I have closed the book on power
"Saya sudah tutup buku dengan kekuasaan",
Suara Independen no.3/I, August 1995
Translated by Alex G Bardsley
A true pearl still shines, though covered in the mud of falsehood. The analogy, it seems, is fitting enough to describe the figure of Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Though his literary works are banned from circulating in this country, yet they glow with a luster to be admired. Of Indonesia's literati, it is Pram whose works have been most frequently translated, into over twenty languages.
Recently, in the middle of last July, Pram was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in the category of Journalism, Letters, and Creative Communication Arts. He is recorded as the tenth Indonesian to receive the prestigious award. According to the schedule, the Magsaysay award, along with as much as US$50 thousand (about Rp110 million), will be presented August 31. "But I still do not know whether I can go or not," says Pram. Understandable, since for thirty years the author, who was confined for [ten years, three months] in detention on Buru Island, has been restricted by the government. The following is an excerpt from Pram's interview with Suara Independen:
What is the story behind your getting the Ramon Magsaysay award?
First I got a phone call from Kuala Lumpur asking whether I would be able to go to the Philippines. From that I figured that this might have some connection with Ramon Magsaysay. I had heard reports three years before, that I had been nominated from Malaysia. Not long afterwards I got a fax from the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation that was sent by Nona B. Javier, Executive Trustee, dated July 19, 1995. It said that Pram got the Ramon Magsaysay for distinction in the category of Journalism, Letters and Creative Communication Arts.
How did you feel?
Pleased obviously, that it turns out someone appreciates what I have worked on all this time. Especially in my present situation, having experienced so much thievery, having been slandered, accused of all kinds of things and unable to defend myself, that it turns out after 30 years someone appreciates my work too. Not that I hoped for an award like this. Before that there was also word that there were many who proposed me for the Nobel prize, but let it be....
The prize is considerable right?
Many people have asked: what will you do with all that money? Well I already know the character of the New Order, so I am wary lest it be stolen too. I will use the money for my life savings. In the commotion of the banning of the book Nyanyi Sunyi Seorang Bisu not long ago, my money was not returned. Even though the money to publish the book was my wife's spending money.
Is there a possibility you will travel or not?
My travelling or not to Manila depends on a number of requirements that must be fulfilled. First, there is the factor of my health, since I just had an operation. A more serious factor, however, is the problem of permission to travel abroad. My passport has been withheld since 1961. I refuse to be treated differently from other Indonesian citizens by having "the duty to request special permission" from the government agencies concerned with socio-political supervision. The last factor is that, for the last 30 years no matter where, outside my home, I feel there is no guarentee of my own safety.
I myself have tried asking whether I could get another passport. In 1961 I got an invitation to go to Austria, I went to the passport bureau, but was ignored. That year I had been arrested by General Nasution in conjunction with my book Hoa Kiau di Indonesia being banned. After I got out of the New Order's prisons in the 80s, I received many invitations from overseas, but when I merely gave a lecture at UI, I was was thrown out and interrogated for 10 days. At the time I asked if there was a chance I could get another passport, eh...the military officers all laughed. Enough, after that I did not want to deal with my passport again. I closed the book on power [the powers-that-be]. They always say, we have closed the book on political convicts/prisoners, so I say the same, close the book on power.
Do you still read the newspaper?
I read the papers to gather information for material on the geographical region of Indonesia, for an encyclopedia. As for politics, in practice I don't follow them, and as for literature and culture, I no longer follow them at all....
Why?
The experience of these 30 years turned off my interest. Thirty years oppressed. What is not literature is what I read. For example I read Bruce Grant's work on the politicians and the gods of India. He makes an evaluation of democracy in India. The book is very interesting, he also quotes Plato's saying that democracy is beautiful: the meeting between harmoni and disorder and also the meeting between people who have power and people who have nothing. Plato said this in the time of ancient Greece, and even then there was already a parliament there, but 4% of the inhabitants of Greece were slaves.
Why were you drawn to the world of writing?
Actually it's more a family issue. My father was a star pupil in school. Up through his graduation from Kweekschol he was always a star pupil. Apparently his hopes for me were dashed, I was thought too stupid. To graduate from the seven-year elementary school, I took as much as ten years to finish.
I studied at the private Boedi Oetomo school, where the principal was my own father. My Dutch language scores were below the government school [standard], of course. I felt inferior around government school kids. This feeling of inferiority made me afraid to express my opinion, and at that point I started to write. Father himself was a writer.
Once I had completed elementary school, and I wanted to go on to MULO, I went to my father and told him I wanted to continue my education. Without giving it much thought he said, "Dumb kid, go back to elementary school!" So when the new school year started I went back to the elementary school. My teacher asked me in Dutch, "Why are you back here, after all you've already graduated." I took my books and ran into the cemetery, which lay between the school and home. There was a castor bean tree there, and I grabbed hold of it and screamed.... Even now when I am reminded of that, my eyes still get teary.
Finally I went to a technical school in Surabaya. My mother and I paid for it. At five in the morning I would go to the bridge that connected the village and the city. I bought paddy that had just been harvested, and sold it again later in planting season. From that paddy I bought Bata shoes and left for Surabaya to go to the school I could complete as quickly as possible, so I could get a job fast. That was my fifteenth year, and my first time wearing shoes. Mother taught me you have to stand on your own feet.
Then?
After technical school, Japan arrived to threaten us. Before getting our diplomas we got landed with military duty. In fact, we had only just been enlisted, but I was taught by my family to be anti-Dutch and anti-colonial, while at the same time I was being corralled via school into the draft, well, I just ran...away from Surabaya and back to Blora. No chance to receive a diploma.
I had to work for the family, take care of everything, nurse my mother who was badly ill. Later she died giving birth to her youngest child. I was the first child of nine brothers and sisters. Father told me to leave the house and from there I went to Jakarta with my younger brother. In Jakarta I stayed with my uncle, and there was a typewriter there. I learned how to use it, and after a week's practice applied for a job at the Domei, the news office of the Japanese occupation. I was accepted. I had the opportunity to attend stenographers' school for a year, and among my teachers were Hatta for economics and Maruto Darusman for sociology. It was there for the first time too that I wrote a book, about Muhamad Yamin from his lectures "Diponegoro" and "Gadjah Mada," but I was only paid 30 perak....
What authors do you admire?
First is the man of letters, I Nyoman Pandji Tisna, who wrote the book A Year in Bedahulu; I also admire Idrus, one of the greatest stylists so far. In attitude I admire Chairil Anwar. When men were turned into cattle during the Japanese era, he said, "I am an untamed beast /From the herd outcast." He was tortured by the Kempeitai for that poem. These are the ones I guess helped form me.
You once said that many of your literary works take their setting from periods of great or fundamental change in this nation, periods of crisis. Why are you drawn to this?
Well, this is because I want to know my own self as [part of] a nation. With the quartet [of which] Child of All Nations [is part], it is the great social-cultural changes leading up to the national awakening, that would produce liberation. My book Arus Balik (coming out this August) tells of the change from traditional independence to colonial possession. There's also one still unpublished, Arok and Dedes, that relates the change from Javanese Hindu society to Hindu Java. And another one, Mangir, that describes the situation after Majapahit fell and the villages became self-sufficient, and were united in a kingdom of villages: namely, Mataram.
How much time does it take to assemble your material?
Actually I have been gathering material since I was young. I don't read it as a scholar, I just take the spirit [semangatnya] of it. If I used scholarly methods I would be a historian, which of course I'm not. Now, here I add one more element, that is my ego. And he processes it himself while I just take notes. So the material that is already there below the level of consciousness I bring out, and once it is added together with my ego, all that's left is for me to jot it down.
Do you have any comment on the release of Soebandrio and Omar Dhani?
Before they were granted clemency I was informed by an English journalist. He said that ABRI was greatly opposed to granting clemency, but Harto was sure to offer it to raise his international stature. So there is some kind of scheme in which napol ["political convicts"] and tapol ["political prisoners"] become assets for power nowadays. I join in rejoicing at the release of people who are oppressed. Not just in Indonesia, but anywhere in the world.
But why were only three people released? Why was Latief, for example, not released?
Like I said before, they are a political asset of power. All of this is put to use in the interests of power. If power had no interest in it, they would not do anything.
So it is just to support the status quo?
Right. Once there was another journalist who asked about the possibility of clemency. In other states of course it is common to offer clemency, why is it that Indonesia, which has the Pancasila, is unable to? Is Indonesia on some other planet, and did those people who disagreed never have relatives, neighbors, a father? Are they made from dirt? From the look of things I get the impression that the tapol/napol issue is a matter of paranoia....
Meaning?
That's a sickness in one's thinking. No longer normal.
Like what?
Ya, people are pursued, closed in, compelled to do this and that, forbidden to do this and that. Like a nation before it is free. People forget what the goals of the revolutionaries were. Didn't Sukarno often say, "Freedom to be free," but nowadays isn't it "Freedom to be unfree"? What is that? It's paranoid. It is no accident that Nasution on October 17, 1952, pointed the muzzles of his artillery towards the state palace. This is a KNIL man. And it is no accident either that Soeharto is a KNIL man, ex-KNIL. During the struggle for independence they swore loyalty to the Queen of the Netherlands instead. It is no accident their blather gets more and more pompous.
What figures from the struggle do you admire? Tan Malaka? Mas Marco Kartodikromo?
(Shaking his head twice:) I admire Bung Karno. He was capable of creating a "nation," not a "bangsa," without shedding blood. He may be the only one, or at most one of a very few. The birth of a nation usually, wherever it happens, is a bloodbath.
But weren't there armed struggles in Aceh, in Java, and other places?
Those were not for national independence. Some were about religion, some about feudalism, some were rampages because the people were continually oppressed. That's not politics, there is no political basis there. This went on all through the colonial era. Not that I don't value them.... But in the national struggle, Sukarno was really number one, he was a great man. That was the cause of the dualism in the national revolution: Sukarno constantly wanted negotiations, while the young crowd wanted to take up weapons. Through the present day he has been continuously scorned.
[...] You were involved with Lekra, and passionately opposed the Manikebu. So you were grouped with artists who changed function to become some kind of ideologue?
I was pretty much autonomous. Even though I was a member of Lekra. I became a member of Lekra not by signing myself up. At the Lekra Congress in Solo in 1959, I was invited to attend. While traveling around I just went. Once there, I was asked to say a few words, so I did. At the end of the Congress, I was appointed a member of the Pleno. Without having climbed up from the ranks, unexpectedly perched straight up on top. With that I was in more difficulties, because the people who had been in the organization a long time were unhappy to see me.
But you accepted the appointment...
I accepted. It was not a criminal organization you know. Accused of being a front for the PKI, no problem. The PKI after all was one of the winners in the elections at the time. Had representatives in parliament. At the end several ministers, even. That's legal.
What did you get from Lekra?
Nothing of course. I'm a solo flight. Can't command and can't be ordered around. There was nothing. On the contrary, nothing but quarrels came out of it.
Why didn't you just get out?
I didn't need to get out, did I? My work was at home. If there was an invitation, I went. Asked to lecture about something I agreed with, I gave one. For example, about Kartini, the history of Indonesian literature. But as a decision-maker, of course not. I was someone snatched off the street and stuck up on top.
But consequently weren't you accused of being a communist?
In 1956 I was invited to China to attend the umpteenth anniversary of the death of Lu Xun, a great writer considered to be China's Gorky. There my primary duty was to deliver a speech for the Minister of Education and Culture. So it was official. I used a [foreign?] service passport. On my return from China I was already accused of being a communist. Bona fide publishers rejected my writing. Up to this moment, people accuse me of this and that. This is for several decades already. Prove it, then. Don't accuse me. Demonstrate where my communist-ness lies.
In fact, aren't you also often accused of being anti- religion?
It's just paranoid people, right, who just want to protect their own rice pot. Cornering people. I'm really not religious, only before sleeping I [sit?] in contemplation to correct myself, accompanied by regulated breathing. This is in an atmosphere, in a spirit of self-surrender. If that is considered anti- religion, be my guest, [just] don't require me to be like this or that. I do not require people to be like this or that.
Speaking of this, are you interested in religion?
I take religious material from many places, some from Islam, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, the point is what makes me strong. But this is not a matter of the religion, the religion as an entirety. If the issue is life itself, I believe that there is a God, and that God is omnipotent. Even thousands of years before the Christian era, His omniscience already knew I would be like this.
Translation ©1996 Alex G Bardsley