Uneasy focusing on the Dutch period, Pak Purwo preferred to talk about the
Japanese occupation and the Independence period. He was keenly aware that
telling the past has political stakes; in New Order Indonesia's "elaborately tended
heritage" of fear one could not be sure what actions and motivations might
be attributed to one fifty (or thirty) years later.58 But his fear may also reference
a silenced memory of nationalist violence, in which former Inale servants
of the Dutch were often suspected of-and sometimes murdered for-treason
against the R e p ~ b l i cC. l~ea~rl y, "history" and "stories" provided neither reassuring
nor safe frames for colonial memories