Dutch-Indonesian Community

My oma used to call me “schatje”, I don’t know what the meaning till someone said it’s like calling you “honey”. My oma was fluent in dutch, her father was head typist of Domestic Affairs in Batavia. Because her fluency in Dutch, her family probably what you call “average” middle-economy eurasians.

Language is really important in shaping identity, and also to the Indo people. Have you been wondering why Dutch never a popular language in Dutch East Indies?

It’s because Dutch serves like latin in the mediaval europe, it’s language of highly educated people. Only these who entered dutch school could speak dutch, most of the speakers are dutch, indo, dutch-educated chinese, and Indonesian elites. This answers why only few cities are named in dutch-sounding names, and why Malay was chosen as Indonesian national language. It’s because dutch keep the language exclusively among the elites and middle class. It is not “Bahasa Pasar”.

Not all Indo people could speak dutch fluently. This happened because Indo was in fact, became target of ridicule by the Dutch colonial government. They were laughed by pure dutch because of their broken dutch, yet, nothing was done to help them fix this situation.

This made these kind of indo people alianated from their dutch heritage, and some found themselves more comfortable living with natives in the Kampoeng and eventually called “Bule Item” because they live indifferently with local natives. But even so, the inability to speak dutch made them unable to achieve higher economy living, and causing them to have resentment toward the dutch.

Dutch language in Indonesia is still spoken by very few speakers. Mostly are the elders of dutch-educated people, the indo people, and dutch-educated chinese elders. How about the later generations? Unfortunately, many do not speak dutch anymore. Language loss is common. This is consequence of anti-dutch and anti-japanese campaign after the independence.

Indonesia would have been trilingual country had the government not abolished the language curriculum in the schools (Dutch and Japanese were still taught during early period of Soeharto’s era). But again, we can’t blame them since it was period full of nationalistic sentiments. Anything related to colonial masters must be abolished. They didn’t view multilingualism as asset.

I once asked my oma why she didn’t inherit dutch language to her children, and as well as to her grandchildren. She said she wasn’t thinking that dutch language is important, after all, we all could communicate with Indonesian language, so what’s the matters? Well in my honest opinion, I think it matters because inability to speak dutch alienated me for long time, accepting that I’m an Indo. I still feel I couldn’t call myself eurasian if I don’t speak dutch. But I think it’s over now.

I accept that I don’t speak dutch, but I’m still indo. I still want to learn dutch language someday, because it’s language of my identity.

There is never too late to learn. Accepting heritage is more than language than look. There is always time to learn our ancestor’s language, and it’s not the reason an Indo rejecting their eurasian identity simply because they can’t speak dutch.