"I WANT to go to Batavia,” Achmad Aidit told his father Abdullah one day early in 1936. Aidit was then 13 years old, having just graduated from Hollandsch Inlandsche School (HIS), an elementary school in Belitung, and the highest level of education available on this island off the east coast of southern Sumatra. To go on to secondary-level education, then known as Meer Uitgebreid Lager Onderwijs (MULO), students had to go to the city of Medan in