Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet Book 2)

by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

A human blind to the future, I could do no more than hope to know. We never even really understand what we have already lived through.

What I was feeling then was that Europe had obtained its glory from swallowing up the world, and Japan from overrunning China. How strange it was if every glory was obtained only at the cost of the suffering of others. How confused I was, surrounded by the reality of the world.

“Don’t be sentimental. You’ve been educated to respect and even deify Europe, to trust in it unreservedly. Then, every time you discover reality—that there are Europeans without honor—you become sentimental. Europe is no more honorable than you, Child! Europe is only superior in the fields of science, learning and self-restraint. No more than that.

Wasn’t it you yourself who told me that our ancestors used great and splendid names in order to impress the world with their magnificence—an empty magnificence? Europe’s show of magnificence isn’t based on names; Europeans strut around with their science and learning. But the cheat remains a cheat, the liar remains a liar, even with his science and his learning.”

Never belittle or scorn a single person, or even two, because every individual contains unlimited possibilities.

“They studied well from the Spanish, from Europe, even before the Japanese. Even before the Chinese. It is a pity they were a colonized people, unlike Japan. The Filipinos could not develop because they were colonized. The Japanese have developed—developed too well. The Filipinos were good pupils of the Spanish. And the Spanish were bad teachers, rotten and corrupting. But the Filipinos didn’t just accept their teachings uncritically. The Filipinos are also great teachers for the other conquered peoples of Asia. They were the founders of the first Asian republic. And it collapsed. A great historical experiment.”

If they had no cannons, would anyone honor them?”

People are entranced and possessed by everything that is new; new etiquette, new behavior. Women are beginning to lose their shyness and are riding bicycles in the evenings. New, new, new, new! People forget that life basically stays the same, the same as yesterday. New, new, new—anything that is not new is looked upon as a remnant of the Middle Ages. People have become so childish, like little schoolchildren, thinking that with these new things life will be better than yesterday. This is the modern age! Anything that is not new is looked upon as being out of date, suitable only for peasants and villagers. People have been so easily lulled they ignore the fact that behind all these shouts, these urgings, this madness for what is new, there stands a supernatural power whose appetite for victims is never satisfied. This magical power is the columns of protozoa, of figures, which are called capital.

“And without knowing other peoples,” he continued without letting me regain my composure, “we will never come to know our own society properly either.”

They would run amok not really in self-defense, nor to attack or to take revenge, but only because they no longer knew what else to do once their last opportunity of life had been stolen.

“Nyai, if Mr. Minke here is unable to see the happier side of life, how is he going to be able to show his people what happier future they might build? Suffering is a narrow window through which to look on life, Nyai. And there are many ways to overcome it. Without some joy, some merriment, even in the defeat of suffering, people will only go round and round in circles inside that suffering.”

“Twenty years, Nyai. We have both experienced it ourselves—twenty years is not all that long. Twenty years can pass by and see a person no cleverer than he was before. There are many who become more and more unable to learn from their experiences.

Criticism can be rejected, but it has to be listened to first, reflected upon. If it isn’t necessary to reject it, then it can be taken as a suggestion. No one need be angry just because they have been criticized.”

you are an admirer of the French Revolution; you want to see human dignity given its proper place. If you look at people from one point of view, that of suffering alone, you will lose the many other aspects of humanity. Reflection upon suffering alone will only give rise to revenge, revenge and nothing else.”

He is just one man among millions upon this earth, and every one of those millions has the right to his own opinion. Why then are you angry? Why does the fact that Nijman has a different opinion offend you, upset you? He too has the right to his own opinion.”

It was not yet an age when someone barefooted could start up a conversation with someone who wore shoes. In the stories of our ancestors only the priests and gods wore slippers and shoes. And these simple people equated shoes with the power of Europe, of the same essence as the army’s rifles and cannons. They were more afraid of shoes than daggers or machetes, swords or spears.

“Why would the queen invest capital here?” A question flew from my mouth to mask my stupidity. “What for? Ah, Mr. Minke, what does it mean to be a queen in these mad times? Without capital she too would be the servant of capital. Even a king is best off being a king of capital.” “But the teachers all say we are entering the age of modernity, not the age of capital.” “They only half know what’s going on, Mr. Minke.

What people call the modern age, Mr. Tollenaar, is really the age of the triumph of capital. Everybody alive in this modern age is ordered about by big capital; even the education you received was adjusted to capital’s needs, not your own. So too the newspapers. Everything is arranged by it, including morality, law, truth, and knowledge.”

All kinds of people influence one another—even into their kitchens. Perhaps you yourself are already a lover of bean curd, and noodles without ever feeling you have been influenced by another race. And not just the Natives of the Indies, but the peoples of Europe too. People use spoons and forks, eat spaghetti and macaroni—all influences from China. Everything that gives pleasure to mankind, everything that does away with mankind’s suffering and boredom, everything that lessens his fatigue, will, in these times, be copied by the whole world. That young sinkeh too. He and his friends were only trying to copy the United States and France. In the end so too will the Natives of the Indies. And if the Natives started on that path, then soon there would be no more comfortable place for big capital in the Indies.”

“The Filipinos have already carried out strikes,” said Ter Haar. “But their rebellion is even more interesting; it rocked all of Europe, including Holland, Mr. Minke.” He hurriedly lit another cigarette. “They’re all busy studying why it happened so they can make sure nothing similar occurs in their own colonies.

I conjured up in my imagination the kings and bupatis of Java, mad with their lust for power, making people bow down and crawl before them, give obeisance to them, do their pleasure. And no guarantee that they would be better educated than those they ordered about. I shook my head. Even to imagine the Filipinos governing without white people was beyond me. And here, on my own earth to think of such a thing! To make any sense of it at all was impossible. Without the power of the whites the kings of Java would soon be mobilizing every single inhabitant in the effort to annihilate each other, each trying to emerge the sole triumphant ruler. Wasn’t that our history for centuries?

“I’m proud to be a liberal, Mr. Minke, a liberal who sees things through. Yes, others call this sort of view ‘extreme liberal.’ Not just disliking being oppressed, but also disliking oppressing. And, indeed, more than that: disliking oppression anywhere.”

It was on behalf of sugar that the liberals in the Netherlands, calling their policy the Ethical Policy because they wanted to pay the Netherlands’ debt to the Indies accrued in the days of the Culture System, waved the banners of education, emigration, and irrigation for the Indies, and prosperity for the Natives. But in reality it was done in the interests of sugar. Education: to produce the literates and numerates and technicians needed for the sugar industry. Emigration: to move more Javanese off Java, providing much-needed labor in Sumatra and opening up more land for canefields in Java. Irrigation: Water for the cane plantations, for sugar.

“Could somebody with education behave as deviously as that?” “The more educated the person, the more educated the deviousness.”

“Friends with you in times of trouble are friends in everything. Never belittle friendship. Its magnificence is greater than the fire of enmity.

People said that Japan was clever only at imitating. But, said another voice, the imitation of worthwhile things was a sign of advancement, not something base and undignified, as some colonial opinion had it. All people and races began by imitating before they could stand by themselves.