Stories from Deli

Tan Malaka, 1919-1921

A land of gold, a haven for the capitalist class, but also a land of sweat, tears, and death, a hell for the proletariat. The very memories of Deli at the time I was there (December 1919 to June 1921) even now tear at my heart. There the sharp conflict between capital and labor, between colonizer and colonized, was played out. The natural wealth of Deli gave rise to the most wealthy, cruel, arrogant, and conservative colonizing capitalist class as well as that most oppressed, exploited, and humiliated class, the Indonesian contract coolie.

What the Dutch had called “the gentlest people on earth” changed its character after suffering so much torment and cruelty, and, to take an analogy from the world around Deli, became “like a buffalo charging and trampling its enemies.” When I was there, between one and two hundred Dutch people were killed or wounded in attacks by coolies every year. Was there anything that Deli did not have? On the border between Deli and Aceh, in the region around Pangkalan Brandan, Pangkalan Susu, and Perlak there was oil. If I am not mistaken, there was iron on the border between Deli and Jambi. Jambi itself had tin, as did Singkep, Bangka, and Belitung. There was bauxite in Riau and alumina in Asahan. If all this wealth were linked with the coal in Sawah Lunto or the waterfall on the Asahan River (the second or third largest in the world), then the area around Deli could support any kind of heavy industry, even more so if it had access to the iron, tin, and other metals on the nearby Malay Peninsula, whicl1 has long historical ties to Deli.

But the Dutch did not look in that direction, and indeed it was impossible for them to see the opportunities for heavy industry, which involves many difficulties in its early stages. Usually, the Dutch are attracted by enterprises that are easy and involve little risk but that are nevertheless solid and provide a large investment return. They go in for profitable monopolies that can be quickly started up, but whicl1 will never, or at least not in the short run, give rise to competition. All the conditions that meet this kruidenier spirit were to be found in Deli, particularly in the tobacco indusu·y. The tobacco of Deli has a special place in the world market as the wrapping leaf for Manila cigars. Of course, in the beginning, it was hard to recruit the labor force, but once profits started coming, obtaining even larger numbers of workers was easy. Within three or four months of planting, tobacco leaves are ready to be picked. Around the tobacco plantations, enterprises producing latex, palm products, tea, and hemp grew up in addition to Deli’s oil industry.

It was tobacco that gave birth to the first Deli millionaire. Cremer was famous for his wealth and cruelty, qualities that led to his being known in the Netherlands as “Coolie Cremer.” The forerunner of all those who later made millions from latex and oil, he was the first to sacrifice contract coolies by the hundreds in an effort to drain the swamps and clear the jungle in Deli three-quarters of a century ago. I do not have the statistics to elaborate on the climate of Deli, the metals hidden in the ground, or its development in matters of population, industry, plantations, and trade over the last threequarters of a century. In any case, it is not my intention to analyze all this here. It will suffice to present some of the facts that I had stored in my head for nearly thirty years, giving a picture of the atmosphere of Deli when I was there. There were some five hundred estates in Deli at that time. Travel between them was very easy and could be accomplished either by car or truck on the many roads that crisscrossed the area, or by the Deli railway. Belawan harbor was one of the largest in Indonesia. If I am not mistaken, in terms of exports it had already equalled, if not surpassed, Java by 1927.

A rough estimate of the number of coolies in plantations, oil fields, mines, and transport at that time was about from a hundred thousand. At a rough calculation of the total population of Deli, numbering around two million ( consisting of nearly all the nationalities of Indonesia: Javanese, Batak, M,Minangkabau, Bugis, Banjar, Deli-Malay, and so forth), about 60 percent of the families were genuinely proletarian. 11 (Here l am assuming that each contract coolie, or former contract coolie, had only one child.) In short, Deli was a region of the modem Indonesian nation, and a region of the true proletariat also. Even a quick glance at its social system reveals that the upper class consisted of foreign bourgeoisie, primarily European and American, and secondarily Chinese. And the Indonesian bourgeoisie, even though it consisted of only a few individuals, cannot be dismissed out of hand.

The Sultan of Serdang and the Sultan of Deli, as a result of their oiI concessions, were capitalist aristocrats who had to be taken into account. At the top of the European bourgeoisie, sitting high on his throne far away in the Netherlands or in some other foreign country, was the great master, known by the contract coolies as the Tuan Maskapai and by the Dutch as the director. Beneath him as the viceroy resident in Deli was the Tuan Kebun, or chief administrator. Only after this level do we come across those called by the respectful title of Tuan Besar, known to the Dutch simply as administrators. Senembah Mij. consisted of several branches and thus had several Tuan Besar. To complete our sketch of the capitalist class we must include those appendages known as Tuan Kecil, or assistant. The word kecil (small) must not be interpreted as being small. Here it means apprentice or prospective. Every lazy and schlemiel who came to Deli from the Netherlands hopes of becoming a Tuan Kecil, a prospective Deli capitalist. Deli was full of these Dutch layabouts and schlemiels.

Big sticks, empty heads, and loud voices: this is the picture of the shabby bourgeois of Deli. They could get rich quickly, since they received high wages and, after a certain number of years’ work, a fixed portion of the profits. If I am not mistaken, apart from his salary of some tens of thousands of rupiah annually, a Tuan Kebun received some two hundred thousand guilders as his share in the profits.18 And the Tuan Maskapai got even more: not only did he get his salary as a director and advisor of several companies, and the dividends from the capital he had invested in them, but he also received a large share of die profits. The Tuan Maskapai was the principal shareholder and the director and advisor, but he did not work there and usually resided far away, tripping around Europe. The rich get richer: such was the dream of the empty-headed Dutch schlemiels on the Deli plantations, sitting with their big sticks in the pool room in front of their glasses of beer and whiskey.

The class that slaved from dawn till dusk, paid only enough to line their bellies and cover their nakedness, the class that lived in sheds like goats in their pens, who were constantly abused and beaten and whose wives and daughters could be taken away at the whim of ‘ndro Tuan, this was the class of Indonesians known as contract coolies. The plantation coolies, male and female, usually got up at 4:00 A.M., for the plantations where they worked were far away. They would return home at seven or eight o’clock at night. According to the contract, they were paid only forty cents a day. Their food was usually insufficient for die hard work of hoeing in the heat for eight to twelve hours a day, and their clothes were quickly torn to shreds from working in the jungle.

This deprivation in all things gave rise to the uncontrollable desire to tempt fate by playing dice, a desire deliberately fostered by the company on payday. Those who lost-and usually more people lost than won- were allowed to incur debts. Because they were bound by such debts, 90 percent of the coolies were forced to sign up again their contracts. The debts produced the desire for more gambling gave rise to greater indebtedness.

Ninety out of a hundred coolies had not the least hope of being promoted. ln fact, only one or two out of a thousand had any real possibility. They would become overseers and eventually head foremen, or they would be taken on as workers or caretakers in garages, electric plants, or hospitals. But their wages remained low: twenty or thirty guilders a month for an overseer and sixty guilders for a head foreman, that is, someone who had been working there some fifteen to twenty years.

I can recall several incidents that took place at Tanjung Morawa, the main office of Senembah Mij., where I worked.  Tuan V. D., an electrical engineer, was at his wits’ end because the generator would not work. He had figured out all the possibilities and all his orders for repair work had been carried out, but the machine still would not function. Kario, the electrical caretaker and a former contract coolie, was called. Without saying anything, he crawled under the machine for a moment, turned his screwdriver and . . . chug, chug . . . it turned over normally. Kario, the former contract coolie, had long received a wage of twenty guilders a month, while Ir. V. D. got five hundred guilders plus any number of fringe benefits.

The late Professor Walch, my close acquaintance who was formerly at Tanjung Morawa with his wife, also a doctor, had the following experience.27 A guest- I think it was the well-known malaria expert Schiiffner came to his laboratory. The two were engrossed in a discussion about a certain species of mosquito that had been found in only one place on one occasion and had such and such characteristics. But they had forgotten in which of t11e hundreds of bottles they had placed this specimen. Naturally, the name of this mosquito was written in Latin. When they had given up hope of finding it, Parman produced the bottle with its specimen and its Latin name. Parman was only a graduate of the H.I.S., was paid only twenty-five guilders a month, and lived in a lean-to with his wife and children. Dr. Walch told me that Parman was then given the “independent” job of examining d1e mosquitoes of a certain location for which he was paid fifty guilders a month. The doctors Walch were not reactionaries, but, as Dr. Walch said to me, “I can’t get any more out of the company.”

Such stories could be repeated over and over, but these two are sufficient to give a picture of the situation. Obviously, tobacco, latex, palm, and hemp plantations require extensive and complex knowledge and long experience to deal with seed, soil, soil conservation, seedlings, and the crop. You could not expect the good-for-nothings and the schlemiels just arrived from the Netherlands to know about such matters. But they had white skins, the skin of the colonizer, and they carried big sticks and used loud voices against the colored, colonized people, “the gentlest people on earth.” With their white skins, big slicks, two or three words of “bazaar Malay” and thirteen different swear words, they could use the knowledge and experience of the head foremen or overseers. These Deli schlemiels started at a salary of 350 guilders a month plus free housing, free this and free that.

A few of the Dutch assistants did have a smattering of general knowledge but, in general, very few in any way smacked of “erudition.” The conflict between the white, stupid, arrogant, cruel colonizers and the colored nation of driven, cheated, oppressed, and exploited slaves-a conflict which found a few Indonesians as skilled labour caught in the middle-fouled the atmosphere in Deli and gave rise to constant attacks by the coolies on the plantation Dutch.

Frequently just one insult or criticism was enough to cause a coolie to draw his machete from his belt and attack the Tuan Besar or Tuan Kecil then and there, for his heart was filled with such a hatred for it all. This conflict between the Dutch capitalist imperialists and The Indonesian inlander coolies was also clearly reflected in the Deli courts. The Dutch person who acted “accidentally” or “only in self-defense” against a coolie attack was generally let off with a sentence of three months or less, which could often be avoided through payment of a fine. But the coolie who killed would seldom escape hanging. When I was there, Dutch opinion was strongly in favor of punishing, “with immediate and most severe punishment so as to frighten the others,” the coolie who was brave enough to attack a white. In this situation, which could turn human beings into beasts, one felt amazement mixed with awe on hearing of coolies mutilating Dutch people and then going straight to the police to give themselves up. It appears that the tales of the ksatria handed down over the centuries by the dalang in the village wayang performances were not without their effect on the people. Was there a place for me in the Deli society That I have tried to sketch above? Was there a place for a radical-minded Indonesian in the midst of a society with such supremely sharp contradictions?

Tan Malaka, from Jail to Jail