In the following document, the press secretary to the Indonesian United Nations delegation, Rochmuljati Wirjohatmodjo, celebrates the pioneering Indonesian women’s activist, Raden Adjeng Kartini (1879–1904), by giving a speech describing her life and work on the seventy-seventh anniversary of her birthday in 1956 (Indonesian Panel for Travel Section 1956). Wirjohatmodjo’s celebration of Kartini—ostensibly for the “Community of Indonesian Women in New York”—offers a window into the larger implications of celebrating Kartini Day and Kartini’s shifting legacy throughout Indonesian transnational history. The use of Kartini as a model in Indonesian history by three successive regimes—first the Dutch Colonial regime, then the “Old Order” of Sukarno, and eventually Suharto’s “New Order”—illustrates how Kartini’s ideas and writing were interpreted according to the agendas of those in power. Wirjohatmodjo’s speech in 1956 exemplifies that pattern.
Kartini lived and worked during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during the long period of Dutch...
