Moluccan monuments

Monuments help Dutch Moluccans to make the Netherlands home

Fridus Steijlen

The monument in Moordrecht is a Moluccan project to remember the    hardship of the first generation    Fridus Steijlen

Two Moluccans in their fifties stand on a road looking over a snow-covered field. They had lived there in a camp until 1962. They discuss the site with a local farmer, showing him pictures. All three are making gestures as if trying to draw the contours of a former camp in the air. The visitors experience a feeling of nostalgia looking at their former playground. But that feeling is ambivalent. Their return to the camp site also reminds them of the hard times their parents went through when they were forced to come to the Netherlands. They now plan to lobby for a monument to preserve their history, concerned that otherwise their 'past will be covered with snow forever'.

Having left other kinds of landmarks like churches on the Dutch landscape, Moluccans are now erecting monuments in remembrance of their arrival in the Netherlands and to pay homage to the 'first generation'. It is an intriguing development because for a long time Moluccans and Dutch alike were convinced they would return to Indonesia; that their future was there and not in the Netherlands. But now their monuments are becoming an integral part of the Dutch remembrance landscape because the Moluccans are here to stay.

From camps to wards

The majority of Moluccans came to the Netherlands in 1951 as part of a group of former soldiers in the Dutch colonial army. Their support for the separatist South Moluccan Republic (RMS) in 1950 and the political turmoil that followed had made their position in Indonesia untenable. Most considered themselves citizens of the RMS. They set up their own RMS movement supporting the RMS guerrillas on the island of Ceram.

Forced by the circumstance, some 3500 Moluccan soldiers and their families – a total of 12,500 people – were transferred to the Netherlands. Moluccans as well as the Dutch government were convinced that the exiles would return in a couple of months. In the meantime, they were housed in provisional camps socially and physically isolated from Dutch society.

Some 90 camps were established before the Dutch government started to build special Moluccan wards in small towns in the 1960s. The transfer from camps to wards took more than 18 years. Sometimes police force was required to facilitate resettlement because some Moluccans considered the transfer to more permanent housing as a denial of the Dutch government's promise for an eventual return to an independent Moluccas. Until that day had come, they felt the Dutch government had an obligation to fully support them.

After the camps were emptied, most were dismantled or given other functions. Some were transformed into holiday resorts while others were taken over by farmers or were pulled down to make place for houses. Others still were simply torn down, leaving isolated markers like the ruin of a central kitchen. Just one camp in Vught, called Lunetten, survived as a living quarter for Moluccans, after it was renovated following long negotiations and conflicts between the inhabitants and the Dutch government.

The wards where the Moluccans came to be housed can be very small, just a few houses in one or two streets. In most, the housing corporation permits a Moluccan council to decide who is allowed to live there. The wards remained the main space for Moluccan communities until the end of the 1970s, when more and more Moluccans moved elsewhere because of study or work and a lack of housing. Although more than 60 per cent of Dutch Moluccans now live outside the Moluccan wards, many are still emotionally attached to them. They symbolise their exile and migrant history and a sense of close-knit community.

The Dutch-initiated monument in Vaassen intends to leave the past     behind    Fridus Steijlen

Partly due to this sense of separate community, the RMS movement remained very strong in the Netherlands and continued to dominate the Dutch Moluccan identity until the end of the 1970s. The movement radicalised with the participation of second generation Dutch Moluccans. In the mid 1970s armed groups of young Moluccans staged a series of hijacks to add force to their case, occupying trains, a school and a government building in the north of the Netherlands and the Indonesian consulate in Amsterdam. In total eight hostages and six hijackers were killed.

Yet others in the same second generation of Dutch Moluccans initiated heated discussions within the Moluccan community on the meaning and continued relevance of the RMS ideology. Moluccans started to redefine their position in the Netherlands and their relationship to their homeland. Until then, they had considered themselves as exiles with a future in the Moluccas. Now, they became migrants, still connected with the Moluccas through family and village networks, but with a future in the Netherlands.

Nevertheless, RMS symbols have remained important as identity markers. Even today, Moluccan wards can be recognised by graffiti and other signs of 'Moluccan-ness', like little RMS flags in a windowsill or on bumper stickers. But these signs are mainly used to distinguish themselves from other migrants, indicating their unique position in the Netherlands owing to their role in Dutch colonial history.

New clashes broke out between Moluccans and Dutch authorities over neglect of their social economic position and the 'old rights' of the former KNIL soldiers, who had been unexpectedly discharged from the army upon arrival in the Netherlands. The Dutch government and the largest Moluccan organisation reached an agreement in 1986, which led to an effort to pay tribute to the first generation of Moluccans, the former colonial soldiers. A special policy was also adopted to improve the social economic position of the Moluccan community. Part of the pact was a fund to renovate Moluccan churches. This resulted in a wave of new Moluccan churches in the Moluccan wards, creating another set of landmarks.

Museums and monuments

Another part of the 1986 agreement was to create a 'living monument'. This came in 1990 as the Moluccan Museum in Utrecht. There had been discussions about erecting a statue but the Indonesian embassy had objected because they feared that it would function as rallying point for demonstrations against Indonesia.

Besides a documentation centre and theatre, the museum hosts a permanent exhibition about the history of Moluccans in the Netherlands. One room is dedicated to the nature and culture of the Moluccas, three other rooms emphasise the decolonisation, the proclamation of the RMS and transfer to the Netherlands and the integration process in the Netherlands. The exhibition tries to avoid political sensitivities but clearly tells the story from the Moluccan perspective. One of the most impressive parts of the museum consists of a corridor with old cabin trunks where the Moluccans lived on the boats to the Netherlands and a replica of a room in one of the barracks.

More recently, a series of monuments have been built. The first, erected in 1997, was a boulder to commemorate the former location of a camp for the minority of Islamic Moluccans in Balk in the North of the Netherlands, closed in 1969. Seven cloves and a nutmeg on the boulder refer to the motive for the Dutch to start their colonial adventure around 1600. Other monuments put the emphasis less on the colonial theme than on the Moluccan experience in the Netherlands. But different perspectives have resulted in very different monuments.

An interesting illustration is the creation of two monuments that were unveiled in September and October 2006 in the Moluccan wards of Moordrecht and Vaassen, some 100 kilometres apart. Both represent a Moluccan family: father, mother and two children. The Moordrecht sculpture shows the family in winter dress, representing the arrival of the Moluccans at the bitter cold Dutch harbours in 1951. Their posture and faces show the hardship they had faced and their fears about life in the Netherlands. The sculpture in Vaassen presents an entirely different vision. The mother is again in traditional dress but the father wears a summer uniform. With his right hand he guides his wife to the future, to which he points with his other hand. The Vaassen family is clearly more prosperous.

Museum Maluku in Utrecht tells the story from the Moluccan perspective    Fridus Steijlen

The difference between the two monuments reflects the different backgrounds and different goals of their creators. The statue in Vaassen was designed by a Dutch sculptor and is an initiative from the local Dutch authorities. In 2001 tensions between Moluccans and Dutch – which were partly related to a violent dismantling of the local Moluccan camp in the 1970s – were still very much alive. One of the initiatives to improve the relations was to create a statue to help them to put their memories of their arrival and their often violent clashes with Dutch authorities behind them, and to help them give their identity meaning. By contrast, the Moordrecht monument was a purely Moluccan project financed by community donations, designed by a Moluccan on behalf of a group of second generation Moluccans who wished to honour their parents, who came to the Netherlands as pioneers and experienced great hardship. The sculpture is accompanied by a large canvas showing photographs of all first generation Moluccans who came to live in Moordrecht, which was attached to a blind wall overlooking the square in which the monument sits.

Tensions and tokens

In recent years more and more efforts have been made to establish reminders of the Moluccan history in the Netherlands. Sometimes tokens of that history are simply added to existing memorials, for example, to a camp's former function as a prison for Nazis. In some cases they commemorate traumatic experiences. In 2011 a monument will be erected on the dike where the camp of West Kapelle was located. This camp was the site of a clash between Moluccans and Dutch police in 1956, which had erupted over government policies considered to be against Moluccan interests. When the protests escalated, police surrounded the camp, arms were fired and the protesters were imprisoned. For many Moluccans memories of this clash are still highly emotional. The choice of the location for the West Kapelle monument can be interpreted as an attempt at reconciliation. But because the erection of the monument is planned to coincide with celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the arrival of Moluccans in the Netherlands, the monument is partly depoliticised and supported by Moluccans and Dutch alike.

Moluccans themselves also now attempt to use monuments for reconciliation, not only with the Dutch but with other ethnic minorities as well. Last January a Moluccan spokesperson suggested that a monument be erected in the city of Culemborg to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Moluccan presence in Culemborg in 2014 with multicultural festivities. This suggestion followed severe clashes that had taken place in this city between Moluccans and Moroccans. The incident had shown how the social structures of the Moluccan ward had broken down and that Moluccans are integrated into Dutch society. The Moluccan spokesperson called for better communication among the two communities in order to improve relations as well as for more attention to their common social and economic difficulties. These were significant remarks. To suggest a combination of a monument for the Moluccan presence and a multicultural festival is like putting the Moluccans at the forefront of the Dutch multicultural society, signalling that Moluccans have turned from exiles to migrants and have started to integrate into Dutch society.

Fridus Steijlen (steijlen@kitlv.nl) is researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden. One of his specialisations is postcolonial migration. He has written several books on Moluccans in the Netherlands.

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Postcolonial neglect in Holland

Colonial and anticolonial sentiments lead Dutch scholars to ignore and marginalise Indies postcolonial history

Lizzy van Leeuwen

Modernity meets tradition in a Dutch manual on how to deal with    ‘Oriental’ migrants, published in 1958    Lizzy van Leeuwen

In December 2009, several prominent Dutch scholars petitioned their government to formally acknowledge the birth of the Indonesian Republic as occurring in 1945, slating the government for continuing to represent 1949 as the year of the nation’s inception in NRC Handelsblad, a leading Dutch newspaper. The question of the proper date of birth of independence of the former colony has been a bone of contention in the Netherlands for decades. Indonesians declared their independence unilaterally two days after the Japanese capitulation that ended the Second World War, on 17 August 1945; after four years of violent struggle the Dutch transfer of sovereignty finally followed on 27 December 1949.

As well as burdening the ‘new’ bilateral relationship between former colony and coloniser, this clash of national calendars soon proved to be a major obstacle within the Netherlands. The Dutch-Indies decolonisation process was accompanied by a diversity of stories of repatriation; conscripts, white settlers, the mixed-descent population (Indos) and Moluccan colonial soldiers all have painful memories of survival and taking leave. These are all stories of entitlement that revolve around and clash with the two contested dates of Indonesian self-determination.

Not surprisingly, coming to terms with the bitter experience of violence, captivity and expulsion proved to be burdensome for many postcolonial migrants. At same time, feelings of frustration and trauma have been exacerbated by the fact that a postcolonial debate continues to be evaded in the Netherlands.

Recognition or neglect?

Recently, the Dutch government finally tackled the controversy about the ‘correct’ date of Indonesian independence. In August 2005 the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ben Bot, joined the celebration of the sixtieth birthday of Indonesian independence in Jakarta, thereby ending the 60-year old stand-off. He also officially declared that ‘the Dutch Cabinet and people liberally accept that Indonesian independence, politically and morally, commenced in fact in 1945’. Indonesia accepted Minister Bot’s statement.

As Bot and his Indonesian hosts realised, this statement was of possibly more significance in the Netherlands than for the bilateral relationship, putting an end to the polarising effects of the controversy in Dutch postcolonial communities. A complicated postcolonial hurdle appeared to have been solved and all Dutch protagonists involved – politicians, Indies migrants, even the Indies war veterans – seemed relieved by this unexpected closure.

But the petition in NRC Handelsblad four years later made clear that the Netherlands’ postcolonial problems are not that easily solved. The signatories advocated a re-writing of this last colonial chapter in a way that integrates the ‘official story’ with the ‘other story’. They proposed merging the Dutch refusal to acknowledge the republic in 1945 with the violent episodes of 1945 to 1949, stating that to ‘accept’ independence is not the same as to ‘acknowledge’ it.

The explicit recognition of historical and political facts is a matter of ‘acceptance’ as well as ‘acknowledgment’. International law recognises the 1949 transfer of sovereignty and Bot had no intention of changing that. He just made a political gesture; everybody knew this was all he could do. The true significance of the petition lies in its domestic postcolonial meaning. It appears to be a case of ritualised Dutch colonial guilt-and-remorse expressed by seasoned professors, but a closer look reveals that more is at stake

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A remarkable passage in the petition addresses the elderly postcolonial migrants: ‘Many Dutch, specifically from the older generations who still maintain close ties with Indonesia, are driven to resolve the sixty years of neglect. If this doesn’t happen during their lifetime, the issue will be a lost case and younger generations will later falsely regard the issue as resolved.’ This is a dubious suggestion because the people at stake, the elderly Indies-Dutch (especially the Indos), are generally shocked when the date of 17 August 1945 is mentioned. In their experience, this day did not so much herald Indonesian independence as set in motion the terror of the Bersiap period (1945-46) at the start of the war for independence. In this chaotic period, the lives of thousands of their relatives were lost.

Even more dubious is the fact that the way the passage is phrased – in particular the word ‘neglect’ – could as well relate to the postcolonial scandal of the so-called back-pay affair, when the Dutch government persistently refused to pay the overdue salaries of those who were prisoners of war during the Japanese occupation. This injustice has led to enduring frustration and anger among Indies postcolonial migrants, who have undertaken political lobbying, class actions and protests in an attempt to find public redress, but to no avail. None of the professors who signed the petition have ever lent credibility to the long-lasting back-pay affair, although it is of much greater social significance in the Dutch postcolonial context than the Dutch-Indonesian relationship. One of these professors recently dismissed the back-pay affair entirely by coining the expression ‘Indo claiming culture’, insinuating that Indos are simply dissatisfied and demanding citizens.

Knowledge monopoly

The narrow focus of the Dutch academic elite regarding postcolonial affairs has a long history. The treasures of knowledge regarding the East Indies have always been close to the heart of the Dutch nation. There is an intimate relationship between knowledge and power, for the ultimate possession of the Indies colony was not accomplished by the merchants or by officials, but by scientists.

Knowledge – linguistic, ethnographical, agrarian or geological – was the key to colonial exploitation. This explains why academics were close to successive colonial governments, often occupying prestigious positions within them. In the first centuries of colonial domination academics necessarily relied on local knowledge. However, after a while local knowledge became threatening because it proved difficult to bring under total control. Local knowledge escaped Dutch scientific standards as it covered the religious as well as the supernatural. Here lies the root of the discrimination against Indos, for they used to be ‘fluent’ in two conflicting knowledge systems, making them liable to accusations of being latent traitors and defectors.

Still, the production of countless statistics, reports and tabulations meant that Western knowledge acquired at least the semblance of total control. The colonial project – obsessed by numbers – took on the shape of one great scientific-quantitative enterprise. After 1900, the idea of a ‘civilising mission’ gave new impetus to the colonial project. In the ensuing modernisation process, rationality and efficiency became household terms. Key positions in colonial administration, trade and industry went automatically to Dutch expatriates, who kept themselves apart from the local society. The freshly-arrived in ‘Tropical Holland’ held on to their European gaze in order to avert the process of ‘becoming Indies’, a concept associated with slackening, moral degeneration and eventually ‘losing touch with Holland’. The new field of Indology, an exclusive feature of Dutch universities, supplied the training for this gaze. It delivered experts who never had set foot in the tropics.

The author in animated discussion with elderly Dutch Indos at the Pasar Malam Fair in The Hague    Lizzy van Leeuwen

The hierarchy of knowledge of the East Indies was part of a well-planned strategy to uphold colonial law and order. All knowledge gathered by Indologists shipped to Leiden and integrated in the archives of the Royal Institute of Linguistics and Ethnology in Leiden (KITLV), which still houses the world’s biggest Indonesiana collection. The enduring academic monopoly on colonial knowledge finally led to a situation of undisputed hegemony. The transfer of sovereignty in 1949 did not remove the Dutch scientific grasp on Indonesia. ‘Indonesianists’ – the successors of the Indologists – still academically possessed the Indies as they used to do. There was just one adaptation: the colonial project was swapped for an anticolonial stance. Basically, this was a matter of switching labels. The ‘civilising mission’ was renamed the ‘bilateral development relationship’.

Postcolonial marginalisation

In Holland, the colonial monopoly on Indies knowledge was maintained by carefully separating survivor discourse (the stories of war and deprivation) from expert discourse. All ‘coloured’ knowledge, brought to Holland by Indies postcolonial migrants, was deemed incompatible with the white academic knowledge of Indonesia. Moreover, against the background of the new, worldwide sentiment of anticolonialism, the postcolonial migrants were suspected of being ‘dirty colonials’ possessed by vengeful sentiment. This point of view led to complete neglect of the Indies postcolonial migrant group as a subject of academic interest. Only the government regularly ordered reports on their assimilation process. By the early 1960s, the painful decolonisation episode seemed at a distance and the Indies migrants appeared to be successfully integrated into Dutch society. But a series of developments in the second half of the 1960s spoiled matters and changed the postcolonial scene significantly.

In 1962, the Netherlands had to abandon its last outpost in the former Indies, New Guinea. In the following years, the general postcolonial mood changed. Firstly, a revival of historical interest in World War II, especially the fate of the Jewish population, drew attention away from postcolonial issues. Then, new sentiments about colonialism began to develop, influenced by the worldwide radical revolt in universities and locally by Suharto’s seizure of power in Jakarta.

A sudden rush of panic engulfed Holland after a TV-program was broadcast that mentioned Dutch war crimes in Indonesia. This had immediate effects. The general indignation about American imperialism in Vietnam changed overnight into an immense but partly suppressed embarrassment about Dutch imperialism in Southeast Asia. This sense of embarrassment again brought Indies migrants – and not just the war veterans – into a negative light. Their presence was a constant reminder of the painful past.

The 1970s left-wing politicisation of universities affected virtually all Dutch academic institutions. Academic-radical coteries took over institutional power and criticised the Dutch (and global) political and social status quo for years to come. Among them were the new generation of Indonesianists, who felt inspired either by Wertheim or by familial-colonial ties. Leftist themes were easy to come by. In Indonesia, repression and injustice abounded, as did the trauma of colonial guilt in Holland. As a consequence, no research space could be spared for the difficult questions regarding postcolonial issues. There was a tendency to lay claim to ‘the Indies’ and ‘Indonesia’ as exclusive ‘moral’ and academic provinces. The unrelenting condemnation of Suharto’s repressive politics seemed to relate, in an obscure but comfortable way, to the redemption of colonial guilt.

There was still no scholarly interest in the history and experience of the Indies postcolonial migrants. In 1986, a few members of the Indies-Dutch community founded an Indies Scientific Institute in The Hague, which, helped by state subsidies, undertook the neglected documentation and historiography of the colonial experience of Indos, but did not publish any major studies on Indies history or culture. Academic research programs focusing on (post)colonial Indies history have started only recently, at the insistence of Indies communities. But the studies that have since been published, including my book, Ons Indisch Erfgoed (Our Indies Heritage), have been met with an ominous silence in academia.

Need for debate

The absence of a critical public debate about postcolonial issues in Holland can be attributed to scholars who continue to claim the field of the ‘Indies’ and ‘Indonesia’ as their own. Their research agendas have never included inquiries into the Bersiap period or the murders at this time. They have not considered the price paid for the so-called ‘quiet integration’ of postcolonial migrants. The question of how postcolonial power structures influenced postwar Dutch politics – especially the formation of right-wing politics – has not yet been grappled with. Their research agendas also fail to consider the postcolonial culture of the ‘pure’ Dutch residents of the Indies or the question why so many Indo migrants could not find a way to stay in Holland after repatriation. Now the first generation of Indies migrants is disappearing and much material has been lost.

However, Indies communities have taken the initiative and a grassroots debate on these issues has begun. This bottom-up engagement is a novel development in the Dutch postcolonial context, made possible thanks to the internet. A clear sign of this is the emergence of American, Canadian and Australian Indo voices, which convey a host of different experiences and reflections. These voices tell, for example, rather carefree about the racial discrimination they once experienced in Holland, a subject that is still considered taboo among the majority of Indos who live in The Netherlands. Although academic interest in their history and experience is almost non-existent, Indos of all generations have passionately commenced the exploration of their complicated communal past. This will undoubtedly lead to a more nuanced take on Dutch colonial history and, hopefully, a serious postcolonial debate will begin at last.

Lizzy van Leeuwen (Lizzyvl@xs4all.nl) is an anthropologist and the author of Ons Indisch Erfgoed (2008), Lost in Mall: An Ethnography of Middle-Class Jakarta (2011) and Airconditioned Lifestyles (1997).

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Memories of a homeland

Njonja Peters

With mixed feelings, Indisch Dutch Australians still think of Indonesia as home

Between 1945 and 1949, around 300,000 Indies-born and Eurasian Dutch relocated from the Netherlands East Indies to the Netherlands as a result of the Japanese Occupation of Java and Sumatra and the Indonesian Revolution. Not only did the Indos (Eurasian Dutch) have to leave members of their Indonesian family behind. Numerous Indies-born Dutch also had to bid farewell to Indonesian and their relatives. For the vast majority of the refugees, the Netherlands was a mythical land rather than an actual place, since few had ever seen it.

Some years after relocating – and mainly in response to the objectionable treatment they received on arrival in the Netherlands – around 30,000 left to go elsewhere. Approximately 20,000 made their way to the USA, while 10,000 chose Australia. But despite their double migration and the traumas that dictated their exile from it they retain an enduring attachment to their country of birth. Little, however, is known about the nature of their ongoing connection with Indonesia.

In 2005, my colleague Dr Sue Summers and I travelled around Australia to collect information, photos and life stories for my research project, ‘Footsteps of the Dutch in Australia’. We found out that hundreds of Indisch Dutch Australians, both Indos and Indies-born Dutch, harboured bitter memories of the war, and felt they had nowhere to go with these experiences. Despite the hardships they had experienced, their connection to their country of birth as ‘homeland’ was mostly expressed in positive terms.

Sense of place

‘Sense of place’ is the emotional relationship between people and their homeland. Documentary maker John Hughes maintains that Australians think and talk a lot about ‘home’ because our personal heritage and sense of identity relate to a place and a history not really our own. This irony is especially relevant to Indisch Dutch Australians. Despite not always being indigenous to it, or only partly so, as previous inhabitants of the Indies (now Indonesia), they nonetheless express strong feelings of connection. For them, a sense of place has come to depend less on physical environment and more on the senses, memories and beliefs that sustain their familiarity with the distant homeland.

The depth of this attachment is clearly articulated in the autobiography of Indo Dutch Australian Andreas Flach (founder of the Indies magazine, Bambu). Writing for his Dutch Eurasian Australian children, in the epilogue Flach records the brutal Japanese Occupation and the violence of the Bersiap period (which marked the start of the Indonesian Revolution) as the darkest episodes in his life. Not only because of the many intense and traumatic experiences he endured but more because a direct consequence was the loss of his beloved country of birth and blood. Andreas has requested that on his death, his ashes be returned and scattered in his ‘motherland’.

Nell van de Graaff, a Totok (Indies–born person of Dutch parents) and now Australian author, describes this enduring bond in her autobiography, We Survived: A Mother’s Story of Japanese Captivity. Concerned with her first visit back to Java, her birthplace, since leaving it 30 years earlier, it confirms that even her double displacement – first to the Netherlands and then Australia – had not erased this bond. Nell’s first strong memories came flooding back when the plane touched down at sunset after a heavy downpour of rain that left the tarmac glistening. As the warmth and humidity generated by the rain enveloped her and the distinctive sounds and the smells of Indonesia rushed in, in a flash she realised how much she had missed all this. She felt emotional, close to tears. Over the next days Nell revelled in Chinese bread and freshly brewed coffee, and the distant calls of street vendors selling sate and other delicacies from their mobile stalls. ‘The sweetness of it all’, she remembers, ‘was almost too much to bear, how I loved this country, I felt I had come home … I sighed and felt blessed.’

Even ambivalent reflections by Indisch Dutch Australians attest to the continuing hold the Indies has on them as the source of their sense of place, of origin. As Willem explained, ‘I have been living in denial for a long time about my formative years in the Netherlands East Indies; however, I know it is part of me, my upbringing, and it just doesn’t disappear. I keep going back for more information and I understand the significance of the part it played and the shaping of the man. I am now proud to be a person with such a complex background.’

Frank expressed similar sentiments about his visit back to Indonesia in 2000, with his wife, to reconnect with his roots on the various islands where had lived and to see the camps where he had been interned. He described this reconnection as both a moving emotional experience and liberating. ‘In Indonesia I felt at home at once, surrounded by all the familiar sights, smells and the landscapes. Until today – and more so in the autumn of my life – I feel increasingly more bonded with things Indisch, especially people and Indisch organisations. I look for them and attend their events regularly and have made many friends at these activities.’ Indeed, sharing the bond is part of what keeps it alive.

Sharing pasts

Indos and Indies-born Dutch Australians validated this bond in the 1980s when they began for the first time to establish social clubs based on their attachment to the former Netherlands East Indies. Those we interviewed explained how at their first meeting with other people from the Indies they immediately felt at home. Everything was familiar – the accent, language, experiences and stories. It felt like they were related. They had the same background, had gone to the same schools, liked the same kind of food, told the same kind of jokes and listened to the same music. Most considered the first meeting a sort of homecoming. As one man pointed out, ‘You know what is so lovely about meeting another Indisch person? They know what I mean when I say pisang, babu or botol tjebok … We don’t have to explain our past to each other. We share our past. That is what makes it so special.’ Those who attend the club functions do so because they enjoy their shared heritage.

The social gatherings in Australia of these ‘other Dutch’ (as Indo/Indies-born Dutch Australians often call themselves) centres on their collective memories of nostalgic imagining and the communicating of ‘Tempo Doeloe’ – the good old times. In Western Australia the Bambu fellowship meets at a local suburban function centre. Here they gather to share experiences and their love of Indonesian food. Dutch from other clubs often also come to partake of the delicious ‘rijst tafel’ they serve and the friendship they find there. The fact that the members meet in a suburban function centre rather than the Neerlandia Dutch Clubhouse is a clear indicator of where Indisch Dutch feel at home and where they do not. Moreover, Bambu patrons are generally younger than Neerlandia Clubhouse regulars. They are closer in age to the migrants who came to Australia as children who we tend to call the second generation.

Untold stories

Indisch Dutch Australians are not only concerned with nostalgia. Their other serious concern is a platform on which to relate their untold wartime experiences.

An important outcome from a letter about our project sent to Indisch Dutch Australians by ‘Stichting Het Gebaar’, the Dutch compensation agency for survivors of Japanese prisoner-of-war camps 1942-1945, was the feeling that their story had never been heard. An amazing one thousand sent us expressions of interest to be involved. Later, when we sent respondents an extended questionnaire, there was an astounding fifty percent return rate. It was not unusual to receive sixty page responses, additional life histories, a range of photographs and historic documents, and supplements to both stories and questionnaires. As one woman commented, ‘After receiving your request regarding my experiences during the war, it was as if the load was lifted from my shoulders. At last someone is interested in what that time was like. I’m 80 now, but those awful happenings are as clear in my mind as yesterday.’

A particularly fraught aspect of these Indisch Dutch wartime stories concerns Australia’s active indifference to their perilous predicament during the Bersiap months. Mary Briggs-Koning, who was among those evacuated from the NEI to join her father in Australia in 1945, recalls, ‘While people around the world celebrated the end of the war, we who had survived [Japanese concentration camps], were now at risk of being killed as we were thrust into a civil war – the Indonesian Nationalist Revolution. Consequently the banning of Dutch ships in Australian ports by the Australian wharf labourers, greatly diminished assistance to provide us (and all Indonesians) with much needed supplies of food, medicines and a means of leaving the country.’

A nostalgic performance at a get-together of Bambu members from New Zealand, Australia and The Netherlands in    Brisbane    Wieneke Coppins

Indisch Dutch who, like Mary Briggs-Koning, were children at the time, remember the Indonesian Revolution as even more frightening than their internment under the Japanese, as the atrocities with which they were then confronted were worse even than those inflicted by the Japanese. Eduard will never forget the horror he felt when his parents told him two children of their friends had been murdered. Both were around Eduard’s age of 13 at the time. The girl was doused in petrol and set alight, the boy hacked to pieces. Around 20 per cent of interned Dutch died. In the period of terror during the Bersiap period, which lasted until early 1946, another 6500 Dutch died and 16,000 went missing are presumed to have met the same fate. In this period most of the Indos were also interned for the first time, but in Republican internment camps for their safety.

Trauma and telling

In Australia, Indisch Dutch Australians have come up against a lack of recognition and care, including appropriate geriatric psychiatric care to help them deal with symptoms of post-traumatic stress that often manifested for the first time in older age. To them, it appeared as if nobody cared about what had happened to them. As one man recalls, ‘We were really starved. To the point that we were bleeding and had beri beri.’ But few Australians know about this suffering. The fact that their traumatic experiences remain largely unacknowledged irks them, and has for some contributed to the intensity of post-traumatic stress symptoms. As another man explains, ‘My doctor tells me that I need to talk about my experiences, but there is nobody to talk to who has a clue about our lives in the Indies!’

For some Indisch Dutch Australians, our study was the catalyst that helped to put them more in touch with their past, including their family histories. For many it also tapped into a growing need to express the past positively and openly. Many are reluctant to see themselves as victims and prefer to be seen as survivors with resilience. The study has also motivated many children of survivors to help their parents to write their story down, with the help of information that is now available online. This process has in turn helped the second generation forge a unique connection to the history of their former homeland.

Indies war victims are part of the collective memory in neither Australia nor the Netherlands. Neither country has acknowledged the fact that they endured world and civil wars and a process of emigration and remigration. In essence, they are a people dispossessed, who lost, not only, their country, their home and all their worldly possessions, but had nowhere to turn with their stories and experiences. The telling of these stories now helps to relieve the trauma. It is another part of ‘coming home’.

Njonja Peters (N.Peters@curtin.edu.au) is the Founding Director of the Curtin’s Migration, Ethnicity, Refugees and Citizenship Research Unit (MERC) and is curator of permanent and travelling museum exhibitions on migration. She is the author of Milk and honey but no gold: postwar migration to Western Australia 1945-1964 (2002), The Dutch down under 1606-2009 (2006) and From tyranny to freedom: Dutch children from the Netherlands East Indies to Fairbridge Farm School 1945-1946 (2009).

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Being 'Indo'

Starting a new life in Holland in 1951    IISG Collection Rijkschroeff 04

We all know that Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony and that after the Japanese Occupation Indonesians fought a long independence struggle before their sovereignty was a fact. Afterwards, Indonesia’s new leaders made sure that the colonial chapter in history was closed. Likewise, the Dutch government did everything to keep the lid on the political particulars of the colonial past. Colonialism was an embarrassing episode which was best ignored. Consequently little is known about the fate of the hundreds of thousands of people who were a product of this colonial past: the people of mixed Eurasian blood, heritage and identity, who were born and raised in the Netherlands East Indies but after the war, were forced to leave the country which they had grown accustomed to calling home.

The stories of how these people have built new lives in the Netherlands or elsewhere, and of the resultant challenges they have faced, are very complex and diverse. They are stories of conflict and conciliation, forgetting and remembrance, denial and recognition, trauma and hope. The larger story that binds these individual stories together is the struggle to redefine and control identity and culture. In the following weeks, Inside Indonesia features a series of articles that highlight different aspects of this struggle.

Benedict Anderson opens the series this week with his reflections on Lizzy van Leeuwen’s book on the construction of ‘Our Indies Heritage’ in The Netherlands. His review presents a vivid historical account of the bitter experiences of Indo-Europeans – from colonial-era Netherlands East Indies to present-day multicultural Holland – and gives us clear insight into the political intricacies at work in the formation of ‘Indo-identity’ – all against a backdrop of major societal changes.

Next, Lizzy van Leeuwen herself gives us a critical analysis of the politics of marginalisation of ‘Indo knowledge’, from colonial to post-colonial times. Highlighting the close relationship between power and knowledge, she argues that scholars have had a major stake in this marginalisation leaving scores of unanswered questions and forgotten stories with which the Indo community has attempted to grapple.Njonja Peters then highlights the story of another ‘forgotten’ group: the Indies-born Dutch repatriates who eventually settled in Australia. She points to the deep emotional bond which many of them still feel for their homeland – despite (or perhaps because of) their double displacement – cherishing fond childhood memories that grow stronger when shared in new community groups, real and virtual. Yet she also shows how the war has caused a rupture in the nature of the memories produced, from nostalgia to trauma, and that Indies-born Dutch Australians, bereft of a homeland, still carry their traumatic experiences.

The articles by Fridus Steijlen and Marijke Schuurmans show that the experience in the Netherlands is quite different. Special monuments have been erected there to commemorate the traumas of the war and forced ‘repatriation’. However, the monuments were a long time coming, and once these memories-cast-in-stone were erected they became deeply-contested sites of struggle in themselves. Marijke Schuurmanshighlights the controversy surrounding the Indisch Monument in The Hague. Many in the Indies community felt initially that this ‘national monument’ neglected their experiences of the war. They have made it their own by giving it a personal touch. Fridus Steijlen tells us the story of what is perhaps the most troubled group in the forced exile from Indonesia; the Moluccans, who have long continued to fight for their own country. His article shows how the development of Moluccan memory sites reflects their problematic integration in the Netherlands, but also how this eventually helped them to make the transition from exiles of war to migrants here to stay.

Of course, Indo identity is not only about memories of the past. For the third post-war generation, quite different issues of identity are more relevant. The final two articles in the series, written by two young ‘Indo’ women, one Netherlands-born and -raised and the other a native Balinese, highlight this. Amis Boersmawrites of ‘moving home’ to the land of her mother to work as an advisor at a well-known Indonesian human rights organisation and embark on a new life. Interweaving her personal and work-related experiences, she tells a touching story about adjusting, dealing with culture clashes and enduring the difficulties and joys of ‘in-betweenness’. A different kind of culture clash is highlighted in Asriana Kebon’s article, in which she writes very personally about how young ‘Indos’ in Indonesia are confronted by great pressures to conform to the stereotype of Indo stardom. Indeed, in Indonesia, the problem is not marginalisation but rather over-exposure of Indo presence, although there are signs that the times are changing here, too.

There are numerous other stories of past and present experiences of different generations of Indos around the world. As telling these stories goes more than halfway to recognition, these articles begin the work of understanding this neglected group in Indonesia’s past and present.

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Badui Community in Banten – Sacred Lives

Badui people

In a fast-changing world, the Badui community in Banten reminds an enigma. A deeply spiritual community, a wholly unique and closed society, the Badui people of Banten steadfastly maintain their ancient ways, rejecting most trappings of modern society.

Members of the innermost community, the badui Dalam (inner badui people), live in one of three villages, Cibeo, Dikertawana and Cikeusik, nestled amongst the forested foothills around Mt. Kendang, southeast of Rangkasbitung. Deliberately spurning all contact with the world beyond their group, the Badui Dalam are completely surrounded by a protective buffer zone of badui Luar (outer Badui people).

The 400 or so members of this community believe they are the direct lineal descendants of the first people to occupy the Earth, the land they are born from is a living mandala, a representation of the entire universe. To prevent devastation and calamity throughout the world, they strive to live in harmony with the earth and in conformity with the ways prescribed by their ancestors. Thus, there are no schools, no medical facilities and no government offices of any kind. Each of the three Badui Dalam villages is headed by a “puun”, a hereditary spiritual and temporal leader whose person is sacred. The land within Badui Dalam territory is also regarded as sacred, and outsiders, including the Badui Luar, are forbidden to till its soil or settle there.

Badui Luar Village (outter Badui village)

The Badui Dalam are not permitted to wear any cloth but the rough white homespun they weave themselves. The may not cultivate cash crops, use fertilizers, eat any four-legged animals, domesticate any livestock apart from chickens or use any medicine except their own herbal preparations. They agriculture is limited to “lading” or shifting cultivation, which relies on the natural fertility of newly cleared ground seldom productive for more than two seasons.

The Badui Luar, or Outer Badui community. Of almost 8000 individuals living in 67 villages, speak the same archaic dialect of Sundanese as do the insiders, to whom they are related by ties of blood, marriage and ritual. The taboos and rules that govern this group are considerably less rigorous than on the inside, although the use of vehicles, machinery, electricity, and chemicals within their territory is still forbidden, as is the cultivation of commercial crops. Members of the Badui Luar may travel in motorized vehicles when journeying outside the area, however, and have far more frequent interactions with the outside world. Although obliged to wear only their homespun blue or black cloth, and forbidden to wear trousers, some of the Luar people now proudly sport the colorful sarongs and shirts favored by their Sundanese neighbors.

A bridge made of bamboo

Other elements of civilizations such as toys, money and batteries are rapidly infiltrating especially in the villages to the north, and it is no longer unusual for an outer Badui to make a journey to Jakarta, or even to work outside as a hired hand during the rice planting and reaping seasons. Some even work in big towns and cities like Jakarta, Bogor and Bandung. Animal meat is eaten in some of the outer villages where dogs are trained for hunting, though animal husbandry is still forbidden.

The origins of the Baduis are obscured by the absence of a recorded or written history, though ethnically they appear to come from the same stock as the Sundanese and the Javanese. There was a popular suggestion that they are remnants of the last Hindu Kingdoms in West Java, Pajajaran, but this fails to account for their unique nature or their religion, which shows no Hindu influence. Theirs is a strange blend of animism and certain Islamic elements, with some original ideas thrown in for good measure.

The Badui’s most hallowed ground lies on Gunung Kendeng, in a place called Arca Domas, which is annually visited (and only) by “puun” of the inner communities. It is possible to visit some of the villages on the northern rim of the badui Area; the most easily accessible is Desa Kaduketug, which is a good four-hour hike from Leuwidamar, 24 kilometers south of Rangkasbitung.

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North Sumatra Cultural Art

The native people consists of all kinds of ethnic groups namely the Malayans, Batak Toba, Simalungun, Karo, Pakpak Dairi, Pesisir, Mandailing and Nias. They reside in their own area, nevertheless there is an assimilation among the migrants in some areas especially in big cities.

The majority of the population earn their living by farming. In the coastal area there are a lot of them who live as fishermen. And some of them carry on trade, become labourers and officials especially cities and plantation areas.

Since a long time ago North Sumatera has been open for the outer world. This is not only caused by the existing communication facilities such as the ocean harbours Belawan and Sibolga and the airport of Polonia Medan but, also Indonesian ethnic groups especially many of those from Java have lived in this province since the opening of the plantation in Dutch Colonial time.

Even later they have assimilated with the native people. Also many foreign citizens live here; especially in big cities. Plantations form the most important economical potential of north Sumatera. A big plantation area is especially found in plains in the Eastern part.

Like the other areas in Indonesia, North Sumatera is characterized with all kinds of art. And caused by the regional condition, the existence of a particular style of art is of nothing incredible in every region. Also various kinds of ethnic groups found in North Sumatra, have created sorts of art showing where the ethnic groups come from.

As a really open area for comers it is obvious that the influence of outer culture will easily enter this area. This influence is seen obviously on the nature of art inherited up to the present. This doesn’t mean that the original form of their art has disappeared. The inheritance shows that some tribes, especially in the inlands still practice the art. Like art life in other areas, the birth and creation of art in North Sumatra contains magic/religious and aesthetic aspects. These two values appear in all kinds of arts.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

According to the myth of the tribes, there were all kinds of antecedents of the people of North Sumatera.

Batak tribe for example believes that their ancestors came down from heaven to the top of mouth Busuk Buhit, and lived in Sianjur area. It first around Samosir island and later its generation developed and spread everywhere in its surroundings. Nias tribe believes that their ancestors came from them most beautiful heaven called Tetoholi Ana’a, and went down to the Gomo area in the middle part of Nias and later spread to all part of the island. Some of the Malayan tribe believes they were originated from the descendants of Iskandar Zulkarnaen who came down on the hill of Siguntang in Palembang.

Nothing could fix the antecedents of the people of North Sumatera, however, according to the historical of the spreading of the tribes like the other Indonesian people the ancestors were supposed to come from further India coming to this area in groups. Therefore people consisting of all kinds of tribes developed by themselves in their own areas.

As the result of the pluralistic condition art as moral expression of the tribes, they have their own various style and kinds. Like the various kinds of its tribes in North Sumatra there are all kinds of traditional art, namely Malayan art, Batak Toba art, Simalungan art, Karo art, Pakpak Dairi art, Angkola mandailing art, coastal and Nias art. These traditional arts have their own kinds, style and local characteristics.

War Dance, Nias

The style and characteristics of ethnic art, are later influenced by outer culture. The influence of the older megalithic art is found in the cultural environment of the population of Nias archipelago. The Hindu influence is felt especially in the Batak ethnic environment whereas Islam influence in the coastal populated area. Megalithic art for example has left its remnants in Nias in the form of stone monuments and sacrificial ceremony by scarifying a pig. Also in several places around Samosir there are statues and cemeteries of the ancestors. The Hindu influence is around in all kinds of aspects of life in this area. In all kinds of spoken language and medical books of Batak called Pustaha there are Sanskrit words. Even the form of the original Batak characters are very much influenced by Hindu, so are the textile handicraft.

The temples found in South Tapanuli are proofs of Hindu remainder in architectural field. The temple complex spread in a large area.

Some names of “marga” in Dairi and Karo, are considered to have originated from the influence of social structure in Hindu culture, such as “marga-marga” Brahmana, Padia, and Colia. So are the influences of religion and Islam cultures. Especially in the art of this area, there are all kinds and sorts of typical Islamic items. Gambus, rebana, adrah, bordah and qasidah are Islamic art of music. Whereas in field of art dancing for example there is one called “tari zapin” which is liked by people of the coastal area.

Batak traditional house

Mosque and palace are the products of Islamic architecture. The Grand Mosque in Medan and Azizi Mosque in Tanjungpura, with their beautiful ornaments have a high Islamic architecture, so are the Maimun on palace in Medan and the Datuk Lime Laras Palace in Asahan.

The Dutch Colonial rule later built some buildings in European style such as City Hall and Post office. Since this era, the new art had developed as individualistic among the middle class people who was living in the city. Whereas the traditional art was still supported by the ethnic group although it was not developed by the colonial government.

In general the new art forms activities on literature and play which develop in Medan. The well known play groups at that time were Keris (creese) Opera, Blue White, Miss Alang etc. The period of the Japanese occupation formed a paralyzing period for art. The people potential supporting traditional art grew weaker and weaker. Some kinds of art had disappeared and the appreciation of the people toward art was decreasing. The daily stress of life which was so burdensome influences the attention and attitude of people toward their traditional art.

After the fight for freedom especially after 1960s’ traditional activity being neglected for a long time and as the result of change in attitude and progress of the era gradually could attract the interest of the people. Probably caused by the strength of the Batak people in holding and applying their tradition, the spreading of art from one area/tribe to the other became difficult. Consequently, particular style of art of each area/tribe was created.

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