“Which MULO did you say you were from?” “MULO in Padang.” “Oh, that explains it!”

IT was a short but offensive question. Dutch teachers always asked this of Mohammad Natsir. Because it sounded like a mockery, the youth held it as a grudge.

Despite his Meer Uitgebreid Lager Onderwijs (MULO) school background, Natsir was not as fluent in Dutch as his Javanese classmates. Natsir’s Dutch was not that bad. He could write well, but