Rohana Kuddus was a Badass Journalist, and Here’s Why:
My first encounter with the name Rohana Kuddus was when I scrolling through twitter. Then an article about her popped up with the title, First Female Journalist I was like, “Ooh, this is interesting!” then, the rest is history.
Rohana Kuddus was born in Koto Gadang, West Sumatera on December 28th 1884. She was born into an ordinary family. Her father was a civil servant working for Dutch government.
Alike most women in that era, Rohana Kuddus didn’t have any chance to receive any form of formal education. Her source of knowledge was merely bunch of newspapers from her father that he brought from work, and her spending time with her Dutch neighbors who taught her knitting and weaving. Her well-spent time with the Dutch neighbor also results in her knowledge of European cultures, which she read from the neighbor’s article collection.
In such young age, Rohana Kuddus has mastered the Dutch, Latin, Arabic, and Melayu-Arabic language. This skill eventually led her into lecture other people as well.
Her concern of the women’s limitation of education made her asked her father,
“Dad, why only boys can go to school? When will there be a female school here? When will I go to school?”
24 years old Rohana answered herself proudly.
In 1911, Rohana Kuddus established the first school for women, namely Sekolah Kerajinan Amai Setia. This school mainly taught women in money management, reading and writing, ethics, religion education, and linguistic subject such as Arabic, Dutch, and Melayu.
But, in every hero story, there will always be a struggle.
Her will in embracing gender equality got lots of backlash from her own people. The majority of people protesting her act and bashed her for thinking about “women have to get the high education”. She even got the protest from the chief of the tribe. But this won’t stop her from doing what is right.
Sekolah Kerajinan Amai Setia got a lot of attention from the Dutch. Not only they can be the source of local business (and also, side colony compensation), but also emerge a culture itself in the society. Rohana stole the limelight with her amazing writing skill and her fluency in speaking foreign language. This makes a strong connection of her people and the colonist, Dutch themselves. The Dutch respect her so much that they actually publish an article about her being a founder of the first female school in Indonesia.
On July, 10th 1912 a local newspaper with the name of Sunting Melayu published with Rohana Kuddus as the founder and editor-in-chief. This newspaper was intended to be a medium of creativity for women in the field of journalism.
Quoting Susan Blackburn in her book Women and the State in Modern Indonesia, all the female contributors in the Sunting Melayu were very supportive of women’s school and often criticize the long-held ‘tradition’ of early marriage and polygamy.
Blackburn also wrote that one daring contributor advocated that girls should not be married before the age of 18 (because otherwise ‘her body will quickly deteriorate’ and ‘if she gives birth to a child, she won’t know how to look after it’) and that it should be left to the girl herself to find the husband (‘Girls are human, aren’t they? They also have brains’).
In 1916, she moved to Bukittinggi and established the second school for women called “Roehana School”. In Bukittinggi, she expanded her skill of crafting to embroidery which she learned from the Chinese. Back then, the Tionghoa people were the only one who had the knitting machinery. Later, this make Rohana the first owner of Chinese knitting machinery that she distributes to her own school and taught her students. The crafts’ quality from her school were the only one that appeal to the taste of foreigner, making her crafts as one of the most delicate and wanted with export quality.
Rohana Kuddus spent most of her life learning and sharing her knowledge.
Despite criticization from lots of people in the village, or even in the country, she had made such history in her own hands. Not only built an entire school for women, she also found her own way to build people’s mindset into accepting gender equality.
Rohana once said, “Time will never change women’s privilege to men. Women are women with all her ability and her duty. What needs to change is that women need to receive education and better treatment. Women had to have healthy body, healthy mind, ethical, religious, and all of those can only be achieved once she got a sense of education.”
Emancipation that Rohana embraced was never intended to demand equality or higher level of women to men but solely a true meaning of women’s existence itself.
To be a woman, woman needs to acknowledge what are their worth and self-actualization is. To be a woman, woman needs to be a decent human being first. And to be a woman, there has to be something done so that people will see woman as a true self, rather than a secondary figure in the society.
For me, Rohana Kuddus was a badass journalist not because she had written badass articles, or physically fighting in the streets in order to be called ‘badass’.
In such young age, she already had an introspective perspective of equality, that later led her in her movement of women emancipation. Born in a patriarchal system which makes her practically criticized for anything that is not “ladylike” or “women-enough” like pursuing education and want to make an all-female school, doesn’t make her stop her action. She kept her dream of wanting to go to school, to eventually make other woman go to her school.
Rohana Kuddus was a badass journalist because she used her voice to speak for those who doesn’t have one.
To make a change for herself.
To make a change for her own kind.
To make a change for a better world.
And those, are enough reasons for you to say the same.
