that lived in sheds like goats in their pens,19 who were constantly abused and beaten and whose wives and daughters could be taken away at the whim of ‘ndro Tuan, this was the class of Indonesians known as contract coolies.20 The plantation coolies, male and female, usually got up at 4:00 A.M., for the plantations where they worked were far away. They would return home at seven or eight o’clock at night. According to the contract, they were paid only forty cents a day.21 Their food was usually insufficient for the hard work of hoeing in the heat for eight to twelve hours a day, and their clothes were quickly torn to shreds from working in the jungle.22
This deprivation in all things gave rise to the uncontrollable desire to tempt fate by playing dice, a desire deliberately fostered by the company on payday. Those who lost—and usually more people lost than won—were allowed to incur debts. Because they were bound by such debts, 90 percent of the coolies were forced to sign up again on the expiration of their contracts. The debts produced the desire to gamble and the gambling gave rise to ever greater indebtedness.23
Ninety out of a hundred coolies had not the least hope of being promoted. In fact, only one or two out of a thousand had any real possibility. They would become overseers and eventually head foremen, or they would be taken on as workers or caretakers in garages, electric plants, or hospitals. But their wages remained low: twenty or thirty guilders a month for an overseer and sixty guilders for a head foreman, that is, someone who had been working there some fifteen to twenty years.24
I can recall several incidents that took place at Tanjung Morawa, the main office of Senembah Mij., where I worked.25 Tuan V. D., an electrical engineer, was at his wits’ end because the generator would not work. He had figured out all the possibilities and all his orders for repair work had been carried out, but the machine still would not function. Kario, the electrical caretaker and a former contract coolie, was called. Without saying anything he crawled under the machine for a moment, turned his screwdriver and . . . chug, chug . . . it turned over normally. Kario, the former contract coolie, had long received a wage of twenty guilders a month, while Ir. V. D. got five hundred guilders plus any number of fringe benefits.26
[51] The late Professor Walch, my close acquaintance who was formerly at Tanjung Morawa with his wife, also a doctor, had the following experience.27 A guest—I think it was the well-known malaria expert Schüffner—came to his laboratory.28 The two were engrossed in a discussion about a certain species of mosquito that had been found in only one place on one occasion and had such and such characteristics. But they had forgotten in which of the hundreds of bottles they had placed this specimen. Naturally the name of this mosquito was written in Latin. When they had given up hope of finding it, Parman produced the bottle with its specimen and its Latin name. Parman was only a graduate of the H.I.S., was paid only twenty-five guilders a month, and lived in a lean-to with his wife and children.29 Dr. Walch told me that Parman was then given the “independent” job of examining the mosquitoes of a certain location for which he was paid fifty guilders a month. The doctors Walch were not reactionaries, but, as Dr. Walch said to me, “I can’t get any more out of the company.” Such stories could be repeated over and over, but these two are sufficient to give a picture of the situation.
Obviously, tobacco, latex, palm, and hemp plantations require extensive and complex knowledge and long experience to deal with seed, soil, soil conservation, seedlings, and the crop. You could not expect the good-for-nothings and the schlemiels just arrived from the Netherlands to know about such matters. But they had white skins, the skin of the colonizer, and they carried big sticks and used loud voices against the colored, colonized people, “the gentlest people on earth.” With their white skins, big sticks, two or three words of “bazaar Malay” and thirteen different swear words, they could use the knowledge and experience of the head foremen or overseers.30 These Deli schlemiels started at a salary of 350 guilders a month plus free housing, free this and free that.31 A few of the Dutch assistants did have a smattering of general knowledge but, in general, very few in any way smacked of “erudition.”
The conflict between the white, stupid, arrogant, cruel colonizers and the colored nation of driven, cheated, oppressed, and exploited slaves—a conflict which found a few Indonesians as skilled labour caught in the middle—fouled the atmosphere in Deli and gave rise to constant attacks by the coolies on the plantation Dutch. Frequently just one insult or criticism was enough to cause a coolie to draw his machete from his belt and attack the Tuan Besar or Tuan Kecil then and there, for his heart was filled with such a hatred for it all.
[52] This conflict between the Dutch capitalist imperialists and the Indonesian inlander coolies was also clearly reflected in the Deli courts. The Dutch person who acted “accidentally” or “only in self-defense” against a coolie attack was generally let off with a sentence of three months or less, which could often be avoided through payment of a fine. But the coolie who killed would seldom escape hanging. When I was there Dutch opinion was strongly in favor of punishing, “with immediate and most severe punishment so as to frighten the others,” the coolie who was brave enough to attack a white.
In this situation, which could turn human beings into beasts, one felt amazement mixed with awe on hearing of coolies mutilating Dutch people and then going straight to the police to give themselves up. It appears that the tales of the ksatria handed down over the centuries by the dalang in the village wayang performances were not without their effect on the people.32 Was there a place for me in the Deli society that I have tried to sketch above? Was there a place for a radical-minded Indonesian in the midst of a society with such supremely sharp contradictions?
When I got the job in Amsterdam from the director, Dr. Janssen himself, I was not really conscious of the difficulties I was to face in Deli. After living for six years among Dutch people in their own country, I did not feel any great differences in the respect accorded human beings on the basis of their skin color alone. When children or old people made fun of us Indonesians in the Netherlands because of the color of our skin or when someone in the street yelled out “Nigger, dirty nigger,” we regarded this as an aberration originating in the most backward elements of this “civilized” country. We did not really pay much attention to it. Indeed, the difference in public attitudes towards colored people in France, for example, and the Netherlands was striking.33
[53] Experience convinced us that most Dutch people in the Netherlands did not measure us according to the standards of color. It was my conviction that in the future, even if after decades, color distinctions as well as those of class would wither away together with the disappearance of capitalism and imperialism. For these reasons the society I was to enter in Deli did not intimidate me. There I hoped to free myself in a short time from the debts that were weighing me down, while at the same time obtaining valuable experience in relating to the most oppressed, exploited, and humiliated of my own nation, thus killing two birds with one stone.34
But apparently Dr. Janssen was well aware of the difficulties I would encounter in Deli. I later heard that before my arrival the Dutch officials were advised by the company, on behalf of the directors in the Netherlands, “to treat Tan Malaka like a European.”
How did it turn out in practice? My initial contact with a Dutch employee of Senembah Mij. went smoothly enough, for in Tanjung Morawa I was close to the schoolmaster Tuan W, a socialist opposed to the head teacher concept and a former Indonesian language student of mine.35 But the second encounter did not give me much hope.
It was the custom for new Dutch arrivals to introduce themselves to the old employees. I was supposed to be accepted into the European group there, so I began by sending a letter to the first bookkeeper, Tuan G, and his wife, asking if and when they would be prepared to receive me for an introduction.36 A reply came quickly from Nyonya G stating that “we do not now have the time to receive you.”
Nyonya and Tuan W were themselves quite
