suspicious of all strangers (interview, Jakarta, 6 October 1972).
49. On Tan Malaka’s instructions to his mother not to visit him in Padang, see Toendoek kepada kekoeasaan, tetapi tidak toendoek kepada kebenaran, p. 90; information on Tan Malaka’s mother came from interviews (including one with her second husband, Murin) in and around Pandam Gadang, November 1972.
50. Budiman Djaja, “Mengenang,” Tempo, 28 March 1963, and quoted in Anderson, Java, p. 276, n. 21.
51. Interview with Paramita Abdurrachman in Jakarta, 24 October 1972. The two previous romantic attachments referred to here are (1) the pressure placed upon him to marry his schoolmate Sjarifah Nawawi in 1913, to accord with the tradition that the holder of the title Datuk Tan Malaka be married; and (2) the Dutch socialist Fenny Struyvenberg, who spent some time with Tan Malaka during 1922 in Holland (see p. lxi above).
In my interviews I came across numerous allusions to allegations of Tan Malaka’s being homosexual, generally swiftly dismissed by the person being interviewed—whether genuinely rejected or pushed aside for fear of bringing ill repute to Tan Malaka, I could not know. The only place I have seen the issue discussed in print is in Budiman Djaja’s “Mengenang”: “his close friends give assurances that he was not gay (bantji) or someone who was ‘not normal’. He never organized a household for strong reasons-he was always on the run.”
52. If one wishes to categorize Tan Malaka according to political personality type, then he can perhaps be seen to fit closely the “revolutionary ascetic” model developed by Bruce Mazlish from the character of Lenin. Self-disciplined and self-restrained; simple in dress, speech, and personal tastes; thorough, fastidious, and punctual; complete dedication to work punctuated by bouts of extreme fatigue, perhaps depression; committed to energy and to work: the type certainly fits Tan Malaka closely, but did he also like cats? I cannot answer that question, but I am prompted to ask it by my own dissatisfaction with personality typecasting without reference to political persuasion.
53. Alimin, Analysis. See also Alimin’s views as recorded in an interview on 14 October 1946 by W. Ch. J. Bastiaans, Indonesia Merdeka.
54. Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (1970), p. v.
55. Sol Tas, Indonesia: The Underdeveloped Freedom (New York: Pegasus, 1974), pp. 200-2.
56. M. A. Jaspan, “Aspects of Indonesian Political Sociology in the Late Soekarno Era. Part III. Counter-Revolution and Rebellion: An Interpretative Analysis of Events in the Period Sept. 1965 to June 1966,” in South-East Asian Journal of Sociology 3 (1970), p. 53.
57. See Philippines Free Press, 10 September 1927.
58. Anderson, Java, pp. 276-77.
59. Shigetada Nishijima, Shogen: Indoneshia dokuritsu kakumei, pp. 189-90.
60. Subardjo, Kesadaran nasional, p. 359.
61. Arnold C. Brackman, Indonesian Communism, pp. 27-28 and 39. See also William F. de Bruyn, The Rising Soviet Star over Indonesia (The Hague: National Committee for “Unity of the Kingdom,” 1947), p. 8, which states that Tan Malaka was a member of the Japanese secret service. Bastiaans’ October 1946 notes of an interview with Alimin refer to Tan Malaka’s political program as “the same as the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere of the Japanese” to Tan Malaka “working with the fascists” and threw in the question as to whether or not Tan Malaka was a British agent! Bastiaans, Indonesia merdeka, pp. 40-41.
62. Lazitch, Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern, p. 249.
63. Tan Malaka refers to such “false Tan Malakas” in Volume II, p. 130, and Volume III, pp. 9 and 106. Many of my informants corroborated the existence of these “Tan Malaka” propagandists for the Japanese (for example, interviews with A. B. Loebis, Jakarta, 30 October 1972; Adam Malik, Jakarta, 7 October 1972; Sjamsuddin Tjan, Jakarta, 8 October 1972; Mohammad Hatta, Jakarta, 29 November 1972; Chaeruddin, Jakarta, 28 November 1972). According to Sakti Arga, some eight Tan Malakas were reported in Jakarta alone! (Tan Malaka, p. 4). However, Japanese intelligence agent Shigetada Nishijima dismissed these reports as “rumours” without foundation (Shogen, p. 189).
64. “Tan Malaka dan soal rechtspositienja diloear Indonesia,” Pewarta Deli, 1 July 1933, which captions Tan Malaka’s photograph with the words “Patjar Merah (the scarlet pimpernel) dalam pergerakan de Asia.” In the early 1930s, the Partindo journal Indonesian Berdjoang carried reports signed “Patjar Merah.” (Jacques Leclerc, “La clandestinité et son double,” p. 234.)
65. Poeze, Tan Malaka, p. 487, noting that Emnast was the pen name of Muchtar Nasution.
66. Ratu Sukma, Tan Malaka, pp. 21-22.
67. Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel was first published in Indonesian translation by the government publishing house Balai Poestaka as early as 1926. As Indonesia was on the circuit for popular European films, one can assume that the many screenplays, from the first silent movie of 1917 to the first sound film of 1935, were screened in the main towns.
68. Benedict Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution, pp. 406-7.
69. Muhammad Yamin, “Tan Malacca, Bapak Republik Indonesia,” Kedaulatan Rakyat, 29 December 1945.
70. Muhammad Yamin, Tan Malaka, Bapak Republik Indonesia, p. 26.
71. Muhammad Yamin, Tan Malaka, Bapak Republik Indonesia, pp. 24 and 5 respectively.
72. See below, pp. xci-xcv.
73. This point is made earlier by Isnomo (p. 138), but the only reference is a brief mention by Sudijono Djojoprajitno in PKI-SIBAR contra Tan Malaka, p. 193.
74. For example Adam Malik, Mengabdi Republik, vol. 1, pp. 188-89; and Wasid Soewarto, Kita madju terus dengan adjaran Tan Malaka, Murbaisme, p. 5.
75. “Keputusan Presiden Republik Indonesia, No. 53, tahun 1963, 28 Maret, 1963”: “We, president of the Republic of Indonesia, considering that the late Tan Malaka should be given recognition by the state in consideration of his services as a leader of Indonesia in the past, in that throughout his life, urged on by a feeling of love for his people and his homeland, he led an organised movement to oppose the colonizer of Indonesia; bearing in mind Presidential Decision No. 217, 1957 concerning regulations for Heroes of National Independence, and Presidential Decision No. 241, 1958 concerning regulations on declaring Heroes of National Independence
Hereby declare
first, the late Tan Malaka as a Hero of National Independence; Secondly, that the provisions of Presidential Decision 217, 1957 apply concerning commemoration of the soul of the departed; thirdly, that this decision takes effect from the day of its proclamation” (included as appendix to Muhammad Yamin, Tan Malaka, p. 40).
76. Poeze, Tan Malaka, pp. 53-58.
77. Tan Malaka’s Naar de ‘Republiek Indonesia’ is given as the earliest mention of this concept by an Indonesian nationalist in R. C. Kwantes, De ontwikkeling van de nationalistische beweging in Nederlandsch-Indie, vol. 2, p. 484. Mohammad Hatta refutes Tan Malaka’s claim to be the first to call for a republic, claiming that Tjipto Mangunkusumo had done so in 1913 (Bung Hatta menjawab, p. 18). However, I have found no reference to a republic in Tjipto’s writings, and Savitri Scherer’s discussion of
