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264 CHAPTER IX Princes, Politicians, and Peasants The Sumatran revolution struck its participants as an autonomous force with its own life and will, “heedless of us who created it”. Once it was in full flight the individual had to ride it or be trampled under foot. Only when it paused, astonished at its own force, did it appear possible to direct it into some defined new path. Even at the point when new and constructive possibilities appeared to be open, neither the established nationalists from above nor the communists from below were strong or imaginative enough to turn them to account. If we compare the north Sumatran case with Asian revolutions which have been considered more successful, this is the most striking distinction. In Vietnam and China communist parties had already developed a recognized national leadership, a cadre system, and even a working relationship with sections of the peasantry by the time their great opportunity came in 1945. Even in Hyderabad, whose abortive revolution of 1946‒48 bears a superficial resemblance to the East Sumatran experience, the communist party had been able to work among the peasants of rural Telengana since 1940. Dutch and then Japanese repression had given Sumatran commu­ nists no compar­able opportunity to develop party structure and discipline before they were suddenly confronted with revolutionary opportunities of extraordinary scope. Individual communists demonstrated remarkable  Mochtar Lubis, A Road with no End, trans. A.H. Johns (London, 1968), p. 97.  Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (London, Penguin, 1973), pp. 380‒2. C.M. Elliott, “Decline of a Patrimonial Régime: The Telengana Rebellion in India, 1946‒51”, JAS, 34, Part 1 (November 1974), pp. 27‒47. 09 BP.indd 264 11/5/13 2:16:54 PM Princes, Politicians, and Peasants 265 imagination and leadership, but the party they formed was almost as spontaneous and opportunistic as the revolution of which it was part. The ability of the PKI to embody a revolution from below was particularly damaged by the vulnerability of its leaders to charges of corruption and soft living. In other parts of Asia decolonization had been taken far enough by the Japanese or the western colonial powers to arm a non-revolutionary nationalist leadership with legitimacy, visibility, and a degree of control over the bureaucracy and the military. Such advantages enabled Sukarno and Hatta to stay on top of the revolutionary process in Java, riding it in the direction of national rather than social revolution. They proved ultimately too strong for the ill-organized communists in Java trying to ride in a different direction, as did the Indian Congress government in Hyderabad and Aung San in relation to the Burmese communists. The Japanese had not allowed a nationalist leadership of comparable strength to develop in Sumatra. The absence of a leadership to define the Sumatran revolution in its own terms gave it an especially spontaneous character. In seeking for explana­ tions and analogies, Sumatrans themselves turned to the French revolution rather than the Russian or Chinese. A small book on the French revolution was produced by an Acehnese journalist in March 1946, and the example was widely quoted to explain both regicide and the terror. The nemesis of Louis XVI was rendered into traditional Acehnese verse form so that it could be read aloud in village prayer-halls. There is more in the analogy than spontaneity and regicide. As Brinton has pointed out, when the balance sheet is made for a revolution like the French, one of the clearest consequences is likely to be the sweeping away of anachronisms and local particularities. Among the incontrovert­ ible consequences of 1789 were a metric system, a centralized pattern of administration and education, a potent set of national myths and symbols. The revolution in northern Sumatra made a similarly sharp break with the diverse and fragmented past. The array of ulèëbalang, imeum, sibayak, sultans, rajas, datuks, and raja urung was finally swept away, along with the judicial system through which they had continued to administer the customary adat of their diverse peoples.  Osman Raliby, Repoloesi Perantjis, advertised in Soeloeh Merdeka, 15 March 1946. See also Revolusi Desember ’45 di Atjeh, and Mohammad Said, “What was the ‘Social Revolution of 1946’”, Indonesia, 15, p. 174.  Abdullah Arif, Seumangat Atjeh, 5 (Kutaraja, n.d.).  Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, pp. 265‒7. 09 BP.indd 265 11/5/13 2:16:54 PM [18.191...

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