Recall/Recalibrate is an essay project that critically analyses the so-called ‘Ethical Policy’ that the Dutch implemented at the turn of the 20th century in Indonesia. Histori Bersama is co-publisher. Indonesian poet and essayist Saut Situmorang wrote an article about the legacy of Kartini. This is the video recording of the Insta live session of Sunday August 10, 2025. With English subtitles.
Check the website of Recall/Recalibrate: https://www.recalibrate.nl/
TRANSCRIPT [4800 words]:
Marjolein van Pagee: Good afternoon. Hello, everyone. I’m just trying to add Saut [to the Insta-live]. So maybe I’ll use this time to first introduce the project that we have been working on. If everything is fine Saut will join us in a minute. Then he can talk more about his essay on Raden Ajeng Kartini. So, the project that we have been working on in the past months is called: ‘Recall/Recalibrate’. It is a separate website, but on Histori Bersama we will also upload the essays that have been written for this project. It’s an initiative from a design lecturer from the Netherlands. Her name is Rosa te Velde. She teaches design in The Hague.
Saut Situmorang: Hello Holland!
Marjolein: Hello, we can see you. Welcome! How are you?
Saut: Good, thank you.
Marjolein: I was just about explaining the project. After that we can talk about your essay ‘Decolonising the myth of Kartini.’
Saut: Okay.
Marjolein: So, yeah, I already explained that the project name is ‘Recall/Recalibrate’ and that it will be a separate website. There’s also an Instagram page but it will be launched on 17 of August, so… Right now you cannot yet check it but soon it will be online. Please keep an eye on our Instagram or social media, we will announce it. It’s a project from Rosa te Velde. So both of us got approached by her with the question to write something about the ethical policy that was implemented from 1901. You chose to write about Raden Ajeng Kartini. I myself also wrote an essay. The focus was actually on art education or crafts schools but yeah, in the end, your piece is more general about the meaning, or the interpretation of how… why is this person Kartini so extremely famous? For those listeners who do not know who is Kartini, she lived between 1879 and 1904 on Java. She was born in Jepara, Central Java. And today in the Netherlands, for example, there are about 8 Dutch street names, named after her. So she’s quite…Yes, she’s still… Of course, not everybody knows her but it is…yeah, it is a famous name. And I was surprised to read in your essay that after Anne Frank she is the best-known Dutch language author in the world. So how come? I know that in Indonesia you have ‘Hari Kartini,’ Kartini Day on her birthday at 21 of April. She’s sort of the national and international symbol of Indonesian feminism. However, you question this, you have a lot of questions about that and you deconstructed ‘the myth’ as you call it. I remember that a few years ago you wrote an essay on Max Havelaar, Multatuli. We also had a discussion then and I also published the translations on Histori Bersama. So, when you were asked for this project, you immediately said that you wanted to write something about Kartini. So, I’m curious, what triggered you? Why her?
Saut: Okay. Thanks. Good afternoon, good evening from Jogja
[min. 5]
to all of you. Especially in Holland yeah. That’s a good question to start this conversation with. I’m obsessed, I was and I am obsessed with these two names: Multatuli and Kartini. Because these two writers are very, very popular in Indonesia. And even compared to
Indonesian writers of today, these two are still the most famous, the most popular. Both of them have this awesome image about themselves. Multatuli with Max Havelaar is like the hero of anti-colonialism. This is being reproduced until today. Kartini the same. Kartini was pictured, mythologized as a nationalist, a feminist of course, a freedom fighter and all these awesome words. But when I read their books, they’re writings, I could not find all these high-sounded names and labels that were given to them. Like Max Havelaar is really a colonial book to me.
The part of the novel that is always talked about, or even reproduced in works of theater, is the little part about ‘Saijah and Adinda’. As if this very small element of the novel is THE meaning of the whole novel. So most people focus on this part of Max Havelaar. But even that part of that novel is problematic. Just the way the locals were depicted by Multatuli, the same as the rest of the novel. The Dutch people, of course, are pictured like humanist. They love the locals, the native, they love Saijah… Adinda. I said to myself I have to expose that this is not true.
I started with having discussions with the students in Jogja. We’re having a discussion group and I also asked them about the movie version of Max Havelaar, about Kartini. It’s slightly different because Kartini is a local character and she’s also a woman. That makes it complicated. The way she is pictured, especially by so-called feminists in Indonesia, is really positive. As if there is nothing in her or in her writings that can be criticized. This sacred image of Kartini is troublesome for me, it is problematic. Because it is unfair to make this particular character from Java as THE representation of what is a heroic woman. Because from my own tribe there was this woman who actually fought against the Dutch army. And she died, she really fought, she refused to accept the existence of Dutch colonial power in Batak land. She is the daughter of our national hero Sisingamangaraja XII. But the problem is, even her name is never mentioned in the mainstream media or in the mainstream discourse about Indonesian history. So, I think also this is very problematic and this is not fair. If you look beyond Batak, there is Aceh with Cut Nyak Din. She is very popular and very famous in all of Indonesia. Especially after there’s this movie, a sort of like biographical movie of Cut Nyak Din.
[min. 10]
That movie was very, very famous, very popular. If we compare these three characters… These two women warriors who really fought against the Dutch army and the Dutch presence in their own land, in their own kingdom. Compared to Kartini, it is like they’re not significant.
Marjolein: Yeah, and Kartini is a famous figure in Indonesia but also in the Netherlands. The other two that you mentioned… in the Netherlands we may have heard about Kartini but we never heard of Cut Nyak Din or the others. But still, I asked you why did you choose Kartini. Now you say that there were also others, but let’s say if Kartini was really critical, it would be fine, right? I mean, why did you want to criticize her? Is there something in her writing of which you say that is actually not critical and which explains why also the Dutch loved her so much.
Saut: Yeah, precisely because of that. That the myth of Kartini is so huge here in Indonesia is why I started to read about her. Then I got this information about how popular she actually is in Holland. She is even considered the number two most popular writer in Dutch after Anne Frank. This is amazing! This is a colonized person from the same area of these two warrior-women before: Cut Nyak Din and Boru Lopian. But why only her?
Of course, because she is famous for her letters, her private letters, I had to read the letters, right. So, I read them in the English translation by Joost Coté. I’m really sorry, but the letters for me are just a representation of an ‘inlander’ who praised her colonizers so much and strongly criticized her own culture. This kind of mentality is also represented in what we call the ‘Balai Pustaka novels’. The Balai Pustaka was the Dutch colonial publishing house where they published especially novels written by locals, by natives. Those novels had to be critical of ‘the adat’, our own culture. So critical that our own culture, our own ‘adat’, is represented as really negative. It started from one of the most famous Balai Pustaka novels called ‘Sitti Nurbaya’. Kartini’s mentality was actually very similar to the mentality of the Balai Pustaka novels. The way they represent their own culture, it is so negative.
Marjolein: So that is also the same with Max Havelaar who criticized the local leaders for immoral behavior? This is comparable with Kartini?
Saut: But Multatuli is a foreigner. I’m talking about the locals, the natives who are actually ‘sadomasochist-natives’, they love to hate themselves. Ahhh… This is the problem. Most of the writings about Kartini are basically uncritical praises. ‘Oh she is a feminist, she is a freedom fighter.’ Of course, she was a very educated woman too. Because writing in the colonial language was considered really civilized, really educated and intellectual. That’s the problem. So I had to write about it. That’s the reason.
Marjolein: Yeah and was there… Did you gain some new insights while writing the essay? Because okay…
[min. 15]
you were already critical, you already questioned her glorification but did you discover new things while writing? Was it worse or did you also found some [anti-colonial] criticism in her work?
Saut: I mainly focused on her so-called feminism because that is always highlighted when she is praised, especially by these so-called Indonesian feminists. They always look at her as a feminist. She’s really positive for the women’s movement in Indonesia. And I was lucky because before I started my essay I’ve been interested in this issue from the post-colonial point of view. For the last five or six years, I’ve focused on postcolonial/decolonial theory. From Edward Saut, oh, sorry, Edward Said [laughing], from Edward Said down to nowadays. Nowadays, of course the postcolonial feminists are very interesting. Like this young Indian woman writer Mohanty and her colleagues, also the black woman writers, bell hooks and all these awesome writers yeah. So, I emerged myself in their writings. And I got this ‘satori’, enlightenment. And this is how I analyze Kartini’s so-called feminism. I found out that actually even her feminism is colonial feminism, to which these writers refer as ‘Imperial Feminism’.
Marjolein: Yeah, I really want to discuss that further but first. I also read in your essay that Dutch scholar Paul Bijl when reviewing the English translation of Kartini’s work, he said that Kartini is comparable to anti-colonial thinkers as Dubois and Frantz Fanon, so… I mean, how is it possible that people in our time… You say that she’s actually not anti-colonial and very colonial, but in this time some people see in her THE anti-colonial figure. So what is your reaction to Paul Bijl’s comment?
Saut: His comment, his review about Joost Coté’s book, yeah, I think it shows everything about the Dutch mentality towards Kartini. The lie, I mean, it’s just the lie. They lie about Kartini! Comparing Kartini to Fanon, I think that guy is crazy. I don’t think he really read Fanon. That’s it. Fanon is critical about the colonial power. Even one of his books is called ‘The Wretched of the Earth’. So negative. Comparing this to Kartini… oh my God. There’s only one simple answer to that: read Fanon properly and read Kartini properly too. He [Paul bijl] is not an important person anyway, I’m not going to talk about it more because it’s crazy. Comparing Kartini and Fanon I think is crazy.
Marjolein: But still some people want to read in her work some anti-colonial remarks. Can you maybe explain that further? First about the concept of linguistic imperialism? You already mentioned Kartini was capable of writing in Dutch very fluently. What is linguistic imperialism, and how do you see that actually reflected in how she spoke about language and about her ability to write and read in Dutch?
[min. 20]
Saut: In the context of colonialism, especially when we talk about Kartini and her writings, the mastery of the colonial language is considered THE achievement of someone who is colonized. Like Kartini, she could speak Dutch, she could write in Dutch. She even wrote letters to these important Dutch people in Dutch. Of course, this is like wow! And then a woman too who could do this! Because you know the way the native is represented during this colonial time is very racist. We were presented as uncivilized, we were basically like monkeys, all right. That’s why the white people, the Europeans from Europe came here to civilize us. We just call them the missionaries of colonialism. And why? Because the white people, Europeans, the men, they had this burden, the white man’s burden. I don’t know where they got this stupid burden from or who gave it to them but they have this burden and because of this burden they want to civilize us, the natives of those land that they colonized. This is the twisted logic of colonialism.
Marjolein: Did Kartini then serve as an example for the Dutch ethical imperialists, like: ‘look here we have civilized a woman.’ Although yeah, of course, at the same time they did not see her as an equal, but they were maybe proud of her? Or how do you think that they used her figure?
Saut: I think that’s precisely the point why Kartini until today is so popular in Holland, in the Netherlands. That you even gave her street names is because of that. Because Kartini was the proof that the ethical policy of the Dutch colonial government in Indonesia was good. We know that the person who compiled and heavily edited Kartini’s letters was actually the director of this program. Abendanon was really involved in the implementation of the ethical policy in the Indies. He also gave the title to the book of the letters. The title also clearly shows the mentality of the whole book project. It was ‘From darkness through light’, something like that.
Marjolein: Yeah, ‘Through darkness to light.’ But did he came up with the title or is that also the theme in her letters? Do you think that it was also reflected in her own work, that she was seeing European civilization as something higher or better than her own?
Saut: Yes she uses this darkness and light metaphor in the letters. Abendanon just used it, yeah.
Marjolein: So Abendanon based his title of the book from Kartini’s own use of this metaphor in the letters?
Saut: Yeah. So, the local culture was like dark, a symbol of darkness. While this Western education in the form of Dutch education, Dutch language, Dutch civilization, was the light that came to this lost land. This motive is also most dominant in the Balai Pustaka novels. It’s the same!
Marjolein: So, these were novels that were not a threat to the colonial regime, they were acceptable, they were respecting the status quo in a way. They were not radical?
Saut: Yeah, yeah! They’re writings, their opinion, their mentality, it was not a threat to the colonial Dutch power.
[min. 25]
Actually, I just talked about that [the white Dutch] thought they were needed in the Indies, their education, their so-called technologies, their language, their literature. Their civilization is needed by these colonized natives. It’s proven by Kartini and the Balai Pustaka novels. Of the enemies of the Dutch you cannot find their names as street names in Holland, like Sukarno.
Marjolein: No, Sukarno not.
Saut: Like Sisingamangaraja, Cut Nyak Dien, you will never find them! They were the enemy. Not the people who refuse us, but people who accept us, even praise and glorify us like Kartini, yes, let’s put their names on our streets.
Marjolein: Actually, there is a street named after [Cut Nyak Dien] as well but yeah, this was a very political move. I think that, in the past years, what we have seen when we got involved in criticizing this Dutch research project… what I noticed is that there is also a continuation of… So, in 1900 we had the ethical imperialists saying: ‘we have to do something in return’. They were opposed by the conservatives who did not want to do something in return. Then the ethicists thought: ‘we are better, we are the good colonizers.’ Yet, in our time, I think these are the people that embrace Kartini as a symbol of feminism and anti-colonialism. They do not see their own position in this current time and how they are actually keeping a system intact and are not being anti- or decolonial at all. You already mentioned the term ‘imperialist feminism’, can you explain what it is? Maybe we can also relate it to our time, because that will explain better why Kartini’s criticism of her own culture fits to what the colonial powers want to hear.
Saut: Imperialist feminism is a kind of feminism that presented the problems of Europe and European women as universal issues that are also applicable to non-European people, like Indonesian women. It is still blindly followed by many contemporary Indonesian feminists. Like the idea of a woman as a universal thing. So, there’s no difference between European women and Indonesian women, there’s no class difference, there is no race difference, even though in practice these two are very dominant.
Marjolein: In case of Kartini how did she express it in terms of feminism?
Saut: Kartini was the beginning. Kartini read all those pop novels, these so-called early feminist books, from Holland. She was very influenced by these books about women in Europe who were trying to get rid of the oppression by the patriarchy of white males. Kartini read it and thought that when they were talking about women in the world, that Kartini was also part of them. Kartini never realized that she was colonized.
[min. 30]
She never realized that she has been colonized by these people, including those women writers that she admired, that they were part of the colonial power too. The lack of understanding about this reality is dominant in all her writings. Not just the letters, but also the public Memorandum that she wrote for these women in Batavia. It is very famous because of the title ‘Educate the Javanese’. But if you read it carefully, this Memorandum has the same motive as her letters. It’s like, the way Kartini looked at ‘the woman’s problem’ in her own culture. We know that Kartini was an aristocrat woman but the she wrote about her people as if she knew anything about the people down there. She never actually mentioned them!
Marjolein: So, you think that she talks in general about Javanese women and does not differente between what the women from lower classes needed, as an aristocrat woman she had very different challenges than the women who were farmers or workers?
Saut: Same goes about the common Javanese woman. She talked the same as European and Dutch women talked about native women. Always from their own perspective. What they think is right or good, must be right and good for all people. Kartini as an aristocrat young woman thinks that what is good for her, must be good and right for those common women too.
Marjolein: They don’t address the colonial occupation and oppression as a problem, is that what you mean? So, they were pretending that in Europe the women were already relatively ‘liberated’ and so the women in the colonized countries needed that liberation too, while in this colonial feminism colonialism in itself was not a problem, right? It is just normal?
Saut: Yeah, there is that kind of belief. But it is also like this: their own point of view is THE only point of view. So, the white women, their own point of view, their problem is THE problem, a universal problem for all women on this planet. Kartini repeated this in the context of her own culture. The way she represented the common Javanese women as if they are the same. But they are different, of course! That is why in that Memorandum she could write ‘what is good for us aristocrats is also good for the lower class Javanese people.’
Marjolein: You said that she used the… trickle-down theory. That she said something like ‘if we aristocrat ladies will be educated better, then automatically the lower classes will profit from that too.’
Saut: Yeah, precisely, that is what she wrote and she believed in that. So, she copied this mentality from the white women, the Dutch so-called feminists who became her heroes.
Marjolein: Because they brought her what…? ‘Liberation’ in a way? Or what did she expect from European women?
Saut: Kartini believed that if she could be like those women who she really admired, that she would become a free liberated woman. Even though she was colonized. Always when she talks about the problems in her own Javanese aristocrat culture… she always first blames the culture.
[min. 35]
Like the women’s issue, Islam, she always blamed the culture. She never thinks it could be connected to colonialism, to these foreign people, to the blue-eyed people. In a lot of her letters she mentioned slightly about these white Dutch women and their strange attitude towards her. But it’s always slightly… She never really thought seriously why they had this strange attitude towards her skin color.
Marjolein: In our time, we still have people who produce books about Kartini, both from Indonesia and the Netherlands, who pick these kinds of comments and say, ‘see how anti-colonial she actually was and critical of the Dutch!’ But you say that when you’ll read more of her writings, you will see something different and that is that she prioritized to criticize her own culture, which the Dutch loved to hear?
Saut: Yeah, and that is the definition of imperialist feminism.
Marjolein: So, in these contemporary publications honoring Kartini, they say: AND she was critical of the Dutch AND she was critical of her own culture. But you say… She’s primarily critical of her own culture and that is what the Dutch wanted to hear.
Saut: Yeah, she was never really critical about Dutch colonialism in Indonesia. In probably one or two letters, she only slighlty talked about that, but not critical. The definition of critical is different. She never asked herself: ‘why that person acts so strange and is suddenly not how she used to be.’ She’s just not critical. When you are critical you think deeply of something and then you try to get more information about the issue that is a problem for you. But in Kartini’s letters and her other writings (not only letters, but also the Memorandum) no, she is not critical.
Marjolein: And do you think that she was aware (even slightly aware) that she was being used by the Dutch ethical imperialists as an example of ‘look how good we are, we are the good colonizers here’? Do the writings of Kartini show any awareness about her being appropriated?
Saut: She was critical in that sense, but only about the Jepara-craft that she was asked to produce. Only in that issue she was a bit critical. But on the most important issues, no. About those Dutch women-and the organization that they had to organize crafts from Jepara– then Kartini realized that they actually used it. But she still liked it because she could get advantage from it. It was positive, a win-win solution. She was like: ‘I used them too so that I could help the crafts people in my neighborhood in Jepara with batik this and that’. But that is different, it’s stupid, because the most important issue was ‘the women’s issue’ and the representation of Islam by her friend, the [Dutch] missionary. Or the fact that she and people from the aristocrat class
[min. 40]
had to use Dutch education in order to be accepted to speak. She never questioned it! She accepted it as a good thing. The reason is childish and ahistorical, it was only so that [by learning Dutch] she could read books written by western writers. I mean… come on. This is just about reading novels from women in the West, so that she could read ‘Max Havelaar’. While we have Ramayana! We have Mahabharata! We have all these things, there is local literature, we have wayang and things. Most of the books that she read were pop-novels, written by women writers in 19th century in England, in Holland, these kinds of new writers became very popular. They talked about their problems. Of course, she could get these novels because she had awesome friends in Batavia, in Holland.
Marjolein: She knew people in high places like this Mr. Abendanon.
Saut: Because she could master the colonial culture as a native woman, so she’s special.
Marjolein: And how do you think that people will read your essay… If people really love Kartini and think that she’s an example, maybe they don’t want to hear what you have to say about her. Because you’re taking her off her pedestal, basically?
Saut: But they must hear me like they must hear me about Max Havelaar!
Marjolein: Of course. I also wrote my own essay for this project, for Recall/Recalibrate and also reflect on this ethical… ‘ethical’, I mean, the world itself is crazy, how can colonialism be ethical? It cannot be. I see many similarities with our time where we have these semi-critical people who are not at all questioning the fundamental structure. When you are semi-critical, you are welcome, then Indonesians are invited to the Netherlands. But people like you, who are more fundamentally critical, yeah, then suddenly we don’t want to listen to you anymore.
Saut: I’m blacklisted. Like Sukarno.
Marjolein: But if you would honor Kartini, maybe you will get an invitation from the Netherlands…
Saut: I will never honor Kartini! Because she’s been honored for so many years by so many people, it is about time to dishonor her. But in a critical way.
Marjolein: Of course, that Indonesian people within the colonial structure got indoctrinated by these colonial ideas too, should not surprise, but honoring them as anti-colonial heroes is really something different. Is it an idea that you read for us the conclusion, the last paragraphs…?
Saut: Okay.
“Most Indonesian heroines, like the Acehnese resistance fighter Cut Nyak Din and her many comrades, are not celebrated internationally, and the reason is that they were truly anti-colonial. They gave their lives in the bloody struggle against Dutch oppression, while the ‘Javanese Princess’ Raden Ajeng Kartini benefited from it.
The promotion of Kartini as a brilliant anti-colonial thinker, equalling Frantz Fanon, is a myth. The Dutch hyperfocus on her legacy can be explained by the colonial ideas that she produced. Despite her occasional criticism of Dutch rule, she only wanted reform under Dutch leadership. Her mind was so indoctrinated by colonialism that she openly expressed her admiration for European ‘civilisation’, and expected her salvation from it. Nothing in her writings indicates that she thought even once about the idea of her people’s independence from the Dutch. Instead, she strongly believed that her people could advance intellectually through Dutch school education, which would in turn benefit the Dutch colonial regime. This is the central thought that she produced through her work, as can be read in most of her letters and other writings. Not only did Kartini hold the classist prejudice that what would benefit the upper class would eventually ‘trickle down’ to lower classes, she was also fully indoctrinated by linguistic imperialism, feeling a proud superiority because of her Dutch language skills. The fact that her letters were published by high-ranking Dutch officials for the benefit of the Dutch Ethical Policy programme shows clearly just how useful she was for them; her imperial feminism proven in the end to be another colonial tool.”
That’s it!
Marjolein: Yeah, I hope that people became curious to read more about Kartini and then from a very critical perspective, I think it is much needed and… Saut, thank you! I hope that after your article is being published that maybe someone here in the Netherlands is interested and maybe an institution will eventually invite you to speak here. That would be really awesome.
Saut: And then we drink a beer, yeah.
Marjolein: Okay. Thank you so much for your time and see you.
Saut: For me yeah, my last words. About Kartini: do read her letters. Read her letters! Don’t read other people’s comment about her. Read her letters!
Marjolein: That’s a very good advice.
Saut: At least the beginning of the beginning, the early, the early letters and her public memorandum entitled ‘Educate the Javanese’. Just read this
Marjolein: Yeah. I agree with you. She can speak for herself. And what happened after that is only a sign that what she said was in some way acceptable and yeah. Thank you again.
Saut: Thank you, makasih!
Marjolein: Okay. Bye
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