AP Photo / S Plunkett
In this article: Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Written by Bakri Musa, and was originally published in Personal Blog
Feb 03, 2025
Written by Bakri Musa, and was originally published in Personal Blog
Feb 03, 2025
Allah in His infinite wisdom has endowed every community with its share of the gifted and talented. What it does with this divine gift will determine the community’s fate.
This Thursday, February 6th 2025, would have been Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s 100th birthday. When he died on April 30, 2006, I wrote a tribute to him in The Sun Daily (May 4, 2006). To my surprise, mine was the only mention of this great man of letters in the Malaysian papers. Back in Indonesia, there was a similar paucity. I anticipate this same lack of acknowledgement this Thursday, February 6th, 2025.
In that tribute I wrote, “I am ashamed of Pramoedya’s treatment by his own kind, but I am even more ashamed of our culture. A culture cannot aspire to great heights if it does not value its gifted and talented.”
This Thursday, February 6th 2025, would have been Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s 100th birthday. When he died on April 30, 2006, I wrote a tribute to him in The Sun Daily (May 4, 2006). To my surprise, mine was the only mention of this great man of letters in the Malaysian papers. Back in Indonesia, there was a similar paucity. I anticipate this same lack of acknowledgement this Thursday, February 6th, 2025.
In that tribute I wrote, “I am ashamed of Pramoedya’s treatment by his own kind, but I am even more ashamed of our culture. A culture cannot aspire to great heights if it does not value its gifted and talented.”
Read the full article here.
