION

14. IS THE GOVERNMENT’S PROGRAM THE SAME AS THE PROGRAM OF THE PERSATUAN PERJUANGAN?

15. LINGGAJATI AND RENVILLE

16. THE MADIUN ARRESTS

17. OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA

NOTES TO VOLUME THREE

APPENDIX A. Biographical Sketches

APPENDIX B. Brief Description of Organizations

GLOSSARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX TO VOLUME THREE

PREFACE

Tan Malaka is a name tied to the Indonesian revolution; though recognized as a hero of national independence, he is officially acknowledged only with embarrassment.¹ His story spans two generations of Indonesian nationalists, from the formative pre-1926 era to the military struggle for independence that followed World War II. It also spans two continents, from Western Europe, through the Soviet Union and China, to almost every country in Southeast Asia.

His countless escapes and his ability to survive while being pursued by all the imperialist powers in Southeast Asia have fired the imagination of many who have written about him. The very title of his autobiography, From Jail to Jail, conveys the spirit of adventure that surrounds him.

The extreme brevity of Tan Malaka’s overt and active political life in Indonesia—three periods totalling less than two of his fifty-three years—gives more than enough scope for confusion, ignorance, and intrigue in recounting his story. The year 1921-1922 marked the real beginning of Tan Malaka’s political career as he established the first Sekolah Rakyat at the same time that he moved into active work in the trade unions and in the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI).² His arrest in February 1922 put an end to all this, and the year stands more as a promise of political ability than as a chronicle of completed tasks.

Following Indonesia’s proclamation of independence on 17 August 1945, Tan Malaka emerged from his long absence from the Indonesian political scene, using his own name for the first time in twenty-three years. Seven months later, on 17 March 1946, he was arrested by the Sjahrir government and held without trial for two and a half years. Once again, he was able to initiate some impressive programs—the most notable being the establishment of the Persatuan Perjuangan-but arrest prevented him from bringing them to fruition.³

His release from prison on 16 September 1948 came only five months before the presumed date of his death, 19 February 1949. He spent his first two months of freedom in Yogyakarta assessing the impact of the Madiun uprising and founding the Partai Murba (Proletarian Party).⁴ The final three months of his life were spent in remote areas of East Java attempting to galvanize opposition to the Dutch. This final period repeated the pattern set earlier, as he formulated his ideas and established several organizations and proposals for action rather than actually accomplishing those goals.

Throughout his life Tan Malaka was a political outsider, the opponent of those holding power. He was constantly castigated by the Dutch East Indies government, his immediate enemy, and attracted the ire of many other groups. The established PKI leadership opposed Tan Malaka’s stand against the 1926 uprisings. His insistence during the 1945-1949 period on the policy of perjuangan led him into conflict with the views of the Stalinist rulers of the Soviet Union, the leaders of the PKI, and the social-democratic supporters of the policy of diplomasi, and, of course, with those who opposed independence altogether. All the many configurations constituting the various Indonesian governments from 1945 to the present day have shared at least one attitude—outright opposition to the ideas and methods of Tan Malaka. There has, in consequence, been little incentive within Indonesia for a careful and reasoned analysis of the man. Half-truths, inaccuracies, slander, and calumny have ruled the day. A subdued counterpoint to this approach has been the slight body of panegyrics written by his supporters and a series of romantic novels woven around his saga. Tan Malaka’s long disappearances and the reports and rumors of his spectacular appearances proved to be the right mix for the genre of romantic adventure stories popular in Indonesia in the immediate prewar period.⁵

Just as it has provided grist for the mill of romantic fiction, Tan Malaka’s colorful and adventurous life story has led also to rampant confusion regarding facts, let alone analysis, by many serious observers of recent Indonesia history, Indonesians and foreigners alike. In an example of art imitating nature the reader will note that the mystery/adventure genre may also have influenced Tan Malaka’s own perception of his exploits, as recounted in the pages of his autobiography.⁶

From Jail to Jail reveals much about the man who has remained one of the greatest enigmas in modern Indonesian history. But it also leaves a lot unsaid. At times Tan Malaka concentrates on extreme detail when recounting the narrative side of his autobiography: the layout of Canton in 1923, the social structure of a South China village in the late 1920s, or the history of the Philippines nationalist movement. But on the really burning political issues, more often than not he slides off into allusion and evasion. Time and again he states his reluctance to reveal the course of political events, citing as his reason the continued strength of Western imperialism and its efforts to push back the colonial revolution and the readiness of his enemies to use his words against him. However, he did not live to see the end of the physical struggle for independence and the relative peace of the 1950s, when he could have filled in some of those gaps, such as the identity of his contacts and protectors in China in the 1920s and 1930s, the activities of Partai Republik Indonesia (PARI), and details of his supposed rapprochement with the Comintern in 1931.⁷ The autobiography is, above all, a tantalizing work, leaving the reader with more questions than answers, but with the exhilarated feeling that comes from putting down a good detective novel; and this is appropriate too, for Tan Malaka was always on the run.

From Jail to Jail is an apt title for the manuscript although, apart from his two-and-a-half-year imprisonment by the republican government, his actual periods in jail were not lengthy, consisting of brief detentions prior to deportation by the Dutch East Indies government in 1922, by the United States administration of the Philippines in 1927, and by the British government of Hong Kong in 1932. The intervening periods were dominated, however, by the threat of detection and arrest and by the overwhelming difficulties of survival. The weight of this struggle, combined with the specters of sickness and poverty that haunted him continuously, form the backdrop to Tan Malaka’s life story, itself written in jail.

The text of From Jail to Jail is on the whole an honest account. Tan Malaka indicates where he is holding back (for instance Volume I, pp. 88 and 99, and Volume II, pp. 77 and 108) and cannot fairly be accused of deceiving or misleading the reader. My investigations in archives, newspapers, and other contemporary accounts, and my interviews with Tan Malaka’s family, friends, comrades, and political opponents, have thrown up few factual inaccuracies in the manuscript. This reliability is remarkable considering the circumstances under which it was written, when Tan Malaka was in jail, without access to books or files.

Bibliographic History of the Text

From Jail to Jail is itself a product of jails. The text was written entirely in various jails of the republic (with the exception of the introduction to Volume III, written in Yogyakarta, October 1948). Tan Malaka commenced the work in Magelang jail, where he was detained from March to July 1947, and continued working on it after his moves to Ponorogo and Madiun.

From what I have been able to ascertain, the text was written by hand: Tan Malaka himself refers to obtaining pencil and paper for the work. Section by section, it was collected by visitors and taken to Yogyakarta for safekeeping and transcription.⁸ The irregularity in the flow of the narrative, omissions, and overlapping of sequences can be explained principally by this fragmented approach, which was occasioned by changing political and physical conditions. Moved to different jails, sometimes held alone, sometimes with his comrades, sometimes under threat of physical attack, sometimes suffering extreme cold and recurring bouts of illness, Tan Malaka produced a text that retains a surprising coherence. The less coherent nature of Volume III may well stem from the fact that he had no chance to develop the manuscript after the initial theoretical chapters beyond merely assembling existing articles intended for further elaboration.

Writing a book of this magnitude in jail without access to a library or to personal files created its own problems. Although the text is scattered with references to a wealth of sources, particularly in the fields of history and Marxism, few are in the form of exact quotations. Visitors were able to bring him some books and maps, and the quotations reveal the nature of these publications: the Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indie, John Gunther’s Inside Asia, Hallet Abend’s The Pacific Charter, and Stalin’s History of the CPSU.⁹ Other references such as those to Hegel, Marx, Engels, and Lenin are quoted from memory, an ability for which Tan Malaka was well known during his days in Holland.

A major problem with the text concerns a possible chapter missing between Volumes I and II: Volume I ends in late 1929, with Tan Malaka leaving the village of Sionching, and Volume II opens in early 1932, with Tan Malaka in the middle of the Japanese attack on Shanghai. There is no explanation of how he found himself there nor of his activities over the previous two years. It seems likely to me that a section was lost in the process of transfer and transcription. Considerable political significance attaches to this period, however, and a missing section is not the only explanation of the lacuna. Harry A. Poeze, who has written a biography of Tan Malaka up to 1945, is of the opinion that Tan Malaka has deliberately omitted a discussion of this period of his life in order to conceal a reconciliation in August 1931 with the PKI leader Alimin, representing the Comintern, and his agreement to work for the Comintern again.¹⁰

In view of the fact that Tan Malaka does refer to the obligation I had to discharge in India (Volume II, p. 30) and that elsewhere he states that in 1932 I still had the confidence of the Comintern (Thesis, p. 63), it is hard to believe that he wanted to cover up this reconciliation. Poeze maintains that his aim in writing From Jail to Jail was to distance himself from the PKI, while at the time of Thesis he wanted to draw closer.¹¹ While this argument may reflect his intentions at the time he wrote Volume I (late 1947), by the time the volume was published in mid-1948, Tan Malaka was hoping to establish close relations with the PKI. Above all, however, in my view it is highly unlikely that Tan Malaka would attempt to cover up in such a clumsy fashion by dropping two years from his life story and leaving such a break between Volumes I and II. If the omission was deliberate, and done with political intentions, perhaps it was someone else along the way from writing to publishing who took the action.

From Jail to Jail has appeared in a number of different editions, each covering only a part of the work and none bearing its date of publication. Untangling the resultant bibliographic confusion has been a process based on deduction from reports of publication, hazy recollections of people involved, and internal evidence from the manuscripts themselves.

On 18 June 1948 the Solo newspaper Moerba announced the recent publication of Dari pendjara ke pendjara. This edition is almost certainly the ninety-nine page stencilled edition of Volume I. Although it bears no imprint whatsoever, its foreword is dated Solo, 17 April 1948. Subsequently, Tan Malaka’s longtime friend Anwar Sutan Saidi of Bukit Tinggi (West Sumatra) published a printed version of Volume I and the first part of Volume II as four separate parts (numbered I, II, III, and IV). This edition, published by the Wakaf Republik Press, could have appeared later in 1948 or in 1949. The third edition of Volume I, published by Lutan’s Widjaya Press of Jakarta, was numbered first part, volumes I-II-III, indicating its derivation from the Wakaf Republik edition. Considering that Jakarta (then Batavia) was under Dutch control until the transfer of sovereignty in December 1949, it is unlikely that a work of this nature would have been published there until 1950 at the earliest.

The only complete edition of Volume II is that published by Pustaka Murba in Yogyakarta, probably between July and November 1948. Pustaka Murba was established by Djamaluddin Tamim, on Tan Malaka’s instructions, in April 1946. Djamaluddin was under detention from July 1946 to July 1947, and it was most likely on his release that work began on the original stencilled edition of Volume I (published in June 1948); publication of Volume II would have followed as soon as practicable. Djamaluddin left Yogyakarta in November 1948. The Dutch occupied the city from December 1948 to December 1949, making publication during that period in Yogyakarta unlikely.

Volume III has appeared only in stencilled form. It was published with a typeset cover by Pustaka Murba, Jakarta, so it is unlikely to have been published before 1950. Indeed one source maintains that it was not published until 1956.¹² The stencilled copy bears stamped repagination for the second half. Pages 53-143 are stamped over page numbers 1-91, indicating previous issue, or planned issue, in two parts. I was fortunate enough in 1972 to obtain access to another typescript copy in the possession of Djamaluddin Tamim, which probably was the manuscript used for production of the stencilled version.

As copy-text for my translation I have used the Widjaya edition of Volume I and the Pustaka Murba editions of Volumes II and III. All three were obtained in 1972 from the Wason (now John M. Echols) Collection of Cornell University Libraries. All the other editions mentioned above have been used as comparison texts to reconcile problems appearing in the copy-text. Variations discovered in this process are indicated in the annotations to my translation.¹³

Several parts of From Jail to Jail have been published separately, including the following: Pandangan hidup (Weltanschauung) (Djakarta: Widjaya, 1952); Dari Ir. Soekrnao sampai ke Presiden Soekarno (Djakarta: Yayasan Tjahaja Kita, 1966); and Tan Malaka’s Manila Memoirs, in the Philippine journal Solidarity 1 (no. 1, 1966). A Japanese translation by Noriaki Oshikawa is now underway, Volume I having appeared in 1979. Excerpts from the autobiography also appear in a number of secondary sources on different periods touched on in the autobiography.

Methodology

The Text

The manuscript of From Jail to Jail presented many difficulties, not the least of which was the large number of typographical errors, characteristic of Indonesian publications during the 1940s and early 1950s.¹⁴ While it might be expected that Volume III in stencil form would have a particularly high number of errors, this holds true for Volume II also, although, appearing in printed form, it clearly did not benefit from the same standard of proofreading as Volume I. Overall, I have identified over four hundred typographical errors, an average of one per 7.36 translated pages in Volume I, one per 1.88 pages in Volume II, and one per 1.57 pages in Volume III. These errors fall into a number of different categories. Some 4.3 percent related specifically to the printing process, as opposed to typing or copying errors. These in many cases proved the most obvious errors, but were among the hardest to correct. Lines of type, and occasionally whole paragraphs, were dropped from the text or transposed. In all these cases, I have indicated in footnotes the error and, where possible, have attempted to rearrange the text into a meaningful form. As mentioned above, I have had the benefit of alternative texts with which to compare my copy-text and have indicated where these have been used to resolve difficulties.

Not unexpectedly, foreign words and names account for a high percentage of the errors (18.2 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively). While some of these may be Tan Malaka’s, a large number reflect absolute unfamiliarity with the language or name being used, making it extremely likely that the copyist or typographer made the mistake. The fact that many foreign words are spelled correctly in one place and incorrectly in another strengthens this hypothesis.

Punctuation errors abound throughout the text, accounting for 12.3 percent of total errors. Almost invariably these involve something as insignificant to understanding as a full stop substituted for a comma, a sentence commencing with a lower-case letter, or quotation marks omitted from conversation. I rarely found it necessary to draw attention to these errors in a note.

The remaining typographical errors fall into the categories of addition (8.7 percent), omission (17.7 percent), substitution (23 percent) and transposition (6.8 percent) of letters, syllables, or entire words. Many of these were obvious and easily corrected (for example, menudjud = menudju; dn = dan; atau = atas; tenutlah = tentulah) and I have not indicated their occurrence in a note. Where the error gave rise to substantial uncertainty of meaning in the text, I have given in a note either a full explanation of the reconstruction or simply the word as it appears in the manuscript and as I have reconstructed it (for example, disetudjui = ditudjui). These errors are the standard types encountered in text editing and can have occurred either in the printing process or at any stage in the copying of the manuscript or even in Tan Malaka’s original manuscript itself.¹⁵

Handling all these textual errors and inconsistencies necessitated the construction of a detailed set of guidelines and policies. While at times I was tempted to document every error in the manuscript, and did in fact prepare footnotes to this effect, finally I decided to pull back from this course and document only those errors substantial enough to involve reconstruction and even guesswork on my part. This decision was influenced partly by the essay of Robert Halsbrand Editing the Letters of Letter-Writers in which he says,

I believe, perhaps naively, that the exact reproduction of a manuscript is impossible. Even if we used a photoprocess, we should then begin to worry about the color of the ink, the quality of the paper, the manner of folding the sheet, and so on. When we decide to reproduce it by means of typography, we have made a great concession; and once having made it we need not be stingy as to its extent. No reader of the book will be fooled into thinking he has a manuscript in his hand.¹⁶

How much more unattainable is the goal of an exact reproduction of a manuscript when one is dealing with a translation. Footnotes documenting every single typographical error could perhaps stand in a parallel text, but they seem quite out of place in presenting the manuscript in translation.

A second major challenge in the manuscript was that of language.¹⁷ Tan Malaka’s Indonesian often reflects more the style used in the 1920s, when he left Indonesia on his long exile, than that predominant in the revolutionary period. In a language evolving as quickly as modern Indonesian, this means that considerable differences exist between Tan Malaka’s style and that of the period in which he wrote the book and, even more so, that of present-day Indonesian. In large part these difficulties could be overcome by reference to contemporary dictionaries and native speakers of Indonesian. The differences from modern Indonesian are principally those of variant spellings (bergumandang for berkumandang), the relative lack of differentiation between various affixes (memindjam kepada for memindjamkan kepada), or consonant changes (mempastikan for memastikan).¹⁸

In addition to these archaic and irregular forms of Indonesian, From Jail to Jail presents problems created by the frequent appearance of foreign words and expressions from a wide variety of languages. Dutch, English, German, French, Latin, Minangkabau, Chinese, and Japanese terms appear throughout the text. With the exception of Dutch, I have retained all Tan Malaka’s foreign vocabulary, in most cases giving the English translation in brackets and where necessary a footnote explanation. This policy was adopted in order to retain the cosmopolitan flavor that pervades From Jail to Jail; eradication of these expressions would, I believe, have detracted considerably from the text. In particular, I considered it important to preserve Tan Malaka’s own English expression, with all its peculiarities, such as his reference to the saying It’s a long way to the prairie. To differentiate Tan Malaka’s English from my translation, his English words appear in italics. I have added footnotes only where necessary for an understanding of his intent. I have retained the spelling used in these English expressions, since it is often unclear whether any errors were Tan Malaka’s or the printer’s. On a few occasions I have pluralized the word in order to make it fit the context. As to Tan Malaka’s use of Dutch, I decided to translate the foreign words without annotation. Tan Malaka would have assumed some knowledge of Dutch on the part of the majority of his readers. Illiteracy was high in Indonesia in the 1940s. Those people educated sufficiently to read such a book would have had enough knowledge of Dutch to understand the terms he used. Written and spoken Indonesian of that period frequently was punctuated with Dutch terminology; a decision to preserve Tan Malaka’s Dutch would, I believe, have introduced a barrier to understanding the text that was not encountered by the majority of its contemporary readers.¹⁹ Occasional exception has been made to this policy; for instance, a few Dutch proverbs and sayings have been retained with English translation in parentheses, as have a few terms, in particular inlander (native), the all-pervasive discriminatory epithet of colonial society, always used to separate and differentiate, hence better left in the foreign tongue in which it was uttered.

Some Indonesian words remain in the translation, principally where they have no direct English equivalent (such as Tan Malaka’s term murba) or where they were used in the revolutionary period with particular connotation and significance (such as pemuda, perjuangan, merdeka). In all such cases I have explained the term in a footnote on its first occurrence and have included it in the glossary, where other foreign words used more than once are also to be found. Proper names, principally those of organizations and parties, remain in their original language (mainly Indonesian), as do titles of publications referred to in the text and in footnotes. Where possible I have not retranslated Tan Malaka’s quotations of foreign-language material, but have sought the original or a published English-language translation for inclusion.

Tan Malaka’s text contains much that is strange to an English reader, leaning towards the Germanic style with frequent capitalization, particularly for abstract nouns, and the inclusion of a series of exclamation marks, question marks, and full stops. I have not included these in the English translation, where they would look quite out of place. I have reserved the use of square brackets for the rare occasions where I have felt constrained to introduce some interpolation to make the text meaningful. Parentheses have been used for Tan Malaka’s own interpolations in other quotations, for his parenthetical remarks in the text itself, and for translations of foreign terms, as explained above. Many of the copy-text’s small paragraphs have been amalgamated into larger portions of text, and occasionally very long paragraphs have been split. I have used the new spelling adopted in 1972 for all Indonesian terms, place names, and organizational names. I have retained the spelling of the time (whether prewar or 1945-1972) for personal names and names of publications with, as noted above, corrections of any errors contained therein.

My approach to the text can be summarized by saying that I have tried to remain faithful to the flavor and spirit of Tan Malaka’s writing, while at the same time presenting a readable English-language book. Where the two aims have been irreconcilable, the latter has prevailed. I believe my task has been more to present Tan Malaka and his ideas to the English-speaking reader than to attempt to render every idiosyncrasy of the text.

Annotation of the Text

From Jail to Jail as presented here in English contains over thirteen hundred notes. These annotations are of three categories. A number of notes relate to the text itself to explain errors and uncertainties in the text or to explain the meaning of a foreign word retained in the translation. Some provide sources for the many quotations scattered throughout the text. On occasion Tan Malaka himself has given the author, title, and page number of his quotations, but elsewhere the source has proved considerably more elusive, and occasionally all my attempts to track it down have proved fruitless. The majority of the annotations provide historical and contextual information on matters raised or referred to in the text. Many of the annotations explain events or concepts familiar to Tan Malaka’s contemporary readers but requiring explanation today, particularly for non-Indonesian readers. Since the story spans fifty years and two continents and refers to ancient and even prehistoric times, this task has been quite formidable.

I have prepared the translation to be read not only by Indonesianists, but also by people interested in the history of communism and nationalism in Asia and in political autobiography in general. I have, therefore, provided annotation that specialists in any one of those disciplines may regard as superfluous but that may be necessary to others for an understanding of the text.

Biographical and organizational appendixes give information on individuals and organizations integral to Indonesian history. Others have been dealt with in footnotes as they occur in the text. Such annotation has been limited to brief factual details relevant to the text, with reference to more comprehensive sources.

Research Program

This project took twelve years to complete. I began in mid-1972, acquiring photocopies of the copy-text from Cornell University. From July to September 1972 I studied the copy-text and some principal secondary sources on Indonesian history in order to start assembling a coherent picture of Tan Malaka and to chart the avenues of investigation I would follow. From September to December 1972 I was able to undertake research in Indonesia. This period was devoted mainly to recording interviews with people who had known Tan Malaka in his home village, concerning his schooling, his political activity, or his imprisonment, either as friend, relative, comrade, or political opponent. The interviews were conducted principally in Jakarta, but also in Serang and Bogor (West Java), Semarang (Central Java), and Padang, Padang Panjang, Bukit Tinggi, and Pandam Gadang (West Sumatra). They were mainly conducted in Indonesian, with one or two in Jakarta in English, and several in Pandam Gadang conducted through an interpreter in Minangkabau.

The remainder of my research period in Indonesia was spent in collecting material by and about Tan Malaka. In this regard, the Pustaka Murba archives held in Jakarta by Djamaluddin Tamim proved to be most valuable. The newspaper and periodical collections of the Perpustakaan Museum Pusat (now Perpustakaan Nasional) in Jakarta and Perpustakaan Negara in Yogyakarta were extremely rewarding.

Only after this research period was complete did I commence the actual translation in early 1973. Over the next eighteen months I prepared the first draft of the translation, working entirely from the copy-text. During 1974 and 1975 the draft was copy-edited for English expression and checked back sentence by sentence with the original. Beginning in 1975, regretfully, the project had to be completed as a part-time effort.

In 1976 I commenced annotating the translation. Further research into contemporary newspapers and other publications complemented the material I had gathered during my field work in Indonesia in 1972. Work in the National Archives and Records Service (NARS) in Washington, D.C., and in the Public Records Office (PRO) in London yielded archival material of considerable significance where Tan Malaka was considered to be impinging on the territorial possessions of these powers. The principal collection consulted in the United States was the Bureau of Insular Affairs records, particularly decimal file 856d.00 in record group 59, which proved extremely valuable for documenting Tan Malaka’s activities in the Philippines, particularly the events surrounding his arrest and deportation in August 1927. United States government interest in Tan Malaka did not vanish with his departure from the Philippines, however, and there is a small but significant body of intelligence reports concerning his role in the postwar period to be found in the State Department Research and Intelligence files. The principal collections consulted in the Public Records Office were those of the Foreign Office (FO 371 and FO 372), India Office (PZ), and Colonial Office (CO 273). Of particular importance were the Malayan Bulletin of Political Intelligence, throughout the 1920s, and the Malaya Command Intelligence Notes.

Material uncovered in the United States and British archives revealed the extent of intelligence cooperation among the various colonial powers. Continual exchange of information regarding the presumed activities of Tan Malaka and other dangerous elements took place throughout the 1920s and 1930s. From these sources I established a solid basis of Dutch intelligence and government material connected with Tan Malaka. This was complemented by the thorough documentation provided in Harry Poeze’s work. I have been fortunate enough to consult many of the documents obtained by Poeze and other scholars when consulting the Dutch archives for research on periods and events that incidentally touch on Tan Malaka. The principal collections of such material are those of the Algemeene Secretaris and the Ministerie van Koloniën, held in the Algemeene Rijksarchief (ARA).

Large amounts of information came from the Mailrapporten (mail reports from the Netherlands Indies), which contain intelligence reports, letters, and transcripts of interrogations of political prisoners. These sources have provided the principal documentation on the Partai Republik Indonesia (PARI). In 1976 I was also able to consult the collections (in particular serial collections) of the Library of Congress and the British Museum, and to do some follow-up research at Cornell University—both in the library and in the private collection of Professor Benedict Anderson. A short visit to Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia in late 1976 also enabled me to follow up a number of leads uncovered over the previous few years.

Between 1977 and 1980 I finished the translation, with reference to the comparison texts and to experts in Indonesian and the other languages in the text. I then undertook a detailed analysis of textual errors and problems. I spent considerable time in basic research on the Philippine national revolution and the Chinese revolution of the 1920s in order to be able to annotate Tan Malaka’s substantial pieces on those historical periods. These were not in my own field of study and I sent these chapters, with preliminary annotation, to experts in these fields for comment and guidance as to further sources for study. Also during this period, I prepared a first draft of my introduction.

In 1980 during a visit to Manila I consulted with Philippine scholars of the labor and communist movement of the 1920s and did some research into contemporary material held in the National Library. I was particularly fortunate in finding a book of 1927 newspaper clippings on Tan Malaka collected by the Filipino nationalist historian Carlos Ronquillo.

A holiday visit to Indonesia also in 1980 enabled me to renew old contacts and to make an unexpectedly rewarding journey to Bayah, on the south coast of West Java, where Tan Malaka stayed during most of the Japanese occupation. I happened to be in Jakarta at the same time as Harry Poeze, who was undertaking research for his continuing work on Tan Malaka, and so we decided to travel together to Bayah. It was our intention merely to look at the place in order to provide a context for Tan Malaka’s description of it. To our surprise, our host, on hearing of our interest in Tan Malaka, informed us that there were still a number of people in the town who remembered him. Our host made immediate arrangements for us to meet these people and to hear their reminiscences, and they took us around the town pointing out landmarks referred to in the autobiography. It was on this visit to Indonesia that I managed to discover the area of Jakarta where Tan Malaka lived at the beginning of the Japanese occupation and to meet some people who remembered him there.

My principal sources both for the annotation and my introduction were my interviews and Tan Malaka’s own writings, as well as newspaper reports and archival documents. I used secondary sources principally in the documentation of events referred to in the text, but they are not central to an understanding of Tan Malaka himself. Several exceptions to this are the handful of secondary sources used as principal documents for different parts of my study. These sources are Ruth T. McVey, The Rise of Indonesian Communism; Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944-1946; George McTurnan Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia; and Harry A. Poeze, Tan Malaka, strijder voor Indonesie’s vrijheid: levensloop van 1897 tot 1945. I used other secondary sources principally as points from which to diverge in reaching an analysis of Tan Malaka.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted, above all, to those in Indonesia who had known Tan Malaka and who gave freely of their time to discuss the man, his ideas, and his deeds. Most of these people agreed to my taping interviews: his family in Pandam Gadang (including the present holder of the title Datuk Tan Malaka); his publisher in Bukit Tinggi, Anwar Sutan Saidi, and Arief Fadillah, both of whom spent a whole weekend recalling old times; Djamaluddin Tamim, who founded PARI together with Tan Malaka and returned from his exile in Digul to rejoin Tan Malaka; Tje’ Mamat, who relived many battles in the space of a single afternoon in Serang, brandishing his samurai sword and singing the Internationale; Djalil and Mai Muna, two gentle people who had much to recall; Adam Malik, who made countless interruptions to his busy schedule, first as president of the United Nations General Assembly, then as foreign minister, and lastly as vice president of Indonesia. So many others, whom I list in my bibliography, gave both their time and their opinions. The one whom I remember most clearly is Djaos, imprisoned with Tan Malaka in Hong Kong in 1932 and later sent to Digul. One rainy afternoon in December 1972 I received an urgent message: Come quickly. A visitor is waiting for you at Jalan Diponegoro. A frail man of seventy, almost blind, had trekked several kilometers along muddy paths and had forded a river to reach the landrover near Tanggerang, so anxious was he to tell his story to someone interested in Tan Malaka.

To the others who have contributed to the scholarship on Tan Malaka—especially Harry Poeze, Yuji Suzuki, Rudolf Mrázek, Giok Po Oey, Ruth McVey, and Ben Anderson—I owe a great deal for information and ideas that I have taken up or taken on. I must thank all the people whom I consulted in their capacity as experts outside my field, whose role I have referred to above, particularly C. P. Fitzgerald, Adrian Chan, Al McCoy, Milagros Guerrero, B. Joseph, Li Chuan Siu, Marcus Susanto, Mitsuo Nakamura, Randolph Albury, George Novack, and Rey Ileto.

The Association for Asian Studies Indonesian Translation Project Group supported me through the actual translation for publication in their series. The Ford Foundation awarded me a travel grant for my 1972 research in Indonesia. The Department of Indonesian and Malayan Studies of the University of Sydney has, since my enrollment as a postgraduate student in 1976, extended all facilities to me, including the possibility (in the course of other business for the department) to visit London, Amsterdam, Washington, and Jakarta collecting data relating to this study.

Within the department, first Peter Worsley and then Michael van Langenberg read the manuscript and made numerous suggestions. From outside, David Reeve applied his scalpel to the first draft of my introduction, while Molly Bondan’s critique reflected her years of involvement with the Indonesian revolution. Lenore Manderson gave me the spirit to carry on to the finish.

As to the manuscript itself, editorial comment was given in considerable detail by Muriel Frederick and Allen Myers, both of whom must have thought I had lost command of the English language at times, while Anneke van Mosseveld bore the greatest typing load.

I would like to thank Christine Freeman and Antoinette Azar Luce for their assiduous copy-editing which penetrated many of the inconsistencies of the typescript. The responsibility for any which remain is mine. Hope Hendricks deserves accolades for her computer skills and for her pains in the enormous project of preparing the final manuscript. Finally, my appreciation goes to James L. Cobban, general editor of the Monographs in International Studies at Ohio University, for his detailed and time-consuming work over several years in bringing the publication of this translation of From Jail to Jail to fruition.

During the long years that this study has taken to complete, every encouragement and support has been given by my family. My mother, Olwen Tudor Jones, and sister, Tory Angelli, typed and proofread various sections. Without my companion, Allen Myers, I know I could not have seen it through. My daughter, Mina, for her first eleven years, has had to live with Tan Malaka as an ever-present fourth member of the household. To all, my deepest thanks.

INTRODUCTION

The Text of From Jail to Jail

From Jail to Jail is a substantial work of over nine hundred manuscript pages divided into three volumes. It begins with an introduction explaining how Tan Malaka came to write it. Although long pressed to write his life story, Tan Malaka had not done so for several reasons. He explains as follows: first, there was so much other work of greater importance; second, such a project was not a part-time job; and third, his circumstances of being moved frequently from jail to jail, often with no chance of writing, made the idea impossible to implement. Finally, he expresses concern at the use to which such a work could be put by his enemies.

In March 1947, however, Tan Malaka found himself in relatively good circumstances in Magelang prison, Central Java. Housed in a separate cell and provided with pencil, paper, and a table, he decided to devote himself to writing if only to fill in the time. He did not have the source materials to work on more serious endeavors, such as his long-postponed treatise on Aslia, and so, as he describes it, he was forced into writing these reminiscences.¹

Such a preliminary statement expressing reluctance to concentrate on his own story, a desire to leave his own history to history itself, but finally capitulating to the demands of others is not an uncommon disclaimer. We see the Javanese nationalist, Soetomo, introducing his memoirs with a similar sentiment: the purpose of the writer in writing this book of memories is the desire to accede to the requests of various people who would like to understand the story of my life.²

In September 1947, in Ponorogo prison, Central Java, Tan Malaka penned his introduction, explaining the focus he had given his autobiography, a focus reflected in the title for the work.

What I write here is only a part of my life history. But it is a part I consider not to be less important because of its close connection with my efforts to realize the desire for independence in both the political and economic sense. I focus this story on several prisons, and so I shall describe the events surrounding each of these prison episodes . . . before, during, and after my imprisonment. . . . I have entitled this book From Jail to Jail. I believe that there is a relationship between jail and genuine freedom. Those who really want freedom for all must be ready and willing at every moment to suffer the loss of their own freedom. Whoever wishes to be free must be ready to be jailed. (Volume I, p. 4)

The prison image has been chosen by a number of Asian political leaders for the title of their autobiographical writings, for example, Mahatma Gandhi’s Jail Experiences as Told by Himself, M. N. Roy’s Letters from Jail, Ho Chi Minh’s Prison Diary, and Phan Boi Chau’s Prison Notes. It is further reminiscent of Sylvio Pellico’s Le Mie Prigioni (My Prisons), popular reading in Europe after its first publication in 1832.³

The image of suffering, exile, and persecution of those in the right, or holders of truth, is a powerful one with cross-cultural meaning. It takes many shapes: the Hindu ascetic, the Muslim fakir, the Japanesea ronin, the Christian martyr. In the Indonesian context it blends into the Javanese notion of sacrifice and self-denial as a means to acquire power, and into the Minangkabau view of isolation in the rantau (outside) as a necessary course to strengthen the alam (Minangkabau world).⁴ This concept was presented in exquisite form by Ho Chi Minh in one of the poems in his Prison Diary, used as the frontispiece to the present volume.

By stressing the harshness of his experiences, Tan Malaka sought to establish his credentials as a true leader. At the same time, by emphasizing the parallels in the behavior and attitudes of all the governments that had imprisoned him, he tarred the republican government with the brush of arbitrary and repressive policies that he so liberally applied to the imperialist powers. In so doing he sought to undermine the credentials of those then in power: by implication they had forfeited their right to govern, and might be expected one day to pay the price for their sins and surrender power to the true leader.

Structure of the Text

While the jail experiences themselves, and the consequent fugitive life that Tan Malaka was forced to lead, certainly form a consistent thread through the manuscript, they form the focus not for the manuscript as a whole, but rather of the most dominant of a series of interweaving themes, the autobiography itself. Violations of the rule of law by a number of different powers is a recurrent projection from these prison experiences, as are the role of imperialism and the overriding need for unity in the struggle to achieve its overthrow. A counterpoint to such a political emphasis is provided by the significant role of good fortune (or fate) in the story, and the style of romance and adventure, about which I comment further later in this introduction.

Tan Malaka asserts that his life history does not follow the usual chronology from childhood to adulthood. And the autobiographical sequences are so penetrated by these above-mentioned recurring themes that the course of events frequently is hard to follow. Time and again through the text a particular incident will serve as a springboard for leaving his own story to embark upon a moral or theoretical exposition, or for telling another tale in the that reminds me of the story about style. Tan Malaka often becomes so engrossed in the storytelling that he finds it hard to break off and return to the account at hand. His difficulty in keeping within bounds is illustrated in the following comment: I have deliberately selected only a few episodes. . . . Even so, what I have written for this section has exceeded what I had planned . . . (Volume I, p. 36).

The balance between the space given to particular incidents or periods may seem uneven in terms of their apparent significance, but it is often through the rendition of seemingly tangential issues that Tan Malaka gives the emphasis and structure he seeks to impart to his life story. The prison incidents themselves occupy but a brief period of his life—two periods of several months each in 1922 and 1932—prior to the longer detention during which he wrote the autobiography. It is clear, however, from his introduction and from his choice of title, that they provided the framework in which he wished to present his life.

In his exposition both of the past and of his own story, Tan Malaka employs historical materialism as his paradigm. While not presented as a history of Indonesia, this text may be regarded as perhaps the first to bring this paradigm into play on the broad canvas of Indonesia from prehistory to the contemporary struggle for independence, as I discuss later in my assessment of the significance of this text. Tan Malaka himself had used this tool of analysis as early as the 1920s, but in a more limited and directed fashion in support of his argument for Indonesian independence and for the organizational and political means to achieve this end. In From Jail to Jail, however, for the first time we see how the historical materialist approach shapes his perception of the development of Indonesian society from Homo erectus in Trinil, East Java, to the signing of the Renville Treaty in January 1948.

Before discussing the style and language used by Tan Malaka in this text, it is necessary to provide an overview of its structure, showing the interweaving of the various themes and their relative balance.

Volume I

Following the introduction, Tan Malaka precedes his own story with four short chapters in which he seeks to provide an ideological perspective through which to view his life story as the struggle between justice and tyranny on the battleground of my own person and my own life, and in which he moves from the general to the specific.

In chapter 1, The Struggle Between Two Forces, Tan Malaka introduces his readers to the concepts of repulsion and attraction in the physical world and their reflection in philosophy as thesis and antithesis, touching briefly on the differences between Hegel’s idealism and Marx’s materialism. Chapter 2, Human Rights, gives a lightning sketch of the development of class struggles to advance these rights through the English, French, and Russian revolutions. Chapter 3, The Right to Self-Preservation, focuses on the struggle for the rights of individuals to survive economically and politically, as illustrated in the destruction of feudalism. Chapter 4, Laws and Regulations, deals with individual rights as guaranteed in the democratic states of France, England, and the United States, paying particular attention to rights relating to arrest and detention, trial and punishment. He concludes the chapter by asking what meaning these rights have for the proletariat, who faces structural oppression within capitalist countries, and even more so for the oppressed of the colonies. Only at this point does he feel that the ground has been laid for a discussion of his own life, and chapter 5 begins the autobiography proper, with Tan Malaka returning to Indonesia in November 1919.

On board the ship as it pulls out of Amsterdam, he looks back at his five years’ teacher training in Holland, his political evolution in the wake of the unfolding Russian revolution and, in passing, he writes a few pages on his childhood and schooling in West Sumatra. In chapters 6 to 11 of Volume I, Tan Malaka continues his story in basically chronological order, through his employment from 1919 to 1921 in Deli, North Sumatra, as a teacher of the children of coolies working on the tobacco plantations; his period of political involvement in Java in the union movement, the PKI, and the radical nationalist education system, culminating in his election as PKI chairman in December 1921, his arrest in February 1922, and his deportation to Holland; his candidacy for the Dutch Communist party in the 1922 parliamentary elections and his fifteen-month stay in Moscow, including participation in the Fourth Congress of the Comintern; his dispatch to Canton, from where he was to function as Comintern representative for Southeast Asia; and his activities in this regard during 1923-1925.

Chapter 12, The Philippines, is a forty-page essay on the history of the Philippines, in particular of the nationalist revolution of the 1890s. In this major departure from his own story, Tan Malaka stresses two recurring themes of his autobiography: the common identity of the Malay/Indonesian/Filipino people and cultures; and the need for unity among various political currents, classes, and ethnic groups in the fight for national liberation. The lessons he draws in this section are echoed throughout the rest of the autobiography. The final two chapters of Volume I return to his own story, relating his activities in the Philippines from 1925 to 1927, the events surrounding his arrest and deportation to China in August 1927, and his flight to the tiny village of Sionching in South China, where he lived in seclusion until late 1929. Only in passing in chapter 14 does Tan Malaka discuss his role in opposition to the 1926 PKI-led uprising in Indonesia, the subsequent smashing of the party by the colonial authorities, and the establishment by Tan Malaka of a separate political party, PARI.

Volume II

Although one hundred pages longer than Volume I, the second volume contains only six chapters, providing a narrative account of Tan Malaka’s experiences from 1932 to 1945. It opens with Tan Malaka caught in the thick of the Sino-Japanese conflict in Shanghai in January 1932. Chapter 2 describes his arrest and detention in Hong Kong in late 1932 and his second deportation to Amoy. In chapter 3 he discusses in considerable detail his experiences in, and the social structure of, Iwe, another small village in South China, and his move to Amoy, where he established the Foreign Languages School in 1935. Again the Japanese army’s southern advance caught up with him, and Tan Malaka fled to Rangoon. Chapter 4 describes his subsequent journey through the Malay Peninsula, involving a substantial, somewhat romanticised, account of Malay history, again stressing the theme of unity raised in the Philippines chapter. It continues with his five-year period disguised as a Chinese schoolteacher in Singapore. When the Japanese occupied Singapore, once again Tan Malaka moved on, seizing the opportunity the war presented to go Toward the Republic of Indonesia, the title of the concluding chapter of Volume II. This chapter discusses his experiences throughout the Japanese occupation, living incognito on the outskirts of Jakarta for one year and then for two years as a clerk in a coal mine in a remote area on the southern coast of West Java.

Volume III

Volume III represents a radical departure from the narrative approach dominant in Volumes I and II. The introduction is actually a postscript covering the period March-October 1948 (including the Madiun Affair) and it completely wrenches the reader from the situation of August 1945 and the Proclamation of Independence, with which Volume II closes. Following the Introduction, Tan Malaka launches into a forty-five-page chapter entitled Weltanschauung, in which he gives a historical materialist account of the development of human society through primitive communism, slavery, and feudalism, paying particular attention to religious beliefs. He then moves on to discuss the emergence of capitalism and the associated development of philosophy, the ascendancy of science and dialectical materialism, and concludes with a few points of dialectical materialism as applied to modern Indonesian history. Chapter 2, The State, concentrates on the evolution of state forms and on differing ways in which the state is defined in order to serve different political interests. Chapter 3, The Rise and Fall of States, discusses changes in modes of production as the motive force for changes in state forms. Chapter 4, Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis, recapitulates much of the preceding three chapters, with an emphasis on the final stage of evolution from class society to communism via the dictatorship of the proletariat.

With chapter 5 the reader is brought back from abstraction to the historical reality of the proclamation of Indonesian independence in August 1945, the legitimacy of which is defended in terms of the right of self-determination. Chapter 6 elaborates on this right, examining the class forces in Indonesian society both before and after the Dutch occupation, and the effect of the Japanese occupation in accelerating the Indonesian revolution. Chapter 7, From Engineer Sukarno to President Sukarno, shifts from discussion of broad social forces to examination of a pivotal individual in historical context. It contains trenchant criticism of the political direction taken by Sukarno and also leaps ahead to a discussion of the surat warisan (testament) in which Tan Malaka was nominated as president should Sukarno and Vice President Hatta be killed or captured.

In chapter 8 Tan Malaka shifts back to narrative style, picking up the story where he left off at the end of Volume II. A detailed account of the events surrounding the proclamation leads in the ensuing chapters to a discussion of Tan Malaka’s opposition to the policies pursued by the government of the republic and to his establishment of a united front known as Persatuan Perjuangan (Struggle Front) in January 1946. Considerable detail of the Persatuan Perjuangan and its differences from the government is given in chapters 11 to 14. Chapter 15 is a thorough analysis of the two agreements signed with the Dutch (Linggajati and Renville) and why Tan Malaka regarded them as setbacks to the revolution. Chapter 16 recounts the arrest of Tan Malaka and a number of his followers in March 1946 (as the Persatuan Perjuangan challenged the authority of the government) and their experiences in detention. It includes the events surrounding the 3 July Affair (1946), presented by the government as the "coup d’etat of Tan Malaka," and the subsequent trials in March 1948. From Jail to Jail concludes with the Official Statement of the Government of the Republic of Indonesia on the 3 July Affair, which is followed by Tan Malaka’s point-by-point refutation.

Volume III is distinguished from the earlier volumes by its relative lack of a personal narrative to balance the internal discordances and shifts of perspective. A number of its chapters actually are previously published articles by Tan Malaka, and the volume itself has more of the feel of a manuscript in preparation. The possibility that Volume III was compiled by someone else is countered by the introduction, which is certainly in Tan Malaka’s style, with puns, Minang proverbs, foreign expressions, and rhetorical flourish, and which gives an explanation of the different approach: This volume differs from the previous two, both in origin and purpose. It has its beginnings in my detention in a prison in the republic and concerns the resulting judicial process. Therefore it is rather abstract and theoretical, tending towards the polemical (Volume III, p. 3).

Concerned at the attention given to the individual’s role by bourgeois historians (Volume I, p. 39), Tan Malaka continually relates his own story to broader forces in operation: colonialism, imperialism, and national liberation struggles form the backdrop to his own saga. At times this relationship emerges naturally from the story as told; at other times it is served up somewhat artificially as a distinct didactic section, such as the introductions to Volumes I and III. These sections occupy some fifteen and fifty pages respectively at the beginning of the two volumes, and a further forty-five pages constituting the chapter of the history of the Philippines. As well as these one-hundred-odd pages, many other segments within chapters on his life story cover similar historical or theoretical topics.

These sections illustrate an essential feature of the autobiography: Tan Malaka’s concern that his own story be presented and interpreted as instructive for the present and future heroes of our struggle for independence (Volume I, p. 3). This concern permeates both the presentation of his own experiences and the didactic sections that precede Volumes I and III, as well as the detailed historical sections such as that on the development of the Philippine revolution in Volume II.

The modern reader may find these didactic sections trite and may resent the fact that they obstruct the development of Tan Malaka’s own story. From Tan Malaka’s perspective, however, they are essential. Without an understanding of the basics of dialectical materialism and the development of class society, the whole purpose of Tan Malaka’s life and the reason for his frequent detention would elude the reader, reducing his story to the level of the adventure thrillers written about him. Tan Malaka’s principal objective was to illuminate these questions to the Indonesian reader of the late 1940s. Neither the stifling Dutch colonial education system nor the mass literacy drives of the Japanese had provided any foundation in this regard, and Tan Malaka felt constrained to rectify this at every turn. Whether he succeeded in this aim is another question. In From Jail to Jail the didactic questions sit so oddly ill at ease with the narrative sections of the work, with