Freedom! Freedom!: Women and Politics in Indonesian Literature / Hana Oktavia Anandira

Freedom! Freedom!: Women and Politics in Indonesian Literature

Published on 17th August 2021

76 years of Indonesian independence, writer Hana Anandira contemplates “freedom of the press”, war, and resistance through women’s eyes.

This article was originally published on Res Publica Politics, 2021.

S. Rukiah, in ca. 1954, from H.B.Jassin, Seri esei dan kritik kesusasteraan Indonesian moderen (Jakarta: Gunung Agung, 1962, vol. 1, p. 208).

The 17th of August marks the day Indonesia rose to its knees.

It’s natural then as if by automation, to think of Ir. Soekarno reading the proclamation aloud with charisma that lives on.

It’s easy too, to think about a history so nuanced: the story of a quasi-socialist nation, bloody massacres whose aftermath remains unstudied, the rise and fall of ideology, the erasure of names; of people; of land; of narratives.

If one wishes to depict Indonesia’s polemic-ridden trail, then any excerpt from Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s ‘Tetralogi Buru’ (the compiled volumes, “Buru Tetralogy”) could easily suffice. But I would like to steer away from this direction and make it about women.

Women, because we have heard the times writer Mochtar Lubis stepped out of prison just to be thrown back in. Because we knew how ‘they’ landed author and critic Hans Bague Jassin behind bars for translating his interpretation of the Koran into poetry. Because what we know about Pramoedya has brought his works closer to justice. Because Siti Rukiah experienced a similar fate and nobody really knows her name.

This is not to invalidate the struggles of our war poets and intellectuals who died, starved, and bled in the hands of the unnamed. But men marching into the streets or incarcerated to alienation is too familiar an image that the idea of women rebelling had—in an almost inherent manner—taken a backseat.

Maybe the common tales in which ‘women’s revolution began at home’ have contextualised war tales with masculinity. But times have changed, and revolution through the female gaze and the literature that instil them have claimed their place. The gap for women’s voices has been filled, and to keep them alive, they must be brought back.

I would like to recall Laksmi Pamuntjak’s column “Two Men, Two Survivors” (2015) for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, where she resuscitates venturing down the Buru Island in the Moluccas—then intended to be a ‘communist graveyard’—in the company of two ex-political prisoners as they wondered about how they live when so many others died.

She wrote curiously of the man, a poet/ex-political prisoner, beside her: “Some of the [ex-prisoners] opted to resort to religion, others to the special brand of amor fati and tremendous self-control often attributed to the Javanese ethnic group. . . But he was his own person. His ability to corral even the most blatant instances of barbarity into the comic was one of a kind.”

Like a hammer knocking down its nail, Laksmi thrashes deep into a fit of anger that shatters anyone who hears it. She quoted the man: “‘Plant almost anything in this Buru soil, even a political prisoner, and it will live.’”

There is something innocent and childlike about the way the female author analyses a violent past. For one, there was no mention of how the “blatant instances of barbarity' ' took place, nor a dragging historical flashback. In the mildest, most observant manner, everything pivots on the raw emotions of man. Like war, anger is multifaceted. Fortified. And oftentimes, manipulated.

Laksmi ends the column with a juxtaposition, likening the two survivors with “the Hectors and Achilleses of the imagination—namely that there may be such a thing as man finding his highest humanity at the point of destruction.”

Writing about a blood-spilt or heart-breaking tragedy is no stranger to Laksmi, whose works anchor in many complex intersections; women and perseverance, pain and pleasure, identity and politics, such as her book “Amba” (“The Question of Red”, 2012) whose story is set against the backdrop of Buru island.

Around the time the two protagonists in Laksmi’s essay were ushered into mass exile, Siti Rukiah (better known as ‘S. Rukiah’), a mother who doubled as a teacher and literary figure, also had to suffer a similar defeat. Granted, being locked up was a common fate for the left-leaning intellectuals. If you’re ‘lucky’ enough, you’ll be exempted with “eks-tapol” (ex-political prisoner) stamped on your ID forever. If not, your name will never again be heard. But Rukiah’s punishment was a different kind: her imprisonment was marred with threats only possible to women.

A mother of six with a line-up of novellas and children’s books to her name, as well as a member of LEKRA (a cultural association affiliated with the Indonesian Communist Party), the oppressive government used Rukiah’s most valuable gift against her: her children.

“While in prison, I was not allowed to see my beloved children. I had no idea of their fate: were they living destitute under bridges, or had they even starved to death? For in those terrible times, nobody was allowed to take in or look after my children. If anyone had dared to do so, they would have faced prison. . . In the end, my desperate longing for my children forced me to write to the Government begging for release, under any conditions”, wrote Rukiah to researcher Annabel Gallop in 1985.

The writer, a powerful one of her time, eventually caved into release. In exchange, the government—led under Soeharto for thirty-one years—coerced her never to write again, informing every publisher of this suffocating agreement and made her live under surveillance for the rest of her waking years. Her literature was obliterated. Her voice, silenced.

The fall of Soeharto, also known as the reformation era, heralded a new wave of literary craftsmen/women. Today, we continue to see Rukiah’s successors voicing out both the downfall and beauty of this nation with perspectives that are colourful and diverse, like a light passing through prism.

Turning the page of a book written by Indonesian women made me realise that the term ‘revolution’ manifests in many shapes and forms, liberated from the mental image of a city abolished, blood or cries for resurrections.

For writer and journalist Leila S. Chudori, the idea of “freedom” and “revolution” are kept rather close to the kitchen, as she beautifully depicted in her book “Pulang” (“Coming Home”, 2012), a tale of a journalist in exile who sought refuge in Indonesian cookings; herbs and flowers intimate to the country, like “Kenanga” (Ylang-ylang or cananga), permeates his life. The idea of “independence” looks different to Balinese author Oka Rusmini. To her, at least in her book, “Tarian Bumi” (“Earth Dance”, 2000), liberation means abolishing class and patriarchal hierarchies and the abuse that comes with them.

It also means expressing oppression through whatever form; in “Earth Dance”, it was the graceful, meditative motions of Balinese dance—an irony for the female dancers who had their bodies colonised and fetishised for this ritual.

With every word written, female writers wherever they are have helped revolutionise and redefine what freedom meant. This includes the non-authors; the casual writers and daydreamers seeking to breathe life into stories in a world where women were systematically marginalised.

In 2007, the aforementioned author Laksmi Pamuntjak translated a beautiful poem about “Wayang” (shadow puppet) by writer, critic and journalist Goenawan Mohamad: “. . . Shadow interrupts the prerequisite of light when life means surveillance.”

I wonder what Rukiah, the late author and revolutionist in her own right, would think about the above excerpt. If not for her interruption, the dawn of the literary landscape would’ve meant differently to women in Indonesia, and to some extent, all over the world.

Siti Rukiah passed away in her hometown of Purwakarta, Central Java in 1996. Her works have won accolades and praise by prominent Indonesian writers like Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Mochtar Lubis, among others. Her novel, “Kejatuhan dan Hati” (“The Fall of The Heart”, 1950) is regarded as the most important early Indonesian novel by a female writer. It was first translated into English by John H. McGlynn as “An Affair of the Heart” and published in Reflections on rebellion: stories from the Indonesian upheavals of 1948 and 1965 (Ohio University Press, 1983; British Library, YA.1986.b.248).