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Kartini's ideas live on: New book presents largest collection of letters

Kartini's role as a prominent figure in women's emancipation is strengthened with the publication of her long lost letters describing her fight and the sociocultural conditions at the time she wrote those letters.

Nur Janti (The Jakarta Post)
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Thu, January 23, 2025

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Kartini's ideas live on: New book presents largest collection of letters Speaking across generations: The three-volume collection of Kartini's letters sits on a shelf in this undated picture. Compiled by former education and culture minister Wardiman Djojonegoro, the book is the largest collection of Kartini's letters, delivering her ideals in the fight for women's education. (JP/Nur Janti)

T

wo centuries after her death, the ideas of 19th-century Indonesian heroine Raden Adjeng Kartini continue to live on through the publication of the largest collection of her letters, compiled by Wardiman Djojonegoro, a former education and culture minister serving from 1993-1998.

The 90-year-old science professor estimates that Kartini wrote around 400 letters between 1895 and 1904, addressed to at least 16 individuals. He translated 179 of these letters into a three-volume book, launched in September by Pustaka Obor Foundation.

The first volume includes letters along with 11 articles, the second contains a biography of Kartini and the third explores her ideas, which remain relevant to today’s gender issues.

"Not all recipients kept or submitted Kartini’s letters to libraries. From the existing letters, Kartini mentions that some recipients were Western-educated Javanese youth who shared her aspirations," Wardiman notes in his book.

One of Kartini's lost letters, discovered and translated by Wardiman, was addressed to a Dutch socialist, Henri Hubert van Kol, dated Aug. 7, 1902. Van Kol was a politician who successfully advocated in the Dutch Parliament for a scholarship that would allow Kartini to study in the Netherlands.

In the letter, Kartini wrote: "It takes a child of her own nation to rise and teach both her peers and outsiders to understand the soul of that child — a people so little known and so often misunderstood."

National icon: Kartini (right) poses with her sister Roekmini in this undated picture, possibly taken in Semarang, Central Java. Born on April 21, 1879, to a Javanese noble family in Jepara, Central Java, Kartini is known for her advocacy of girls' education during the Dutch colonial period.
National icon: Kartini (right) poses with her sister Roekmini in this undated picture, possibly taken in Semarang, Central Java. Born on April 21, 1879, to a Javanese noble family in Jepara, Central Java, Kartini is known for her advocacy of girls' education during the Dutch colonial period. (Leiden University Libraries/-)

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