Only if I Was (Als ik eens)

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve seen framed pictures of my dad beside a typewriter in the corners of my house. I used to wonder, why would he frame it so big? He wasn’t a president, after all.

When we moved to a new house, he framed and hung one of his articles from a newspaper—an old sports writing about this one football club’s victory. At first, I wasn’t interested. It was football. But I entered the room so frequently that I began to read it, word by word, eventually. I thought: what made this writing so important that he wanted to keep it forever?  

I remember learning about Indonesia’s history. To me, it seemed like a movie that was unreal. I learned about how the colonial era works, how our people built their strategy, so on and so forth. 

During the colonial era, every act, every word, was a movement toward something bigger. One thing intrigued me the most was the use of newspapers as a threat for the Dutch, as I was already familiar with it. How it can stand for the people at the time fascinates me.

There were several types of newspaper, from a different party and from a different community. And not only a few of them were considered a threat. The Dutch claimed that the newspapers were making the colonial government unstable—it critiques the condition they went through.

It is not unfamiliar anymore that Soewardi’s work for De Express was a phenomenon. “Als ik eens Nederlander was” (Only If I Was A Dutch) critiqued the condition very clearly. It questions the hypocrisy of Dutch rule, which then exposed injustices, criticized the colonial government, and planted ideas of resistance.

“But… I am not Dutch, I am just a tan-skinned son of this tropical country, a native of this Dutch colony. And because of that, I will not protest.”

The piece explains how ironically the natives can not do anything without the Dutch declaring it as provocative. It wasn’t just an opinion piece, it speaks the voices of the unheard. It was a challenge, a disruption.

The Dutch then responded with deportation for Soewardi. They silenced the voices, shut down the newspaper, erased the ink from their records. 

But, could they truly erase the impact? Could they unwrite what had already been read?  

Once a story is told, it never truly disappears.  

Truth told, history repeats, history repeats. How ironic it is that in this time, we still think “Only if I was horizontally in a higher position, I would not have to go through all of this.” How ironic it is that how the rule treats us is similar to how Soewardi was once treated.

The methods may have changed, but the purpose remains the same. To control the ink, to dictate the story, to ensure that truth serves power, not the people.

I take a look at my father’s framed article again. It was just a football match. Just another game. But to him, it was the story that mattered. And maybe that’s what journalism is—a force that finds meaning in moments, that captures what would otherwise be forgotten.

Soewardi once wrote “Als ik eens Nederlander was”, imagining a perspective that was not his own. The power it holds echoes in places that was not his, but instead of it being a compellence to the rule, they silenced it. They controlled it, for the sake of power.

However, the fight remains the same. Pieces of writings have not lost their power. If anything, its existence—its constant struggle against those who seek to silence it—is proof that it still matters. That it always has.