TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Winternachten literary festival and the art of decolonization
Former Dutch colonies are the focus at Winternachten, one of the Netherlands' biggest literary festivals, in The Hague.
Change Size
Reading session: Angelina Enny (right) and Robin Block read from their book of poetry on the podium at Theater Aan Het Spui in The Hague on Jan. 18. (Writers Unlimited/Serge Ligtenberg)
Former Dutch colonies are the focus at Winternachten in The Hague, one of the Netherlands’ biggest literary festivals.
“Again, your excellency, we are in 1939, and just as your parliament expressed expectations that it would take at least another century before Indonesians are ready for independence, I am also voicing my expectations that before the end of the next decade, and most likely after a regrettably bloody independence struggle, I will be sitting at the same table with your Queen to discuss the independence of my country and my people.”
This imaginary letter from Mohammad Hatta, who at the time was jailed in Banda Naira and later became Indonesia’s first vice president, to then-Dutch prime minister Henrikus Colijn, was penned by Dutch author Reggie Baay.
He and eight other writers — all with roots in Indonesia, South Africa, the Dutch Antilles or Surinam — wrote and read out the “letters” written to or from people of these former Dutch colonies. This performance in mid-January was part of the annual Dutch literary festival Winternachten (Winter Nights), which this year celebrated its silver anniversary.
“In 1995, we organized an arts festival to commemorate Indonesia’s 50th anniversary. We thought it would be a one-time thing,” said Winternachten founder Ton van de Langkruis.
The Netherlands only recognized Indonesia’s independence, proclaimed in August 1945 by Sukarno, in December 1949.
“It always puzzled me why Dutch performing arts did not weave our colonial history into their creations.”
