Minorities, Modernity and the Emerging Nation: Christians in Indonesia, a Biographical Approach (review)

There is an extensive literature on Indonesian nationalism in the last decades of Dutch colonial rule. Most of the focus has been on what went on in Java—understandably so given the centrality of events on Java for the evolution of Indonesian nationalism. Almost all of the writing has also focused on various strands of the "secular" nationalists or on the Indonesian communist party or mainstream Islamic groups such as Sarekat Islam and Muhammadiyah. Minorities, Modernity and the Emerging Nation breaks new ground in its focus on the lives of five politically active Christians and their search for identity within the emerging Indonesian nationalism. Two were Javanese (Kasimo and Soegijapranata), two were Bataks from South Tapanuli (Amir Sjarifoeddin and Goenoeng Moelia), while the fifth (Ratu Langi) was from Minahasa. Two were Catholics and three were Protestants. All were acutely aware that they were adherents of a minority faith and that their Christian faith was in the eyes of the majority, tainted by being the faith of the colonizers. As intellectuals they were aware of the social, political, and economic ideas swirling among the newly emerging indigenous elites in the 1920's and 1930's. Like so many of their contemporaries they were searching for new identities—intellectual, spiritual, and institutional. In Van Klinken's terms they were searching for new forms of political community.

Through his biographical approach Gerry van Klinken has thrown new light on some of the big issues that confronted Indonesian intellectuals in the last decades of colonial rule and the chaotic decade of Japanese occupation and subsequent revolution. It is an innovative approach that not only develops a sensitive understanding of these five individuals and the communities of which they were part, but also provides a new insight into the evolution of political ideas in late colonial Indonesia. He has made excellent use of private papers in personal collections in Indonesia and The Netherlands and has also made extensive use of the Archives of the Archbishop of Batavia. This, combined with interviews with those who knew these men, has enabled him to paint nuanced and sensitive portraits.

All but Amir Sjarifuddin were deeply conservative men. Kasimo and Soegijapranoto struggled with the ideas of the mainstream of the Indonesian nationalist movement. Their class position in Javanese society, their status within the Catholic Church, and their concern about the position of Catholics in an independent Indonesia caused them to have ambivalent relations with the key nationalist political leaders. In the end they were primarily concerned with preserving the Catholic Church as an institution rather than Indonesian nationalism as such. Van Klinken writes well about the ambivalence of their relationship with the small and conservative Catholic Party and with the Dutch episcopal hierarchy in the colony. Ratu Langi was like Kasimo and Moelia a member of the colonial "parliament," the Volksraad. Like them he too was a deeply conservative man struggling with the ambiguities of modernity as well as being a member not only of a minority religion but also a minority ethnic group.

I found the portrait of Amir Sjarifuddin especially poignant. Amir was a convert to Christianity and a political radical who in 1948 stated that he had really always been a communist. After the Madiun revolt in September, 1948, he was arrested by the Indonesian army and executed. Van Klinken explores his ideas and his personality with a real depth of understanding of the ambiguities of his life.

This is a fine book on a number of levels. It explores, as no other book has, the interaction between key Christian intellectuals and the evolving political ideas in late colonial and early independent Indonesia. It provides the reader with a clearer understanding than hitherto of the dilemmas facing many who saw themselves as members of minorities. It also provides a very different approach to understanding the broader political and...