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.
