Though she said that she took her religion for granted, there resided deep in her a latent, unconscious ambivalence towards that religion that found expression in her questioning attitude toward Malaya and her father. She was hostile toward authority; she wanted no part of world government; no state should sponsor religion (no father should have created the kind of problem that her father had created for her! There were times, when I was questioning her, that I felt that she wanted to be her own father; there was a strongly repressed masculine drive, though she was ostensibly feminine in manner…).
She, like the Indonesian-born European, felt that some vague, metaphysical principle in nature had decreed that Africa was for the blacks, China for the yellows, Europe for the whites, etc. (It was amazing how widespread this feeling was in Asia and Europe, but less in Asia than in Europe. Those who took their racial environment for granted seemed to feel that nature had ordained the present arrangement; and those who had been shaken up, as it were, by war, racial prejudice, or religious persecution, had become awakened and felt that the world belonged to all of those who lived in it.)
Her insistence that Eurasians were full of complexes was but an oblique recognition of her own perturbed state, and some of the doubt and distrust that she felt for Malayans she also felt for herself. Her outlook being divided, she held toward Malayan culture a vacillating attitude, respecting parts of it and disparaging others. As highly color-conscious as an American Negro, she felt the racial insults thrown from both sides. Her individualism made her family blood unimportant to her, yet, concerning love objects, she leaned first toward the whites and then toward the group with which her father was identified…. It was significant that the Japanese attracted her mightily because of their “pride” and “strength” and “development,” and she would certainly have liked to belong to a “colored” nation if that nation resembled, say, the British or the American. Her bête noire was the yellow races, be they bourgeois or Communist. And she was careful to exclude Malaya from the category of the “colored” countries.
The social aspects of Catholicism made her distinguish between the Leftism of Russia and that of the British Labor Party; her refusal to describe what Right meant to her indicated that that was her position. Though no nation should use the atom or hydrogen bomb as a military weapon, she passionately believed in capital punishment, especially as a protection against Communism and the yellow races. Her belief in democracy was limited by national boundaries; to her mind, world government, though supported by all the people of the earth, was as bad as Communism.
To her most problems were subjective ones, and “thinking” could solve them; “greatness” was being true to one’s self. Though ostensibly conservative, this girl could almost as easily have been a revolutionary, for the crux of her problem was a question of identification…. Her agonizing position was born of accident, and her emotional rootlessness aggravated it. Had Communism been presented to her before she embraced Catholicism, she might well have accepted it….
After dinner, back in my compartment, I resumed perusing my notes:
Moving from the European-born Indonesian and the Eurasian, I had encountered an Asian, but, strangely, a Westernized one. Mr. X was an extraordinary man, one of the leading educators of his country. He was no marginal man; he was more Western than most Westerners. Self-made, partly self-educated, rich, he stood alone and unique among his kind. Each question posed elicited a psychological reaction (I might say a physiological one!): a quick smile, a tensing of his muscles, a faraway look, then halting words that cut across the distilled wisdom of many cultures.
He is married, fifty years of age, has six children. His rooms are lined with shelves of books from all the Western countries. Widely read, widely traveled, he reacts sharply to my questions and I have the impression that ideas are more real to him than reality. His parents are Moslems, but he shies off committing himself too definitely in religious matters.
He feels that the state should not have anything actively to do with religion, but perhaps the state ought to try to keep alive the sense of the religious, the attitude and feeling of religion without regard to sects or ideology.
He feels that the overrunning of the continents of Asia and Africa by the white Western nations was a mixture of good and bad. Objectively, the impact of the West had a liberating influence. He is inclined to feel that short-range views tend to emphasize the damage done to Asia and Africa; five hundred years from now the bad effects will be forgotten and the good effects remembered.
He is interested in politics in spite of himself. “I’m impatient with politicians; they take such short views. My aim is to make people think correctly. At this moment, politics is the negative thing in my country….”
He participated in the liberation movement of his country in the field of publishing; he was a member of the first parliament and he would like to sit in parliament again. The Japanese imprisoned him for three months when he opposed their trying to ram the Indonesian mind into a strait jacket. When the Japanese banned the Dutch tongue, he saw his opportunity and came forward with his own native language, Indonesian, which is now the official language of his country.
He has traveled in Europe and America, but he has not served in the armed forces of any non-Indonesian power.
“The only enemy of Indonesia is Indonesia herself,” he says.
He attends many international conferences but feels that the Asian-African Conference is but a political gesture to bolster the local political regime in Indonesia. He does not feel that there is a naturally allotted, geographical space for each race on earth; the earth is for everybody…. He has many white friends. His wife is German. He feels that Western contact has had an emancipating effect upon him and his people, smashing the irrational ties of custom and tradition. “But the West failed to replace these ruptured relations with anything positive,” he says. Dutch colonial oppression kept the Indonesians stupid, did not give the people a chance to develop their personalities. The only justification of Dutch rule in Indonesia was the superiority of the Dutch….
Inferiority feelings in his country have been copiously expressed in novels, plays, poems. As proof of the intense inferiority feelings engendered in his people after three hundred and fifty years of Dutch rule, he cited the passion with which the Indonesians rejected the Dutch language and insisted upon resurrecting their own long-buried native tongue, a tongue which now, under enforced conditions, they seek to modernize and make serviceable. Japanese occupation helped to stimulate the desire on the part of the Indonesians to break with the West.
He first heard the word “lynch” in connection with what the United States did to American Negroes; he first encountered the phrase “White Man’s Burden” in connection with Dutch rule over Indonesia; he came across the phrase “Yellow Peril” in connection with Western attitudes toward Japan and China. “It’s racial snobbery,” he says. He believes that racism can be eliminated by education, by informing people of its baleful effects.
He yearns to see Indonesia industrialized. He says: “We must have a most fundamental change in every department of life. That part of the past that can be synthesized with the future will be saved.” The purity of his family blood is not important to him; he will not send his children to either “national” or European schools; he will send them to modern schools.
Maintaining close contact with his people, he not only speaks his native language fluently, but he helped to create and develop that language. Under Dutch rule he lived in the “native” quarter of his city; today he lives in the “European” quarter. The literacy rate is about 30 per cent in Indonesia. When the Dutch were driven out, his people “reclaimed” their country by renaming many of the towns, cities, etc. He feels that the relations between the new nations of Asia and Africa are cordial.
He disdains slogans, propaganda. We must, he says, rethink and revalue the whole of history. We must recontemplate the role of ethics and morality in the light of modern knowledg
e; the conflict between morals and the advance of science is something that must be thought through and enthroned in our educational system.
He could not answer yes or no to the question as to whether Indonesians were dissatisfied with the United Nations. “Indonesia is not as yet sufficiently developed to make herself felt. She cannot handle the facilities offered her.”
He does not feel that the West constitutes a racial or political bloc against the Asian and African peoples. “Sometimes it might look as though such a bloc existed,” he says. “But if one takes a long view, it’s not entirely true. One must always remember that one of the deepest traits of the West is its anti-Western attitude. Take our fight for national independence, for example. A part of the West sided against the West in our favor. A characteristic of the West is its restlessness, its changeability. Most Easterners overlook this.”
Regarding Stalin’s identifying Russia with Asia, he says:
“Stalin used such a phrase because he felt that it benefited the policies of his country at that moment.” He has no ideas about the impact of the Russian Revolution in either Europe or Asia.
When asked what the words “Left” and “Right” meant to him, he answered sharply:
“They are misused words. ‘Left’ is a word that is an instrumentality in political struggles. The same is true of the word ‘Right.’ In reality, there is not much difference between the Left and Right today. Again I say that we badly need a redefinition of words that will link words with reality. To garner votes from emotionally conditioned and ignorant masses, politicians use terminologies from the last century. The character of the world has changed radically, but we are using an old, outmoded terminology to describe that world. Many of the world’s problems are simple, but we use words to describe those problems and the problems become complicated. The phrases on the lips of most people have little or nothing to do with the new times. Words like ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ denote psychological attitudes rather than objective realities….”
Is a nation ever justified in using the atom or hydrogen bomb as a military weapon? “What a question! Such a question has meaning only when there is no war. Once you are in a war, you use what you have got.”
He says that Indonesia needs all kinds of aid. “We need all those things that will help us to stand shoulder to shoulder with other nations, things that will make us the equal of others. But this is not simple. For one nation to help another is to assist in the development of a competitor. True planning is possible only on a world basis. For that we need a superparliament filled with men of the highest skills. The insistence upon state sovereignty is what blocks world planning, and world planning is the only way to aid nations to develop.”
He balked when I asked him what the phrases “democratic opinion” and “democratic institutions” meant to him.
“These are difficult questions. Maybe my attitude will be misunderstood, will shock people. Like so many other phrases we use so much and do not think about, these phrases ought to be re-examined and reinterpreted….” He paused, stared off. “The best way to explain my whole attitude to you is to tell you a story. I was interned by the Japanese for opposing what they wanted to do with our educational system. There were some twelve of us in a tiny cell. For a window, we had only a small hole high up in the wall. It was hot…. We suffered. Spiders and lice crawled on the floor. I hated it; we all hated it; I hated it in particular, for I could never be alone. I refused to take exercise; it was only when the others went out to take exercise that I could be alone and think…. When alone, I sat and thought. What could I do? What was my role here? Would I die? Would I live? At last I came to feel what the true worth of a man was. I survived only because I could think…. I mastered my situation with my mind. That was the main thing. Thinking is what marks off man from the animal kingdom. The Japanese conquered me, but not really….
“How can a man’s worth be measured when he votes? If Democracy means the opportunity of each man to develop to his highest capacity, then a mere counting of heads is no Democracy. Really, Fascism is the logical outcome of Democracy as it is practiced in the world today. I ask you: Do people really know what they are voting for at the polls? The world is not simple, yet simple men vote. Is there any wonder that they vote for things that they never get? Some men are just naturally quick, and some are just naturally dull-witted…. And the quick rule; the mobile get to the top, get power and riches. That is the law of the jungle…. So when we trust the running of government to a counting of heads, the vast majority cannot vote for their rights; they do not know them. I don’t know of any system of government that can defeat the general welfare more thoroughly than what we call Democracy. Democracy is a means of protest, not a method of construction.
“I feel that men ought to have the right to vote for only what they can understand. I’d not have the franchise go further than village voting. But there are problems that village folk cannot understand, so why ask them to vote on them? Only a scoundrel bent upon duping ignorant people would urge those people to vote on issues too big and complicated for them to understand.
“In the world today Democracy is the greatest enemy of the true democrat. The so-called democratic process keeps the real democrats from being in a position to help the people. People have been lulled into believing that they are wise, that they know all things, that there is a kind of divine wisdom in their collective decisions; so, when these simple people try to think and vote, the quick and the unscrupulous outwit them and cheat them.
“That is why I insist that all of these questions must be re-examined. I know that people will quail before such probing. The problem of ethics must be brought up again; today we live in a world that is modern and our ideas about that world are obsolete. That is the origin of most of our trouble….”
I felt there must have been a factor of Asian skepticism in that man’s outlook. Compassion for man was the keynote of his life. Such a mind refused to accept the means for the end. His outlook was grounded in a tough-souled pragmatism. My questionnaire was not designed for such as he. He stared at me and smiled. “I’m alone in my country,” he mumbled sadly. I desisted in my questioning.
This subject’s replies, especially his disdainful skepticism toward Democracy, came as a complete surprise, and I jokingly dubbed him the H. L. Mencken of Indonesia…. He had an acute mind, yet he was atypical and he ruefully admitted it. But, as drastic as he sounded, he was by far the most impractical of all the Asians I talked to. He was logical, but his logic was not of the life that surrounded him. Because he could easily spot fraud, he had concluded that that fraud had no valid reality.
He took the view that, in the long run, the impact of the West upon the East would undoubtedly be entered upon the credit side of the historical ledger. I was inclined to agree with him. But that was not what the individual Asian colonial victim felt about that Western impact while he was undergoing his torturous “liberation” from his irrational customs and traditions, his superstition and folklore. It may be perfectly true that there was absolutely no synchronization between the aims and actions of the Western merchants, soldiers, and missionaries when they swarmed out of Europe and overran Asia and Africa; but, from where the victim stood, the impact of the West had as its main effect a result that could come about only if those Western forces had been synchronized in their aims and actions: that is, his culture had been smashed by what he felt to be hostile forces and he had been cast into a void….
On the other hand, compassion was this Asian’s hallmark. If the future of the masses of Asia were to be in the hands of aristocratic spirits such as this Indonesian educator, then one could say that the bridge between lives anchored in mysticism and lives built on secular and industrial reason could be erected with a minimum of tragedy and human waste. But neither Asia nor Africa nor Europe was ruled or was likely to be ruled by compassionate aristocrats; instead, there were millions of folk-minded masses trapped in the nets of fear, hunger, and impossible dreams—
masses at the mercy of irresponsible interpretations of their plight. Such masses, under the leadership of messianic men, would be induced into situations whose final outcome would spell more of glory for the messianic leaders than of welfare for the millions of expendable lives involved.
There was no doubt, in my mind, that my Indonesian educator was correct on the plane of abstract logic, but logic cannot solve problems whose solutions come not by thinking but by living. His approach implied a denial of collective thought-processes, of mass organic experiences embedded in the very lives and social conditions about him. His people, eighty million strong, had fought and died for the right to vote, and now they were going to vote whether they voted right or not and there was nothing that anybody could easily do about it. Regrettably, one could safely assume that his influence upon Asian reality would be nil.
My eyes were heavy; the Madrid express was rocking me to sleep and I could hold out no longer…. When I awakened the next morning, daylight gleamed through the curtain of my train window. After breakfasting, I went into my notes again….
My fourth subject had been a more typical and basic Asian, whose attitude was less conditioned by abstract considerations; from the outset, I had been able to feel in his reactions the pressures of history and environment:
He is full-blooded Indonesian in his twenties. Single, restless, a student of political science, he is supported by his government, and he openly says: “I belong to the backward nations of the world, the underdeveloped nations.” And his manner of saying it indicates how deeply a sense of his people’s inferiority weighs upon him. He has a quick smile that hides bitter knowledge; already he is an actor: for the outside world that is white, he laughs; for the nonwhite world he drops his smiling mask and his eyes stare with the unblinking fixity of the fanatic.
He is Moslem and so are his parents. He has broad artistic interests and boasts of the cultural contacts of his people. He is, he says, too busy with his political studies for organizational activity, and he is too young to have participated in the liberation movement of his country.
Black Power Page 44
