A description of the situation with regard to the language of instruction and of text books in Netherlands New Guinea and in Indonesia

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Languagepolicy in Dutch New Guinea and Indonesia
At Ipenburg, 2000
There is at the moment, in the context of the local autonomy, a kind of Risorgimento for
the textbooks the Dutch used in the 1950s. These were specially made for Papua. Very
popular was the reading book written by IzaakKijne, who used as a basis for the story the
koreri motive. This is the famous "Kota Emas" series. A Dutch girl and a Papuan boy
(mind the division of the sexes between the two population groups), after many
difficulties find the Golden City, where Jesus himself is sitting and talking to them, before
they go back with their story to Papua.
There was the series "Omhoog en Vooruit" (also in Malay "NaikdanMaju" if I am not mistaken). I
got from a colleague the book “Paradijsvogels” (Birds of Paradise), volume 9 . It is a story about
a very clever boy from Biak, who finally gets a scholarship to do his high school in Holland,
where he will stay in the house of the parents of his Dutch friend. All harmony and self-
confidence. The book is written with 2,400 words and was used in the last grade of the primary
school.The book written by an early missionary Van Hasselt Junior, "In het Land der Papoea's"
(Di Tanah Papua") is now translated into Bahasa. It tells about the coming of the Gospel on the
North coast in the early years of the 20th century. This is part of the process of
“meluruskansejarah”, the process whereby the Papuans reclaim their own history. One has to do
with the other. It is a massive effort by Papuans to reclaim their right to their own particular
identity as Papuans, separate from Indonesians.
For decolonization and for the empowerment of the local people Papua was a special case. The
Dutch realized that they had the territory only temporarily. It was threatened by an Indonesian
invasion and by Indonesian successes on the diplomatic front. They had in the first place to
make annual reports about progress made with regard to "papuanization". In the second place
they had to show the world how good and benevolent they were as colonizers compared to the
Indonesians. Papuans would agree). In the third place there were hardly any settlers, apart from
a few Indo-Dutch who fled Independent Indonesia in 1950. This helped to keep the relationships
between the Government and the Papuans friendly. The Dutch just began colonizing here at a
time when European and American colonialism in general was already on the wane.
There is usually not a conscious effort to make oneparticular language the national language
after Independence. So many countries choose the language of their former colonial power.
India had till the 1970s two subcontinent wide languages, Hindi and English. Hindi had become
the national language, notwithstanding opposition by the Tamils in the South who wanted to stay
with English. Maybe as a compromise or maybe just for practical reasons English staid the
“official” language. Tanzania, a former German colony taken over as a League of Nations
mandate by the English, did more or less the same: Swahili became the national language and
English the language for tertiary education. Swahili, by the way, is the language of the Arab
slavers, who went, from Zanzibar, far into the interior by the middle of the 19th
century. Kenya
and Uganda followed the example of Tanzania. Malawi and Zambia, however, choose English
as the national language.

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At Independence in December 1949 Indonesia claimed the whole of the Dutch East Indies,
including West New Guinea. It did not exclude claims to West Borneo, East Timor and Malaysia.
This is Indonesia Raya, Greater Indonesia, the true successor state to the Majapahit Empire. But
Indonesian national unity was very fragile, as development and traditions were very different in
different parts of the country. There were secessionist threats in Ambon, Sumatra, the
Minahasa, and Makassar. There were also threats from the Darul Islam, strong in West Java,
among the Sundanese, and of the communists, strong in East Java.
There is a principle, already advocated by NicoloMachiavelli, that if a nation has internal
problems it should create an external enemy. In the 1950s Soekarno made the Dutch fulfill this
role as the main internal and external enemy. The Dutch were the former colonizers, a role they
did not want to give up as they hang on to West New Guinea. The Dutch also controlled major
parts of the Indonesian economy, like shipping, until 1957 when all the Dutch businesses were
nationalized. In that year also all the Dutch Indonesians, who were still living in Indonesia, about
75,000 people, were forced to leave the country. In 1962 New Guinea was handed to the UN,
which handed it to Indonesia in 1963, under pressure of the Kennedy administration. The US
just began at that time to increase American involvement in the war against communism in
South East Asia. When the Dutch had given in and there was no longer any Dutch presence in
Indonesia there was need of a new enemy and immediately Britain was targeted to fulfill this
role, because Britain established the Malaysian Federation, another so-called "puppet state” like
West Papua. This led to the “confrontation policy”, a guerilla war in the Malaysian jungle, in
which the Indonesian army did not perform well. Immediately after the “Trikora”, the threefold
oath to conquer West New Guinea, there was the “Dwikora”, the two-fold oath to conquer
Malaysia.
In 1965, after the coup d’etat, the new enemy became international and national communism.
The national communists were outlawed. They were many of them, as the communists usually
got one third of the votes at the elections. This has set the pattern for the “dwifungsi”, the
political role of the army. The civilian population was threatened by an internal threat from
communists.The national unity continues to be threatened. The Christians of East Indonesia
could well become the new enemy, replacing successively the Dutch and the communists.
This is related to language policy. In 1951, from one day to the other.Soekarno, forbade the use
of Dutch at universities. At that time there were still a good number of schools, which used Dutch
as a medium of instruction. These schools aimed to have the same level as schools in the
Netherlands. Graduates could without further examination continue their tertiary education in
Holland. Dutch was, however, also very important for the study of Law. The original law books
came with some adaptations from Dutch codified law, which received it from the French. For
access the jurisprudence one has to know Dutch. Dutch was also the mother tongue of possibly
half a million speakers on a population at that time of 70 million. This decision of Soekarnoto
forbid Dutch as a language of instruction at tertiary institutions, was a great setback for the
educational level. Dutch was not replaced by another universal or global language. In the 1940s
the nationalist have been musing about the introduction of a new national language to replace

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Dutch. This could be English (as in Malaysia and Singapore) or French (as in Vietnam). But
nothing came out of it.
The Dutch language is not unimportant in the world . It is a language of more than 20 million
speakers, spoken in the Netherlands (16 million) and in Flemish Belgium (6 million speakers).
The language spoken in South Africa by people of Dutch, French and mixed descent, Afrikaans,
is mutually intelligible with Dutch. Afrikaans may also have some 6 million speakers. Till 1994
Dutch, next to English and Afrikaans, was an official language in South Africa. Students could do
examinations in Dutch. Dutch was an official language in law courts. Also in Surinam and the
Netherlands Antilles, six flourishing islands in the Caribbean, have Dutch as the official
language. Dutch was spoken in Sri Lanka by the “burghers”, descendants of the Dutch who
ruled parts of Sri Lanka from the beginning of the 17th century till the Napoleonic Wars. Dutch
was the liturgical language of the Burgher churches till the second half of the 20th century. The
Ottoman sultan had the Dutch who had a settlement in Izmir recognized as a “nation” in the
Ottoman Empire, with special privileges. There was in Izmir till the fall of the Empire with Kemal
Ataturk a Dutch hospital and a Dutch congregation. However, in the latter usually the church
service was in French. In Brisbane there is at present also a Dutch speaking congregation of
Dutch migrants. Japanese scholars used Dutch to communicate with the world outside Japan till
Commander Perry opened Japan with military force, in 1854. The Dutch had from 1641 till 1859
a settlement on Deshima, a small artificial island in Nagasaki Harbor, being the only European
power to be allowed by the shogun to trade with Japan.
The Dutch language, brought by the sailors, made its impact on Indian languages like
Malayalam, and Indonesian languages, African languages, Russian and other languages
through loan words. These languages also made their impact on Dutch. Indonesian, for
instance, has no less than 5,000 loan words from Dutch, though some are now replaced by
English equivalents. The Dutch language has numerous words from Malay.Language remains a
very intriguing topic.
Suriname got its independence in 1975. In 1954 Suriname got a basic law, which made it an
independent part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with its own parliament and government.
Foreign affairs and defense remained under the control of the Dutch. The Dutch Antilles still
have this form of relationship with the metropolitan power. I guess West Papua would have been
given in the early 1960s a similar relationship with the Kingdom of the Netherlands as Suriname
got in 1954.
There have been debates in New Guinea about language policy. One could consult the minutes
of the Council for New Guinea (“Nieuw Guinea Raad”). The supremacy of Dutch in education
meant the use of Dutch, and thus relatively expensive teachers for a long time to come. The use
of Malay, though maybe less adequate as a language of learning and study, would be much
cheaper. There was also the political consideration that one wanted to give West Papua its own
identity separate from Indonesia. This favored the use of Dutch. There were also practical
considerations, e.g. in the limits of Dutch teachers willing to work in West Papua and the
financial constraints.