Tjalie Robinson - Life in The Netherlands

Life in The Netherlands

In 1955 he left for the Netherlands and first lived in Amsterdam and later in The Hague, where he became a zealous activist for the preservation of Indo culture. Initially he wrote columns reflecting on repatriation in Dutch newspaper 'Het Parool', where he became a direct colleague of Simon Carmiggelt, and simultaneously kept catering for the Indos still in Indonesia by writing for Surabaya based 'De Vrije Pers' (The Free Press). He originally attempted to find connection with the cultural and literary establishment of the Netherlands, but unwilling to assimilate he wanted to establish his own cultural network of Indo authors and artists. To groom the 62 year old Indo author Maria Dermoût who successfully debuted in 1955 he wrote her: "I am Mrs Dermoût, a barefoot child of the free seas and free mountains. Even when death would be my prediction, I will keep fighting an injustice that does not threaten me personally, but our cultural conscience (if there is such a thing)."

He soon started a short-lived magazine called 'Gerilja' (Guerrilla), sub-titled 'Magazine for Self-preservation', after which he took over editoral responsibility of the monthly magazine 'De Brug' (The Bridge) in 1957, which he wanted to transform into a weekly Indo magazine. This became the predecessor of his magazine ‘Tong Tong’, sub-titled 'The only Indo magazine in the Netherlands', established one year later (1958) and that lives on to this day under the name ‘Moesson’. The magazine's main target audience was the Indo community in diaspora. At its peak in 1961 the magazine had 11,000 paying subscribers and reached an estimated 77,000 readers, one third of the Indo community in the Netherlands. Another living monument of his achievements is the annual Pasar Malam Besar (renamed to 'Tong Tong Fair' in 2009) which he co-founded in 1959.

In a 1958 example how Tjalie Robinson used the Tong Tong Magazine to elucidate both his own Indo community and Dutch public opinion, his editorial reaction to a government study about the repatriation from Indonesia contradicts the widespread notion Indo culture was merely a thin facade laid over a Dutch foundation. Using the evidence of centuries old Portuguese family names many Indos carried and matriarchal kinship relations within Eurasian communities, he argued that in origin the Indos sprang from an ancient mestizo culture going back all the way to the beginning of the European involvement in Asia.

When in 1960 and 1961 he published his best known work, respectively the books 'Tjies' and 'Tjoek', Dutch literary critics immediately praised his style and narrative. However they found it hard to comprehend the Indies environment he was describing. Tjalie Robinson himself consequently decided to give all his focus to the advancement of the Indo community in diaspora and the social objectives he coupled to that, by solely publishing in his own magazine. In 1963 he wrote: "I couldnt care less about literary life, in reality that only means your a name in a bookcase. Writing should have a living social function. 90% of what we call literature is just phraseology, obsequious embellishment and blatherskite."

Tjalie Robinson developed a life philosophy that evolves around the nature of the Hunt, regularly writing about the practice of hunting as a parable for 'real' and 'truthful' living as he saw it. In his stories the Hunt often returns as a theme to intellectually explore 'dangerous' and 'couragous' life and particularly to depict the life and culture of Indos. In the Netherlands he emerged as a sharp critic of assimilation, putting the hunting lifestyle of the Indo opposite to mundane lifestyle in the West.

Tjalie Robinson has been attributed to having single handedly preserved the historic hybrid Indo culture of the Dutch East Indies in literature.

"...with the wisdom of hindsight we now know that Tjalie Robinson was one of the most original writers of post war Dutch literature, that in the nick of time he secured something that otherwise would have been lost to us: how people felt, thought and spoke in the now lost world of the Indo community on Java." Rudy Kousbroek, 1989.