Sometimes, when the monsoon winds blow hard across the Java
Sea and the old colonial buildings in Batavia creak like ships in a storm, you
can still feel them—the ghosts of power that once walked these streets. The
Djajadiningrats. Christ, what a name to carry. Heavy as a millstone, sharp as a
kris blade.
There’s something about certain families, you know?
Something in the blood that won’t let them rest easy, won’t let them fade into
the background like normal folk. The Djajadiningrats were that kind of
family—the kind that history grabs by the throat and refuses to let go.
Achmad was the first one you’d notice if you were walking
through those government halls back in the day. Regent of Serang from 1901 to
1924, then the first and only Regent of Batavia until 1929. But here’s the
thing about Achmad—he wasn’t content to just sit behind some mahogany desk,
rubber-stamping papers while his people suffered. No sir. This son of a bitch
had something burning in his chest, something that made him stand up in the
Volksraad and speak truth to power like his life depended on it.
Maybe it did.
The colonial boys didn’t much like a native who talked back,
who supported the Sarekat Islam and pushed for political autonomy. But Achmad
kept pushing, alongside that other troublemaker, Regent Wiranatakusumah V from
Bandung. Two thorns in the side of the Dutch East Indies, prickling and drawing
blood every chance they got.
His younger brother Hilman caught the same fever, the same
restless need to shake things up. During those chaotic days when the Pasundan
State was tearing West Java apart like a rabid dog, Hilman went head-to-head
with Wiranatakusumah V himself. Family friend turned political enemy—now there’s
a story that would make your grandmother cross herself twice before bed.
But if you want to talk about the real scholar of the bunch,
the one who could make the dead speak through dusty manuscripts and forgotten
chronicles, that would be Hoesein. Sweet Jesus, this man was something else.
While his brothers were playing politics, Hoesein was in Leiden, hunched over
books that most folks couldn’t even pronounce the titles of, working on his
dissertation about Banten’s history.
Critische Beschouwing van de Sadjarah Banten, they
called it. A critical review that sliced through centuries of myth and legend
like a scalpel through skin, revealing the bone-white truth underneath. He
became the first Indonesian to earn a doctoral degree—the first—and came
home carrying Western historical methods like sacred fire.
No more of that old babad nonsense, all mixed up with
gods and monsters and half-remembered dreams. Hoesein wanted facts, dates,
evidence you could hold in your hands and weigh like grain. He helped establish
the Java Instituut, worked alongside his father-in-law Mangkunegara VII, and
ended his days as a professor at the University of Indonesia, teaching young
minds how to separate truth from fairy tales.
Then there was Maria Ulfah Santoso, their niece through
their sister Chadidjah. This woman had steel in her spine and fire in her
belly. Minister of Social Affairs from 1946 to 1947, member of BPUPKI when the
Japanese were breathing down everyone’s necks, integral to the Indonesian
Socialist Party when choosing sides could get you killed.
It was Maria Ulfah who suggested Linggarjati in Kuningan for
those crucial negotiations in November 1946. One woman’s voice, changing the
course of history. Makes you wonder what other moments hang on such thin
threads, doesn’t it?
But here’s where the story gets really interesting, where it
takes a turn down a dark road that most family histories prefer to avoid.
In 1907, some colonial bureaucrat filed a report claiming
there were forty families in Lebak practicing “Hinduism.” The boys back in the
home office didn’t believe it—sounded too strange, too unlikely. So they asked
Achmad to investigate, but told him not to go directly to Lebak. Couldn’t
offend the local regent, after all. Had to maintain appearances.
Lucky for Achmad, he had a friend in the shadows—a man named
Naseuni, a puun from Cikeusik in the Baduy community. Traditional elder,
keeper of old secrets, the kind of man who knew things that weren’t written in
any colonial reports.
Turned out those “Hindus” were the Baduy people living in
Kanekes Village. Not worshippers of Shiva or Vishnu or Brahma, but something
older, stranger—practitioners of ancestral worship, keepers of the old
Sundanese faith that predated Islam, predated everything the colonials thought
they understood about this place.
But Naseuni had more to tell Achmad than just the truth
about the Baduy. He had a story that would change everything Achmad thought he
knew about his own blood.
Picture this: Two men sitting in the gathering dusk, the
jungle pressing close around them, and one of them—the elder, the keeper of
secrets—leaning forward to speak words that would echo through generations.
“Your father,” Naseuni said, his voice carrying the weight
of centuries, “Raden Bagus Jayawinata, descends from Prince Wirasuta, who
served Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa during the glory days of Banten.”
But here’s the kicker—Wirasuta wasn’t from Old Banten, wasn’t
from the Serang court where Javanese flowed like water. He was Baduy. Born in
the deep forest, raised among the keepers of the old ways.
Naseuni told how Wirasuta’s father was a puun from
Cibeo, and how the young man received a vision—a wangsit—that told him
to leave everything he’d ever known and journey down the Ciujung River to the
court at Banten. Can you imagine that? A young man from the forest depths,
carrying nothing but a sacred dagger called Kebo Gandar and a divine
vision, walking into the most powerful court in the archipelago.
The Sultan of Banten took him in, made him a punakawan,
a personal aide. But Wirasuta wasn’t content to remain in the shadows. He
fought, he bled, he proved himself again and again until his skill with blade
and strategy became legend.
When the Lampung rebellion erupted in 1663, threatening to
tear the sultanate apart, it was Wirasuta who helped crush it. For that
service, he was elevated to patih—prime minister of all Banten.
Alongside men like Syahbandar Cakradana and Kaytsu, he helped Sultan Ageng
Tirtayasa guide the kingdom to its golden age.
But power, as any Stephen King character will tell you,
always comes with a price.
At the height of his influence, when the world seemed to bow
before him, Wirasuta fell in battle. His hand—the same hand that had wielded Kebo
Gandar, that had signed treaties and death warrants—was so badly wounded
that infection took him. Death came slowly, painfully, inexorably.
The Sultan, grieving the loss of his most capable minister,
gave him the title Pangeran Astapati—“the hand that died.” They buried him in
Odel Village, five kilometers from the Great Mosque in Old Banten, where his
grave would watch over the kingdom he had served unto death.
And that dagger, that sacred Kebo Gandar? It passed
down through the generations, carrying with it the weight of forest magic and
royal blood, until it came to rest in Achmad’s hands as the eldest son of the
line.
Some families collect stamps or old coins. The
Djajadiningrats collected destiny, each generation adding another layer to a
legacy that refused to die, refused to be forgotten, refused to rest easy in
the ground.
There’s something almost supernatural about it all, isn’t
there? The way this one family kept producing leaders, scholars,
revolutionaries—as if that original vision, that wangsit that called
Wirasuta from the forest, never really ended. As if it kept echoing through the
bloodline, calling each new generation to greatness or glory or something that
looked a hell of a lot like both.
And maybe, just maybe, on nights when the monsoon winds blow
particularly hard and the old colonial buildings creak with the weight of
memory, you can still feel them walking these streets—the ghosts of the
Djajadiningrats, carrying their burdens of power and their secrets of the
forest, still serving, still fighting, still refusing to fade into the darkness
that claims us all in the end.
Because some legacies, like some stories, are simply too
powerful to die.
Comments
Post a Comment