Abdul Muis

Abdul Muis (also spelt Abdoel Moeis; 3 July 1883 or 1886 – 17 June 1959) was an Indonesian writer, journalist and nationalist, an activist of Sarekat Islam and member of the Volksraad, and the author of Salah Asuhan (1928), one of the most famous novels of modern Indonesian literature. In 1959 he became the first person named a National Hero of Indonesia. The year of his birth is disputed between the sources and is recorded as debated in his record. ^{1 2 3}

He was born at Sungai Puar in Agam, West Sumatra, the son of Sutan Sulaiman, a Minangkabau chief. After the European primary school he studied medicine at STOVIA in Jakarta for three years before illness forced him out. He worked as a clerk in the education department, where Dutch discrimination drove him to resign in 1905, and turned to journalism: he co-founded the paper Kaoem Moeda in 1912 and wrote pieces in the Dutch-language De Express sharply critical of colonial attitudes. ^{1 2}

He joined Sarekat Islam, rose quickly, and represented it in the Netherlands in the campaign for direct Indonesian representation; in 1920 (the Indonesian article says 1918) he entered the Volksraad. In 1919 he was arrested after a Dutch official was murdered in North Sulawesi just after his speaking tour there; in 1922 he led a pawnshop workers' strike in Yogyakarta and was confined to Garut in West Java for three years — the Indonesian article says it was in that exile that he completed Salah Asuhan. ^{1 2}

From the late 1920s he turned to fiction with the state publisher Balai Pustaka. Salah Asuhan (1928; in English, Never the Twain) tells of Hanafi, torn between tradition and western modernity, and the liberal Corrie — a story of racial and social discrimination that became a classic. Pertemuan Jodoh followed in 1932, Surapati in 1950 and Robert Anak Surapati in 1953; he also translated Don Quixote and Tom Sawyer into Malay. ^{1 2}

He spent his later life in Bandung, helped press for the founding of the Bandung Institute of Technology, and after independence founded the Persatuan Perjuangan Priangan for the development of West Java and the Sundanese. His school of Islam is not recorded: the Arabic article's infobox gives his religion as Islam and leaves the school field empty, and no other source names one. He died in Bandung on 17 June 1959 and was buried at the Cikutra heroes' cemetery; that same year President Sukarno named him the first National Hero of Indonesia. ^{1 2 4}

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